Best web hosting services in 2024
Through independent research and testing, our team of experts offers transparent and thorough reviews of web hosting providers. We use the same testing criteria for all providers to offer a fair and unbiased assessment of each hosting service.
Our in-depth articles include feedback about our hands-on hosting experience and other crucial information for potential customers.
Learn moreWhether you’re a startup, a solo freelancer, or a seasoned business owner, having your own site is crucial to your business’ success – you might find yourself in search of the best web hosting service. With it, you get storage space and access to websites, making your site visible and accessible on the internet.
However, with different types of hosting available, ranging from shared to dedicated hosting, and including specialized WordPress or VPS hosting it is difficult to pick the right host for your needs. Also, complex pricing tiers and different billing cycles make it harder to compare hosting provider price values.
To help you find the best web host, we tested 52 providers and selected 9 best web hosting services in 2024. In our selection process, we looked at security, performance, ease of use, and price value.
Note: We independently test review web hosting services and regularly update our reviews and rankings to ensure that you can always make an informed purchase decision.
Top 5 web hosting providers at a glance
- Bluehost – best web hosting service in 2024
- Hostinger – best cheap all-round web hosting
- DreamHost – the best web hosting service for beginners
- SiteGround – top web hosting for large-scale and business sites
- 1&1 IONOS – best cheap web hosting for any type of site
📢 LIMITED OFFER: Get up to 75% OFF Bluehost
There are 4 more providers on our detailed list to explore. Check out Liquid Web, InterServer, A2 Hosting, InMotion Hosting for more options
Our in-house research team and expert writers work hand in hand to regularly test hosting services and provide accurate and fact-checked information. Discover the ins and outs of how we test and evaluate website hosting providers.
The best website hosting services of 2024
To help you find the best web hosting services, we’ve carefully tested 52 hosting providers in terms of usability, security, performance, features, and pricing. Below, you’ll find detailed descriptions of the hosts that we’ve picked.
1. Bluehost – best web hosting service in 2024
Best for: | Personal projects, beginners, WordPress sites |
Free domain: | Yes |
Disk space: | From 10GB |
Current deal: | Get Bluehost now, 75% OFF |
Bluehost is the best provider of web hosting, highly regarded for its excellent WordPress hosting services. Its intuitive platform, powerful features, and solid performance make it ideal for quickly setting up websites. Plus, the unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certificates, and AI website builder add great value for those starting out.
Features: All Bluehost shared hosting plans come with unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certificates, at least 5 email accounts, and a free domain. Additionally, you get free CDN, malware scanning, and an AI website builder. This provider offers a combination of a custom dashboard and cPanel, which are functional and easy to use. You can install WordPress, add domains, as well as set up performance and security settings all from the native interface, while cPanel serves well for more advanced tasks.
Bluehost plans: Bluehost offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, and Dedicated hosting plans, all of which are suitable for any kind of website, including blogs, portfolios, online stores, and large-scale business sites. All plans include all the necessary security and other features, and you can expect excellent Bluehost server performance with any subscription.
Testing results: Over a month of my Bluehost monitoring, it showed a very reliable 99.99% uptime. In addition, the average response time was 971ms and Bluehost handled all 50 virtual users very well.
Uptime: | 99.99% |
Average response time: | 971ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 1.8s |
Customer support: There's 24/7 customer support via live chat and phone. As we noted in our Bluehost support review, the agents are helpful and quick to respond. Plus, you can get premium support services known as the Blue Sky for an additional cost.
Price: Bluehost pricing starts with costs lower than the market average, which makes it an affordable and still fully functional host for any purpose. You can choose from 4 shared hosting plans – Basic ($1.99/month), Plus ($5.45/mo), Choice Plus ( $3.99/month), and Pro ($9.99/month). The 30-day money-back guarantee is included as well.
Who it is best for: I recommend Bluehost if you’re looking to start and grow your website from scratch – with an intuitive control panel, a free website builder, and excellent performance, anything is possible.
2. Hostinger – best budget-friendly hosting provider
Best for: | Beginners, personal sites, business projects, eCommerce |
Free domain: | Yes |
Disk space | From 50GB |
Current deal: | Get up to 78% OFF Hostinger + 3 months free |
Hostinger is a very reliable option for those seeking affordable web hosting without compromising on performance. With a user-friendly interface and a range of hosting options, it caters to both beginners and more advanced users. It offers a generous features suite, an intuitive control panel, and helpful customer support included. More so, Hostinger has 8 data center locations to choose from to maintain excellent speeds.
Features: All plans allow to host at least 100 websites, as well as include up to 100 professional email accounts, unlimited bandwidth, free CDN, weekly backups, a free SSL certificate, and a custom domain name. Hostinger also uses performance-boosting technology, such as LiteSpeed web server and caching. The custom control panel hPanel is easy to use, and functional, and features a couple of tools that cPanel doesn’t have, such as WordPress and Access Manager.
Hostinger plans: with Hostinger, you can choose from four types of hosting: shared hosting, WordPress hosting, Cloud hosting, and VPS hosting. All plans come with excellent features and tools needed to host any type of site with ease.
Testing results: as noted in our detailed Hostinger review, the host kept 100% uptime and a speedy server response time throughout our testing period with no issues. Also, the provider managed 50 virtual users with no slowdowns or other disruptions. My overall experience using hostinger to host the site was nothing less than excellent.
Uptime: | 100% |
Average response time: | 511ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 0.8s |
Customer support: You can get 24/7 customer support via live chat. I tested this option ourselves, and the agents were both professional and friendly.
Pricing: Hostinger is one of the most affordable hosting providers that also offers excellent feature and security packages, with a website builder included. It has 2 shared and 1 cloud hosting plan – Premium ($2.54/month), Business ($3.39/month), and Cloud Startup ($6.79/month). All packages come with a free SSL certificate, domain, and weekly/daily backups. Additionally, you can use a 30-day money-back guarantee to test the service risk-free.
Who it is best for: With a feature-packed suite, Hostinger is the best web hosting service for beginners as well as most users. I recommend choosing Hostinger if you’re looking to host a personal site, such as portfolios, or a business site with eCommerce projects.
3. DreamHost – the best hosting provider for beginners
Best for: | Personal projects, beginners, budget-friendly hosting |
Free domain: | Yes |
Disk space: | From 50GB |
Current deal: | Get DreamHost now, 79% OFF |
DreamHost is one of the oldest hosting providers, and it’s beginner-focused, especially with affordable pricing. Apart from easy migration to website building, the service ensures great performance and offers unlimited bandwidth, daily backups, and a free domain.
Features: All packages include a free custom domain and domain privacy, daily backups, unmetered bandwidth, and a free SSL certificate. Additionally, a migration plugin helps you easily migrate your site to DreamHost, and a premium BoldGrid website builder for designing your site on WordPress is included. Much like Hostinger, DreamHost uses its own custom control panel. It’s a modern-looking and functional interface. Everything from domain management to security setups and 1-click WordPress installations can be found there.
DreamHost plans: like the best providers on this list, DreamHost offers shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans for all your needs. Whether you want to create a portfolio or launch a large-scale business site, DreamHost has a lot to offer, complete with full-package security and other hosting features with all plans.
Testing results: I monitored DreamHost for 2 months and it only had a single 1-minute outage – that’s more than 99.99% uptime. The average response time was 231ms, and it remained quite stable throughout the monitoring period – you can see a more detailed overview in our Dreamhost review. Additionally, the provider withstands the full 50 virtual users’ load.
Uptime: | 99.99% |
Average response time: | 231ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 1.6s |
Customer support: You can get help via live chat (5:30 AM – 9:30 PM PT), phone, and 24/7 email tickets. I reached out and the support agents were helpful and friendly.
Pricing: DreamHost offers quite competitive shared hosting prices when compared to the market averages. This provider has 2 shared hosting plans – Starter ($2.59/month) and Unlimited ($3.95/month). So the choice is very simple. Plus, you can enjoy risk-free services as there’s a generous 97-day money-back guarantee.
Who it is best for: DreamHost is a good option for those interested in WordPress hosting specifically. It’s quite universal – you get good performance and ease of use for a cheap price. At the same time, it’s not a simplified version – business users and beginners will find it equally good.
4. SiteGround – fast web hosting service for business sites
Best for: | Businesses and scalable sites |
Free domain: | Yes |
Disk space | From 10GB |
Current deal: | Get SiteGround now, 83% OFF |
Being among the best web hosting providers, SiteGround is famous for performance-focused plans, excellent customer support, and many tools to help you manage a successful website. While any website could take advantage of the features, it’s more of a business option for those who need fully managed service to scale.
Features: With every plan, you get free SSLs, a free domain, a custom caching option, the possibility to add collaborators, free email accounts, and daily backups. Besides that, there’s also a staging environment, as well as WordPress Starter and Migrator plugins to quickly get a site up. The native Site Tools panel offered by this provider is very beginner-friendly and it has everything you may need as we explored in our review of SiteGround, it can be slightly customized to suit your needs.
Siteground plans: SiteGround offers a variety of hosting plans, including specialized WooCommerce hosting for online stores, as well as WordPress, Reseller, and Cloud hosting. As a user, you have the opportunity to choose the type of hosting that suits your unique site needs.
Testing results: During my 2-month tests, SiteGround was up 99.99% of the time, with just 7 minutes of downtime. The average response time was at a very speedy 217ms too, which is on par with hosting services like Bluehost and Dreamhost. Plus, SiteGround also easily handled increased traffic (50 simultaneous virtual users) on the site. Lastly, the provider also offers data centers in 7 countries.
Uptime: | 99.99% |
Average response time: | 217ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 1.8s |
Customer support: You get impeccable customer support that is available 24/7 through various channels such as live chat, phone, and ticket. As for the agents, in my experience, they are knowledgeable, fast, and friendly.
Price: The most affordable SiteGround plans are the shared hosting plans, priced at just a little above Hostinger prices. Although slightly more expensive that some other options, SiteGround offers advanced features, like free domain, free SSL certificate, and daily backups, with all subscription plans, so you get a lot for your money. There are 3 SiteGround shared hosting plans – StartUp ($2.99/month), GrowBig ($4.99/month), and GoGeek ($7.99/month). Additionally, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Who it is best for: SiteGround is a more advanced shared hosting option, and I recommend it for business use. However, it’s easy to use – you just get better tools and better performance than on an average host.
5. 1&1 IONOS – best cheap web hosting for any type of site
Best for: | Budget hosting, smaller sites, personal projects |
Free domain: | Yes |
Disk space: | From 10GB |
Current deal: | Get IONOS now, 91% OFF |
1&1 IONOS offers budget-friendly hosting solutions and is one of the oldest European hosting providers. You can get very generous server resources, ease of use, and an extensive package of security tools without spending a fortune.
Features: All 1&1 IONOS shared hosting plans come with a free custom domain, SSL certificate, one email account, and unlimited traffic. What’s impressive is that you also get free daily backups, DDoS protection, and a site scan – read more about these features in our IONOS review. The host has a beginner-friendly control panel that also doubles as a website management dashboard. Plus, it offers a 1-click WordPress installer and setup assistance.
1&1 IONOS plans: With the classic shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting options, IONOS also offers Windows hosting for small-to-medium sized projects and sites, as well as WordPress Pro Hosting for developers, website designers, and agencies. Overall, IONOS' selection of hosting plans is suitable for both absolute hosting beginners and large-scale enterprise sites.
Testing results: In our tests, IONOS delivered 99.99% uptime and an average server response time of around 758ms. While its response time is slightly above the market average, the site load speed ranged from 0.5 to 1.2 seconds, placing IONOS in the higher performance bracket. The stress test showed that IONOS handles smaller traffic loads well, but starts to slow down with over 50 virtual users. Lastly, IONOS offers servers in the US and Europe.
Uptime: | 99.99% |
Average response time: | 758ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 1.1s |
Customer support: This provider offers 24/7 help via phone and live chat. I tried reaching out and it took some time to get a response. Nevertheless, the agents were eager to help.
Price: IONOS cheapest subscriptions are with shared hosting. You can choose from 3 shared hosting plans – Essential ($4.00/mo), Business ($1.00/mo), Expert ($9.00/mo). Also, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Who it is best for: IONOS is a good provider for those looking for a budget-friendly hosting service for websites of any size and purpose. It is an affordable, yet generous provider, as it includes a well-rounded security and resource package with all of its plans.
6. Liquid Web – best web hosting for developers and agencies
Best for: | Advanced business projects |
Free domain: | No |
Disk space: | From 40GB |
Current deal: | Get Liquid Web, now 74% OFF |
Liquid Web is one of the best options for VPS hosting. The company is known for its managed plans focusing on power and security. It’s an option for developers, agencies, and larger business owners with mission-critical projects.
Features: All Liquid Web VPS hosting plans include free SSLs, 10 TB of bandwidth, server monitoring, DDoS protection, firewalls, as well as the ability to choose the control panel. This host uses a unique, yet functional and intuitive InterWorx panel which works on 2 levels – server (NodeWorx) and website (SiteWorx) management. We reviewed the panel more thoroughly in our Liquid Web review. Nevertheless, you can also pick cPanel or Plesk.
Liquid Web plans: Unlike other providers on this list, Liquid Web doesn’t offer shared hosting plans. However, it has excellent VPS hosting solutions, as well as plans for WordPress and scaling your site to enterprise levels with public cloud hosting and dedicated hosting.
Testing results: During the 2-month-long tests, the provider kept our website online 100%, just as promised. As for the server response time, 521ms is quite average. However, the stress testing results were great – it handled all 50 virtual users. Best of all, Liquid Web has 3 data centers in the US and 1 in Europe.
Uptime: | 100% |
Average response time: | 521ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 1.2s |
Customer support: You can reach Liquid Web customer support via live chat, phone, or tickets 24/7. I’ve tried reaching out and received support within 30 seconds. Plus, the agents were eager to answer all of my questions.
Price: This provider has 4 main VPS hosting plans. The price ranges from $5.00 up to $44.00 per month, depending on how many resources you need. The cheapest plan includes 2 GB RAM, 2 CPUs, and 40 GB SSD disk space.
Who it is best for: I recommend Liquid Web for advanced projects that require the utmost reliability – it is one of the best business web hosting options available.
7. InterServer – the best secure hosting for all types of websites
Best for: | Business websites, blogs, and personal projects |
Free domain: | No |
Disk space: | From 2GB |
Current deal: | Get InterServer, now 65% OFF |
A less mainstream name, InterServer is a good choice when seeking the best web hosting services. It offers a wide range of solutions for websites of all sizes. Plus, there are strong security features that come at affordable prices.
Features: InterServer shared hosting plans include weekly backups, CDN, and a proprietary security solution – InterShield – with DDoS protection, malware scanning, and firewalls. All plans come with unlimited storage, data transfer, domains, emails, free migration, and free SSL certificates. This provider offers the classic cPanel control panel. It has a well-organized interface and you can easily add a domain, or web email account, install WordPress, or edit files in the File Manager.
InterServer plans: this host provides a variety of hosting plans for all purposes. Among the most popular and cheapest shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting options, you can also choose a Reseller hosting plan if you’re looking to sell sites, and a Collocations hosting plan if your business is in need of a whole datacenter.
Testing results: During the 2-month monitoring, the uptime was 99.99%, the average response time reached 662ms, and it handled 35 virtual users out of 50 during the stress test. In our InterServer review, you can see a more detailed overview of the monitoring results.
Uptime: | 99.99% |
Average response time: | 662ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 2.3s |
Customer support: You can get help via 4 different support channels. There’s the 24/7 live chat, phone, email, and Messenger. I tried the live chat option and agents were eager to provide professional help.
Price: The host offers 3 shared hosting plans – Standard ($2.50/mo), Boost 2 ($9.95/mo), and Boost 4 ($19.95/mo). Since the plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, you can request a full refund within a month.
Who it is best for: I recommend InterServer for those looking to host business websites, blogs, and personal projects.
8. A2 Hosting – top web hosting provider for enterprises
Best for: | Large-scale and resource-intensive sites with high monthly traffic |
Free domain: | No |
Disk space: | from 100GB |
Current deal: | Get A2 Hosting now, 84% OFF |
A2 Hosting is one of the oldest providers and still remains among the best web hosting services. Its main focus is on providing performance-optimized hosting for business websites.
Features: All shared A2 hosting plans include unlimited transfers, email addresses, plus free SSL certificates and migration. In addition, you get more advanced features, like the LiteSpeed Web Server with caching engine, 3-level advanced caching, and A2 Optimized software with image and code compression available. The host uses the standard cPanel. We evaluated it in our A2 Hosting review and found that it is less modern than currently available solutions. However, it’s still easy to use and highly functional.
A2 Hosting plans: A2 Hosting offers shared hosting, Managed WordPress, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting plans. While the first two plans are best suited for beginners and smaller websites, the VPS and dedicated hosting options offer more resources and functionalities for large-scale hosting, such as business sites and other enterprise ventures.
Testing results: During our 2-month testing period, A2 Hosting delivered a 99.99% uptime with just 7 minutes of downtime. The response times were average – 597ms. But impressively, it handled all 50 virtual users during the stress test. Plus, you can choose from 4 server locations.
Uptime: | 99.99% |
Average response time: | 597ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 1.4s |
Customer support: While you can get support via live chat or phone, the main customer support option is the ticketing system. Regardless, you’ll be able to reach support agents 24/7.
Price: A2 Hosting offers 4 shared hosting plans – StartUp ($1.95/month), Drive ($5.99/month), Turbo Boost ($6.99/month), and Turbo Max ($14.99/month). Also, there’s a 30-day full refund and any-time money-back guarantee that you can use.
Who it is best for: A2 hosting is a performance-focused hosting provider best suited for business needs – large-scale and resource-intensive sites with high monthly traffic.
9. InMotion Hosting – affordable web host for beginners and businesses
Best for: | Beginners and large-scale sites |
Free domain: | Yes |
Disk space: | From 100GB |
Current deal: | Get InMotion now, 75% OFF |
One of the more well-known providers around, InMotion caters to larger websites and businesses. However, its abundance of features at a low entry price for shared hosting makes it attractive for smaller projects, too.
Features: InMotion includes a series of free extra features with its shared hosting plans, such as a free BoldGrid (a drag-and-drop website builder for WordPress), themes, advertising credits, visitor statistics, free SSL certificate, hack protection, and DDoS protection. For hosting management, you’ll get to use the classic cPanel, which makes the provider one of the few that offer purely cPanel-based management. Nevertheless, as we conclude in our InMotion Hosting review, it’s still user-friendly and functional.
InMotion Hosting plans: InMotion offers a variety of plans for various types of hosting, including shared hosting, Managed WordPress hosting, VPS, dedicated server hosting, and reseller hosting. With InMotion hosting plans, you can host any type of website from a personal blog to large-scale business sites and online stores.
Testing results: During the 2-month-long testing, our site was available 99.98% of the time and saw an average response time of 759ms.The stress testing results were definitely more impressive. The provider handled all 50 virtual users.
Uptime: | 99.98% |
Average response time: | 759ms |
Fully built site loading time: | 0.8s |
Customer support: InMotion Hosting offers quite a few customer support options. This includes 24/7 live chat, email, ticket, phone support, and even Skype. The agents are friendly and helpful.
Price: The cheapest and most popular InMotion plans are shared hosting subscriptions. This host offers competitive shared hosting pricing, close to the best and most affordable providers such as Bluehost or Hostinger. There are 4 main shared hosting plans – Core ($2.29/mo), Launch ($4.99/month), Power ($4.99/month), and Pro ($12.99/month). Plus, you get a 90-day money-back guarantee with 6-month or longer subscriptions.
Who it is best for: InMotion hosting is suitable for both beginners, who may find the shared hosting plans useful and affordable, as well as large-scale businesses and online stores that can make use of the VPS or dedicated server hosting.
Best web hosting comparison
Brand | Rating | Starting monthly price | Uptime | Data center location | Storage | Bandwidth | Free SSL | Free domain | Customer support | Best for |
1. Bluehost | From $1.99/mo | 99.99% | US only | From 10GB | Unmetered | ✅ | ✅ | 24/7 | Personal projects, beginners, WordPress sites | |
2. Hostinger | From $2.54/mo | 100% | Yes, 8 | From 50GB | Unlimited | ✅ | ✅ | 24/7 | Beginners, personal sites, business projects, eCommerce | |
3. DreamHost | From $2.59/mo | >99.99% | US only | From 50GB | Unmetered | ✅ | ✅ | 24/7 | Personal projects, beginners, budget-friendly hosting | |
4. SiteGround | From $2.99/mo | 99.99% | Yes, 5 | From 10GB | Unlimited | ✅ | ❌ | 24/7 | Businesses and scalable sites | |
5. 1&1 IONOS | From $1.00/mo | 99.99% | Yes, 2 | From 10GB | Unlimited | ✅ | ✅ | 24/7 | Budget hosting, smaller sites, personal projects | |
6. Liquid Web | From $5.00/mo | 100% | Yes, 3 | From 40GB | 500GB | ✅ | ❌ | 24/7 | Advanced business projects | |
7. InterServer | From $2.50/mo | 99.99% | US only | From 2GB | Unlimited | ✅ | ❌ | 24/7 | Business websites, blogs, and personal projects | |
8. A2 Hosting | From $1.95/mo | 99.99% | Yes, 4 | From 100GB | Unmetered | ✅ | ❌ | 24/7 | Large-scale and resource-intensive sites with high monthly traffic | |
9. InMotion Hosting | From $2.29/mo | 99.98% | US only | From 100GB | Unmetered | ✅ | ✅ | 24/7 | Beginners and large-scale sites |
How we tested and selected the best web hosting providers
When it comes to selecting hosting providers, we follow a set testing process and select the providers based on the results. I set up a standard website on a chosen hosting platform, and perform testing and monitoring over a set period of time. Here’s my step-by-step testing and evaluation process:
- I looked into what type of hosting plans each provider offers, and evaluated their price points compared to what they offer, as well as the market average for the lowest-priced plans.
- With my testing websites for each host, I monitored the host's performance over a 1-month or 2-month period. The main metrics I measured were uptime, monitored with the Pingdom tool by SolarWinds, the site loading times measured with GTMetrix, and stress testing conducted using the k6 tool from Grafana Labs.
- Next to performance, I reviewed the overall functionality and ease of use of the hosts’ control panels. Additionally, I evaluated the site migration and security setup process, as well as tested the website builders if a host offered any.
- Finally, we summarized the findings via a thorough review and comparison process and determined the overall rankings according to the price value, usability, and performance.
Additionally, here are the main criteria I looked at when ranking hosting providers:
- Performance. If you want to start a successful website, high-quality web hosting performance is a must. All of my selected hosts keep 99.99% uptime, provide high average response times, and can manage relatively large amounts of traffic on the site.
- Security. Website security is crucial to consider when selecting the best hosts. Features such as SSL certificates, DDoS protection, malware scanners, and firewalls will protect your site from malicious traffic and attacks which could take your site down or otherwise impact your site performance.
- Features. Some premium providers offer hosting packages with everything you might need. I picked the hosts that provide extensive SSD storage, professional email accounts, unlimited bandwidth, automated backups, free SSL certificates, and different hosting types, including VPS, shared, cloud, and WordPress, among others.
- Customer support. It’s essential that you can get help whenever you need it. Thus, the selected hosts offer 24/7 customer support via live chats, phone calls, emails, and other convenient options.
- Interface. Despite your level of experience, a simplistic panel that enables the user to manage all aspects of their site in one place is a must. All selected hosts either use easy-to-navigate native user interfaces or a well-known cPanel. And some of them offer an easy migration to WordPress, as well as other apps.
- Price value. Sometimes spending more money doesn’t mean better services. For this reason, I picked providers with great price/quality ratios, which offer budget-friendly and feature-rich plans.
How to choose web hosting
Selecting a hosting service that’s best for your website is not a walk in the park – you need to consider many different things. Here’s a short checklist of what to consider when choosing the best hosting service for your needs:
- Consider your personal hosting needs. There will be a difference in what kind of hosting service you choose if you want a personal portfolio website, to host an e-shop, or to launch a professional business website. Each of these intents requires different resources, performance qualities, and features.
- Know your audience. Depending on whether your website will be meant for a few locals or for a huge international crowd, you will have to take into account the resources and data center locations, among other things.
- Evaluate the performance. A fast server response time and an adequate full site loading time, along with uptime and traffic handling are important metrics to look into to ensure that your site will stay online and easily accessible at all times, for everyone. Good performance also plays a part in getting your website ranked high with search engines.
- Take website security into account. In the current digital landscape, cybersecurity is crucial both on a personal and business level – you want your website to be able to withstand DDoS and malware attacks, as well as be accessible via secure connections.
- Choose a plan that offers backups. To make sure that the latest version of your website isn’t lost forever due to a technical failure, choose a hosting service that offers automatic backups, either daily or weekly. That way, you can recover your site quickly if anything goes wrong.
- Ensure efficient and reliable customer support. Hosting a site with a hosting service should be a smooth process, but sometimes a need for help might arise. In such moments, you want the service’s support agents to have your back and help you effectively and efficiently.
- Consider the price value. Choose a hosting service that fits your budget the best and equips you with everything you need for hosting your site.
Video review
If you want to learn all about the top three web hosting providers in detail, check out our video review. You'll learn everything there is to know about the best providers and what makes them special.
What is a web hosting service?
Web hosting service is a service that provides the means for individuals and businesses to host their websites and make them visible on the internet. Such web hosting services essentially rent a digital storage space (server) where you can store your website data. These rented servers bridge your site and other people, allowing them to detect and reach your website and the information you share.
Creating a website hosting server yourself is challenging – it requires a lot of technical knowledge, finances, time, and effort. Therefore, it’s best to trust this task to a specialized web hosting company such as Bluehost. This way, you will be able to use secure servers with fast response time and quick page load.
What’s also important is that there are different types of web hosting. The most popular options include shared, VPS, WordPress, cloud, and dedicated hosting.
Types of Web Hosting
One web hosting type doesn’t fit every website’s needs. Hence, there are different types of web hosting that differ in storage space, server speed, technical capabilities, and such.
To help you find out which one matches your needs, we have briefly described each popular web hosting type right below:
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is the most popular type of web hosting. It suits beginners, small businesses, and other websites with small to moderate traffic flow. Your website will be stored on the same server as multiple other websites.
While this type of web hosting is considerably cheaper than other types, you should also be aware of the fact that all server resources, like bandwidth, storage space, and more, are shared with all websites on the server. This can sometimes lead to performance issues.
VPS hosting
With VPS hosting, the server is shared with multiple websites but each site has its own resources, resulting in an overall better performance. This type of hosting is a perfect fit for e-commerce, growing businesses, game server hosting, and websites requiring more customization possibilities.
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting provides an entire server for one website. It provides you with top-notch performance, as well as the most flexible customization and control options. This type of hosting is best suited for large businesses or unique websites that require a lot of resources. If managed properly, your website will offer the visitors the highest quality experience, and you may also claim higher search engine rankings.
WordPress hosting
This hosting type is specifically designed and built for WordPress websites. Practically, WordPress hosting is great for all businesses, bloggers, and even online merchants. This option allows you to effortlessly manage your website due to implemented automatic updates, preinstalled plug-ins, and themes, as well as easy installations.
Cloud hosting
With cloud hosting, the resources you can use are spread through several different servers, which also reduces the chances of unexpected downtime over a server failure. Moreover, cloud hosting is scalable, meaning that you wouldn’t need to transfer in case your organization grows bigger.
How much does the best web hosting cost?
Website hosting can cost anywhere from $1 to $999+ a month depending on the service and hosting option you choose. Shared hosting is the cheapest option, and usually costs up to $15/month. Dedicated and cloud hosting are the most expensive options – the prices range from $50 to $999+ per month.
Fortunately, there are many excellent hosting providers that offer frequent discounts and deals for their hosting plans. To keep on top of the most recent deals and promo codes, be sure to regularly check out the available web hosting coupons and promo codes.
The main requirements for hosting a website
The majority of the websites are not needy. On average, they take around 1-2GB of space. Dang, photos alone take more than 30GB of space on my phone! So this one here is not about getting enough. This one here is about not overpaying for the resources you don’t use.
- Small websites such as one-pagers, portfolios, or blogs easily fit the entry plans. They offer from 10GB to 100GB of storage and can support up to 30,000 monthly visitors, which is more than enough. The catch, though, is that you usually can host only 1 website on such a plan. So consider if you’re going to add a second website in a year or so.
- For small business websites that might sell online – mid-range plans are the best bet. They come with more than 1 website allowance, 30-100GB storage space, and can support around 50,000 to 80,000 monthly visits. More server resources also mean better performance, so websites will load fast.
- Big commercial projects require either performance-focused shared hosting or managed VPS. Look at high-end plans that can support more than 100,000 monthly visits, including speed optimization features, security for malware and DDoS, daily backups, and reliable uptime.
Free vs paid web hosting service: should you pay?
Yes, you can host a website for free by using free web hosting services or making your own server. However, building a hosting server by yourself is a technical and financial challenge, and free hosting providers come with severe resource limitations, such as limited storage and bandwidth. Additionally, free hosting services often don’t have efficient website security, and cannot guarantee reliable performance and uptime.
However, if your budget is tight and you want to host a website for free, we recommend looking into some of the cheapest hosting providers on the market or using money-back guarantees of paid providers to try out the service.
Some visitors are pickier than others, but one thing is certain – all of them want a good user experience. For example, 3 seconds is around that time when a visitor notices issues with page loading speed. A pickier one might leave immediately, causing your bounce rates to skyrocket. That results in worse places on search engine listings as well as a loss in revenue.
Bottom line
It doesn’t matter if you’re about to start a small blog or a large-scale online business, you should seek the best web hosting services. The right host can provide you with reliable, fast, and easy-to-use services that have a high impact on the success of your website.
With all tests completed, I can conclude that Bluehost is the best web hosting provider in 2024. It offers affordable pricing plans, top-class performance, and many useful features to make site management simple.
Have you tried other web hosting services? Share your experience with us in the comments below.
Best web hosting FAQs
Which is the best hosting service provider?
Bluehost is the best website hosting provider in 2024. Due to its reliable performance, user-friendly features, excellent customer support, and competitive pricing. It offers a variety of hosting plans suitable for beginners and advanced users alike, making it a top choice for a wide range of website needs.
Can I switch web hosting companies?
Yes, you can easily switch your web hosting company. That’s even advised if your current one doesn’t meet the expectations. The majority of the hosts actually provide free or even automated website migration, so the transfer is effortless.
Can I host my own website?
Yes, you can host your own website, but that only works in theory. To host your own website, you’d need a server (a personal computer can be used) that’s always connected to the internet. You’d need to take care of software setups too, but that’s the easy part. Keeping that server online is a different story – if you have an electricity outage, your server and website will go down.
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