#7. A2 Hosting – Fast & Reliable Shared Hosting

Visit A2 Hosting

• Normally $8.99/month
• Month-to-month pricing at $9.99
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• 30-day money back guarantee

Get a 63% discount

A2 Hosting stands out for their great speeds and low prices.

At every hosting tier (shared, VPS, dedicated), A2 Hosting beats other hosts on speed. If you’re coming from another shared web host, you’re likely going to see an improvement in loading speed once you migrate to A2.

With their Turbo Boost and Turbo Max plans, you’ll get access to their Turbo Servers. They boast that it’s 20x faster than their other servers and includes:

• 40% faster AMD EPYC CPU performance
• 2x faster to first byte
• Manage 9x more traffic
• 3x faster read/write speeds with NVMe drives

A2 Hosting also has a 99.9% uptime commitment on all plans so you know you’ll have a reliable host that won’t be down often.

They offer free site migration with each plan too. If you’ve set your site up on a bad host and want to migrate, this is a fantastic deal. It’ll save your dozens of hours trying to get your site rebuilt. The A2 Hosting team takes care of it for you.

Like many of the other web hosts, there are 1-click installs for all the popular CMS tools like WordPress, Magento, and Drupal.

Note: Their startup plan includes only one website.

If you plan on hosting multiple websites, you’ll need to get the Drive plan which is an extra $2/month after the promotional period ends.

One trick to save money with A2 Hosting: the promotional prices end on renewal. To lock in the 63% discount for as long as possible, go for the tri-annual billing which will bill for three years at once. You’ll get 2 years of hosting for free.

#8. InMotion Hosting – Best VPS Hosting

Visit InMotion Hosting

• Normally $7.99/month
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• Free and unlimited email
• 90-day money back guarantee

Get a 57% discount

InMotion offers truly excellent technology, a wide assortment of plans, and a legion of longtime customers.

InMotion also gives you a massive self-help knowledge base. So if there’s something wrong, there’s probably a guide out there to help you.

The customer support is also among the best. Don’t believe it? Try for yourself. InMotion’s 90-day free trial period for shared hosting is one of the longest around and gives you plenty of time to test out InMotion’s support team.

InMotion’s plans are really straightforward and almost identical. As you upgrade, you’ll get faster servers and extra databases, websites, and subdomains. It’s a straightforward approach I like, especially for small businesses and websites that aren’t overly complex. No pushy upsells or confusing tiers to worry about.

Even the entry-level plans have excellent customer support. It’s 24/7 via 5 communication channels: phone, chat, email, tutorials, and Q&A, which were actively answered.

I also appreciate that none of this support is hidden or hard to find. The phone number is broadcast at the top of the page and the chat support login is easy to find in your admin panel.

There’s nothing more annoying than 24/7 support that requires you first unearth the contact methods on your own. It’s a waste of time and tells me exactly what I need to know about the host.

I also appreciate that the support is available at your level — whether you’re just starting and need someone to walk you through the ultimate basics with a friendly and supportive demeanor, or you want someone who can talk specs and technical nuances like a pro, the InMotion support has you covered.

InMotion also has some of the best VPS hosting options. They even have two types of VPS hosting so you can get the exact amount of support or flexibility that you want:

InMotion regularly runs promo pricing, with deals that start as low as $5/month. Normal pricing for shared hosting bumps up to $8–$9/month after the initial contract is up.

In addition to shared hosting, InMotion offers upgrades to managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers.

#9. WP Engine – Best Managed WordPress Hosting

Visit WP Engine

• Normally $30/month
• Month-to-month pricing
• Free domain and SSL certificate
• 30-day money back guarantee

4 months free or 20% off

WP Engine is one of the best (if not the best) WordPress hosts out there. Full stop.

They provide a truly excellent product, that’s highly optimized for WordPress websites. If you want all the storage and speed you can get for your WP blog or online store, this is the host for you.

It does come at a price though. A fully managed WordPress host is noticeably more expensive than shared hosting providers.

WP Engine’s lowest-priced plan is $30/month, and that’s only for one 10GB site with max 25,000 visitors/month.

If you sign up for an annual subscription, you’ll save a good bit of money because they give you three months for free.

Yes, the price tag is higher than other hosts, but when you factor in what WP Engine does, it’s an incredibly appealing option for WordPress site owners.

As a managed WordPress host, WP Engine only provides service to WordPress users, which means its entire infrastructure can be optimized for WordPress. Your site will be wicked fast, there’s virtually no downtime, and lots of maintenance tasks get taken care of automatically.

Bottom line: If you want a blazing fast site where everything is taken care of automatically, you’ll want WP Engine.

Customer support is also laser-focused on WordPress, which makes for highly competent knowledgeable support staff available through tracked tickets and on live chat 24/7.

You’ll be paying more in order to get a lot more. WP Engine is the ultimate choice for any business running on WordPress. If you don’t want to waste time managing the hosting component of your website, then these are the guys to turn to.

#10. Nexcess – Best for scaling and growth

Visit Nexcess

• Managed web hosting for 9 CMS
• Great for ecommerce sites
• 24/7 customer service
• Choose from 6 different plans

Learn More

Nexcess is a web hosting solution from Liquid Web — a provider I’ve featured on my lists for best dedicated web hosting, best VPS hosting, and best WordPress hosting.

So it’s no real shock that Nexcess makes my list for best web hosts. Where they really shine is managed ecommerce hosting. In fact, they offer ecommerce hosting for:

• Magento
• Woocommerce
• WordPress
• Drupal
• BigCommerce
• Sylius
• ExpressionEngine
• Craft CMS
• Orocrm

So if you’re looking to make an online store, they should be a top consideration for you.

Their Nexcess Cloud Accelerator—a feature that adds a layer on the cloud stack that increases the speed of your websites loading time. That’s a huge boon because speed is everything when it comes to keeping your customers on your website and browsing.

They also offer a massive suite of plans for each of their web hosts. Here are the ones from just WordPress for example:

This makes Nexcess perfect for any growing business looking to scale. No matter where you are with your business, there’s likely a plan for you with Nexcess.

On top of that, they have a dedicated support team available 24/7 to help you address any technical issues as they occur. Very important when it comes to web hosting.

If you’re running an ecommerce website or if you have a startup that you know will grow quickly, Nexcess should definitely be in consideration.

Prices vary depending on which CMS platform you want to use. But their WordPress plans start at $15.84/month.

Specified Web Hosting Reviews

I’ve went deep into all aspects of web hosting. Here’s a list of additional reviews and guides to further help you make the best decision for you ideal hosting provider.

Hosting Company Reviews

• Hostinger Review
• Bluehost Review
• Dreamhost Review
• Hostgator Review
• A2 Web Hosting Review
• InMotion Review
• SiteGround Review
• iPage Review
• GoDaddy Review
• Whogohost Review
• NameCheap Review
• Bluehost vs Dreamhost Comparison
• Bluehost vs Hostgator Comparison

Types of Web Hosting

• Understanding Different Types of Hosting
• Best Free Web Hosting Plans
• Best Cheap Web Hosting Plans
• Best Cloud Web Hosting Plans
• Best Cpanel Hosting Plans
• Best Dedicated Hosting Plans
• Best Reseller Hosting Plans
• Best Shared Hosting Plans
• Best VPS Hosting Plans
• Best WordPress Hosting

How To Find The Best Host For You

You do not have to know anything about web development to get hosting.

But knowing how to assess a few key factors helps a lot.

I’ll hit on each one in this section. You’ll be able to assess your options, get something that works for you, and not have to worry about hosting again for awhile.

So how do I evaluate web hosts? What actually matters?

Let’s go through all the key items.

Site Uptime

Uptime is the most crucial component of a good web host. If your site isn’t up, you won’t make money or gain an audience.

First and foremost, you want a web host with great uptime. This means you’re site is always available and never goes down.

To try to avoid the “just trust us” promise of near-perfect uptime, most hosts provide some sort of guarantee of at least 99.9 percent uptime. However, that guarantee isn’t much of a guarantee. It just means your bill can be discounted in the event of any unplanned downtime. There’s a lot of fine print on these guarantees, too, including not accepting self-reported or third-party uptime data, and not providing refunds for downtime that was out of the host’s control (for example, a hurricane).

Site Speed

Site speed impacts everything related to your site. Want search rankings? Get a fast site. Want conversions on your site? Make it fast. Want happy users? Speed it up.

Every part of your business is impacted by the speed of your site.

When looking at different web hosts, make sure you’re choosing a host that can serve every page lickity split.

There is some nuance with site speed.

In the early days, you need a host that’s fast “enough.” It doesn’t have to be blistering fast, but it needs to be fast.

Think of Amazon. Back in the day when Amazon just sold books, their site needed to be fast but it didn’t need to be instantaneous.

Now that many people use it for all their shopping, Amazon’s site can’t be fast enough.

The bigger you get, the faster you’ll want to be. If you’re planning on building a high-traffic site, you’ll want a host that can maintain crazy-fast speeds on large sites.

Customer Support

When running your own site, web host customer support is the single most important thing a web host can offer.

Digging through use reviews doesn’t always give you a conclusive answer on the quality of support at a particular web host.

Watch out for glowing reviews on top publications, they don’t always reflect reality.

There is one true test for assessing the customer support quality at any host.

The free trial customer support test.

Pretty much every web host has some sort of money-back guarantee on their shared hosting plans, which means you can set up your website and see what you think of the service with relatively low stakes — just your time and any add-on fees you opt into, like paying for domain registration. I recommend going to town with customer support during that trial period. Get on live chat, open tickets, hop on the phone as much as possible to see if you like what you’re being served up.

Most web hosts offer some sort of free trial period. I recommend using this time to really dig into your host’s customer support — its knowledge center and especially support staff across all channels. That’ll tell you the real story.

Traffic Volume

The amount of traffic that you get has a huge impact on the hosting that you need.

For a site that gets 300 visitors every month, pretty much any standard hosting package will be good enough. As long as your web host has strong customer support, you’re good to go.

As you get bigger, all sorts of small details start to matter a lot more.

Is the PHP on your server being updated regularly? Do you have a CDN for your content?

Is your site being backed up daily and can you restore it within 15 minutes if something goes wrong?

Do you have an SSL certificate? Can your server handle a giant traffic spike during a marketing promotion?

Whenever I have a larger site, I look for premium hosting that takes care of all this for me. And if I’m planning on building a large site, I look for a host that can easily scale to millions of visitors per month. I’m happy to pay a premium price in order to guarantee easy upgrades in the future.

Don’t skimp if you’re going big.

And if you plan to stay under 50,000 visitors/month, get a standard shared hosting package. There’s no reason to worry about the advanced stuff.

Price

While you don’t want to overpay on hosting, you definitely don’t want to underpay either.

Avoid choosing a host exclusively on price.

Most basic web hosting plans are in the $10-$20/month range. Yes, there are cheaper options. Some of them are promotional offers that go away at renewals. Others are hosting plans with terrible support and uptime.

My rule is if the price sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I also don’t worry about chasing promotional offers to save a few dollars. For every site I’ve ever managed, I used the same host without ever switching. Once you have a host you’re happy with, changing to save a few bucks isn’t going to be worth it. Promotional offers come and go pretty quickly.

Migration Features

The ability to easily and quickly migrate an existing site will save you weeks of time.

Even a basic WordPress site can be a real hassle to migrate. First you have to set up a new WordPress install on your new host. Then you need to export the database of content from your old site and import it into your new one. Finally you have to re-configure everything in WordPress like the theme, plugins, and settings.

That’s a real pain and that’s why I put together an entire guide on WordPress migration.

It is possible to skip all this.

Some hosts will offer a 1-click migration for popular site builders like WordPress.

If you’re switching hosts and handling the migration yourself, look for an easy migration feature. This is a great way to make the final decision once you’ve narrowed it down to a few final options.

Managed Hosting

Here’s how a normal host works:

• After you sign up, you get a login.
• The login takes you to cPanel. The cPanel is an app on your server that lets you manage it through a UI without needing to know how to code anything.
• You configure your server however you want.
• There’s a FTP option to upload files manually to your server.
• There are also quick options for installing WordPress and other site software if you want.
• You get full access and can do anything you want. It’s a “choose your own adventure.” Install WordPress, Drupal, Magento, or code your entire site by hand.

Alternatively, there are managed web hosts. These hosts customize the hosting environment and manage a lot more of it for you.

WP Engine is the best example, they’re a managed host for WordPress. Instead of getting a cPanel login that lets me do anything I want, WP Engine gives me a login to their custom interface that’s built to manage WordPress sites specifically.

When a web host is optimized exclusively for WordPress, three key things happen:

1. Faster performing sites than shared hosting. Everything can be tailored to making WordPress work its best, whether that’s optimizing website caching or tinkering with the command line tools. The host only needs to know how to support WordPress, as opposed to, say, Joomla and a Node server and some sort of custom-made site and on and on.
2. More security and stability. A managed WordPress host can build a system that predicts, accommodates, and patches all of WordPress’s vulnerabilities. That means fewer malicious attacks and less downtime.
3. Admin and site maintenance get a lot easier. And that service is vital because managed WordPress hosting is significantly more expensive than shared web hosting services.

While I give up some flexibility from not having a basic web server like other hosts, a managed host takes care of a lot of ongoing tasks that I’d normally have to handle myself.

If you have a small business site, a normal host is fine. If you’re building a larger site, a managed host will save you a ton of time in the long run and is worth the extra cost.

Conclusion

Out of hundreds of web hosting companies I have narrowed it down to my top 10 picks for the best web hosts.

If you’re inexperienced or know you’ll need a bit more guidance, look no further than Bluehost.

SiteGround is a top choice for WordPress sites that need reliable speed and security.

Looking to maximize your budget? DreamHost offers the best rates for month-to-month hosting, while Hostinger provides the lowest prices on hosting plans around without skimping on resources or features.

If you know you don’t need any extra bells and whistles from your hosting provider, HostGator is the best option for your simple website.

For websites where you need to count on fast loading speed, A2 Hosting and Inmotion are great options, particularly for shared hosting and VPS hosting, respectively.

Got serious growth on your mind? Nexcess is the hosting provider best suited to scale alongside your site.

Bluehost is one of WordPress’ recommend web hosts, but you can also get managed WordPress hosting from the specialists at WP Engine, who also come highly recommended by WordPress.

And for any companies or operations that value ethical, eco-friendly hosting, GreenGeeks is the provider whose values match your own.

Source: quicksprout

Best Web Hosting Providers