14 Best Web Hosting Services ( Real data on April 2023 )
Table of contents
- Best web hosting for beginners
- Best web hosting for wordpress
- Google web hosting
- List of web hosting companies
- Website hosting free
- Godaddy web hosting
- Cheap web hosting
- Best web hosting providers 2023
Best web hosting services compared in 2023
After searching the market deeply, we’ve find out those feature the following companies by rank:
- Bluehost (www.bluehost.com)
- SiteGround (www.siteground.com)
- WP Engine (wpengine.com)
- DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)
- Kinsta (kinsta.com)
- Namecheap (www.namecheap.com)
- InMotion Hosting (www.inmotionhosting.com)
- Flywheel (getflywheel.com)
- Cloudways (www.cloudways.com)
- Hostinger (www.hostinger.com)
- A2 Hosting (www.a2hosting.com)
- IONOS (www.ionos.com)
- HostGator (www.hostgator.com)
- GreenGeeks (www.greengeeks.com)
Best web hosting services : SUMMARY
1. Bluehost (www.bluehost.com)
- From: $2.75 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Disk Space: 50 GB
- Free Domain: YES
- Uptime: 100% (last 3 months)
- Load time US: 0.76s
- Load time EU: 1.81s
- Load time Asia: 0.39s
Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting companies on the web, catering their services to different users with different websites and goals.123
For instance, if you’re a beginner with not much money to spend, you can get a Bluehost plan for as low as $2.75 / month. Then if you ever need more, you can upgrade to a higher-tier plan easily.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re an advanced user or have a site that receives more traffic, you can get a VPS hosting or a dedicated server (of course, those cost more).
Bluehost also offers beginner-friendly tools for site software installs. This is particularly useful if you’re planning on building a WordPress site. The user panel in Bluehost is straightforward to use and doesn’t require any prior experience or knowledge of how web servers work.
Last but not least, Bluehost also throws in a free domain name if you pay for your server up front for one year or more.
Bluehost is one of the largest website hosting provider and powers millions of websites. Learn more about out secure and reliable hosting services today!
One if the oldest web hosts started in 1996, Bluehost has become in largest brand name when it comes to WordPress hosting. They are an official ‘wordPress’ recommended hosting provider. With Bluehost, you never have to worry about your website being slow even when there is a lot of traffic. Their 47/7 expert support is always there to help when you need it by phone, email, or live chat. They are rated #! in webhosting for small businesses. On top of the, they are offering webhostingplanets users and exclusive 3% off discounts, a free Domain, Free SSL, and a free Site Builder with templates.
Bluehost Hosting Plans and Features
Bluehost offers a variety of hosting plans for all budgets and sizes. This includes shared hosting, VPS, dedicated server, cloud hosting, WooCommerce hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and more.
Let’s take a look at Bluehost hosting plans and their features.
· Shared hosting: Shared hosting is the perfect way to start a new website with low traffic volume. In a shared hosting environment, your website shares server resources with other websites.
· Cloud hosting: A more reliable upgrade to the shared hosting plan. It allows you to utilize multiple cloud servers, allowing your website to automatically switch to a different server in case of a hardware failure or high traffic.
· WordPress hosting: Their WordPress plans are designed specifically for WordPress powered websites. It is optimized to run WordPress and can even protect your WordPress site against common threats.
· WooCommerce hosting: WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress, it allows you to easily start an online store with WordPress. WooCommerce hosting offers you all the essential features to kick start your eCommerce store.
· VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting: An upgrade to shared WordPress hosting, VPS hosting allows you to virtual dedicated resources in a shared environment.
· Dedicated hosting server: A dedicated hosting server for your website, means you will have all the resources of the dedicated server to yourself. The downside is that you will have to manage the server on your own.
All Bluehost hosting plans allow you to install WordPress with 1-click.
All plans come with an easy-to-use hosting control panel where you can manage your hosting, create databases, etc.
Bluehost has a custom control panel that improves ease of use for beginners. It also uses a customized version of the cPanel hosting dashboard for more advanced options.
| FEBUARY 2023 TEST RESULT |
|---|
| 100% |
| East Coast, USA: 0.45s | West Coast, USA: 1.06s |
| London: 0.48s | Paris: 3.13s |
| Mumbai, India: 0.34s | Sydney: 0.44s |
Pros:
- Most affordable prices
- Free domain name
- Free CDN + SSL
- Great customer support
- Officially Recommended by WordPress
- 1-click WordPress install
Cons:
- Higher domain renewal price
Webhostingplanets users get an exclusive 69% off discount and free Domain!
(this discount will be applied automatically)
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. See how webhostingplanets is funded, why it matters, and how you can support us.
2. SiteGround (www.siteground.com)
From: $1.99 / month
Traffic allowed: 10,000 visits/month
Disk Space: 10 GB
Free Domain:
Uptime: 99.99% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 1.15s
Load time EU: 0.31s
Load time Asia: 1.75s
SiteGround is a web hosting company, founded in 2004 in Sofia, Bulgaria. As of January 2020, it provides hosting for about 2,000,000 domains worldwide. It provides shared hosting, cloud hosting, enterprise solutions, email hosting, and domain registration. In 2019, the company employed about 500 people. Wikipedia
SiteGround has made a name for itself as a quality WordPress hosting platform, but it’s grown to offer other types of web hosting as well.
These days, SiteGround allows you to host a site built on Weebly (popular builder), Joomla, Drupal, and other popular CMS platforms. SiteGround is also perfectly capable of hosting your eCommerce store.
Oh, and about that WordPress hosting thing, SiteGround is still one of the top companies you can choose for that. In fact, it’s one of the few web hosting companies openly endorsed by the WordPress.org crew.
Feature-wise, SiteGround delivers everything you might expect from a quality host. There’s an easy-to-use panel, you can take advantage of a handful of one-click website software installers (including for WordPress), and SiteGround will offer you good support and more than capable servers.
There is a lot to process, and SiteGround promises tons of benefits. But is it all true?
After having tested SiteGround Shared hosting solution on our test site, I decided to write this SiteGround review, which I hope will help you decide whether it’s the best option for your website.
But if you don’t have time to read this SiteGround review, just watch this short video I put together for you:
SiteGround Pricing & Hosting Plans
$14.99
StartUp
For 1 website, unlimited traffic and 10 GB of storage. Only automatic backups.
$24.99
GrowBig
For unlimited websites and traffic and 20 GB of storage. Manual and automatic backups.
$39.99
GoGeek
For unlimited websites and traffic and 40 GB of storage. Manual and automatic backups.
The following SiteGround prices are for their shared hosting plans, which is the most popular service. SiteGround offers additional web hosting options (e.g. cloud hosting plans), you can see their costs here.
When to use SiteGround hosting?
SiteGround offers unbeatable services and I’d recommend it in a heartbeat. It’s suitable for serious projects, and if you need more performance down the line, you can upgrade to one of its premium hosting plans (e.g. cloud hosting or dedicated). I especially recommend it for:
- Online store (SiteGround WooCommerce hosting available)
- Professional bloggers
- Websites that run on WordPress (more information) – to have managed WordPress hosting services.
- Large corporate websites
- Developers and designers that want quality and good customer support
- Those looking for features like staging, Git repositories or SSH access
- In general, anything that will require high-performance solutions
Remember that you can try SiteGround for 30 days with no obligation.
When not to use SiteGround hosting?
Even though this hosting company adapts to many profiles, in some cases it might not be the best option, for example:
- If you’re looking for cheap web hosting
- If you want Windows-based servers (check Namecheap Hosting or A2 Hosting)
- If you need a lot of webspace and have a small budget
Testing SiteGround's web hosting
Uptime tests
I used StatusCake to measure the availability (uptime) of SiteGround’s servers. The fewer the interruptions the better. It’s recommended to have uptime figures above 99.95%.
SiteGround’s uptime results in our web host reliability tests, are impressive, as you can see in the chart below:
3. WP Engine (wpengine.com)
From: $20 / month
Traffic allowed: 25,000 visits/month
Disk Space: 10 GB
Free Domain:
Uptime: 100% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 0.52s
Load time EU: 1.28s
Load time Asia: 1.74s
Pros:
- Fast Loading Time
- Expert WordPress support
- Advanced Security Tools
- 1-click WordPress install
- Free SSL, CDN, and Website Backups
- Easy Staging Tools
- 10+ Premium Themes
Cons:
- No Free Domain
WPBeginner users get an exclusive 40% off discount and free SSL!
(this discount will be applied automatically)
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. See how webhostingplanets is funded, why it matters, and how you can support us.
WP Engine Review from Our Experts
WP Engine is the first for-WordPress-only web hosting service on our list. It is also one of the more expensive solutions out there, starting at $20 / month.
WP Engine® is the managed WP host trusted by more than 175,000 customers. Easy migration, SSL, DDoS mitigation, dev tools, staging, SSH, backups, CDN, 24/7 support. Build Faster. 1.5M Active Sites. 60-Day Guarantee. Secure Hosting. 24/7 World Class Support.
WPEngine is VIP WordPress hosting. Their hassle-free hosting offers fast and robust servers that can handle anything. Your website is practically hacker proof, and their mind-blowing customer service makes you feel like king. They offer automatic security updates, daily backups, one-click restore points, automatic caching, top-tier security, one-click staging area, and more. WPEngine is like having an army of WordPress experts on your side for assistance. Brands like HTC, FourSquare, SoundCloud, Balsamiq, and many others use WPEngine for their WordPress hosting (Just sayin’). If you are a business who do not want to deal with the technical side of running your blog, then WPEngine is the solution for you. Bonus: now you get all 36+ premium StudioPress themes and Genesis framework for free with all WP Engine account
Feature-wise, however, WP Engine offers you pretty much everything you might need for your WordPress site to thrive. Except for just the hosting-related features, there are also additional perks such as 30+ free StudioPress themes, dev/stage/prod environments, advanced caching solutions, and a user dashboard that lets you get to every setting of your site quickly.
That said, this is more of a solution for the savvy user who wants to get the most out of their WordPress site. If you’re just a beginner with a new WordPress site, or you’re not planning on using WordPress at all, you’re going to choose a different company.
There are plenty of cheap hosts available that can provide a decent service. However, what if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to check out our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, offering managed plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared with many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly cheap. Therefore, you’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the cost before making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, support options, performance capabilities, and everything else you need to know. Let’s get started!
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only offers managed WordPress hosting. Their managed WordPress plans have following hosting options.
- Managed hosting – Managed hosting environment suitable for small business and blogs
- Managed Hosting Plus – Includes automated plugin updates tested with AI including 3rd party plugins.
- Secure Hosting – Additional security layers with website firewall and DDoS protection
- Ecommerce Hosting – WooCommerce hosting with powerful store search, eCommerce templates, and more
Each of these hosting options has five different levels available: Startup, Professional, Growth plan, Scale, and Custom. The Custom plan also includes dedicated servers dev. environments, customer success, and priority support.
All plans include unlimited data transfer. The plans differ based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (Monthly visitors or number of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Bandwidth requirement
Each WP Engine plan has set limits on the number of visits your hosting account can get. If your account exceeds those limits, then you may be charged overage pricing for extra visits.
WP Engine includes some unique features for WordPress users that most hosts don’t offer, or charge extra for. These special features include:
- Git version control
- Staging environment: instantly staging sites for testing
- Easy transferable WordPress installation from free to paid accounts
- Free SSL certificates and SSH access
- Cutting edge technologies including latest PHP version
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine offers the most advanced and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting features.
Advanced Security Features
WP Engine also offers a number of premium security features. The WordPress core is automatically updated to the latest version for you.
WP Engine thoroughly tests any major core updates before upgrading their customers. They have a proprietary intrusion detection and prevention system to block any DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, malware, JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, and more.
They also partner with third-party security firms to conduct regular code reviews and security audits.
Your security is guaranteed, so if you get hacked WP Engine will fix it for free.
Pros and Cons of WP Engine
WP Engine is a popular web hosting company, but it may not be right for everyone. Consider these pros and cons before choosing a plan.
Pros of choosing WP Engine
- Security– WP Engine keeps your site protected with many advanced security features that other hosts don’t offer.
- Fast Loading Times– Servers are optimized for WordPress with WPEngine’s own Evercache technology your website loads fast. Plus, you get access to CDN which further boosts performance.
- Reliability– WP Engine’s proprietary front-end layer system can handle traffic spikes easily without slowing down your site.
- WordPress Expert Support– WP Engine’s entire support staff is comprised of trained WordPress experts.
- Rave Reviews– WP Engine is an incredibly popular host that gets great reviews from many customers for their reliability and excellent customer service.
Cons of choosing WP Engine
- Disallowed Plugins– WP Engine does not allow you to install certain WordPress plugins on your site, either because they conflict with or duplicate WP Engine’s features, or cause a high server load. This includes many caching, backup, related post plugins, and others. You can see the full list of disallowed plugins here.
- No Domain Registrations– WP Engine offers only hosting services, not domain name registrations. This means you’ll have to register your domains with another company, which some users may find inconvenient.
- Higher Costs– When comparing to shared hosting, WP Engine is more expensive, but the services they offer are well-worth the investment.
Examining WP Engine’s Plans
So as you’ve gathered by now, the main reason to choose one plan over another is to do with the number of visitors you receive on a monthly basis.
The Startup Plan
It costs $25 a month, paid annually, and the biggest obstacle is the number of visitors, set at 25,000.
By comparison, SiteGround has a shared hosting option without any limit on visitors, but that only costs $14.99 a month for 1 website. And you can build unlimited sites for as little as $24.99.
For a better comparison, the entry plan for managed WordPress hosting by Bluehost costs $39.99 a month – but you get up to 100 Million (!) visitors and 5 included sites. Well, eventually, of course, the server will crash. 100 million is more a way of saying ‘as much traffic as our server can handle’.
In all honesty, we don’t love recommending Bluehost due to their poor support, but as far as prices go it’s a much better deal. You’d have to pay $20 per month per extra site with the Startup plan, which would put you well over the price point of their competitors. Read our full Bluehost review.
The advantage with WP Engine is that if you buy a hosting plan for up to X amount of visitors, you can be completely sure that their servers will be able to handle it perfectly. Read our full WP Engine review.
The Professional Plan
This plan is a recent addition to (finally!) bridge the gap between Startup and Growth. With it, you can host 3 websites that receive up to 75,000 visits. Storage only goes up to 15GB but should be enough for regular sites.
You’ll be paying $25 a month, which is a fair price when taking into consideration what is on offer.
The Growth Plan
It’s quite a leap from the Startup plan, with everything more or less multiplied by 4. So it’s four times more expensive ($96), and you get four times more monthly visits (100,000). Bandwidth is upgraded from 50GB to 200GB. The only thing that isn’t quadrupled is the local storage, merely doubling from 10GB to 20GB.
Once again, Siteground offers similar features with $24.99 a month. Paying $89.99 with Bluehost gives you 600 Million visitors, ad a whopping 3TB of bandwidth.
Moreover, WP Engine lets you build up to 10 sites, whereas you can go up to 20 with Bluehost’s WP Premium plan.
You need the Growth Plan to access features like multisite and geotargeting (more on that below), and you also get the phone support, which the Startup plan lacks.
The Scale Plan
Another huge leap, reaching $242 a month for a mere 400,000 visitors per month.
In terms of features, you get exactly the same as the Growth Plan, so once again, it’s really about managing monthly visits more than anything else. Having said that, the 50GB of local storage and 500GB bandwidth can be great if you host your own video files, for instance.
You can easily upgrade your plan directly from your dashboard.
It’s also possible to add extra sites to your plan. It costs:
- $20 per month per site on the Startup plan (1 site included)
- $40 per month per site on the Scale plan (10 sites included)
- $60 per month per site on the Growth plan (30 sites included)
Support wasn’t able to tell me if there’s a limit to the amount of sites you can add.
For storage and more bandwidth, the only solution is to upgrade. But note that we moved some of our content to other hosting providers to remain under a certain number of monthly visits, as it was cheaper than upgrading (which we eventually had to do anyway).
What Are These Free StudioPress Themes?
Just like normal WordPress themes, but designed to work with the aforementioned Genesis Framework for improved performance and compatibility. As far as I could tell, they are all:
- Mobile responsive
- Fast
- Well-designed
- High-quality code
- Usually worth $100 – $150 each if you buy them without a WP Engine plan
WP Engine Speed Test Results
4. DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)
From $2.59 / month
Traffic allowed: unmetered
Disk Space: 50 GB
Free Domain:
Uptime: 99.92% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 1.9s
Load time EU: 2.15s
Load time Asia: 3.43s
Pros:
- Award winning hosting
- Great customer support
- Officially Recommended by WordPress
- 1-click WordPress install
- Free Domain, SSL, and Privacy
- Automatic Daily Backups
Cons:
- No Free Email
Webhostingplanets users get an exclusive 72% off discount and free domain!
(this discount will be applied automatically)
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. See how webhostingplanets is funded, why it matters, and how you can support us.
DreamHost Review from Our Experts
DreamHost is one of the most affordable of the best web hosting services on the market, especially for new website owners who don’t have experience with web servers and the like.
Their entry-level hosting plan, for instance, offers a free domain name included, a free SSL certificate, and WordPress pre-installed if that’s the platform that you want to use.
Besides shared hosting, DreamHost also offers VPS hosting options, managed hosting, dedicated servers, and affordable email hosting if you need a new home for your inbox.
DreamHost has been around for 18 years, and is known for making web hosting easy. You get a custom dashboard, 1-click WordPress install, automatic WordPress updates, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth and free SSDs which makes your site 200% faster. DreamHost powers over 1.5 million WordPress blogs and websites. They’re also an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. Webhostingplanets users get an exclusive 72% off and a free domain + free SSL certificate.
DreamHost is a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar. It is owned by New Dream Network, LLC, founded in 1996 by Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez and Sage Weil, undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, and registered in 1997 by Michael Rodriguez. Wikipedia
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California, United States
Founded: April 10, 1996, Claremont, California, United States
Founders: Michael Rodriguez, Sage Weil, Dallas Kashuba, Josh Jones
Is DreamHost a good company?
What is DreamHost used for?
Is DreamHost the same as GoDaddy?
Is DreamHost free?
If you want to build a Linux-powered website, DreamHost should be one of the first places you look. The web hosting service has a rich feature set that satisfies many personal- and business-related web hosting needs by offering shared, WordPress, virtual private server (VPS), cloud, and dedicated plans. In addition, its website-building software gives webmasters simple tools to create attractive, flexible sites. As a result, DreamHost is an Editors’ Choice award-winning web host, racing to the top alongside competitors like HostGator, Hostwinds, and Liquid Web.
Shared Web Hosting
If you’re looking to create a web site, but don’t want to spend a lot of money, shared web hosting is the way to go. Shared hosting is an extremely low-cost form of web hosting that sees your site share CPU, RAM, and other server resources with other websites. As a result, it isn’t a very powerful hosting tier; if you expect your site to see a large amount of traffic, you should look into virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated hosting.
That said, HostGator, the Editors’ Choice winner for shared hosting, is one of the few web hosts we’ve reviewed that offers Windows-based shared web hosting. That’s a big deal, as there are many businesses that require Microsoft’s operating system to run specific software. DreamHost, on the other hand, only offers Linux-based servers. HostGator also offers unlimited email across the board.
VPS Web Hosting
DreamHost offers four Linux-based VPS web hosting plans (starting at $15.00 per month, or $13.75 per month with a one-year commitment) for businesses that need servers with more power than what shared hosting offers. VPS hosting places your website on a server with far fewer virtual roommates than shared hosting. As a result, there’s more server power available for your site to tap.
DreamHost’s VPS plans offer unlimited monthly data transfers and domains, which is a nice perk. However, the base memory and storage is quite low; the Basic plan (whose prices are quoted above) offers only 1GB of RAM and a 30GB solid-state drive. On the other hand, the highest configuration ($120 per month, or $110 per month with an annual contract) maxes out at 8GB of RAM and 240GB of solid-state storage. Unfortunately, the VPS plans only offer the Ubuntu Linux operating system.
Hostwinds, PCMag’s top pick for VPS hosting, has superior VPS plans. It has wallet-friendly, well-rounded VPS offerings. Take the managed Linux VPS plans, which start at just $5.17 per month for 1GB of RAM, 30GB of disk space, 1 TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email and scale to $247 per month for 96GB of RAM, 750GB of disk space, 9TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email.
Dedicated Web Hosting
If you want maximum web hosting power, you need to get a dedicated server. With this setup, your website lives on a server all by itself, thus leveraging all the system resources. You should look into dedicated hosting if you’re expecting your site to see an incredible amount of traffic, and if your site is so mission-critical that it absolutely can’t go down or slow down.
DreamHost has several dedicated server options. The offerings start with the Standard 4 plan ($169 per month, or $149 for an annual commitment) that includes 4GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The options top off with the $379 per month Enhanced SSD 64 plan that boasts 64GB of RAM and 240GB of solid-state storage. Each DreamHost dedicated server plan has unlimited data transfers.
Unfortunately, DreamHost lacks Windows-based dedicated servers; it’s Linux or bust here, too. If you want a build a website using Microsoft’s operating system as a foundation, we suggest checking out AccuWeb, Webhostingplanets Editors’ Choice for dedicated web hosting, which offers Linux and Windows dedicated server options. AccuWeb also has powerful dedicated plans, including a $1,070 per month package that has 8TB of storage, 512GB of RAM, and up to 50TB of monthly data transfers.
Cloud Hosting
You’ve probably heard of cloud hosting, which spreads resources across multiple servers (traditional hosting pulls resources from a single server). Cloud hosting allows sites to easily increase server needs when the situation calls for it. Fortunately, DreamHost offers three cloud hosting tiers—512MB RAM Server, 2GB RAM Server, and 8GB RAM Server—that come in Linux, BSD, and Windows varieties.
DreamHost has excellent packages that start at $4.50 per month (for 512MB of RAM, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers) and top out at $48 per month (for four CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers). As a result, DreamHost’s powerful specs make the web host the co-Editors’ Choice for cloud hosting services.
If you’re a corporate customer who wants world-class cloud hosting, 1&1 Ionos is the way to go. It’s a co-Editors’ Choice for the category that boasts incredibly powerful cloud hosting packages.
Reseller Hosting
If you’re looking to get into the web hosting business, but don’t want to deal with infrastructure matters, reseller hosting is the way to go. Unfortunately, DreamHost doesn’t offer standalone reseller plans; you can resell your own server space, but only if you add other domains to your own. Check out DreamHost’s reseller FAQ page(Opens in a new window) for more information.
If you really want to dabble in reseller hosting, we recommend Hostwinds, the category’s Editors’ Choice. Hostwind’s plans, starting at $3.29 per month, have unlimited email, storage, and data transfers. On offer are dedicated and VPS packages of both the Linux and Windows variety, as well as shared hosting, which is limited to Linux. The servers have the same RAM and storage amounts as those that Hostwinds supplies directly, which is not always the case. Hostwinds also lets you apply your own branding to the servers you rent, and it supplies 24/7 tech support, too.
DreamPress lets you install any plug-in you desire; Pagely and WP Engine, on the other hand, restrict you from installing a small number of plug-ins that may impact your site’s performance. Recently, DreamHost added staging to its WordPress offerings, so you can test new site features on another site instance that won’t affect your live pages.
Impressive as DreamPress is, the Linux-backed A2 hosting is the webhostingplanets Editors’ Choice in the category. A2 boasts an optimized environment that is supposed to be six times faster than traditional hosting environments. Plus, A2’s WordPress plans offer unlimited storage and monthly data transfers in most of its options. For more on the fantastically popular content management system, you can read our story on how to get started with WordPress.
DreamHost Hosting Plans and Features
DreamHost specializes in providing hosting for web designers, developers, bloggers, and online businesses. They support and use open source technologies, apps, and platforms like WordPress and Joomla.
Their one-click installer includes configurations for many open source apps. As a Dreamhost customer, you get expert support, free migrations, and built-in security features.
Their hosting options include: shared hosting, email hosting, managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting (Virtual private servers), and dedicated servers. They also offer cloud hosting packages and cloud storage.
All of DreamHost’s plans use SSD drives for faster loading. DreamHost also uses a proprietary control panel instead of cPanel.
Shared hosting includes:
· 1 free domain registration and Let’s encrypt free SSL
· unlimited storage and bandwidth
· Easy to use control panel
· Unlimited email accounts and subdomains (with WordPress unlimited shared plan)
· 1-click installation of WordPress
Shared Hosting Pricing
DreamHost’s shared hosting plans start at $2.59 per month (3-years billed). You can also choose to pay monthly for the Shared Starter plan, but the price goes up to $4.59 per month.
For additional functionality and email accounts, you can upgrade to WordPress Shared Unlimited plan which starts at $3.59 (billed 3-years). This plan also allows you to add unlimited websites to your account.
Managed WordPress Plans
DreamHost also offers a managed WordPress hosting plan called DreamPress. DreamPress is over 5 times faster than shared hosting. The linux servers are optimized for WordPress, and they can handle traffic spikes (millions of visitors) without your website going down.
Managed WordPress hosting also includes:
· Automatic WordPress core updates for security
· Private IP address and SSL certificate pre-installed for eCommerce sites
· SSD storage and unmetered bandwidth
· Web application firewall to block malware and brute-force attack mitigation.
· One-click staging site set up
· Free website builder along with on-demand as well as daily backups
· DreamPress Pro and Plus plans also include unlimited CDN and Jetpack Professional add-on features.
· Dedicated hosting with your own CPU server resources for maximum performance
In our DreamHost review, we found that they provide high-quality, reliable hosting at very affordable prices. Their plans include everything you need to build your website and room to upgrade when your site grows.
Frequently Asked Questions About DreamHost
Following are a few of the commonly asked questions (FAQs) about DreamHost that we have been asked by our users.
Is DreamHost a good host?
Yes, DreamHost is a good host for any type of starter WordPress website. They offer great features, a rock-solid platform, and fast servers at an affordable cost.
Their quality of service and pricing is on par with HostGator, GoDaddy, InMotion Hosting, and Bluehost.
The only web hosting company that offers cheaper web hosting prices than DreamHost is Hostinger.
Does DreamHost use cPanel?
No, DreamHost does not use cPanel. Instead, they have built their own custom control panel that has all the management features you’ll find in cPanel.
You can easily do MySQL database management, change PHP versions, access 1-click installers for WordPress, manage SSH & FTP access, and more.
Which is better Bluehost or DreamHost?
Bluehost and DreamHost offer similar features and they are both good hosting providers. However, Bluehost has an edge as they offer 24/7 Live Chat support which is great for beginners.
Which is better DreamHost vs SiteGround?
DreamHost and SiteGround used to be similar, but recently SiteGround has significantly improved their web hosting platform. However, they have also increased their pricing by 2x.
So the comparison isn’t fair anymore.
If you were comparing DreamHost vs SiteGround based on shared hosting prices, then DreamHost is better.
However if you were comparing DreamPress managed hosting vs SiteGround, then SiteGround offers a lot more value for better pricing.
Where are DreamHost servers located?
DreamHost servers are located in the United States. They have data centers in Ashburn Virginia and Hillsboro Oregon. DreamHost headquarter is located in Brea, California.
Can I Install WooCommerce on DreamHost?
Yes, you can easily install WooCommerce on DreamHost shared hosting as well as VPS plans.
Ready to start with DreamHost? Get 72% off on your DreamHost plan by clicking here to sign up for DreamHost. The discount will be auto-applied.
5. Kinsta (kinsta.com)
From $29.17 / month
Traffic allowed: 25,000 visits/month
Disk Space: 10 GB
Free Domain:
Uptime: 99.98% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 0.55s
Load time EU: 0.84s
Load time Asia: 2.23s
4.7
Ranked 13 From 3855 Webhosting
Pricing
Web hosting $35.00 – $1650
Reseller hosting $340 – $675
Kinsta is a Cloud Platform designed to help companies and dev teams ship and manage their web projects faster and more efficiently
Kinsta is another WordPress-only host on our list. The overall offering is quite similar to WP Engine’s, but it comes in a bit different package.
Under the hood, Kinsta runs their servers on Google Cloud Platform, and everything is fully managed for you – with daily backups and other useful features.
Kinsta also lets you choose from 24 global data center locations, there’s automatic database optimization, WordPress multisite support, malware removal, support for PHP 8.0, staging area, and more.
Price-wise, Kinsta isn’t the cheapest – starting at $29.17 / month – but it does deliver good value if you’re expecting your site to receive a lot of traffic each month. Still, just like WP Engine, not a solution for new sites with zero traffic or sites not built on WordPress.
What is Kinsta used for?
What is the difference between Kinsta and WordPress?
Who owns Kinsta?
Is Kinsta a good host?
Kinsta takes hosting and performance to the next level. With our Application Hosting and Database Hosting, you can run almost any app in a matter of minutes .
Founded in 2013, Kinsta makes running projects of all sizes quick and seamless with their Application Hosting, Database Hosting, and Managed WordPress .
App, Database, & Managed WordPress Hosting. Seamless setup, World-class tech stack 24/7/365 expert support #PoweredByKinsta · kinsta.com/
Some hosting providers try to do it all. Kinsta, on the other hand, has a very specific focus. This provider offers a single set of plans, all of which are WordPress-specific.
The plans are also fully managed, which means you can be very hands-off when it comes to setting up and maintaining your site.
Kinsta is a cloud WordPress hosting, which means that it doesn’t have its own data center with its own servers. Instead, all of its plans are powered by the premium tier of Google Cloud Platform, which is the same infrastructure that Google uses to power its own products.
As for features, Kinsta has quite a bit to offer. This includes:
· A custom dashboard, where you can view site stats and analytics.
· Automatic daily backups, along with the option to back your site up manually.
· A staging area for testing changes to your site.
· Free migrations from WP Engine, SiteGround, Flywheel, & more.
· A free SSL certificate.
· Various security features, such as Google Cloud firewalls and uptime checks.
· Secure Shell (SSH) access to your site for development tasks.
· Included CDN bandwidth via KeyCDN.
All of these features are included even on the basic Starter plan. This feature set provides you with a lot of the tools you’ll need to create and manage your site right away, minimizing the need for external solutions (and getting you up and running fast).
Kinsta Review (2023)
Worth Paying For This WordPress Hosting Expert?
First, there’s WP Engine, which we use for this site. But we also rely on Kinsta WordPress hosting for our sister site EmailToolTester, and we find there’s a lot to love about their offering. And just like WP Engine, Kinsta also uses Google Cloud Platform to power its infrastructure
Kinsta Pricing
The last element of our Kinsta review for WordPress is a
look at this provider’s pricing options. As we mentioned earlier, there’s just
a single set of WordPress-specific managed plans:
However, you’re able to scale your plan to meet your
needs, since there are ten tiers on offer. They range from $29.17 per month for
a single WordPress install, to a $1,500 per month enterprise plan supporting up
to 150 installs.
The plans in between offer a range of installs, supported
traffic, and resources. However, for the most part, the features provided with
each are identical. Higher-tier plans do come with a few perks, such as free
‘white glove’ migrations, Multisite support,
and site
cloning functionality.
Still, you’ll be able to select a plan based on your
needs, whether you’re a small business owner or a developer with lots of
clients. There are also some optional add-ons you can purchase, such as an
analytics engine and extra backup storage.
Starter $35
Pro $70
Business 1 $115
Kinsta caters to a lot of different sites, ranging
from $35 – $1,650 per month. That’s a very wide spectrum, but for this
comparison, we’ll only focus on the first three key consumer plans, Starter,
Pro and Business 1. After Business 1, it goes up to Business 4, and then
Enterprise 1 – 4.
The key thing to note is that the prices
displayed here are for monthly payments. You get 2 months free when
you buy annually, which I think is a pretty good deal.
| STARTER | PRO | BUSINESS 1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress Installs | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Monthly visits | 25,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 |
| SSD storage | 10 GB | 20 GB | 30 GB |
| Free CDN | 50 GB | 100 GB | 200 GB |
| PHP workers per site | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| 24/7 email support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH Access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free SSL and imported SSL | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Staging area | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited users | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multisite | No | Yes | Yes |
| Premium migrations | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Price | $35 a month | $70 a month | $115 a month |
| More information | www.kinsta.com | ||
6. Namecheap (www.namecheap.com)
From $1.58 / month
Traffic allowed: unmetered
Disk Space: 20 GB
Free Domain:
Uptime: 99.92% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 1.3s
Load time EU: 1.79s
Load time Asia: 3.4s
4.6
Ranked 13 From 3855 Webhosting
| Web Hosting | $1.88 – $4.98 |
| VPS Hosting | $9.88 – $17.88 |
| Dedicated Server | $48.88 – $299 |
| WordPress Hosting | $4.88 – $13.88 |
| Reseller Hosting | $19.88 – $58.88 |
Great Bratain ✓
Fast and Easy to Use, Perfect for Beginners and Basic Websites
Namecheap is widely known for its discounted domain names, but like many other registrars, it has also branched out into hosting. Are the hosting solutions on par with the best of the best the internet has to offer? I signed up to find out.
Namecheap has been in the business since 2000 and has over 10 million active domains registered. It’s website hosting plans cover most hosting types and include shared, managed WordPress, VPS (virtual private server) machines, dedicated servers, and even private email hosting. All services are available in English.
Now, while it’s extremely tempting to purchase your domain name and hosting plan from the same provider, you should be wary of doing so. An all-in-one solution simplifies everything – from management to support and billing – but a jack of all trades is (usually) a master of none.
Laughing in the face of danger, I took the risk upon myself and signed up for managed WordPress hosting. To my surprise, I found a managed WordPress platform like few others, seamlessly designed and providing a fantastic user experience.
Still, does that ease of use come at the cost of features? Can the service really answer advanced needs, or will you find yourself limited and unable to grow? Well, read on and see for yourself!
Great Basic Features, but also Serious Limitations
Namecheap provides powerhouse VPS and dedicated servers,
but we’ll focus on the shared hosting side of things. Shared hosting is
the simplest, cheapest form of hosting, and in my opinion, there’s no better
place to start.
With Namecheap, shared hosting includes two
subcategories: Regular shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting.
I signed up for WordPress hosting, which is provided
through Namecheap’s proprietary platform – EasyWP. EasyWP is a
WordPress-only cloud-based plan and can’t be used with any other CMS (content
management system). Regular shared hosting, on the other hand, lets you install
any CMS through the use of Softaculous.
In terms of storage space and bandwidth, the basic EasyWP
plan, Starter, has 10 GB SSD storage and allows for 50,000 monthly visitors.
The mid-level plan, Turbo, comes with 50 GB of SSD space and about 200,000
monthly visitors. The most advanced plan, Supersonic, has 100 GB of space and
about 500,000 monthly visitors.
This “monthly visitors” metric is confusing, as bandwidth
is usually measured in GBs. I tried to get an answer from support, but they kept
claiming that there’s really a “visitor counter” working in the background.
Either way, your site will have a lot of room to grow.
On to regular shared hosting. The basic Stellar plan has
20 GB of SSD space, the second plan has unlimited space, and the last one is
capped at 50 GB. Bandwidth is unmetered for all three.
You must be thinking – how come the mid-tier plan comes
with more space than the most advanced one? According to Namecheap, it has
something to do with “premium support” and “extra caching.” I think it’s just
cheap.
Anyway, let’s go deeper, into features that can make or
break your site.
Most of us know Namecheap as one of the best (and cheapest) places to register domain names. But did you know they also offer incredibly cheap web hosting too?
Well, they do! And in this Namecheap hosting review, we’ll be looking specifically at their EasyWP shared hosting for WordPress to determine whether it’s a good option for your website.
We’ll review how easy it is to use, what sort of useful features are included (and excluded), whether it’s fast and reliable enough and how well their customer support performs, as and when you need it.
Let’s get into it…
Namecheap is a domain name registrar that was founded in 2000 in Arizona, United States. It also provides web hosting, email hosting, SSL certificates and VPV services.
Namecheap has 11 million registered users and 10 million domains. Indeed, according to Statista they are the biggest registrar worldwide after GoDaddy – about 8% of all domain names are registered with Namecheap.
In this review, we will concentrate on their shared hosting plans for WordPress. However, we will also take a quick look at the other products they offer too.
Namecheap EasyWP Pricing
Starter $4.07
Turbo $7.91
Supersonic $9.57
There are several hosting packages and other products that Namecheap offers (see below).
But this Namecheap review will focus on their EasyWP hosting plans for WordPress – we picked this one to test, as we love (and use!) WordPress and thought its affordability would be interesting for other WordPress site owners.
PLAN | STARTER | TURBO | SUPERSONIC |
Sites | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Webspace | 10 GB | 50 GB | 100 GB |
Visits per month | 50.000 | 200.000 | 500.000 |
Resources (CPU & RAM) * | 1x | 1.5 more | 2x more |
Caching | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Free CDN included | No | Yes | Yes |
SSL certificate | No | Yes | Yes |
99.99% uptime | Not guaranteed | Not guaranteed | Not guaranteed |
Automatic WordPress updates | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Yearly renewal prices * | $4.07 a month | $7.91 a month | $9.57 a month |
Support | 24 h | 24 h | 24 h |
More information | |||
Namecheap Hosting Features
As I’ve already mentioned, EasyWP is a very basic service when it comes to features. This is what you’ll get with all plans:
· Hosting for 1 WordPress site
· WordPress 1-click installation to make the process easier
· Free migration of your existing WordPress site to Namecheap
· SSL certificate
· 1 SFTP access
· 1 Database access through phpMyAdmin
· A system to create your own backups and restore if something goes wrong
· Analytics data
· 24-hour support over live chat or ticket system (similar to email)
Compared to some of the other hosting providers we review, this is a very basic offering. However, the truth is that many users won’t need more than this.
All the basics are taken care of.
But there are a few additional things that are either not provided, or only available on the higher tier plans, which will be missed by most users, and that I would like to see provided on every plan:
· Free domain for the first year
· Automatic daily backups
· Multiple server locations to choose from
· Better than 99.90% uptime guarantee (more on this below)
· Free CDN to speed up your site (limited to Turbo and Supersonic plans)
· Free SSL (limited to Turbo and Supersonic plans)
Obviously, we need to bear in mind that Namecheap EasyWP is the cheapest web hosting provider we review, so there are bound to be some compromises in terms of features!
But no free SSL on the lowest tier plan is really annoying, as every other web provider I can think of provides this as standard these days.
Namecheap also provides both shared and managed WordPress hosting plans. Again, here we have focused on the shared hosting features…
· One-click WordPress install (via Softaculous app installer)
· Free .website domain name (for the first year)
· Unlimited websites (excluding the bottom-tier Stellar plan)
· Unmetered bandwidth
· 100% uptime guarantee
· Backups (and automatic backups on top-tier plans)
· Free website migration (this is unique as Bluehost does not offer free migrations)
For anyone wanting to access extra WordPress specific features, check out Namecheap’s managed WordPress service called EasyWP.
Support for Namecheap Domains Only
Meh. There’s no justifying this. EasyWP plans can only work with Namecheap registered domains. What’s the difference between a domain from Namecheap and one from GoDaddy, you might ask? Well, Namecheap doesn’t make money off domains you buy from GoDaddy.
I had no idea this limitation existed before signing up. The “feature” is sneakily described as “Your Namecheap domains will show up right on EasyWP.” I did not think it was impossible to connect other domains – just that it wasn’t as easy.
Luckily, the domain I was using was from Namecheap. Had it not been, I would’ve had two options: use an ugly-looking subdomain or transfer my domain to Namecheap at an extra cost. Not cool guys, not cool.
The regular shared hosting plans come with none of these limitations, and you’ll be able to simply point your current domain to the nameservers.
What Can Be Done Is Super Easy to Do
I mentioned that Namecheap’s EasyWP is easy, but that’s an understatement. The whole process, from signup till WordPress, is lightning fast and requires almost nothing out of you. The management dashboard is streamlined to perfection, and everything is a one-click joy.
But… it doesn’t really contain everything. It’s actually limited to a few actions you can one-click your way through, and no others. These include deleting your website, connecting a Namecheap domain, uploading an SSL, backups, SFTP access, and database access.
What about everything that’s so easy to do with cPanel, like setting up DNS (Domain Name System) configurations, email accounts and mailboxes, subdomains, a browser file manager, logs, and timed tasks? These options just don’t exist.
And that’s the major tradeoff with EasyWP. The things that you can do are ridiculously easy to do. The rest is impossible.
Signing Up and Installing WordPress
Signup involves selecting your plan, signing up, and entering payment details. You’ll be asked for your personal details – nothing special – and after paying you’ll immediately be directed to creating your website:
If you already have a Namecheap domain, you can connect it now. If not, feel free to use the EasyWP subdomain for now and change it later.
After entering your desired website name and choosing a username and password, your new WordPress installation will be ready to proceed:
And that’s it. Everything is installed, and you’ll be redirected to your EasyWP dashboard. You can find a detailed description of the domain and WordPress installation process (including one problem I encountered) with Namecheap here.
Using the EasyWP Dashboard
Use the dashboard’s tabs to easily navigate between the different options. To enter your WordPress administrator panel, for example, just click WP Admin on the upper right corner:
If you want to enable SFTP access, all you need to do is enter the Files & Database and activate the option:
Connecting the Domain
Connecting your domain is obviously done from the Domains tab. Remember – it’s Namecheap domains or bust. Because I already had a domain registered with Namecheap, it appeared in the dropdown menu.
Select your domain, press Change, and the process will start. It shouldn’t take longer than half an hour, and mine was connected in less than five minutes.
Now, I want to reiterate: I’ve never seen such an easy-to-use WordPress platform. It’s just not possible to go wrong, and the few advanced features available are foolproof.
If this is all you need, I can’t recommend it enough. If you require even a single thing that’s not available here, opt for regular shared hosting instead. It comes with cPanel, and while it’s a few steps up in terms of complexity, it’s a much fuller hosting experience.
Namecheap user experience
Namecheap is also very user-friendly, although it provides a slightly different experience to Bluehost. Once you have set up your account with Namecheap, you can view and manage your account, domains, and hosting plans within your dashboard.
However, unlike Bluehost, to set up a new website, you will need to do so via the Softaculous App Installer within cPanel.
Although the Softaculous App Installer is straightforward to use, it doesn’t compare with the automatic WordPress installation that Bluehost provides – something beginners should bear in mind.
Namecheap will install WordPress with the free W3 Total Cache plugin, to help improve your site’s loading times. However, unlike Bluehost, it does not come with any type of start-up wizard or menu.
One of the key user-friendly features that Namecheap offers is its website migration service. If you have an existing website hosted with a different web host, Namecheap will move this site for you for free. This is a service that isn’t offered by Bluehost.
To conclude on ‘user experience’, if you are a beginner, or just feel like you will benefit from an extremely user-friendly hosting provider, then Bluehost is for you. That is not to say that Namecheap doesn’t provide a good user experience – and for most customers, it will do just fine – but it just doesn’t compare to the standard of Bluehost.
Namecheap Hosting Performance (Speed and Reliability)
When it comes to web host “performance”, what we’re referring to is: speed and reliability.
Your web host’s server speeds will affect how fast your website loads in a browser when people try to visit it. This is really important, because if it takes too long:
1. Your potential visitors will leave (and probably not come back)
2. Search engines like Google won’t rank your website highly in the search results
Web host reliability is all about how often your website is online and available to users when they try to visit it (technical issues and maintenance periods at the hosting provider will create periods when it’s down and unavailable).
Slow load times and long periods when your website in down mean fewer visitors to your website, so you want a web host that provides enough technical resources to limit such issues.
Because although there are lots of other things you can do to fix a slow website and make WordPress faster, a fast web host is the biggest contributor to a fast website.
At webhostingplanets we run year round tests on all the web hosts we review, monitoring the load times and uptime rates for each one to find the fastest and most reliable providers.
You can read more about how we test the fastest web hosts and why average page load times are important. But you can see how Namecheap performs in these tests below:
Yes, there were several faster web hosts. Hostinger, for example, is one of Namecheap’s closest competitors in terms of price. And they had slightly faster load times.
But Namecheap also beat many other web hosts for speed, all of which are more expensive. One of them (Kinsta) costs many times the price of Namecheap.
And you can see in the table below that their speeds have been consistently good for the last two years.
2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
Page Load Time in Seconds | |||
2.39 | 1.56 | 1.29 | |
3.15 | 2.01 | 1.30 | |
3.40 | 1.94 | 1.44 | |
2.32 | 1.73 | 1.46 | |
2.14 | 1.54 | 1.56 | |
4.19 | 1.61 | 1.63 | |
2.21 | 1.65 | 1.66 | |
– | 1.60 | 1.69 | |
3.28 | 1.84 | 1.75 | |
2.98 | 1.77 | 1.82 | |
3.07 | 2.87 | 2.07 | |
– | 1.95 | 2.32 | |
4.36 | 2.75 | 2.58 | |
4.19 | 2.76 | 2.60 | |
3.77 | 2.78 | 2.72 | |
Results in seconds
Namecheap claims that it’s their genuine cloud based technology that is responsible for such impressive speed. And it also seems to be doing wonders for their reliability…
Do all of Namecheap’s plans include a free domain name?
Surprisingly, no. Despite Namecheap being well known as a domain name registrar, getting a domain name for most plans, including the WordPress packages, will cost you extra.
Free domain name registration is only included with the Shared plans (Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar Business) as long as you sign up for the 1-year or 2-year packages, and this is limited to certain extensions. In particular, .com domains are only included with Stellar Plus and Stellar Business, so you’ll have to pay extra if you want a .com with the entry-level shared plan.
Thankfully, Namecheap’s plans are affordable, and there are often discounts for certain domain name extensions.
Other Types of Hosting and Services with Namecheap
Beyond the EasyWP hosting plans that form the bulk of this review, Namecheap also offer a lot of other products, which we will take a quick look at below…
Domain names
If Namecheap gets something right, it’s domain name registration. I have all my domain names registered with them – I moved them over several years ago from Names.co.uk, and I am still delighted with the service.
Domain name prices vary, but with Namecheap they are always very competitive. For less than $10 you can register a .com domain name – and it renews at $14.58 per year.
DOMAIN NAME TLD | REGISTRATION (PER YEAR) | RENEWAL (PER YEAR) |
.com | $9.48 | $14.58 |
.net | $12.98 | $14.98 |
.org | $9.18 | $14.98 |
.co.uk | $7.48 | $9.48 |
.de | $6.98 | $8.98 |
.fr | $12.98 | $12.98 |
.es | $20.98 | $21.98 |
Prices referenced on 25th Apr 2023
You can also buy (for about $5 a year) premium DNS that should help your site load faster and have 100% DNS uptime.
And if you need SSL certificates, you are in luck – Namecheap also offers them, starting at about $11 a year for a single domain or $90 for a Wildcard certificate.
Email Hosting
Another thing Namecheap offers are email hosting plans, in case you don’t need a website, but you’d like to have a professional-looking email address like your_name@your_domain.com.
These email hosting plans start at around $15 per year (on renewal), for 1 email account and 5 GB of storage (you’ll need to purchase the domain name separately). There are superior plans with more storage and email inboxes if you need them.
If you are looking for an email service that offers storage for your emails, files and even has some features for you to create documents (e.g. similar to MS Word), spreadsheets or presentations, check out the Namecheap Ultimate Plan.
However, a service like Google Workspace (read review) or Microsoft 365 (read review), may be a better alternative.
Namecheap Web Hosting
For those needing a web hosting service for their website, Namecheap has several products to offer:
· Shared: This Namecheap hosting plan allows you to host your websites with other clients (you share the server). It’s managed via cPanel, and it starts at around $3.74 a month for hosting a maximum of 3 websites and 20 GB of storage – there are higher plans if needed.
· EasyWP: With prices from $4.07 to $9.57 a month, this Namecheap hosting service will allow you to have 1 WordPress installation only. As it is a WordPress-exclusive hosting package you can’t host other types of sites (e.g. Joomla or Drupal). This review focuses on EasyWP.
· VPS hosting: These are servers ‘virtually’ divided into sub-servers that clients use. VPS hosting is ideal when you want to have your own space and server setup, but can’t afford / don’t need dedicated hosting. VPS Prices start from $6.88 a month with Namecheap, and you can decide between cPanel and InterWorx to control your dashboard.
· Dedicated hosting: With a dedicated server, you will be the only one using it. Therefore, this is ideal for larger websites (e.g. tens of thousands of visits per month). At Namecheap, dedicated hosting plans range from around $62 – $260 per month up.
· Reseller: Useful for agencies or freelancers working with clients that want to resell hosting packages to others. It’s cPanel-based and the prices range from around $20 a month to $59, depending on the storage and number of accounts needed.
· CDN: For those looking to speed up their websites’ global loading times with a network that serves content across different locations faster. It also has some security advantages like preventing DDoS attacks. Some Namecheap hosting plans (e.g. EasyWP Supersonic) include this option, but if needed it can be purchased separately, starting at $8.88 a month.
Other products
But email hosting, domains and web hosting are not the only services and products that Namecheap offers. For example, you can purchase a VPN from them (starting at around $3 a month), a website builder or even a logo maker!
Namecheap Alternatives
7. InMotionHosting (www.inmotionhosting.com)
From $2.29 / month
Traffic allowed: unmetered
Disk Space: 10 GB
Free Domain: no
Uptime: 100% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 0.48s
Load time EU: 0.83s
Load time Asia: 2.17s
4.7
Ranked 27 From 3695 Webhosting
| Web Hosting | $3.29 – $4.98 |
| VPS Hosting | $24.99 – $59.99 |
| Dedicated Server | $69.99 – $540 |
| WordPress Hosting | $4.99 – $16.99 |
| Reseller Hosting | $21 – $50.99 |
Washington
InMotion Hosting Review
InMotion Hosting is one of the most popular US providers. Founded in 2001 and with over 350 employees and more than 170,000 customers, it offers affordable shared hosting plans.
I am quite excited to review InMotion Hosting as they promise ‘a truly outstanding customer service’ and the latest technology like SSD drives and PHP 8. But what really caught my eye was that they promise a 99.99% uptime on the homepage.
But of course, before you purchase their services, you should be aware of their shortcomings (spoiler alert: they have some) and how their servers perform when benchmarked to their competitors.
If you rather check how InMotion Hosting backend looks, watch this video-review I created for you:
InMotion Hosting is a weird one. A few years ago, I would’ve said, “Definitely try it out.” With excellent features backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee, you couldn’t have gone wrong.
Nowadays, InMotion Hosting is not a terrible host, but there are much better options out there.
InMotion Offer?
· Domain names: Once you open an account with InMotion Hosting, you can register additional domain names. The available extensions are: .com, .net, .biz, .org, .info and .us. Other providers offer more variety. Domains cost $15.99 a year,which is cheaper than most direct competitors.
· Shared hosting: One of their most popular products. The prices range from $13.99 to $24.99 a month for 12-month deals. Shared hosting is suitable for small to medium projects that don’t need unusual server configurations.
· WordPress shared hosting: Pretty much every shared hosting provider offers WordPress hosting plans too. At InMotion these start at $10.99 per month and go all the way up to $36.99 a month. Besides including a CDN and an integrated backup system (for some plans), I am not sure what the differences are with the regular shared hosting plans. There are certainly other cheap WordPress
hosting options worth considering.
· VPS (Virtual Private Server): VPS hosting is where servers are subdivided into smaller (virtual) servers using a special piece of software. This means that you can configure the server as you please and you don’t have to share the available resources with other websites. VPS InMotion Hosting packages go from $59.99 to $131.99 a month.
· Dedicated: Meant for larger projects (e.g. 400,000 + visitors / month) that need the highest performance. You’ll need a budget for dedicated hosting; at InMotion they start at $169.99 a month.
· Cloud VPS hosting: Cloud hosting is a bit of a novelty in the hosting world. You can imagine this as a network of several servers that host your site interconnected with each other. It’s especially convenient for projects that have changing resources needs (e.g. they get sudden traffic peaks). The price changes depending on what youresources you pick.
· Website builder: For the less tech-savvy, they have a website builder that doesn’t require programming knowledge to design your
website. To be fair, it’s a bit overpriced as it starts at $10.99 a month, other easy-to-use alternatives are much cheaper.
But it doesn’t stop there. They also have a reseller hosting program, so you can sell your own hosting accounts to your clients, there are also enterprise hosting solutions for remarkably large projects, amongst other things. But in this InMotion Hosting review, I’d like to explore their shared hosting plans, so from now on, I’ll refer to those in my analysis.
InMotion Pricing
Core $9.99
Launch $13.99
Power $17.99
Pro $24.99
What Do Their Shared Plans Include?
CORE | LAUNCH | POWER | PRO | |
Allowed websites | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Domain name | No | 1 free domain first year | 1 free domain first year | 1 free domain first year |
Support | Regular | Regular | Regular | Pro |
Storage | 100 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Email accounts | 10 1 GB/inbox | Unlimited 5 GB/inbox | Unlimited 10 GB/inbox | Unlimited 20 GB/inbox |
Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Database | 40 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Backup * | Starts at $1/month extra | Starts at $1/month extra | Starts at $1/month extra | Starts at $1/month extra |
Advanced caching | No | No | Yes | Yes |
First-term prices for 1 year deals | $3.29 a month | $6.99 a month | $10.99 a month | $14.99 a month |
Renewal price for 1-year deals | $9.99 a month | $13.99 a month | $17.99 a month | $24.99 a month |
InMotion Hosting plans can be purchased either yearly or bi-yearly. Obviously, the longer the plan the cheaper it gets.However, be aware that you’ll be required to pay the full amount in advance.Monthly plans are available too.With the Core tier, you are limited to 2
websites, 100 GB of storage, 40 databases and 10 email accounts.
The Launch plan is a good option for those needing unlimited websites, storage and email accounts. It also comes with a domain name included. The Power tier seems to be ‘ecommerce ready’ and offers advanced caching options too. The main selling point of the Power tier is the faster customer care support it offers. If you have a professional project, you’ll want to have some sort of backup feature integrated. InMotion only offers this as an add-on starting at $1 a month for 10 GB of backups, so make sure you factor this into the price. For example, the Launch plan will go from $13.99 to $12.99 a month.
The purchase process can be a bit tricky, as some add-ons are added to the cart without you doing so – make sure you remove them. For example, the backup manager or the privacy protection for your domain name (see image above).
When to Use InMotion Hosting
I would recommend InMotion Hosting if you are looking for a web hosting provider that offers a lot of bandwidth and is simple to use.
For instance, smaller projects that won’t be needing a top performing and a cutting-edge service can find a good partner in InMotion. I would say small businesses’ websites like bakeries, law firms and beauty salons could use InMotion.
When Not to Use InMotion Hosting
But of course, InMotion isn’t for everyone. If you have a very hosting-dependant project (e.g. an ecommerce or a blog), InMotion may not be your best alternative as it can be slow.
Developers or larger teams (e.g. agencies) needing advanced features like staging areas, GIT repositories or built-in backup systems may find InMotion’s (too) simple system frustrating.
InMotion Hosting Speed Test
Having a slow server can be a huge pain as it’ll slow down your website. As you can imagine, today’s internet users aren’t very patient and will not wait around until your site is fully loaded (if too slow). Your conversion rate will therefore sink.
On top of that, search engines factor in websites’ speed when creating their rankings. Therefore, a slow site can cost you a bunch of SEO points too.
Unfortunately, in our latest web host speed tests to find the fastest web host, InMotion performed very poorly:
As far as performance is concerned, we need to take two criteria into consideration – performance-specific features and loading speeds. Let’s see how InMotion fares with the former:
· Solid State Drive (SSD) hosting: InMotion offers SSD storage for all its customers, which cuts down on loading times.
· The choice of two data centers: You can pick between east and west coast based data centers, which gives you more control over your loading speeds.
Although InMotion offers unlimited bandwidth and storage, the rest of their performance features are pretty threadbare. Furthermore, since their data centers are entirely based in the US, your international loading times could suffer. Let’s check if that logic holds up with a couple of performance tests.
Basic load testing with Load Impact
UnlikePingdom, Load Impact doesn’t offer a straightforward speed test. Rather, it seeks to highlight how a website does under strain by simulating up to 25 simultaneous users accessing the site at once. Here’s how InMotion did:
· Load Generator: Ashburn, US.
· Test Server: Ashburn, US.
· Minimum Response Time: 0.27 seconds.
· Maximum Response Time: 0.84 seconds.
As we saw earlier, InMotion does well when it comes to US servers due to the location of their data centers. There are a few more spikes than we like to see, but overall, this is a good showing. That being said, we recommend you consider a good Content Delivery Network (CDN) to lower loading speeds for users outside the US.
InMotion Hosting isn’t expensive. It’s not as cheap as Hostinger, but it’s definitely cheaper than other hosts I’ve tested.
They offer payment periods of 1 month, 1 year, 2 year and 3 year, and the money-back guarantee is for a whole 90 days, which is 3 times the industry average. You’ll really have a ton of time to decide if you like the service.
You can pay through major credit cards, PayPal, or money transfers, and there are no hidden setup fees. There were some pre-checked items on my cart that I never asked for, so be careful and choose exactly what you need. Those automatic upsells can cost a lot.
A free domain is available with all plans, as is customary with one-year plans and longer (with every host almost), but the renewal price is steep: double what a domain costs with Namecheap, and without the WHOIS protection.
InMotion Hosting Web Hosting
InMotion Hosting VPS Hosting
InMotion Hosting Dedicated Server
InMotion Hosting WordPress Hosting
InMotion Hosting Reseller Hosting
InMotion review for WordPress: features
As a WordPress user, one of the main things you should be on the lookout for in a host is whether it offers options tailored to the platform. In InMotion’s case, it certainly does! Let’s see what they are:
- Pre-installed WordPress: This is a handy feature that helps get you up and running quickly.
- BoldGrid builder: Every WordPress plan includes the premium BoldGrid builder. This drag-and-drop builder is compatible with most WordPress themes.
- Free themes included: InMotion includes several free themes with your subscription, including niches such as restaurants and lifestyle.
- WordPress Command Line Interface (WP-CLI) support: Each of InMotion’s installations supports the WP-CLI. This enables you to manage your WordPress website using a command line, and is perfect for advanced users.
As you can see, InMotion offers a decent set of WordPress-specific features for beginner users; however, aside from WP-CLI support, advanced users could find this feature set lacking.
INMOTION HOSTING REVIEW: BOTTOM LINE
If you had asked me a few years ago, I definitely would have recommended InMotion Hosting.
Nowadays, I’d say you can still try out an InMotion Hosting plan without worry – the company still has the same 90-day money-back guarantee – but I’m not sure there is much reason to do so. Maybe, just maybe, if your main audience is on the US West Coast, where not many hosts have data centers, it could be a good choice.
But InterServer has a data center on the West Coast as well, and is also more powerful. The same goes for Kinsta. InMotion Hosting is not a bad host, but there are far better ones.
You can see some other options on our list of the best web hosting services in May 2023
8. Flywheel (getflywheel.com)
From $13 / month
Traffic allowed: 5,000 visits/month
Disk Space: 5 GB
Free Domain: no
Uptime: 100% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 0.23s
Load time EU: 0.49s
Load time Asia: 1.12s
4.6
Ranked 25 From 5695 Webhosting
Pricing
WordPress hosting $13.00 – $242
Reseller hosting $0 – $275
REVIEWS AND EXPERT OPINION ABOUT FLYWHEEL WEBHOSTING
In almost every category, Flywheel’s performance exceeded expectations. From its intuitively-designed processes to the great page loading speeds, Flywheel’s pricing plans present fantastic value for money.
Flywheel is managed WordPress hosting built for designers and creative agencies. Build, scale, and manage hundreds of WordPress sites with ease on Flywheel.
Flywheel Local is a free tool that can help you to create local WordPress websites. After downloading the software and installing it on your Mac
Flywheel Hosting Plans and Pricing … Flywheel offers two main hosting plans, Managed WordPress and Growth Suite, each targeting a slightly different audience.
Flywheel is one of the top providers of managed WordPress hosting out there. They also develop and maintain Local, one of the best WP development tools out there. Flywheel focuses on providing managed WP features that are aimed specifically at designers and developers (though anyone can take advantage of them and benefit). We want to showcase some of these features so that you can determine if Flywheel is the right managed WordPress host for you, whether you’re a dev, designer, or everyday site owner.
Flywheel is one of the most popular WordPress managed hosting providers available, and it’s easy to see why. They offer a fantastic set of features for both regular WordPress users and agencies – but are they a good pick for your unique needs?
In this article, we’ll go over Flywheel’s WordPress-specific features, how their support team fares, performance benchmarks, and pricing information. Let’s get this Flywheel review for WordPress on the road!
Aside from their WordPress managed hosting features, Flywheel is known for its extensive suite of tools for freelancers, designers, developers, and agencies. If you’re looking for a web host that can help you grow your web development or design business, you definitely should consider them.
However, for the purposes of this review, we’re going to focus on WordPress-specific features. Here’s what Flywheel has to offer in that respect:
· Optimized dashboard: Instead of a clunky cPanel, you get access to a streamlined dashboard for WordPress sites.
· One-click staging sites: Test changes on your WordPress sites using staging environments.
· Nightly backups: Flywheel backs up your WordPress sites nightly, for increased peace of mind.
· Hands-on security: Protecting your site from malware and attacks is taken care of, removing the need to install security plugins.
· No manual installations: Flywheel’s Blueprints tool packs some frequently used themes and plugins into reusable configurations to auto-install them on new sites.
Overall, Flywheel lives up to its reputation with a comprehensive set of WordPress features. Let’s see if that quality translates to support as well.
Flywheel Cloud Platform
Delivering on its promise to do things a little differently, Flywheel has leveraged the Google Cloud Platform to create a cloud infrastructure for its users. With technologies such as auto-healing websites, instant scaling, FlyCache, and a free global CDN, Flywheel promises to provide better performance and higher levels of server availability.
WordPress Migration
Flywheel provides a free website migration service that you can request during the signup process. The migration takes one to three business days, but you can speed it up for an extra charge. The team will essentially create a Flywheel version of your website for you. Because they can create this copy while you’re still hosting the original, you don’t have to take your website down in order to migrate it.
One-Click WordPress Install
Your WordPress installation will be ready for you immediately after you’ve registered, so you can start editing the template and adding content right away
Flywheel Webhosting Speed Test and Performance
As a managed WordPress web host, Flywheel takes performance seriously. That becomes clear when perusing the tools they offer:
· WordPress optimization: Since Flywheel only hosts WordPress sites, they’ve fine-tuned their servers for it.
· Custom caching engine: They offer a custom caching solution built with WordPress users in mind.
· Free Content Delivery Network (CDN): A partnership with Fastly enables Flywheel to deliver enhanced load speed.
· Powerful infrastructure: Flywheel also partnered with the Google Cloud platform for powerful performance.
To top things off, Flywheel offers server availability throughout the world, including the following locations:
· USA: New York, Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco
· Singapore
· Tokyo, Japan
· Toronto, Canada
· Amsterdam, Netherlands
· Frankfurt, Germany
· London, United Kingdom
That collection of features and server locations sounds great on paper, but does it translate into positive real-life results? Let’s find out.
Best Managed WordPress Hosting (Quick Recap)
Now that you have compared performance test results of the top managed WordPress hosting companies, you need to decide which one fits your needs.
To make this easier for you, we have created a table with a side-by-side feature list. Here you can easily compare the best managed WordPress hosting companies.
Hosting | Cost | Free Domain | Free SSL | Staging |
$7.99/mo | No | Yes | Yes | |
$35/mo | No | Yes | Yes | |
$15.99/mo | No | Yes | Yes | |
$19.99/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
$14.95/mo | No | Yes | No | |
$25/mo | No | Yes | Yes |
In our in-depth managed WordPress hosting review, we believe that if you are looking for a reliable managed WordPress host, then you really can’t go wrong with either SiteGround or WPEngine.
SiteGround’s platform is powered on Google Cloud, and they offer all the premium features at a very affordable price.
WP Engine is a household name when it comes to managed WordPress hosting, and they also bundle StudioPress premium themes which is a bonus for some.
They both come with free SSL, 1-click staging, and all the optimization that you would expect from a managed hosting platform.
If you’re a large company and looking for truly enterprise level service, then we recommend using WP Engine. Both offer outstanding service, but Liquid Web is famous for their heroic support.
In fact, you can’t go wrong with any of the best managed WordPress hosting companies that we have compared above. They all offer hassle free WordPress hosting, with blazing fast servers, great uptime, friendly support, and prices to match your budget
9. Cloudways (www.cloudways.com)
From $10 / month
Traffic allowed: 1 TB bandwidth
Disk Space: 25 GB
Free Domain: no
Uptime: 99.99% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 1.07s
Load time EU: 0.28s
Load time Asia: 1.94s
4.8
Ranked 25 From 5695 Webhosting
Pricing
Cloud hosting $11.00 – $183
Server Locaion
London ✓
San Francisco ✓
Singapore ✓
New York ✓
Amsterdam ✓
13 more over the world
Cloudways review for WordPress: Features
There are many advantages of using cloud hosting. It’s easily scalable, you can have a lot of control over server choices, and it’s often budget-friendly. The problem is that most cloud hosting platforms – such as Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services (AWS) – are too complicated for most non-developers to use.
Cloudways offers cloud hosting via other cloud infrastructure platforms. But it will manage those cloud hosting services for you, so you can just install WordPress (or a different CMS) and go. If you want to run a site without the hassle of managing a server yourself, Cloudways is a solid, affordable cloud-based service. You can take advantage of the 3-day free trial to see if it’s right for you.
Cloudways’ goal is to simplify cloud-based hosting so that even non-developers can benefit from this type of hosting. It’s a managed cloud service that supports WordPress, among other platforms. With Cloudways, you can easily deploy a website on a high-performance cloud server through a user-friendly interface.
In this Cloudways review, we’re going to take a look at how the service works and what features it offers. We’ll also cover its performance, support, and pricing to help you decide whether it’s a good fit for you. Let’s get to it!
First off, it’s important to make it clear that Cloudways isn’t a hosting provider per se. Instead, it enables you to set up web applications on one of several cloud hosts, including DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud. WordPress, of course, is among the available applications:
When you set up a new website, Cloudways enables you to configure everything from which cloud service to use to your server size. Depending on the host, you might also get to choose from multiple server locations:
All this happens on a single screen. In practice, Cloudways enables you to set up a WordPress website using your cloud provider of choice in a matter of minutes.
When it comes to ease of use, Cloudways gets top marks. Regardless of how you decide to configure your server, you can also access the following features:
· Managed hosting and security services
· One-click SSL certificate setup
· Simple server scaling should you need more resources
· Support for multiple PHP versions
· Support for both MySQL and MariaDB database management systems
· SSH and FTP access
· Git integration
One thing Cloudways doesn’t support, though, is sending or hosting emails. However, Cloudways does have a simple integration with SendGrid for free email sending, and you can use services such as Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) (paid) or Zoho Mail (free) to host your email. Or, Cloudways also has a dedicated integration with Rackspace for affordable email hosting.
Overall, Cloudways offers a wealth of features that are comparable to some top WordPress managed hosting options (such as SiteGround or WP Engine). Plus, keep in mind that although we’ll be focusing on WordPress for this Cloudways review, it also works with platforms such as Magento and Drupal.
As a pioneer in – and popularizer of – cloud hosting, Cloudways offers users serious advantages, including incredible uptime, extremely flexible scalability, and overall better performance than traditional web hosts.
Why should you even consider cloud hosting in the first place? Well, clouds allow multiple servers to host your site, creating a built-in redundancy that amplifies the speed and security of your site. Plus, cloud hosting allows you to quickly scale your site up or down in response to traffic surges. But if you’ve ever tried to set up cloud hosting on your own, you know it isn’t always the easiest to understand or use.
Cloudways allows you to ignore the annoying technical complexities and focus on building your site. In other words: you can choose Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, or one of several other infrastructures to host your site, and Cloudways will actually manage your cloud hosting for you.
You could be an individual freelancer building your portfolio or a self-employed entrepreneur who sells robot pants and needs an online store. You could be the manager of the local hair salon and bait shop, and you just need to get your WordPress site on some reliable cloud hosting. Whatever the case, Cloudways’ managed hosting plans are designed to help you get your content onto the cloud easily and reliably.
Simple, Affordable Hosting Plans Keep Things Simple - Cloud Hosting Plans
Cloudways offers hosting on top of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud providers such as DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Linode, and Vultr. Like with traditional shared hosting, Cloudways lets you choose from several predesigned hosting plans, each with its own combination of bandwidth and storage.
Just pick your cloud hosting provider, pick your plan, and go.
You even get to decide whether you want to pay by the month or by the hour. And no matter what you choose, you can host as many sites and applications on that plan as you wish (provided, of course, that you don’t exceed the bandwidth/storage limits).
Cloudways leverages the resources of several clustered servers to balance your website load; it doesn’t dabble at all in the traditional shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. Instead, the company offers several pay-as-you-go, hourly cloud hosting packages that only charge you for the amount of time you’ve used. For example, if you cancel a plan while 10 days into a month, you’ll only be charged for 10 days’ worth of hosting. Hosts like the Editors’ Choice award-winning DreamHost and HostGator bill you for the entire month, even if you cancel just a week into the cycle. Cloudways offers traditional monthly billing, too.
The monthly web hosting plans start at $10 (for 25GB of storage, 1TB of monthly data transfers, 1GB of RAM, and a single-core processor) and scale upward to $1,035 (for 3840GB of storage, 12TB of month data transfers, 192GB of RAM, and a 32-core processor.) The high-end offering outclasses many web hosts’ most powerful dedicated server plans. In fact, Cloudways’ top-level specs have more in common with the SMB-friendly Liquid Web, which lets you outfit a server with an wild 512GB of RAM. If you prefer hourly billing, the aforementioned plans start at just over $0.01 and scale up to slightly more than $1.43.
$10 Cloudways Digital Ocean 1
$22 Cloudways Digital Ocean 2
$42 CloudwaysDigital Ocean 3
Ok, as mentioned above, the first thing to understand about Cloudways is that you can choose between the five different data center providers: DigitalOcean (which we used for our tests), Linode, Vultr, AWS (from Amazon), and Google Cloud. Every provider has a minimum of 10 plans, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll only mention the four key featured plans from each provider. Let’s call them Entry, Standard, Advanced and Pro to make things easier. This is what it looks like in table form:
SERVER | ENTRY | STANDARD | ADVANCED | PRO |
Digital | $10 / month 1GB 1 25GB 1TB | $22 / month 2GB 1 50GB 2TB | $42 / month 4GB 2 80GB 4TB | $80 / month 8GB 4 160GB 5TB |
Linode | $12 / month 1GB 1 25GB 1TB | $24 / month 2GB 1 50GB 2TB | $50 / month 4GB 2 80GB 4TB | $90 / month 8GB 4 160GB 5TB |
Vultr | $11 / month 1GB 1 25GB 1TB | $23 / month 2GB 1 55GB 2TB | $44 / month 4GB 2 80GB 3TB | $84 / month 8GB 4 160GB 4TB |
AWS | $36.51 / month 1.75GB 1 20GB 2GB | $86.77 / month 3.75GB 1 20GB 2GB | $176.26 / month 8GB 2 20GB 2GB | $274.33 / month 16GB 4 20GB 2GB |
Google | $33.18 / month 1.70GB 1 20GB 2GB | $73.50 / month 3.75GB 1 20GB 2GB | $138.52 / month 7.5GB 2 20GB 2GB | $225.93 / month 15GB 4 20GB 2GB |
Then, don’t forget that you can always go up one level. For instance, with Google Cloud, you can go up to $1332.65 per month. This would give you an insanely performant 120GB of RAM and 32 vCPUs. (Vultr also has special High Frequency plans, which are slightly more expensive than the ones listed above, but give you extra storage.) Also, Cloudways is the only affordable hosting provider I know who lets you buy hosting on an hourly basis. For instance, with DigitalOcean, the entry plan would be $0.0139 per hour; Standard is $0.0306 / hour; Advanced is $0.0583 per hour, and Pro is $0.1111 per hour. This is obviously best for agencies and resellers that manage client websites, or website owners who know when traffic spikes are coming. Now I know it’s a lot to take in, so the best place to compare all the prices is probably directly on the pricing page of the Cloudways website.
How does Cloudways match up to the competition
What could you get from each Cloudways plan?
This is the nice thing about using Cloudways, they offer all the same features on all plans. So whether you use the cheapest Linode plan or the most expensive AWS, you will get:
· 24/7/365 Support
· Free SSL
· One free migration
· Unlimited application installation
· Team management
· Dedicated firewalls
· 24/7 real-time monitoring
· Automated backups
· Staging environment
· Optimized with advanced caches
· Regular security patching
· HTTP/2 enabled servers
· SSH and SFTP access
And the main advantage, of course, is that you can use the services from multiple providers without being locked into a contract with them.
There’s just one extra thing worth mentioning about the individual server providers, and that’s the datacenter’s locations:
Cloudways review: Performance
Since Cloudways relies on third-party cloud hosting platform servers, performance can vary depending on your configuration. For our test website, we chose the most basic DigitalOcean setup, with 1 GB of RAM and 25 GB of SSD storage. Beyond that, every server also includes the following:
· Caching configuration and a pre-installed caching plugin for WordPress
· PHP 7 as the default option
· A custom content delivery network (CDN)
At any time, you can choose to scale your server to add more RAM or storage, in case you need a performance boost. However, downgrading requires you to clone and restore your server configuration. In any case, Cloudways also offers one-click backup and restore options.
Theoretically, cloud hosting should provide near-perfect uptime, but your mileage may vary depending on the host you choose. Cloudways itself keeps detailed records of incidents you can review at any time:
Cloudways Page Speed Tests
The fastest way to get a read on a WordPress website’s performance is with a quick page loading speed test. As we mentioned before, we set up a new WordPress website on a DigitalOcean server. We also went ahead and imported the WordPress Theme Unit Test Data, which we set up alongside one of the default themes to simulate a simple website.
Once our website was ready, we ran some page loading tests from multiple locations using Pingdom:
· Washington D.C.: 0.38 seconds
· San Francisco: 0.63 seconds
· London: 0.61 seconds
· Sydney: 1.33 seconds
Overall, these are fantastic results, and even more so when you consider our test page weighs 6.5 MB. That level of performance should be par for the course for a properly configured cloud server.
The slight increase in loading times when we tested the site using an Australian server is also normal. Our website’s server is located in New York, so the distance explains the higher number.
A single page loading test doesn’t paint a full picture when it comes to performance. You also want to find out how your website will hold up under traffic spikes. That’s where BlazeMeter comes in. We used this tool to simulate up to 30 virtual users hitting our site over a period of three minutes. Here’s what the results look like:
On average, it took 0.25 seconds for our site’s server to respond, even under moderate stress. This tells you that even with the most basic Cloudways setup, your website should be able to handle moderate amounts of traffic. From a performance standpoint, Cloudways gets a thumbs-up for its optimized server configurations.
CLOUDWAYS ALTERNATIVES
4.8
Lowest prices on the market for long-term plans
Read Review >
4.8
Dedicated support advisor and instantly scalable performance
Read Review >
4.8
Best managed hosting for multiple platforms, from WordPress to Magento
10. Hostinger (www.hostinger.com)
From $1.99 / month
Traffic allowed: 10,000 visits/month
Disk Space: 30 GB
Free Domain: no
Uptime: 99.96% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 1.27s
Load time EU: 0.38s
Load time Asia: 1.91s
4.8
Ranked 25 From 5695 Webhosting
Pricing
Web hosting $1.99 – $3.99
WordPress hosting $1.99 – $3.99
Cloud hosting $9.99 – $29.99
VPS hosting $3.99 – $77.99
Web hosting $3.99 – $14.99
Server Locaion
Manchester ✓
San Paulo ✓
Asheville ✓
Jakarta ✓
Singapore ✓
3 more over the world
Hostinger Low Prices, But What's the Catch in 2023?
In this review, we take a look at Hostinger, one of the cheapest shared hosting providers you will find anywhere.
But is it easy to use? Will it have all the features you need? What’s the performance like? Is the customer support any good? And is it the right choice for your website?
We answer all these questions and more. So let’s get into it…
Founded in Lithuania in 2004, Hostinger is a small, employee-owned web hosting company. However, their coverage is global, and they host 29 million websites in 178 countries worldwide.
Originally, they offered completely free web hosting. While that’s not the case any longer, they still pride themselves on combining affordable pricing with powerful features for professional websites.
In this review, we’ll take an in depth look at their shared hosting plans. However, we’ll also take a quick look at the other hosting packages they offer
Hostinger Pricing
$5.99/month Single
$8.99/month Premium
$11.99/month Business
These
are the prices that you will pay on renewal (if you pay for a year in advance), when the 1-year introductory offer ends Let’s have a look at what you’ll get for these prices:
SINGLE | PREMIUM | BUSINESS | |
Websites | 1 | 100 | 100 |
FTP Accounts | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Inodes (files allowed) | 200,000 | 400,000 | 600,000 |
Storage (SSD) | 50 | 100 | 200 |
Bandwidth | 100 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
RAM | 768 | 1 | 1.5 |
MySQL Databases | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Database size | 3 | 3 | 3 |
1 Domain registration for free | No | 1 | 1 |
SSL Certificates | Yes | Yes | Yes |
SSH Access | No | Yes | Yes |
Backups | Weekly | Weekly | Weekly |
Email accounts | 1 | 100 | 100 |
CPU Cores | 1 | 1 | 2 |
First year prices | $2.39 | $2.39 | $3.99 |
Price at renewal for 1 year-deals | $5.99 a | $8.99 a | $11.99 a |
More information | |||
Price Increases on Renewal
Nearly all web hosting providers offer incredibly cheap introductory prices to lure you onto their plans. However, these low prices are not sustainable and when the introductory period ends, your plan will automatically renew at a higher price.
Web hosting price increases on renewal can be enormous
Some of the renewal prices are many hundreds of times more than the introductory prices!
However, it’s these renewal prices that you’ll pay going forward, and they represent the true value of the product. It’s therefore these prices that Tooltester uses to evaluate hosting plans and compare them to other web hosting services.
With Hostinger, the price increases on renewal are quite modest compared to other providers. However, you can expect your first year prices to more than double on renewal, so just be aware of that.
Great Discounts for New Customers on Hostinger (A Free Domain Name With Certain Plans)
Pricing is usually what draws customers to Hostinger in the first place. Hostinger is easily one of the most affordable options for shared and WordPress hosting, with prices starting as low as $1.99 per month. These can be purchased on monthly, annual, biennial, and quadrennial (that’s 4 years!) billing cycles. hostinger offers free domain name with different plan along that hostinger also offer free hosting plan 2023.
Signing up for four years gets you the best prices, but it also locks you into the longest commitment. The monthly plans are rather poor value, though you can still get a good deal with the annual or biennial plans. Hostinger offers a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you aren’t satisfied, you can cancel within the first month for a full refund.
I’ll let you in on a little secret – you can get an even better deal if you play your cards right. The WordPress Starter plan comes with a free domain name, while the entry-level WordPress Single plan does not – meaning you’ll actually save more money with the higher-tier plan in your first year of hosting. You’ll get unlimited bandwidth and email accounts too, making it the best-value plan overall.
Hostinger Shared Web Hosting Plan
Hostinger WordPress Hosting
Hostinger Cloud Hosting
Hostinger VPS Hosting
Hostinger Reseller Hosting
Hostinger Shared Hosting Features
One of the things I like most about Hostinger’s shared hosting is that despite the super low prices, their plans are still packed full of features. These include:
· Free SSL certificate
· 1-click app install (for WordPress for instance)
· Tools to import a website from another provider
· Tools to migrate your website to another platform
· Multiple server locations to choose from
· DNS management
· FTP Accounts
· Page speed test tools
· Staging areas (limited to Premium and Business plans)
· 24/7 Support via live chat
· Access to their own Hostinger website builder
However, there are a few features I would like to see, that are missing, or at least missing from the lower tier plans. These include:
· Free domain name for first year (limited to Premium and Business plans)
· Automatic daily backups (limited to Business plan)
· Staging areas (limited to Business plan)
· Better than 99.90% uptime guarantee (more on this below)
Hostinger review for WordPress: Features
To start with, let’s take a look at some of the plans Hostinger offers. You’ll find a full range of options here, including shared, cloud, virtual private server (VPS), and dedicated plans.
What’s more, you can opt for a WordPress-specific plan, and get additional support options and one-click installation. These plans are low-cost, shared hosting – perfect for a variety of website types. You also have a choice between single, premium, and business plans, although the business plan is recommended if you’re using WooCommerce.
If you’re considering a shared plan to get your site started, Hostinger has you covered. Some of its features include:
- 24/7 WordPress support in 20+ languages
- One-click WordPress installation
- A free domain name
- Enhanced security features, such as daily backups and a free SSL certificate
- Practically unlimited bandwidth
As you can see, Hostinger’s shared WordPress plans come with a solid set of features. For most first-time website owners, you’ll have everything you need. In addition, all of this is offered for an affordable price, which we’ll get to in a minute. First, however, let’s look at the support you’ll get.
Hostinger Speed Test and Performance
Above all else, the sign of a quality web host is how well its servers perform. After all, having a fast website is crucial for providing a positive user experience (UX) to your visitors, and keeping your bounce rate low. Fortunately, Hostinger offers the following performance-specific features:
- Solid State Drive (SSD) hardware
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Custom-built cache manager
Even better, unlike many other hosting providers, Hostinger offers public information on the performance of its servers. This includes uptime data for the last 24 hours as well as for the past week and month.
Server uptime depicts the amount of time a server is fully-functional and online. In general, you want to be as close to 100% as possible, as even .1% downtime means ~45 minutes of downtime per month. Above, you can see that Hostinger’s uptime can be a little shaky, which is one of the tradeoffs you’ll make for its cheap prices.
In this case – with the numbers being as low as 99.3% at times – you can experience even 10 minutes of downtime per day. No good.
Of course, it’s also helpful to get a real-world take on performance. For that, we can use Pingdom to test page speeds and Load Impact to analyze loading times under pressure.
First, let’s do some page speed tests. Pingdom is an effective and popular tool for this, and a basic test is free. To complete our test, we set up a simple website on Hostinger’s servers, loaded with the default theme, added a smattering of plugins covering various essential features, and the WordPress Theme Unit Test Data. We then input our site’s URL into Pingdom and ran the test from several different locations.
The following results demonstrate the averages of three tests from each location:
- Washington D.C.: 0.81 seconds
- San Francisco: 1.12 seconds
- London: 0.54 seconds
- Sydney: 2.49 seconds
- Tokyo: 1.57 seconds
Overall, these results are quite good. It’s considered a best practice to keep your page loading times under two seconds. Anything over that can have a negative impact on your bounce rate (how many visitors leave after viewing only one page).
Based on these results, we can see that Hostinger’s servers are performing quite nicely on either side of the United States, and exceptionally well in London. What’s more, both of the other locations we tested are within acceptable limits. From this data, we can conclude that Hostinger is likely to provide serviceable speed in the majority of the English-speaking world.
Next, let’s see how our site handles traffic. For this, we’re going to need a different tool – Load Impact. This lets you simulate a number of virtual visitors to your website, and is a great way to see if your website can hold up under pressure.
We ran our test site through Load Impact’s tool to see how it would perform:
From this test, we can see that loading times were generally solid. The response time (the blue line) did get a little choppy as the requests rate increased (the purple line), but Load Impact didn’t find any performance issues.
For many sites, Hostinger’s shared servers will function just fine. However, if you are planning to maintain a high-traffic site – or see sudden fluctuations when your site is live – it may be best to consider an upgraded plan.
2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
Page Load Time in Seconds | |||
2.39 | 1.56 | 1.29 | |
3.15 | 2.01 | 1.30 | |
3.40 | 1.94 | 1.44 | |
2.32 | 1.73 | 1.46 | |
2.14 | 1.54 | 1.56 | |
4.19 | 1.61 | 1.63 | |
2.21 | 1.65 | 1.66 | |
– | 1.60 | 1.69 | |
3.28 | 1.84 | 1.75 | |
2.98 | 1.77 | 1.82 | |
3.07 | 2.87 | 2.07 | |
– | 1.95 | 2.32 | |
4.36 | 2.75 | 2.58 | |
4.19 | 2.76 | 2.60 | |
3.77 | 2.78 | 2.72 | |
11. A2 Hosting (www.a2hosting.com)
From $2.99 / month
Traffic allowed: unmetered
Disk Space: 100 GB
Free Domain: no
Uptime: 99.76% (last 3 months)
Load time US: 0.83s
Load time EU: 1.29s
Load time Asia: 2.57s
4.7
Ranked 25 From 5695 Webhosting
Pricing
Web Hosting $2.99 – $14.99
VPS Hosting $2.99 – $99.99
Dedicated Server $106 – $506
Cloud Hosting $2.59 – $89.99
Reseller Hosting $3.99 – $14.99
Server Locaion
USA ✓
Amsterdam ✓
Singapore ✓
Despite not being well-known, A2 Hosting has made a bit of a name for itself thanks to its rapid speed and great support. However, when it comes to web hosts and their claims, it’s usually best to take this type of information with a grain of salt, unless you’ve tested the solution yourself. As a WordPress user, any web host you’re considering should be held to a much higher standard. Given WordPress’ massive popularity, hosts should offer specific features geared towards its users – A2 Hosting doesn’t disappoint in this aspect:
- Optimized WordPress installations: A2 Hosting offers optimized WordPress installations to maximize speed and security. This enables you to focus on growing your site without worrying about performance.
- Fast loading sites: This provider’s main claim to fame lies in its speeds. Faster loading sites lower your bounce rates and keep users happy, so they’re definitely a good thing. We’ll discuss performance in-depth later on, so keep reading.
So far, we’re off to a decent start! Let’s move on to see how A2 Hosting fares with its customer support.
A2 Hosting is one of the oldest providers around. They are originally from Michigan and started in 2001 under another name (Iniquinet). Later on, in 2003, the name was changed to A2 Hosting.
On their website you can read that 97% of their customers are satisfied and that they promise “Up to 20x faster servers” – we’ll see later if their servers are as fast as the Road Runner (meep, meep) or whether A2 is more like the Coyote. On top of that, their (first-term) pricing seems like a bargain, but what about the renewal fees?
That’s exactly why I decided to review A2 Hosting and tell you all about their products, prices, advantages and flaws.
Let’s dive-in and find out if A2 Hosting is the hosting service you were looking for. But if you prefer to watch an overview of A2 Hosting, check the video below:
Boasting some of the best loading speeds I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, A2 Hosting is a performance beast – even on the cheap plans. There are multiple options to boost your website even further, guaranteeing that your visitors will always enjoy a nice and easy browsing experience. Support isn’t anything to write home about, but hey, you can’t have it all.
What Products Does A2 Hosting Offer?
Like many other popular hosting providers, A2 Hosting has a lot to offer. Let me tell you what products you can get from them and when to use them.
Besides hosting plans, at A2 Hosting you can get domain names too, and their prices are fair. Domain name prices vary. For example, a .com domain name will cost you $14.95 per year. Among other extensions, you can purchase: .com, .info, .net and .org domains. Country specific TLDs like .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es or .au aren’t available.
A2 Hosting is very popular for its shared hosting plans. Their renewal cost goes from $10.99 to $25.99 per month. It’s the one that most projects will need – unless you have a site with huge traffic or need a special server setup, that is.
They also offer managed WordPress hosting plans. These are shared hosting packages that are optimized for WordPress, come with some additional WordPress features (e.g. staging) and their support agents are WordPress experts. A2 Hosting WordPress hosting users will also get automated backups and a free Jetpack License. Managed WordPress hosting starts at $23.99 a month at A2 Hosting.
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It’s a way to divide a server into smaller individual (sub)servers. This means that you can configure it to your needs and you won’t have to share resources with other clients. They are a good match if you need something in between shared hosting and a dedicated server. A VPS at A2 Hosting goes from as little as $7.65 a month to around $200. See our round up of the best VPS web hosting for more details.
But if your site is likely to get hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, you probably need a dedicated hosting package. In other words, a whole server to exclusively host your project. These aren’t cheap, at A2 Hosting they start at $190 a month.
If you have clients of your own who require hosting, you can opt-in for the reseller program where you’ll be able to sell hosting plans (without A2 Hosting branding) to your clients. These plans start at around $35 a month.
But in this A2 Hosting review, I’d like to explore their shared hosting plans, so from now on, I’ll refer to those in my analysis.
The Startup plan comes with a 100GB of SSD storage, an unlimited bandwidth allotment, and can support one single website. The more advanced plan, Drive, has unlimited space and can support unlimited websites.
A cool thing about A2 is that it’s very honest about the amount of RAM (the memory needed to run processes) included in the plans. While most hosts keep this kind of info to themselves, A2 notes that Startup comes with 0.7GB, while Drive has 1GB of RAM. That means they both can easily handle landing pages, blogs, portfolios, and other basic logic pages. Drive might be strong enough for some WooCommerce websites, but you’ll be pushing it to its limits.
A free SSL certificate is available with all plans, which firmly makes A2 one of the good guys. Your visitors’ data, privacy, and connection will all be secured, and you’ll have the padlock showing in the address bar. I tested the strength of the certificate through Qualys, and got A+, the highest possible grade.
I won’t be covering them in depth here, but VPS plans are also available, and they’re definitely worth your time if you find yourself in need of more power. That might be because you become oh-so-popular and are dealing with an endless barrage of visitors, or because you’re running processing-heavy tasks like ecommerce or personal accounts-based projects.
So far, so good? Great. Let’s dig a bit deeper.
A2 Hosting Pricing
$10.99 Startup
$12.99 Drive
$20.99 Turbo Boost
$25.99 Turbo Max
A2 Hosting Turbo Server
“Up to 20x faster!” screams the tagline. Gosh, I wonder what ancient sorcery is at work here, and why other hosts aren’t using it as well. As you’ve probably guessed, there’s no real secret sauce, and I’m willing to bet that your website will not be 20x faster.
What is happening is that A2’s copywriters had a stroke of genius. LiteSpeed is a new, significantly faster web server technology that’s quickly replacing Apache (recap: which the basic SwiftServers are running). It also allows for very effective server-level caching, which can greatly boost speeds. While other hosts are simply listing LiteSpeed as one of their many features, A2 built a whole brand around it.
Who else has LiteSpeed? Hostinger, GreenGeeks, and InterServer, to name a few. Hostinger really knocks it out of the park, while the others have been using it to varying degrees of success.
This is all a bit sneaky, and I’d agree that A2 isn’t winning any points for straightforwardness. I’m still going to commend it for really utilizing the power behind LiteSpeed, and for coupling it with equally-impressive hardware. These plans might not cut your loading times by 20x, but they’re much more powerful than the SwiftServer plans.
A2 Hosting Pricing and Hosting Plans
- A2 Hosting Shared Hosting
- A2 Hosting VPS Hosting
- A2 Hosting Dedicated Hosting
- A2 Hosting Reseller Hosting
- A2 Hosting Email Hosting
- A2 Hosting cPanel Hosting
- A2 Hosting Turbo Hosting
- A2 Hosting Web Hosting Plans
A2 Hosting Choosing Your Plan
Still, the most confusing part of A2’s service comes before signing up. There’s an almost endless number of “plans” (Shared, WordPress, Python, Ruby, WooCommerce, Linux, CMS, CRM), but in reality, they’re all the exact same shared plan.
With that in mind, and the A2 Lexicon I’ve created for you in the Features section, I trust you to choose the plan that’s right for you.
A2 Hosting VPS Hosting Feature
A2 Hosting Dedicated Hosting Feature
A2 Hosting Reseller Hosting Feature
What Do Their Shared Plans Include?
FEATURE | STARTUP | DRIVE | TURBO BOOST | TURBO MAX |
Allowed websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Storage | 100 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Max. number of Inodes (total files) | 300,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 | 600,000 |
Bandwidth Simultaneous HTTP connections | Unlimited 35 | Unlimited 35 | Unlimited 35 | Unlimited 35 |
Databases | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Email addresses |