The 14 best web hosting services right now: August 2022

August 04, 2022

There are thousands of web hosting providers. Some hosting companies run their own data centers. Others rent virtual machines from cloud service providers. All provide some way for their customers to appear online. But choosing the web hosting service that’s right for you can prove to be quite the challenge. While you no longer need to be a programmer or an IT professional to properly configure a web presence, you do need to understand marketing to help get your message across.

We’ve spotlighted four classes of web hosting services, ranging from providers that give you a quick and easy way to build your website, all the way up to the big companies that provide full datacenter infrastructure capabilities as a service.

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There are thousands of web host providers out there. One company, Newfold (previously known as Endurance International Group), sells web hosting under almost 100 different brands. In many ways, standard-fare web hosting is about as generic as it gets. Nearly all these web hosting providers offer shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. Some offer the ability to resell their services. Many offer a free SSL certificate.

Be careful: Nearly all the hosting vendors in this category entice customers with a very low entry-level fee. But there are often two critical gotchas in that fee. First, the fee quoted is usually a monthly fee, but the hosting service bills by year (or even multiple years). So while you might be attracted to, say, a $3-per-month fee, you might find yourself facing a $144 bill, because you’ve been asked to prepay for four years to get the discount. Second, upon renewal, most hosting providers vastly increase the starting fee. So even though you signed up for $3 per month, you might find yourself being asked to pay up to $10 per month just to keep your site operating.

We are always cautious about these sorts of hosting plans because migrating off of them can be time-consuming, costly, and difficult.

Features

cPanel: No, proprietary panel
SSL: Free
SSH: Yes
Backups: Yes
Money-back guarantee: 97 day
Support: 24/7 chat, ticket, and call-back

DreamHost is a full-featured hosting provider that has made an ongoing effort to reduce its environmental footprint. With LEED Platinum and EnergyStar-certified facilities, high-efficiency cooling, partnerships in clean wind programs, and a push to power their data centers from renewable energy, DreamHost is a web hosting service that looks to the future.

As far as hosting offerings themselves, DreamHost has WordPress hosting, shared hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and cloud hosting. We particularly like the fact that DreamHost has added G Suite integration into their offerings, with domain integration and Google Cloud support. The company also provides a great set of resources and guides that can help customers grow their business.

Read the review: DreamHost review: I’m a satisfied 15-year customer

Pros

Over three-month money-back guarantee
Many hosting options

Cons

No telephone support
Uses a custom-built control panel

Features

cPanel: Yes
SSL: Yes
SSH: Yes
Backups: Yes
Money-back guarantee: 30-day
Support: 24/7 chat, ticket, and telephone

The “green” in the company’s name reflects the Green Geeks’ commitment to the environment. It purchases three times the energy it actually uses in wind energy credits, essentially putting energy back into the economy. The company does this through a form of renewable energy certificates, which, while complicated, means that it’s not just energy neutral, it’s actually helping fuel the green energy economy. Yes, it’s a gimmick. But it’s a good hearted gimmick that might actually help the environment.

Rather surprisingly, the low-end account provides both SSH and WP-CLI access, along with Git preinstalled. It’s also possible to customize PHP and PHP.INI, something somewhat unheard of on a bottom-end plan.

Pros

Environmentally friendly with one tree planted with every subscription
Free domain for first year
Nightly backups

Cons

Plans can be expensive after first year
No Windows server hosting

Features

cPanel: Yes
SSL: Free
SSH: Some plans
Backups: Basic, plus more on select plans
Money-back guarantee: 30 days
Support: 24/7 chat, phone, email

Bluehost fits into the category we call “standard-fare” hosting providers, in that it offers a wide range of services, ranging from basic shared hosting up to virtual private servers and dedicated machines. We’re putting them into the WordPress ecosystem category because Bluehost has a strong focus on WordPress in its offerings.

We particularly like how this hosting service segments their WordPress offerings, ranging from basic shared hosting offerings up to their higher-performance pro plan, and then on to a WooCommerce-based shopping cart solution. All solutions come with some level of backup, an Office 365 mailbox, and malware detection and removal. We also like the staging environment that Bluehost offers, allowing you to test your site and changes before deploying them publicly.

Pros

Strong focus on WordPress
Free domain for first year
Malware scanning on all plans

Cons

Can only host in the US
Limitations on cheap plans try to pressure you into purchasing more expensive plans

Features

cPanel: Some plans
SSL: Some plans
SSH: Some plans
Backups: Some plans
Money-back guarantee: 30 days for annual plans, 48 hours (!) for monthly plans
Support: 24/7/365 US-based ticket and phone

I talked about GoDaddy when I surveyed email hosting providers, and here they are again in the web hosting provider space. GoDaddy has made a business of offering as wide an array of services as is possible for individuals and small businesses in need of an Internet presence.

Although most of my decade-plus experience with GoDaddy has been with domain registration, I’ve come to respect how this web host provides the key services most customers want. They’re definitely not the best at anything, but they do a good job with almost everything. Pricing is fair, customer service is reasonable, and although not 24/7, if you need a technical lead to get something accomplished, you can usually find someone with a clue (after jumping through a few hoops, of course).

Be careful. We’re not happy that GoDaddy will only refund month-by-month plans if canceled within 48 hours of the sign-up transaction. That’s very restrictive.

Pros

Free, unlimited SSL for all websites on the Deluxe plan and up
Average load time is 171.1 ms
Tutorials online to help guide your website creating process

Cons

Have to put a large payment down to start hosting
Sneaky money-back guarantee

Liquid Web

We might as well get WordPress out of the way since if we’re talking web hosts, we’re going to talk WordPress. About 62% of websites with content management systems use the open-source WordPress CMS. And 35.9% of all websites use WordPress.

Also: Best WordPress hosting in 2020: Pagely, WordPress VIP, WP Engine, Kinsta, and more

The WordPress ecosystem is huge, and finding the right WordPress host is a challenge all its own. Beyond WordPress.com, the service offered by the creators of WordPress, there are a large number of managed hosting providers and an even larger number of hosting providers that specialize in providing a WordPress-optimized server for your website. Nearly every hosting provider will allow a WordPress install.

In this list, we’re going to discuss WordPress.com, one managed hosting provider, and mid-tier web hosting service provider that optimizes for WordPress offerings.

Features

cPanel: No
SSL: Free
SSH: Some plans
Backups: Some plans
Money-back guarantee: 30 day
Support: Some plans email, some plans 24/7 chat

Here’s where things get confusing. WordPress.com is a hosting provider for WordPress websites. It’s run by Automattic, the company behind the WordPress software. WordPress.com offers services ranging from free websites with restrictions, all the way up to major VIP websites like those of CNN and The New York Times. If you want to run WordPress, but you don’t want to install it, one place to go is WordPress.com.

Also: Understanding the different WordPress variants

I find WordPress.com a little too restrictive. The lower-end plans limit the plugins and themes you can use, which means custom-built solutions like those I favor are not available. Fortunately, there is a huge market of competitive WordPress hosting providers, and we’ll touch on a few more in this article.

Pros

Lots of options from free websites to professional hosting
SSH, Backups, and support all depend on what plan you have

Cons

Not many customization options on base plans
Page speed is slow

Next up are the IaaS providers. These include names you probably know intimately: Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. The five companies we’re including in our list are highly credible vendors who’ve been providing infrastructure for years.

If you’re just starting, you might not want to go all-in with an IaaS provider, although they do offer the most flexibility. Some, like Amazon with Lightsail and Digital Ocean with Droplets, allow you to point-and-click configure virtual WordPress machines or almost any other open-source content management system you may want.

One quick note: Because the IaaS providers offer such configurable choices, we haven’t summarized cPanel, SSL, SSH, backups, etc. In most cases, you’ll need to set that up yourself as part of your overall configuration.

Amazon

Digital Ocean

Features

cPanel: Yes
SSL: Yes
SSH: Yes
Backups: Yes
Money-back guarantee: No
Support: 24/7

I like to think of Digital Ocean as “AWS for the rest of us.” Digital Ocean offers cloud-based infrastructure like AWS but offers a much smaller set of services. These include scalable compute services (i.e., virtual machines), managed Kubernetes clusters, cloud databases, and simple object storage.

I use a Digital Ocean droplet to host a cloud-Linux server that runs ten of my archived websites, as well as some other incremental workloads. New droplets are incredibly easy to set up and deploy, and just as easy to shut down. I often spin up a Digital Ocean droplet for testing, paying mere pennies for a few days use, and then shut it back down when I’m done with my testing.

While AWS has undeniable depth and breadth, it is a little more complex to use. The actual infrastructure you buy costs about the same as comparable AWS services, but Digital Ocean is more simple and straightforward.

Pros

99.97% uptime
272 ms loadtimes
Simple interface

Cons

Customer support is mediocre at best
Pricing structure is complicated

A website builder is a piece of software that lets you craft your business website, generally without programming. Many allow you to choose from templates and then modify those templates to suit your look and layout.

Nearly all web hosting providers include some sort of website building software; but for most hosting plans it’s often an afterthought included to simply check off a box on evaluation forms. By contrast, the website builders listed in this section are provided by web hosting services that have made point-and-click website building tools with excellent customer support and solid up-time a core priority in their offering. Each offers a rich library of gorgeous starting templates and then lets you build out from there.

You do sacrifice some control when choosing a website builder solution, but if you’ve never done any web development and you want a beautiful, usable website by tonight, these services are for you. One warning: There are a lot of lock-ins here. You won’t be able to transfer the look of your site (and sometimes the content) to another hosting provider easily. So keep that in mind when you choose a website builder.

Features

cPanel: No
SSL: Free
SSH: No
Backups: Site history, but no export
Money-back guarantee: 14-day
Support: 24/7 English call-back

If you’ve ever watched a YouTube video, you’ve sees a Wix ad. They are everywhere. For all that advertising, their market share is still under 2.5% of CMS users. That said, with 4.4 million subscribers, they’ve got some momentum — and are certainly capable of grabbing attention.

When selecting a website builder, why would you go with Wix over WordPress? The answer is simple: simplicity. WordPress offers tremendous depth. Wix gets you up and running with an attractive site quickly. There is nothing like the thousands of plugins and themes offered by WordPress in the Wix world, but if you want a well-designed site and you’re willing to pay from about $13 per month to $39 per month, you’ll get started quite nicely. Higher price plans are available for e-commerce and enterprise use.

Be careful: Like many website hosting providers, you’re required to pay for a full year at once, and the second year might cost more when it comes time to renew.

Pros

Lots of templates to choose from for beginner web designers
Simple interface
Website apps available with Wix support

Cons

Cheapest plan isn’t necessarily cheap
Can’t switch templates; have to start from scratch

Squarespace

Features

cPanel: No
SSL: Yes
SSH: No
Backups: Limited export
Money-back guarantee: 14 days
Support: 24/7 email, chat

In the overall pantheon of Web hosting services with their own website builders, Squarespace is squarely in Wix territory, with slightly more than 2.7%. Squarespace takes the basic website builder complex and allows you to add a variety of custom brand and product sale options — all with beautiful presentation.

Pricing ranges from $16 per month to $46 per month, but if you pay for a full year, you can save about 30%. We like that Squarespace offers SSL, mobile-optimized websites, SEO features, 24/7 support, and the ability (with the higher-priced plans) to manage contributors. Intriguingly, Squarespace has just added the ability to use third-party extensions, which has been the signature competitive advantage of WordPress. We’ll see whether it helps Squarespace compete in the website builder space in the long run.

Pros

Template designs are fantastic
Live chat makes customer support great

Cons

Pages tend to be a little slow
Autosave isn’t reliable

Dreamhost is ZDNet’s top choice because it offers excellent features at outstanding price points, with a large selection of tools to make the process easy even for beginner webmasters.

Like we mentioned at the top, there are thousands of web hosts, and even 14 included in this article. To help make the process a little simpler, here is a guide to make your decision less of a hassle.

So, there you go. We’ve presented you with 15 hosting providers in four different categories. When putting together this list, I started with web hosts I’m personally familiar with. I’ve been running production websites since 1997 or so, and my sites have served millions of pages.

Today, I run a dozen or so sites, some very active and others are archives of older sites. Today, I use Digital Ocean, AWS, Pagely, and GoDaddy (each for different types of work), but I’ve purchased and tested hosting services from just about all the other sites.

It’s impossible to test every hosting provider out there, just because there are so many. We chose these providers because we have some familiarity with all of them.

Wix and Squarespace are the two web hosts we would recommend for beginners. With an abundance of creative templates between the two platforms, users will be able to gain experience in web-development with an attractive site.

Simply put, yes. There are many sites that allow for free hosting, but to do so, you will have a generic, branded domain. For example, if you were to have a free WordPress website, your domain would be [yourwebsitename].wordpress.com.

GoDaddy is the most popular web hosting service provider with roughly 18.5% market share in a recent analysis by codeinwp.com.

InMotion Hosting, Pagely, Microsoft Azure, are Weebly are top-notch web hosting services we’ve also tried and really like, but they didn’t make our top 14. They’re worth considering if you’re still unsure about which web hosting service is best for you and your needs.

Article source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-web-hosting/#ftag=RSSbaffb68