Most of you are not sure in which web hosting service to choose and fail to reach that most of the recommendations over the internet are not based on a real review, they only have interest to refer you through their affiliate link, so the review is not reflecting the services offered. I also work with affiliate programs but I tend to make real recommendations and I will not recommend products or services to my visitors that I personally would not recommend to myself. In this post, I’ll give you a full overview based on my previous experience with those companies.
Disclaimer: The links to the web hosting services are affiliate links and I may receive comission if you chose to purchase one of those services.
HostGator
HostGator is a web hosting company established in 2002 and located in Houston, Texas. In 2012 the company was sold and transferred to the ownership of the EIG Group. The company has hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide and millions of domains registered with them.
I have been working with them for several years now with some sites and I can say that their service is very reasonable for price and high server availability. The company offers unlimited storage and traffic but take into account that it’s just like in the cellular packages, nothing is really unlimited. Beyond that,if you will look in the company’s terms they have several clauses that allow them to block your account if there is an unusual deviation or unreasonable use of their storage services.
In terms of technical support, they have chat and it’s quick to reach to chat with the representative most of the time. If there are simple things to solve, the support representatives help on each problem and solve it at the same time, but recently I came across a number of representatives (from India, I suppose) who write in breakdown English and take them time to relocate the problem,.
There are problems that only their engineers can solve and it took them almost a month to fix the problem. So consider that, if you don’t have the technical knowledge and able to identify the problem and report to them exactly, in such cases sometimes you will simply be stuck or will encounter difficulty in front of them without being able to do anything about it.
Another disadvantage is the version of MySQL that is not updated on some of their shared hosting servers and there is no way to know it, it’s just luck if you fall on such a server. They basically say they’re gradually updating but don’t expect it to happen quickly.
Their Cloud packages are much more recommended than shared web hosting packages, you’ll see a significant difference between the server response times and they will also give the best value to your price. The standard web hosting packages start at $3.95. Cloud packages are offered from $4.99 a month. WordPress sites have special web hosting packages starting at $5.95 a month.
As with other web hosting companies, an annual commitment will reduce the price. Through the following link you can get up to 60% discount on their web hosting packages or a first month in only one cent in this link
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks, as the name of the company, markets herself as the green web hosting company that is a leader in energy saving. The company’s server farm is operated by wind energy, perhaps it’snot a significant detail for everyone but it is certainly something that needs to be noted for those that care for energy efficiency and protecting the environment of large corporations and companies.
I was impressed by their technical support. The response in the chat was quick and it seems that the representatives there are professional. This is the thing I liked there. Their support via e-mail also gives the feeling of a small company that supports every customer, even though they have quite a few customers (about 30,000) and hundreds of thousands of websites that are hosted with them, according to their website.
At GreenGeeks, the average server response time was slower by 0.461 seconds than HostGator Cloud servers. Note that my comparison is to the cloud plan of HostGator and not to their shared hosting. Compared to HostGator shared hosting, it’s GreenGeeks that leads with a faster response time of about 0.246 seconds.
The price is only $3.95 a month via this link for an unlimited basic web hosting package and note that you can also host unlimited domains. This means that you can host as many sites as you want and again at a reasonable level that your account will not be blocked, take this into account. This is shared web hosting but they also have dedicated servers and dedicated storage packages for WordPress. Their storage package includes domain registration for life (will continue to renew as long as you keep hosting in them).
BlueHost
BlueHost was established in 2003. In 2010, it was acquired by the EIG group, yes, the same group that acquired HostGator. The company owns a large server farm in Utah, USA.
Although both BlueHost and HostGator have been purchased and owned by the EIG Group, they are working on different management teams as well as support representatives. From my work experience with them, I was very impressed with their technical support and storage services representatives. Here, too, I did not experience representatives from a third world country like HostGator.
Their shared storage packages start at $3.95 a month and include unlimited storage, but I found that the server response time was much slower than HostGator, and that’s their disadvantage. The price is also not so attractive compared to other web hosting companies.
But if you talk about their cloud storage services then my opinion is completely different. They recently renewed storage servers and remarkably fast response time. Through this link you can purchase a web hosting in the cloud starting at $5.95 per month.
One of the BlueHost advantage over other web hosting companies is security. They seem to have security tools and spam protection. Their web hosting service is recommended by WordPress officially.
DreamHost
DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting companies in existence since 1996 and is located in Los Angeles. DreamHost has been also officially selected by WordPress as one of the recommended web hosting companies.
DreamHost has over 400,000 active customers and stores over 1.5 million sites on its servers. One of the great advantages of their storage services is their high availability and they also undertake to compensate in the event of non availability. The server response time is also fast.
Their technical support is also good and you can chat with them with a support representative with a relatively quick response. They don’t have phone support but if the online support is good why need such?
The drawback or more correctly the significant consideration is the price but you will get a good web hosting service in return. The prices of their shared web hosting packages start at $ 9.95 per month for a year and $ 16,955 for WordPress-enabled cloud storage, a relatively high price compared to other web hosting companies, and the management panel is not cPanel and is built by the company.
SiteGround
SiteGround was established in 2004 and its head offices are in Bulgaria with more than 400 employees. The company has a server farm in 5 countries: the US, Holland, England, Italy and Singapore.
SiteGround uses SSD drives for its servers. The availability of their servers is high and also the page loading time with an average load time of 0.542 seconds. Another advantage is that all their web hosting packages are compatible with WordPress with access to SuperCacher, the cache they offer for WordPress that significantly improves the site’s load speed. There are also various security applications for your storage that will protect your site from attack and spam attacks.
Their support is also excellent. They have a meeting with excellent and patient support representatives with full transparency with whom they speak, and they are not representatives from a third world country. For new clients, they offer free transfer of the site from your previous web hosting service.
The price they offer is especially low for the service they give and starts at $3.95 a month for a shared web hosting package. Please note that they charge a setup fee of $14.95 if you choose the monthly route, so you shouldn’t do so. Another disadvantage of SiteGround is in the storage and traffic limit and if you exceed the quota of one of them you will be charged otherwise your account will be restricted or blocked. It’s very worthwhile to pay attention to this detail. From storage space you probably will not exceed (10 gigabytes in their basic course), but traffic should make the right consideration and correctly estimate the amount of traffic and traffic expected on your site.
Web hosting services that are less recommended
I also have bad experience with some web hosting companies. During my work I got to work with my client web hostings and one of them was in Godaddy, yes yes the known domain registrar. Maybe they’re cheap on domains but their interface storage is obsolete and incredibly slow. Not at all comfortable, at least until the last time I got to work with them. Their support was also very slow.
Another company is ByetHost, which operates on several different and strange domains, and it’s not really clear which ones belong to it and who they are. Some customers have been tempted for some reason and have purchased a “cheap” web hosting package, but availability and slowness are not worth it. Beyond the fact that the company is sending out bulk emails and all my attempts to remove myself from their terrible mailing list have been unsuccessful, which is annoying and I don’t like it.
In summary – What is the best web hosting service?
Just as in everything there is no unequivocal answer. There are companies that I could tell you not to approach but among the companies I recommended from the beginning of the post, everyone has the advantage or disadvantage according to your specific requirements. There are those who can experience a nightmare in one company and there are those who can be satisfied customers for many years. Sometimes it’s a matter of luck and sometimes it depends on you and the way you are able to understand the nature of the problem and the solution it needs.
The HostGator cloud package seems to offer the best value for it’s price, availability, server response time, unlimited storage and traffic (reasonable), free domain, cPanel management interface, and more. Their support is somewhat less supportive than other companies but still provides when necessary, at least for me.
If you choose shared storage, I will recommend GreenGeeks, which offer excellent service and great price. The response time of their servers is also extremely fast.
If you have any specific questions, you are welcome to comment and ask me.
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