This is an unbiased guide to the top web hosting providers for shared hosting to help you decide which is the best web hosting provider to host your site with. The key factors for evaluation were Quality of Service, Reliability, Speed, Ease of Use, Quality of Customer Support and finally Cost. This is primarily for those readers who want to set up their first business site or blog and need to choose the best shared hosting service to host their website with.
Best Web Hosting Companies
SiteGround has all the basics needed for you get your first website up and running all backed by terrific customer support. It lacks some of the 'extras' marketed as 'advanced features' by some of the other web hosting companies, but a majority of those may not be needed by you anyway. What's really going for it, is the extreme ease of getting a site up and running backed by a set of core features like free backups and SSL which are charged for by other hosts. SiteGround is really great for people setting up their first website or for those who don't need to get into the dirty details of web hosting and simply need a rock-solid host with essential features and great support. Get started with SiteGround now.
DreamHost is a service which is targeted at advanced users who know about web development and website management. It has a good number of options like version control software, .htaccess management, server-side includes (SSI) and cron scheduling tools to allow users to control most aspects of their site. All this comes at an economical price of $10 per month for their basic plan. This is a great option for those who want to build simple WordPress based sites as well. Even though this is great for intermediate and advanced users on a budget, this is not a good option for inexperienced webmasters as it lacks the tools and handholding support required to get your site up and running. Advanced users, though, will love all that DreamHost has to offer. Get started with DreamHost now.
Media Temple is a power hosting service for users who want to run professional sites for their small to medium businesses. Bloggers rarely use Media Temple web hosting which may have an overkill of features especially for users just starting out. As expected from an enterprise-grade hosting service, Media Temple is extremely reliable and fast through its grid architecture. It contains several important features like Cloudflare, Automated Backups etc which make it among the best hosts in the market. It also has a Virb based site builder to make it easy for new users to set up their website.
The only reason it ends third in our rankings of the best web hosting services is due to its high price which might not be ideal for most users looking for a shared hosting plan. Though Media Temple delivers excellent features and quality at that price, some users may prefer to spend that amount on a Virtual Private Server instead. If you can afford it, Media Temple is the best quality web host available. Get started with Media Temple now.
Update: They also have an amazing offer for 2 months of free hosting with the WordPress hosting annual plan.
Note to the Reader
If you are a beginner and are setting up your first site or are a user who wishes to focus more on the content than on the nitty-gritties of site setup, your search for the best website host should end here - i.e. we recommend that you choose between SiteGround and DreamHost. If you are an intermediate to advanced user, your search for the best web host should end here - i.e. we recommend that you choose between DreamHost and Media Temple.
Also, since we said this is an unbiased guide, we would like to point out that the hosting providers listed below, although still among the best in the world, have had a fair share of user complaints. Though listing the web hosting companies below is important to be able to give the reader a full list of the top hosting providers, we are only listing them for completeness of this article.
For new or intermediate users who need decent quality web hosting at a reasonable price, BlueHost fits the bill. It has a good number of security options as well as web tweaking options. It has a very user-friendly interface and provides a free domain with the shared hosting packages. BlueHost was one of the best web hosting services around but has been steadily moving out of the top spots owing to increasing customer complaints. Even then, it still has a decent reputation among the webmaster community and is also endorsed by WordPress.org. Get started with BlueHost now.
HostGator is a good hosting service, though it has lost out on its top ranking to other better providers like SiteGround. It offers a great array of features including a free SSL and toll-free number for its top plan. It's Cpanel is one of the best - offering a wide variety of functionality in a very user-friendly way.
A key area where it has lost out is the speed and quality of customer support. We have also faced security issues on some of our sites using HostGator. Lastly, as compared to other hosts, the top (Business) plan doesn't offer a lesser number of shared accounts per server to increase site performance.
That said, HostGator is a great option as it has a great knowledge base for self-help, a feature-rich Control Panel and supports most major web technologies to ensure a decent hosting experience. It is also among the few hosts offering Windows-based web hosting.
If you are someone who wants to go with one of the biggest brands in the market and can ignore some of the disadvantages which come with working with one, HostGator web hosting is a good option. Get started with HostGator now.
Everything about InMotion's Web Hosting service is above average. They have a great set of tools and a decent interface to get your site up and running. Their reliability is high and customer support is good. They include free automated data backups with each plan. One of the advantages of InMotion is that they allow you to choose which data center you want to place your site in. This helps site speed if you have a geo-restricted target audience. They are a good option if you are a new blogger looking for a decent host to run a single site at a reasonable price. Get started with InMotion now.
iPage is targeted at new users with its vast array of easy to set up website builders. It comes with three site builders - Weebly, Website Creator and goMobi. If you want to set up an eCommerce site, it also includes an online store builder. It offers a free domain and most of all an unbeatable $2 a month starting price for unlimited domain hosting. Its plans also don't set hard limits on disk usage or bandwidth.
Their main downside is their customer support - it is quite slow in responding and the responses are not always to the point. For us, figuring out how to move WordPress installations from our old host to iPage without getting any downtime was a slight challenge, and customer support did nothing to help. Advanced users who are not keen on using iPage's website builders and prefer to do things themselves may not find iPage's control panel very user-friendly. The speed of their servers is also slower than other providers on this list.
However, If you are a brand new user and would like to try a web host without paying a significant amount upfront, then iPage is the right choice for you. Get started with iPage now.
Once upon a time a king among the web hosting companies, GoDaddy can't be ignored from any best web hosting ranking. GoDaddy offers a decent array of tools and services and good quality hardware. It's customer care, however, is a big let down. Also, GoDaddy caps email addresses at 100 and 500 respectively for its first two shared hosting plans. This makes it a let down for someone who might want to use the service to host several micro-sites or host a community site with email accounts for several users. Get started on GoDaddy now.
Summary of the Top Web Hosting Companies
Here is a summary of the rankings of each web hosting service along with the link to their website. As we have mentioned earlier, SiteGround is the best option for a beginner, DreamHost is the best options for an intermediate to an advanced user, while Media Temple is the best for a Power user.
The focus of this guide was to provide the list of the best hosting providers, which are not necessarily the cheapest. On using some of the cheaper options, we soon realized that the cheaper providers are not worth the trouble involved in keeping your website running smoothly.
Do let us know which service you opted for in the comments section below. In case you have used any of these services and have had positive or negative experiences, please let us know those too as it will help our readers make an informed decision about their web hosting service purchase.
Also Read: Beginner's Guide to Web Hosting, Best VPS Hosting Providers, Understanding the Real Costs of Web Hosting.
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