1. Bluehost – The Best Web Hosting
Review Process
Bluehost Pros
+ Good uptime (99.98%)
+ Decent speed (420 ms)
+ One-Click-Install for WordPress
+ Easy to use, beginner-friendly
+ Free domain and site builder
+ 24/7 support (chat and phone)
Bluehost Cons
– Discounts for longer plans only
Visit Bluehost.com
Notable Features
Their cheapest plan comes with features like a free domain name, website builder, and one-click install for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal through their control panel. So for starters (someone without a website), this is probably the best option. Unmetered bandwidth and 10 GB storage is also included in the basic plan.
Bluehost also offers free email accounts and SSL on all plans. It’s very easy to use and probably one of the best entry-level web hosting providers that are both reliable and secure. In addition to traditional shared hosting, the company also offers dedicated, VPS, and managed WordPress hosting plans for higher traffic websites.
Our top choice is Bluehost that has been around since 2003 and is one of the officially recommended hosts by WordPress. They are the most beginner-friendly, low-cost hosting option for new websites.
Performance
We’ve been keeping a close eye on Bluehost’s performance since 2017 and thus far we haven’t been disappointed. Over the past 6-months, they’ve delivered an uptime of 99.98% and an average loading time of 420 ms.
Customer Support
Bluehost provides 24/7 customer support over live chat, phone, and an email ticketing system. On top of that, they have a vast knowledge base packed with answers to frequent questions and useful information.
We tested out Bluehost’s live chat by asking some general questions about their shared hosting plans and the customer rep was quick and knowledgeable.
Pricing
| Basic Plan | Plus Plan | Choice Plus Plan | Pro Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.75/month Renews at $9.99/mo | $5.45/month Renews at $13.99/mo | $5.45/month Renews at $18.99/mo | $13.95/month Renews at $26.99/mo |
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
We signed up with Bluehost’s shared hosting plan already in 2015 and we’ve been monitoring their performance since 2017. When we first signed up with them we paid a total of $42.48/year and after the renewal $107.86/year.
Visit Bluehost.com
…or read our detailed Bluehost review
2. A2 Hosting – The Fastest Web Host
Review Process
A2 Hosting Pros
+ Fast load time (286 ms)
+ Reliable uptime (>99.99%)
+ WordPress optimized servers
+ Unlimited bandwidth and storage
+ 24/7 “Guru” chat support
+ 20+ email accounts
A2 Hosting Cons
– Higher renewal cost
Visit A2Hosting.com
Notable Features
The cheapest plan “Lite” comes with 1 website, unlimited email accounts, a domain name for 1 year, free Cloudflare CDN, and unlimited bandwidth.
The A2 hosting company is also well-known for working seamlessly with all major content management systems including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and Magento making it a great fit for web developers. The company offers a variety of hosting plans and they all include a free LetsEncrypt SSL certificate, unlimited SSD storage, and free site migration.
US-based A2 Hosting that has been in the hosting industry market for over two decades. A2 Hosting is for everyone who is interested in having fast server speeds and reliable uptime together with stellar customer service.
Performance
A2 Hosting servers that we’ve monitored since 2015 are optimized for WordPress websites and they use LiteSpeed cache. Thanks to that they are the fastest host we’ve seen with an average speed of 286 ms. Moreover, A2 Hosting is also reliable. Their average uptime over the past six months has been hovering around >99.99% with only 13 minutes of downtime.
Customer Support
A2 Hosting has a reliable customer support team called “Guru Crew Support.” Customers can connect with them 24/7/365 via live chat, phone, email, and tickets.
Our personal experience with A2 Hosting live chat was positive, their customer rep connected within a few minutes and was very knowledgeable.
Pricing
| Startup Plan | Drive Plan | Turbo Boost Plan | Turbo Max Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.99/month Renews at $10.99/mo | $5.99/month Renews at $12.99/mo | $6.99/month Renews at $20.99/mo | $12.99/month Renews at $25.99/mo |
All plans come with an anytime money-back guarantee.
We signed up with A2 Hosting in 2015 and have been monitoring them ever since. During the initial sign up we paid in total £51.32 and after a year it renewed to £74.20.
Visit A2Hosting.com
…or read our detailed A2 Hosting review
3. Hostinger – The Most Affordable Host
Review Process
Hostinger Pros
+ Fast load time (307 ms)
+ Good uptime (99.97%)
+ Cheap pricing ($1.99/mo)
+ Datacenters in US, Europe & Asia
+ Free SSL certificate
+ Multilingual support
Hostinger Cons
– No free domain
– Limited bandwidth on the cheapest plan
Visit Hostinger.com
Notable Features
The company offers a variety of hosting plans with different features and all plans come with an easy website builder, free SSL certificate, and 99.9% uptime guarantee
Hostinger’s cheapest plan comes with 50 GB of disk space, 100 GB of bandwidth, two MySQL databases, and one email account. Most notably, the cheapest plan doesn’t include a free domain and has limited processing power and memory. Starting from the Premium plan, bandwidth, and disk space are unlimited.
Other services provided by Hostinger include Cloud, Email, WordPress, and Windows VPS hosting plans.
Hostinger offers extremely affordable hosting plans without compromising too much on the quality and performance of the service. While it’s cheap in the price, the features that come with Hostinger’s plans will appeal to many beginner website owners.
Performance
We’ve been monitoring Hostinger since 2017 and during previous years, their performance was rather mediocre. However, they managed to step up their game and now delivered an average uptime of 99.97% and an average speed of 307 ms – proving themself to be both a fast and reliable provider.
Customer Support
Hostinger has a multilingual customer support team, live chat, and they integrated Intercom as their main support system.
They also have a knowledge base where you can find guides, information, and answers to questions by yourself.
Our personal experience with their live chat was satisfactory – we asked some technical questions and got knowledgeable replies backed up by links from the customer support rep. However, the response time was rather slow, since there was a 30-minute waiting line.
One thing to note is that Hostinger’s live chat is available only for registered users.
Pricing
| Single Shared Plan | Premium Shared Plan | Business Shared Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $1.99/month Renews at $2.99/mo | $2.99/month Renews at $6.99/mo | $4.99/month Renews at $8.99/mo |
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
We started monitoring Hostinger’s performance in 2017 and in 2019 and 2021 we paid $139.39 for a two years plan, making them very affordable.
Visit Hostinger.com
…or read our detailed Hostinger review
4. DreamHost – Best “Monthly” Payment Option
Review Process
DreamHost Pros
+ Uptime guarantee
+ Monthly plans available
+ 97-day money back guarantee
+ Unlimited bandwidth and storage
DreamHost Cons
– Poor uptime (99.77%)
– Slow loading time (1730 ms)
– No cPanel
Visit Dreamhost.com
Notable Features
The basic plan includes a free domain, 1 website, unlimited bandwidth, and storage. Customers also get to use DreamHost’s drag-and-drop builder and can add an email for a monthly fee of $1.99/mo.
The company offers strong security features (LetsEncrypt SSL), a variety of domain management tools, and unlimited data transfer per month. WordPress comes pre-installed and the company also has its own easy-to-use and beginner-friendly website builder. They don’t have cPanel which is well known in the web developers industry, but DreamHost offers their own admin panel which pretty much does the same as cPanel or Plesk.
DreamHost serves over 1.5 million websites, blogs, and applications in more than 100 countries and is officially recommended by WordPress.org. What makes DreamHost different from many other web hosting services is that they offer an option to pay monthly instead of yearly.
Performance
We started tracking DreamHost’s performance in 2017 and they started out strong with stable uptime and fast speeds.
However, during the past six months, DreamHost’s performance has not been exactly stellar – delivering an average speed of 1730 ms and uptime of 99.77%.
Customer Support
DreamHost provides a knowledge base and discussion forums to help customers solve their own issues.
They also claim to offer a 24/7 live chat option, but in reality, it’s limited to being available from 3.00 AM to 9.30 PM PT every day. In order to get an answer to our technical questions, we had to try many times before we were connected to anyone in the sales team. However, during the times when we actually could contact the customer rep, they were helpful and quick to reply.
Pricing
| Shared Starter Plan | Shared Unlimited Plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.59/month Renews at $5.99/mo | $3.95/month Renews at $10.99/mo |
All plans come with a 97-day money-back guarantee.
We’ve been monitoring DreamHost since 2017 and in 2019, for example, we paid a total of $119.40/year.
Visit DreamHost.com
…or read our detailed DreamHost review
5. SiteGround – The Best Uptime
Review Process
SiteGround Pros
+ Fast load time (356 ms)
+ Exceptional uptime (99.99%)
+ Knowledgable customer support
+ Unlimited email accounts
SiteGround Cons
– Limited cheap plan
Visit Siteground.com
Notable Features
All SiteGround hosting plans include website builder, email accounts, SSL, Cloudflare CDN, daily backups, and SSH access, for free.
With the cheapest StartUp plan, you can host one website well-suited for ~10,000 monthly visits. The plan comes with 10 GB of web space, unmetered traffic, and 24/7 support.
SiteGround has a wide line of services including managed WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, cloud hosting, enterprise hosting, and dedicated server hosting. Instead of having in-house servers, they are renting servers from the Google Cloud.
SiteGround is one of the three web hosting services officially recommended by WordPress.org. Moreover, SiteGround is well-known for its exemplary uptime.
Performance
SiteGround excels in uptime – being almost perfect at 99.99%. They also perform well in speed, coming at an average of 356 ms.
We’ve been testing SiteGround since 2017 and during those years their lowest uptime has been 99.91% (January 2021). So it is safe to say that with SiteGround your website will be up and running at all times.
Customer Support
SiteGround offers a 24/7 live chat option together with phone support. They also provide a vast knowledge base for customers who like to find answers on their own.
Their live chat is professional and fast. The customer rep connected with up in less than a minute and it took us less than four minutes to get answers to our questions.
Moreover, many user reviews emphasize that SiteGround’s customer service is very professional and quick to help.
Pricing
| StartUp Plan | GrowBig Plan | GoGeek Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $3.99/month Renews at $14.99/mo | $6.69/month Renews at $24.99/mo | $10.69/month Renews at $39.99/mo |
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
We signed up with SiteGround in 2017 and have also been monitoring their performance ever since. During the initial signup, we paid a total of €114.48/year and the maximum amount that we’ve been invoiced is €503.86 (for a one-year plan).
Visit SiteGround.com
…or read our detailed SiteGround review
6. GoDaddy – One of the Largest Hosting Providers
Review Process
GoDaddy Pros
+ Good load time (280 ms)
+ Average uptime (99.98%)
+ Uptime guarantee for 99.90%
+ cPanel and website builder access
GoDaddy Cons
– SSL & email costs extra
– No free site transfers
Visit GoDaddy.com
Notable Features
GoDaddy is an excellent solution for building custom websites as it comes with a simple drag-and-drop website builder (GoCentral) designed for beginners. It also features developer-friendly tools like MySQL, cPanel, CloudLinux, Python, and multiple versions of PHP.
Their cheapest web hosting plan comes with a free domain and unmetered bandwidth. Security monitoring and DDoS protection are included too.
However, GoDaddy has many “upsells” that will likely make you pay a bit more. For example, SSL certificates, and email accounts are not included in their cheapest plan.
GoDaddy is one of the leading hosting solutions powering over 44 million websites and is recognized as one of the largest domain registrars. They offer web hosting services that are suitable for both small and very big websites.
Performance
During the past six months, GoDaddy has shown fast loading times, coming at an average of 280 ms (fastest host in this list, surpassing even A2 Hosting during this testing period) and strong uptime (99.98%).
Customer Support
GoDaddy comes with 24/7/365 customer support. They have a live chat, phone support in a number of languages, and a vast knowledge base.
Our experience with GoDaddy’s support (live chat) has been quite inconsistent. There were times when the customer rep connected within a few minutes and replied to our questions very swiftly, but other times, their live chat was nearly impossible to get access to as the waiting time was nearly an hour.
Pricing
| Economy Plan | Deluxe Plan | Ultimate Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.99/month Renews at $8.99/mo | $7.99/month Renews at $11.99/mo | $12.99/month Renews at $16.99/mo |
All GoDaddy’s yearly and multi-year plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
We’ve been monitoring GoDaddy’s performance since 2017 while also paying for their shared hosting services. In 2021 we paid €107.86/year for their Economy plan.
Visit GoDaddy.com
…or read our detailed GoDaddy review
7. GreenGeeks – Best Eco-Friendly Hosting Provider
Review Process
GreenGeeks Pros
+ Good load time (478 ms)
+ Reliable uptime (99.93%)
+ US, Canada & Netherlands servers
+ Free site transfer
+ Unlimited bandwidth and email accounts
GreenGeek Cons
– Questionable money back policy
– High renewal cost
Visit GreenGeeks.com
Notable Features
Their cheapest plan comes with a free domain for 1 year, website control panel (cPanel), free SSL, PowerCacher, 50 GB SSD storage, and unlimited data transfer. Customers also get one website, 50 email accounts, and nightly backups.
If your website grows bigger, you can always upgrade to their more flexible VPS hosting. Also, GreenGeeks will migrate your site from your existing web host for free. Unfortunately, the $10.95/month renewal rate may dissuade some webmasters from choosing GreenGeeks over other hosting providers.
GreenGeeks has been around over a decade and is one of the few hosting providers that are eco-friendly. For every hosting account that GreenGeeks provisions on their platform, they’ll plant one tree.
Performance
GreenGeeks offers a fast loading time (478 ms) and reliable uptime of 99.93%. Overall, GreenGeeks has been performing very well since we started monitoring them in 2017.
Customer Support
GreenGeeks offer 24/7 live chat and phone support. Besides the two aforementioned, they also come with an extensive knowledge base.
Their live chat is very responsive. Customer support representative connected with us within a few minutes and was overall very knowledgeable.
Pricing
| Lite Plan | Pro Plan | Premium Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.95/month Renews at $10.95/mo | $5.95/month Renews at $15.95/mo | $10.95/month Renews at $25.95/mo |
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
We signed up with GreenGeeks in 2015 and have been monitoring their uptime and speed since 2017. During the initial sign up we paid $76.32 per year and the highest amount that we’ve paid is $131.40 per year (in 2021).
Visit GreenGeeks.com
…or read our detailed GreenGeeks review
8. InMotion Hosting – One of the Most Well-Known Providers
Review Process
InMotion Pros
+ Good uptime (99.97%)
+ Fast Speed (311 ms)
+ Good Customer Support
+ 90-Days Money-Back Guarantee
+ Free Website Transfer
InMotion Cons
– No Free Domain with the Cheapest Plan
– Some Plan Limitations
Visit InMotion.com
Notable Features
InMotion’s cheapest plan comes with great features such as unlimited bandwidth, free SSL certificates, and 400+ app integrations (including a 1-click WordPress install). Sadly, a domain name is not included in their cheapest plan.
Still, InMotion is worth trying out as they provide some great features when starting with your first website. Beginners can benefit from their free website builder. When your site starts to grow, you can switch to a more scalable VPS or dedicated server hosting plan.
Since 2001, InMotion Hosting has grown a customer base of over 1.2 million domains and has one of the most established names in the hosting industry.
Performance
We’ve been testing InMotion’s performance for over five years now and our last six months’ measured data shows a great average uptime of 99.97% and a fast page speed average of 311 ms. Considering the size of InMotion’s client base, these are very solid results.
Customer Support
All customers can benefit from InMotion’s 24/7 live chat, phone, email, and phone support. Moreover, they also offer Skype support, and of course knowledge base.
Our experience with their live chat was okay. This means, we got all the answers to our questions, but they came with a short delay, and the customer rep was overall a bit too concise.
Pricing
| Lite Plan | Launch Plan | Power Plan | Pro Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.29/month Renews at $8.99/mo | $4.99/month Renews at $11.99/mo | $4.99/month Renews at $15.99/mo | $12.99/month Renews at $22.99/mo |
All plans come with a 90-day money-back guarantee.
We signed up with InMotion in 2015 and we’ve been also monitoring their performance ever since. During the initial signup, we paid in a total of $47.94/year which was later renewed to $107.88/year.
Visit InMotionHosting.com
…or read our detailed InMotion review
9. IONOS (1&1) Hosting – The Largest Hosting Company in Europe
Review Process
IONOS Pros
+ Strong Uptime (99.97%)
+ Improved Speed (713 ms)
+ Free SSL Security
+ Free Domain and Email
+ Improved User Interface
IONOS Cons
– No Free Website Transfers
– Can’t Sign Up in Many Countries
Visit Ionos.com
Notable Features
With IONOS’s cheapest plan, you’ll get access to several great features: a website builder, free SSL, a free domain and email, as well as popular CMSs including WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
Unfortunately, free site migrations are not offered and on top of that, IONOS isn’t even available in many countries, including numerous European countries, China, and Egypt.
IONOS (1&1) Hosting has been around since 1988(!) and is the largest hosting company in Europe. They manage more than 8 million customer contracts and host over 12 million domains in their own regional data centers in the US and Europe.
Performance
We’ve been monitoring IONOS since 2020, so we haven’t gathered that detailed insight into their performance yet, especially compared to other hosts on this list.
However, our test site data from the previous 6 months reveals that IONOS is very reliable when it comes to uptime (99.97%). However, their average page speed isn’t exactly top-tier coming at 713 ms – but it’s still improved and is more than 100 ms faster than last year.
Customer Support
IONOS offers 24/7 customer support for non-registered and registered users only via phone, email, or knowledge base. Recently they also started offering a live chat option. Overall the live chat was fast but still has room for improvement.
Pricing
| Essential Plan | Business Plan | Expert Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $4.00/month Renews at $6.00/mo | $0.50/month Renews at $10.00/mo | $8.00/month Renews at $16.00/mo |
IONOS offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
IONOS is the newest host on this list. We signed up with them in 2020 and also have been monitoring their performance ever since. IONOS sends an invoice for $4.00 every month.
Visit Ionos.com
…or read our detailed Ionos review
10. HostPapa – Good Value for Price
Review Process
HostPapa Pros
+ Great uptime (99.95%)
+ Fast average speed (572 ms)
+ Extensive Support Options
+ Proactive Security Features
+ 30-Days Money-Back Guarantee
HostPapa Cons
– High Renewal Prices
Visit Hostpapa.com
Notable Features
HostPapa’s cheapest plan includes a free migration, SSL, and CDN, as well as a website builder and 400+ 1-click-install apps. On top of that, you’ll get a free domain, 100 GB of storage, and unmetered bandwidth.
Next to shared hosting, HostPapa also offers VPS and WordPress hosting plans.
HostPapa is a Canadian-based independent hosting company that was founded in 2006. They offer shared, reseller, WordPress, and VPS hosting. HostPapa is also one of the first companies to make a public commitment to going green.
Performance
When we started monitoring HostPapa in 2015 they didn’t exactly excel in speed – our test site took over a second to load. However, they have remarkably improved their server speed and during the past six months, their average loading time was 572 ms.
Moreover, HostPapa has proven to be reliable with an uptime of 99.95%.
Customer Support
HostPapa offers more support options than perhaps any other host. They have 24/7 live chat, email, fax (!), and mail support as well as phone support in over 18 countries and four languages. Also, their knowledge base has many helpful videos.
Our experience with HostPapa’s live chat was smooth – they were responsive and knowledgeable in regards to our technical questions.
Pricing
| Starter Plan | Business Plan | Business Pro Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.95/month Renews at $9.99/mo | $2.95/month Renews at $14.99/mo | $11.95/month Renews at $23.99/mo |
HostPapa comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
We signed up with HostPapa in 2015 and throughout these years their invoices have been between $95.88 to $172.66 per year.
Visit HostPapa.com
…or read our detailed HostPapa review