Website issues caused by unreliable hosting infrastructure, security gaps, and chronic downtime are costing companies a significant amount of money.

A survey of 500 business owners, developers, and IT decision-makers across industries and company sizes from Liquid Web has revealed that they lose, on average, five hours per month to downtime.

Many are affected several times a year – 61% of marketing and advertising companies, for example, 56% in information technology, and 52% in professional services. And this downtime is expensive, with one-in-five companies losing more than $2,500 per month as a result of hosting downtime, and nearly half of all businesses are affected.

Overall, businesses are spending an average of $418 per month fixing hosting issues. Education reported the highest average losses at $663 per month, followed by healthcare at $478, finance at $458, information technology at $447, and marketing and advertising at $441.

"You can't scale a business on shaky infrastructure," said Liquid Web president Sachin Puri. "Fast, reliable hosting ensures your website keeps up as your traffic, customers, and operations grow. It's the engine behind sustainable digital growth."

Meanwhile, security threats are common, with almost half of businesses facing hacking attempts in the past year and 32% suffering data breaches because of poor hosting security. Around half reported that poor hosting had led to security vulnerabilities, with nearly as many having experienced hacking attempts or website slowdowns caused by malicious activity.

Others cited extended downtime or outages caused by cyberattacks, data breaches, loss of critical data or inadequate backup recovery, and website blacklisting or compromised reputation.

The survey respondents were lukewarm about their hosting providers, with 72% saying they were somewhat or slightly satisfied. Only a quarter were extremely or very satisfied. Despite this, 42% of businesses have stuck with their hosting provider for between one and five years – and 41% reported regret after changing providers.

When asked what would make them make the switch, 43% pointed to high costs, followed by 28% who said slow website performance, and 26% who flagged frequent downtime. But nearly seven-in-ten businesses said they'd delayed changing hosting providers because of fears around downtime, migration costs, and technical complexity. These concerns were most common amongst users of WordPress hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and shared hosting.

"In 2025, businesses should stop viewing hosting as a commodity and start treating it as a critical investment in security, performance, and growth," said Ryan MacDonald, chief technology officer at Liquid Web.

Nearly half of hosting teams expect budgets to rise in 2025, with security enhancements, AI-powered solutions, and backup and disaster recovery their biggest priorities. Among large companies, 62% are planning stronger security, 59% are prioritizing AI, and 45% want more scalable infrastructure. The picture was similar for medium-sized businesses, with 56% focusing on AI, 53% on security, and 50% on faster website or app performance.

Small businesses reported that their top investments would be in stronger security (59%), AI tools (54%), and faster performance (51%).

Hundreds of years ago, if you had something to sell, you only had the local marketplace to make your money. In the present day, the entire world can be your marketplace with a brief understanding of eCommerce.

What is eCommerce?

It might sound intimidating, but eCommerce is simply the act of buying or selling goods over the internet.

Given the saturation of internet access across desktop and mobile devices, you can pretty much engage in eCommerce anywhere there's a connection.

That might sound challenging, because there's a lot to think about, from setting up a website to deciding how you want to sell online, to managing your inventory and shipping - it's a lot, right?

It sounds challenging but it doesn't have to be, with tools from platforms such as Shopify, ready to take the grunt work out so you can get on with the actual eCommerce itself. Let's examine how.

What ways can I sell online?

Online sales can follow traditional sales methods, whether that’s direct sales to consumers through a storefront, a single mention on social media, or an auction format. You can decide what's the best fit for your business model!

Here’s some of the ways that you can consider selling goods and services online:

· Direct Business To Consumer (B2C): Your classic storefront, a business selling to consumers.

· Direct Business To Business (B2B): Do you have products that resonate more with businesses than singular consumers? You’re in the B2B space.

· Consumer to Consumer (C2C): Fairly similar to B2C, but in this case it encompasses selling goods you may have purchased yourself – so a second-hand laptop, for example.

· Dropshipping: A mix of B2C and B2B, you act as the intermediary between a larger wholesaler and individual consumers.

· Wholesale: Do you have access to bulk goods and need an efficient way to sell them? Wholesale selling is a great way to quickly sell considerable quantities of goods.

· Digital Product sales: Not everything sold online needs to be a physically deliverable product, whether you’re selling digital gift vouchers or digital artworks.

· Services: It’s not just products that can work within the eCommerce model, many services can be distributed online as well.

· Subscriptions: Whether you’re providing rolling services or access to goods on a continuous basis as they’re developed, a subscription model can be a solid way to earn long term, recurring revenue.

Where should I sell products or services online?

There’s a number of approaches to online sales and eCommerce that are worth exploring. Your approach should be dependent on what you're selling and what potential customers you are looking to target.

These can include large already branded services, although in that space you're competing with many other brands with established market share.

Plenty of online entrepreneurs make good money selling through social media. When selling through social media, it's important to establish brand trust and balance the constantly shifting algorithms.

You can of course also set up your own website for selling your goods or services, which can significantly help to build out your eCommerce brand.

Looking to set up your own website but concerned about the technicalities of web hosting or coding up a website to incorporate secure online selling?, Shopify’s got your back with a range hosting, website building and eCommerce tools that can get an online shop up with ease.

Starting up your eCommerce business: What you must consider

What’s your business plan? While services such as Shopify can make setting up your online eCommerce business both easy and affordable, it’s best to have a properly laid out business plan written up beforehand. Planning upfront can help you avoid problems, move flexibly when business conditions change and more accurately track the growth of your eCommerce business over time.

First impressions are important: Without physical presence, how you sell your goods – both descriptive terms and photos can make a huge difference when you’re trying to close a sale. Shopify Magic AI can make it a breeze getting product descriptions that will entice customers while hitting SEO targets, as well as cleaning up and polishing your product photos with ease.

Do your solutions scale and can you adapt them?

Businesses change and adapt, especially online, so it’s vital to set up your eCommerce business with a provider that can grow as you do, as well as having a flexible set of tools for when and if your business changes.

With hundreds of apps to bring in tools for everything from online auctions to advanced analytics and templates galore to make your online eCommerce business, Shopify can help your business grow and adapt as and when you’re ready.

Security matters: Your customers will expect a secure shopfront, and you certainly wouldn’t want to have your own business accounts exposed either. Shopify provides industry-standard security across all of its eCommerce plans to help keep your data for your eyes only.

Shopify has a range of competitive monthly price points, starting as low as $42/month when paid yearly in advance, (or $56/month when paid monthly) for smaller shopfronts, and scaling upwards as your business expands rapidly and has significantly higher needs.

This gives you the room to let your business grow, secure in the knowledge that Shopify can scale up to meet your needs, including for point-of-sale transactions in the real world if you also require that kind of service.

Still not sure if Shopify is right for you? New Shopify users can enjoy the first three days free, then it’s just $1 per month for the first three months, which also includes your Shopify affiliate link. This lets you get to grips with the interface and start selling right away, with no ongoing commitment if your needs change. You’ve literally got nothing to lose – and plenty of customers and sales to gain.

Start your free trial with Shopify now!

If you’re looking to set up an online store, or expand an existing one, Shopify offers a wide range of benefits to help your business grow. Here’s eight reasons why it’s so effective to use Shopify as your eCommerce platform.

1. Shopify is easy to use

Building an online business sounds challenging, but it absolutely does not have to be.

Shopify handles everything you need to help you set up an online store. That includes all your web hosting, your online sales transactions, product logistics and more, all from a simple interface that runs just as easily from your phone as it does your laptop.

That’s why more than 100,000 Australian retailers, including brands such as Budgy Smuggler and Oz Hair and Beauty, have trusted their businesses to Shopify, because it has enabled them to take their enterprises to the ecommerce world with ease.

2. Shopify lets you sell anywhere

A traditional storefront relies on people walking by, but with an online store you can sell just about anything to anyone at every hour of the day.

You’re not limited to just chasing web traffic either with simple integrations that make it feasible to promote your business and sell on leading marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay as well as social channels like Instagram, YouTube or TikTok.

That’s how businesses that use Shopify such as Mister Zimi have adopted a “sell anywhere, anytime” strategy and made it a real success.

3. Shopify is affordable

Over time as your business grows and expands, Shopify has a range of plans and prices for every business.

Shopify’s affordable Basic plan is just AU$42 per month and gives you the flexibility to experiment with minimal risk. Got an idea for a side business that’s just a little different to your primary trade? Get started with Shopify and you can run a small side business to supplement your primary business income.

4. Shopify helps your business stand out

Whether you’re selling headphones or hand-knitted headwear, grabbing a customer's attention is crucial, but we all know it isn't always easy.

Shopify offers a range of tools to smooth out the process of building your website. Need to quickly write a host of product descriptions that will lead to sales? Shopify Magic AI tools make it near effortless to write eye-grabbing copy for an entire product catalogue.

If you need visually appealing assets, whether that’s a website template for your entire brand or just adding a little pop to those product photos, Shopify has tools for that too.

5. Shopify scales as your business grows

Shopify has solutions for businesses of every size as they expand, and this includes advanced tools for business reporting, marketing and finance.

That’s how a small business like Rollie Nation went from a simple pop-up market stall to a global business operating across 13 countries via the Shopify platform.

6. Shopify works with you wherever you are

What happens if an opportunity occurs, or you get a new business idea that needs activation straight away, but you’re away from your desk and your primary computer?

With Shopify, the answer can be as simple as reaching for your phone.

Shopify’s Mobile App can help you manage and monitor your business, make changes to your store theme or use Shopify’s powerful AI tools to create new business promotions whether you’re at the office or the beach.

7. App Marketplace caters for all your business needs

Every business is different, and that can be challenging if you want to both stand out and get access to the specific tools for your individual needs.

Shopify’s App Marketplace has thousands of apps available to help you tweak the look, feel, and functionality of your business.

These features include, but are not limited to, a temporary feature like a countdown timer to encourage consumers to "buy now" or more permanent features to integrate with your social media, email marketing, or language translations to elevate your store into the global marketplace.

8. Shopify is secure

Shopify’s cloud-based systems are highly secure with Level 1 PCI DSS compliance built into every Shopify store.

This means that your customers can shop with you in a secure way, but also your own transactions and accounts are locked down tight where only you can see them.

9: Shopify helps keeps your finances in check

Shopify has tools to help with every aspect of your business operations, including finance tools to help you track and manage sales and relevant tax obligations in selected countries. Like every other aspect of the Shopify experience, this is designed from the ground up to be accessible and powerful whether you’re a tiny microbusiness or a rapidly expanding enterprise.

Get started now

Shopify has a range of competitive monthly price points, starting as low as AU$42/month when paid yearly in advance (or AU$56/month when paid monthly) for smaller shopfronts, and scaling upwards as your business expands rapidly and has significantly higher needs.

This gives you the room to let your business grow, secure in the knowledge that Shopify can scale up to meet your needs, including for point-of-sale transactions in the real world if you also require that kind of service.

Still not sure if Shopify is right for you? New Shopify users can enjoy the first three days free, then it’s just AU$1 per month for the first three months, which also includes your Shopify affiliate link. This lets you get to grips with the interface and start selling right away, with no ongoing commitment if your needs change. You’ve literally got nothing to lose – and plenty of customers and sales to gain.

While bricks and mortar retail will always have its place, there’s no doubt that we live in a world where online sales increasingly dominate. If you’re looking for ways to sell online, it can seem bewilderingly complex. From doing the actual web site development, to integration with your stock systems, through to managing the essential tax requirements for selling internationally – that’s a lot, right?

This is where Shopify thrives, because it’s been designed from the get-go to be a flexible, customisable but above all easy-to-use system. You can use it to sell everything from computer peripherals to floral bouquets.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is an all-in-one software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. It’s custom built to make it as easy as possible to set up and run a site selling products worldwide, both online and in person.

Shopify does not assume that you know all about web standards and coding. Instead, it works from simple templates that speed up the process of creating a professional looking web store for your business, while also providing the tools you need to manage your sales, provide flexible payment options and make your products stand out in the competitive online world.

What do I need to get started with Shopify?

Not a lot more than a product to sell… and maybe a name for your store and some ideas on how you’d like to manage your branding.

There are some product categories that Shopify won’t allow for sale, but generally speaking, whether you’re selling motherboards or meringues, Shopify is ready to help you set up your online store.

All you need is a web browser on any gadget, whether that’s a smartphone, tablet or computer. Head to Shopify and click on Start Free Trial, answer the simple questions about your business type, verify your email and you’re ready to start building out your online store.

Shopify provides a number of free templates built around common business types to help you set up your store, as well as paid options to give you plenty of choice.

Why choose Shopify?

Shopify’s key advantage in the online retail space is its simplicity. You don’t need to be a code-savvy developer or have any in-depth knowledge of how the web works; you just need products to sell and a desire to become part of the rapidly expanding online sales space.

All the rest of the internet fiddly work – from payments processing, to web site hosting and even helping you work out how to list, describe and illustrate your products online – is taken care of by Shopify.

If you’re worried that Shopify might not meet your precise needs, you can relax. Shopify provides a wide array of add-on apps, providing integrations with numerous external data sources, shipping solutions and additional online places to sell your goods or services, as well as ways to add specific features to your online store.

Because Shopify is a fully online hosted service, there’s no software to install, no security worries around updating plugins or firewalls or licences to give you headaches when all you really want to do is get on with the core details of your actual business.

What’s more, because it’s fully online, you can access your Shopify storefront and analytics from any internet-connected device anywhere, so you don’t need to worry about having access to a specific computer if you discover a new product on the go, or want to see how your online marketing spend is working out. Shopify will run just as well from the café as it will from the boardroom, internet connectivity permitting.

Struggling to come up with a snappy, SEO-friendly way to describe your products and services that will grab the attention of customers? Shopify Magic uses AI to help you generate product descriptions, as well as sharpen up your product images to make them more appealing to customers. It’s included with every Shopify account at no additional charge.

Getting started

Shopify has a range of competitive monthly price points, starting as low as AU$42/month when paid yearly in advance, (or AU$56/month when paid monthly) for smaller shopfronts, and scaling upwards as your business expands rapidly and has significantly higher needs.

This gives you the room to let your business grow, secure in the knowledge that Shopify can scale up to meet your needs, including for point-of-sale transactions in the real world if you also require that kind of service.

Still not sure if Shopify is right for you? New Shopify users can enjoy the first three days free, then it’s just AU$1 per month for the first three months, which also includes your Shopify affiliate link. This lets you get to grips with the interface and start selling right away, with no ongoing commitment if your needs change. You’ve literally got nothing to lose – and plenty of customers and sales to gain.

Start your free trial with Shopify now!

Running a small business isn’t easy – I know, I have two of them. The testing lab is fortunate to have a close set of clients of many years, so advertising isn’t something we need to do. It’s all word of mouth and recommendations.

The food company that I run with my husband Andre is different. This is public-facing, and it’s a lot of work to do marketing, trade and public shows, and operate an e-shop for direct sales to customers. 

This latter part has been a topic of considerable discussion recently. We have two brands with two websites: Manfood and Janda. We set up Janda to showcase a vegan-focused product range, with the name Janda stemming from “Jon And Andre”. 

The initial branding was devised many years ago, and so, it was time to refresh the Janda look, labels and boxes, as well as its e-shop. Now, I’ve been following the rise of e-shopping since its first tentative steps in the mid-1990s. Back in the day, setting up an e-shop was difficult and required a lot of code munging. Better still if you’d host your own server, with a database and a payment gateway. It was a lot of work and a lot of hassle. 

Then, in the early 2000s, along came WordPress, and a huge market emerged for that platform. Being an extensible technology, it allowed companies to build all sorts of bolt-on capabilities. We have used WordPress for the Manfood site, including its e-shopping capabilities, and to do this we retained the services of a web design and hosting consultancy. I could’ve worked it all out myself, but this would have taken time, and the results wouldn’t have been anywhere near as professional. So I swallowed the cost of getting the site built – a few thousand pounds – and hosting costs of about £500 per year.

As a solution, it works out reasonably well, but WordPress is not without its issues. Keeping on top of security and updates can be a particular pain. For the Janda refresh, I was conscious that e-shop design and hosting had moved on, with one of the biggest new players being Shopify. It was a name that kept popping up in my timeline, especially in the small business sector. It seemed like a good choice to explore.

So the obvious thing to do was to reach out to various web design companies that worked with the Shopify platform. The first came back saying that if we worked with tweaked standard designs, then the cost would be £4,000. If we wanted more customisation, add another £2,000 to the bill.

The second company’s quote was even more eye-watering than our horseradish: “In order to do this we would need to build the core store – £20,000 + VAT – and then build two clone stores which we can swap out the language for £5,000 each. This would take you to £30,000.” Being able to have a multilingual store, which adapts the display language based on geolocation, seemed like a good idea. The price, however, did not.

I took a quick look at the Shopify site and wondered: “How hard can it be?” Usually, this mindset results in a smoking crater. But over the Christmas shutdown, Andre sat down with his laptop and created an account in Shopify. Andre is very talented, but a computer geek he is not. He was armed with his M2 MacBook Air, a web browser, a Shopify login and all the background information we had – product details and photography had already been sorted.

Four hours later, he showed me the workings of an excellent site. It had everything we needed: product selector, basket, credit card handling and so forth. I fired up my phone and logged into the test site, and found it rendered just fine on the smaller screen. Andre spent another few hours pouring in the product information and, barring a few tweaks and adjustments, it was ready to go live.

Multilingual support is provided within the Shopify platform itself, and you can use third-party translation companies to tweak your words. We paid a company £562 to translate our site’s text into Spanish, French and Chinese. We’ll load this into the Shopify site and make that go live over the next few weeks. So it’s now up and running, and has been built for the main part by someone who doesn’t understand computers at all well, certainly not at a nerdy level. 

I needed to step in for 15 minutes to help with the DNS, but this could have been handled by a Shopify-provided DNS name if required. What about security and updates? It’s Shopify’s responsibility to keep everything up to date. As for the £30,000 bill to build a Shopify e-shop for us? Let’s just say that we politely declined.

Domain.com offers relatively affordable shared and managed WordPress hosting plans, and ranks among the best web hosting services available on the market for certain use cases.

Domain.com review: Snapshot

Domain.com offers relatively affordable shared and managed WordPress hosting plans. The company’s sites had excellent uptime and speed during our testing, and it was easy to get in touch with the customer support team by phone or live chat.

However, our Domain.com review found that this hosting service is missing a lot of things that we expected it to have. Managed WordPress sites don’t include an SSL certificate, for example, and email is an expensive add-on for every shared hosting plan. In addition, the company uses its own ad-filled hosting software instead of providing users with cPanel.

Another issue is that Domain.com isn’t very flexible. You have to sign up for hosting one year at a time and there are no VPS or dedicated hosting options if you want to upgrade your site. Domain.com might make sense for some basic websites, but we don’t think it’s the best web hosting service for most sites.

Score: 3/5

Read on for the full Domain.com review.

Domain.com's competitors

How does Domain.com compare to its main competitors?

Domain.com: Key features

Domain.com is a budget-friendly hosting provider that offers both shared and managed WordPress plans. The company doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but it does stand out in a few key ways.

One important feature to Domain.com is that all shared hosting plans include 24/7 customer support. You can get in touch by phone or live chat, and in our experience the wait was never more than a few minutes.

It also has dozens of video tutorials designed to help you set up your new website with WordPress or Domain.com’s website builder. We also found tons of guides for more advanced management tasks, like creating and archiving MySQL databases.

The web host offers managed WordPress hosting plans that are competitively priced and fairly simple to use. All managed WordPress sites come with unlimited storage and pre-installed plugins and themes.

Domain.com’s more advanced WP Essential plan also comes with a built-in security suite called SiteLock. SiteLock includes daily website scans, automated malware removal, and DDoS protection. Just note that Domain.com doesn’t offer site backups with any of its WordPress plans.

While most shared hosting providers use cPanel as their back-end management software, Domain.com has developed its own custom control panel.

We have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it’s pretty simple to get started with since there aren’t as many options as you’d find in cPanel. On the other hand, the lack of options makes it harder to manage your website. There are no one-click installers, and there’s no built-in system for running site backups.

Domain.com hosting plans don’t include email, but you can purchase email hosting as an add-on. The site offers both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace integrations, which is nice since most businesses already use these productivity suites in some capacity.

You can set up email through Domain.com’s control panel, but after that you’re free to use the much more user-friendly Gmail and Outlook platforms. The Domain.com control panel lets you add and remove email addresses from your domain, but not much else.

Domain.com: What’s new in 2022?

Not much has changed since we last reviewed Domain.com’s service. In fact, the company’s plan offerings, pricing, and add-ons have been the same for several years now. We had hoped to see some more tools added to Domain.com’s custom control panel, but the support options there are still the same.

The biggest changes to Domain.com are in its email services, but that’s primarily because Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have been undergoing changes. Managing your active addresses with Domain.com remains as simplistic as ever, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re looking to get online quickly.

Domain.com: Pricing

Domain.com offers shared hosting plans and managed WordPress plans, all of which are fairly cheap. The company also offers website builder plans, which include Basic shared hosting plus access to Domain.com’s website builder.

One thing that we found unusual about Domain.com is that you have to sign up for a full year at a time. You also won’t get a discount for signing up for multiple years at once—the annual price is the same whether you subscribe for one year or three. In addition, none of Domain.com’s hosting plans include email, an add-on which starts at £2.45 per user a month.

Domain.com's pricing plans

*Cost per month based on the annual price

Testing Domain.com

In order to comprehensively compare Domain.com to the competition, we analysed a series of its features and tools to see how it performed. This included creating a website with its built-in website builder, and checking its server response times.

How do you create a website with Domain.com?

Domain.com offers a custom website builder that you can use to create simple websites in minutes. To be sure, this isn’t a comprehensive site builder from among the best website builders, like those offered by Weebly or Wix. However, we found that it was extremely simple to use, and enabled us to get a basic site online in under an hour.

One thing that we found unusual about Domain.com’s website builder is that you don’t get to choose from a set of themes. Instead, you simply choose among a few site colors, fonts, and layouts. The lack of themes means there’s more layout work to do later, although this isn’t a huge issue.

Once we got the basic layout of our site down, we were pleasantly surprised by how customisable the builder was. You can add page sections and content blocks freely, so it’s simple to fill your site with text, images, and more. Some of the content blocks available include contact forms, testimonials, videos, and social buttons.

Depending on your chosen plan, you can also set up blog and ecommerce pages. The blog post editor is very simplistic, and doesn’t offer many formatting options. It would be nice if you could create a blog post using the same tools and content blocks that the site builder offers, but that isn’t the case.

The ecommerce tool is also simplistic, but we found that it gets the job done if you only have a few products. You can set up shipping and payment options, as well as a calendar for booking appointments. However, don’t expect more advanced features like integrated inventory management.

How does Domain.com perform?

The most impressive thing about Domain.com is the performance of its shared hosting plans. For the price, we think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a hosting provider that offers similar speeds and consistency.

To test our Basic shared hosting site, we pinged it every five minutes for a week. Over that time, the site had an average response time of just 215ms—far better than the 300ms response times that we typically see from shared hosting providers. Even more impressive, response times never exceeded 365 ms. That level of consistency gives us a lot of confidence in Domain.com’s servers.

Alternatives to Domain.com

Domain.com is in a crowded field of budget-friendly shared and managed WordPress hosting providers. The platform doesn’t offer more substantial VPS or dedicated hosting plans, so you’ll want to look elsewhere if you need to host a large site or expect a lot of traffic.

Compared to other budget hosting services, Domain.com’s pricing is competitive. Namecheap offers slightly more affordable shared hosting plans, while well-known providers like GoDaddy are more expensive.

However, Namecheap offers a much better value for your money in our opinion. A basic shared hosting plan gives you access to cPanel as well as a customisable website backup tool. You can also host three websites instead of just one. Another nice thing about Namecheap is that if you sign up for a multi-year plan, you’re rewarded with a discount.

While GoDaddy is more expensive than Domain.com, you also get some benefits for the added cost. Most important, GoDaddy has an enormous range of hosting options, including dedicated Linux and Windows servers. So, it’s easy to upgrade your hosting plan in the future as needed.

Domain.com's features compared to the competition

Domain.com: The verdict

Domain.com excels in two key ways. The first is that it’s very affordable. While you can find cheaper shared hosting plans (for example, from Namecheap), Domain.com offers pretty good value for your money. Just keep in mind that you’ll pay extra for things like email and the website builder.

The second way in which Domain.com stands out is that it’s reliable. Our testing found that Domain.com’s shared hosting plans offer better than average response times, and were extremely consistent over a week of testing.

Beyond those two strengths, though, we found ourselves wishing for a lot more from Domain.com. One major issue is that the company doesn’t offer VPS or dedicated hosting plans, so you’ll be forced to migrate to another provider if you want to grow your site in the future. On top of that, annual plans lock you into the service, and there are no discounts for signing up for a multi-year subscription.

We also aren’t huge fans of Domain.com’s custom control panel. It’s easy to use, but it severely limits your control over your website relative to cPanel. Likewise, if you set up email through Domain.com, you don’t have very much control over it.

With all that in mind, Domain.com can be a good choice for some basic websites. However, if your goal is to grow your website over time, or you want the ability to develop the back end of your site, you’ll be better served by another hosting provider.

Further reading on web hosting

To find out more about the best alternatives to Domain.com, check out our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting? Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

LA-based DreamHost has been offering web hosting for 25 years, and serves over 1.5 million websites. It offers quite a gamut of web hosting services, from inexpensive shared hosting to high-end dedicated servers, and regularly features among the best web hosting services.

DreamHost review: Snapshot

DreamHost’s pricing is highly competitive. Performance is good, too, and plans are straightforward to understand and packed with value-adding features. Above all, DreamHost has a focus on privacy and security not often seen in most bigger web hosts.

It may have less than half as many customers as bigger rivals Bluehost and HostGator, but it punches above its weight. It’s consistently cheaper than Bluehost and HostGator, yet doesn’t skimp on the most important features.

In our DreamHost review, we look closer at the web hosting provider’s features, performance, and pricing, so you can decide whether it’s the best web hosting service for your needs.

Score: 3.5/5

Read on for the full DreamHost review.

DreamHost's competitors

How does DreamHost compare to its main competitors?

DreamHost: Key features

DreamHost offers a wide range of hosting products. These include shared hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress hosting, dedicated server hosting, and cloud hosting. We’ll focus on shared and WordPress hosting here, but remember that DreamHost has you covered if you have a larger business with more precise needs.

DreamHost includes many features in its set plans that you need to pay extra for if you choose a budget web host instead. Taking its cheapest Shared Starter plan as an example, you get unlimited traffic, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited databases, a free SSL certificate, SSH access, and a WP Website Builder tool for creating a WordPress site.

You get automated daily backups, and there’s a one-click installer for a variety of pre-assembled apps. Even with this plan, your site is hosted on fast SSD drives. The only notable item missing from the Shared Starter plan is email, which will cost you £1.63 a month. Or, you can upgrade to the Shared Unlimited plan, where unlimited email is included.

Though DreamHost has a one-click installer for popular web apps, the list of available apps is shorter than most competitors. As it stands, there are 25 apps you can install, including big hitters like Joomla, Shopify, Squarespace, and Weebly.

We tested DreamHost's security by looking at what security features are available on all accounts, and researching how well its security has performed in the past. DreamHost appears to consider security and privacy part of the basic specification of any web hosting service, and includes features that competitors often charge a premium for.

Every site gets its own Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificate, so all data transferred between your website and your visitors is encrypted. Your login details can be protected with multi-factor authentication from Google Authenticator or Yubikey. DreamHost also uses ModSecurity on its Apache servers, which is essentially a tried-and-tested firewall that can help block denial-of-service attacks.

For an additional £2.46 a month, you can add DreamShield, a malware-scanning tool that checks your website weekly for rogue software and automatically removes it.

This section must come with a caveat that a security researcher found DreamHost previously left some client data exposed because of a server misconfiguration. However, the company responded quickly and rectified the mistake immediately. It says that only 21 websites were affected, and none of the data exposed included personally identifiable data or user passwords.

All of DreamHost’s shared plans include WordPress, but it also has several managed WordPress hosting plans—DreamPress, DreamPress Plus, and DreamPress Pro. As the name suggests, managed WordPress plans shift some of the day-to-day running of a WordPress site onto the hosting company.

DreamPress is one of the best managed WordPress options we’ve reviewed. Your WordPress website is pre-installed on a high-performance cloud with fast SSD storage. Bandwidth is unmetered, and your WordPress installation gets multiple performance boosts like built-in caching, unlimited CDN, and Jetpack.

Recently added to DreamPress is one-click staging, so you can safely test tweaks to your website on a draft version before putting them live. You now also get free automated WordPress migrations, making it easy to move your site to DreamPress.

Besides this, there’s dedicated 24/7 ticket support from WordPress specialists, with phone support available. DreamPress deserves attention for offering all these features without the massive bump in pricing that’s often seen from managed WordPress solutions.

When evaluating the privacy features offered by DreamHost, we were impressed that it includes domain privacy as standard. This means people can’t find out your name, address, and contact details simply by searching for your domain name. It’s something many hosts charge a small fee for, and we appreciate that DreamHost doesn’t.

DreamHost also scores big points for users concerned with privacy because it has stood up for its users’ privacy in the past. Most newsworthy was DreamHost’s 2017 refusal to hand over the personally identifiable data of visitors to a political protest website.

The Department of Justice took the case to the Washington D.C. Superior Court, but DreamHost fought for its users so that only a highly redacted list had to be handed over.

DreamHost: What’s new in 2022?

DreamHost has continued to make improvements to its control panel. In 2020, the central hub of the user interface got a complete overhaul that made it easier to add new features. It became easier to change your domain, and free WordPress migrations were added. The DreamHost website also became available in Spanish for the first time.

In February 2021, it added a DNS Propagation Checker that shows you, in real-time on a world map, the status of any new domain name you purchase. This gives you a better idea of how long it takes for a new domain to go live across the whole internet.

DreamHost: Pricing

DreamHost offers monthly, one-year, and three-year plans. On shared plans, the discount for paying for three years at once is a massive 63%, but on other types of plans, the discount is modest. It’s great to see a web host with a no-commitment, no-contract monthly plan.

Like most web hosts, DreamHost offers a low introductory rate for your first term to draw you in, starting at the equivalent of £2.42 a month. After the initial term, the rate increases. But DreamHost’s standard rates are generally cheaper than the competition, so it makes for a good choice if you’re in it for the long haul.

Alongside shared hosting, DreamHost also offers WordPress, VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting plans. Some of these feature the same initial discounting and increased rates, while WordPress hosting is available in managed and unmanaged variants, and cloud hosting is a separate service.

DreamHost also offers a massive 97-day money-back guarantee, making it the leader in the industry in this regard.

DreamHost's pricing plans

Shared hosting

WordPress hosting

VPS hosting

Dedicated hosting

* Undiscounted monthly rates

** Undiscounted one-year rates

Testing DreamHost

In order to comprehensively compare DreamHost to the competition, we analysed its server response times.

How does DreamHost perform?

To test DreamHost’s performance, we ran a basic WordPress website for 14 days, and constantly checked uptime over this period using Uptime.com. In total, we accessed the website over 4,000 times, and each time, the site was available. This is generally to be expected with a test over such a short period, but it's promising nevertheless.

DreamHost also goes further than most hosts by offering a 100% uptime guarantee. This is streets ahead of the usual 99.9%. If any of your services (website, email, etc.) go down because of a DreamHost system failure, you’ll be compensated one day of hosting for every hour your service is unavailable.

What's DreamHost's response time?

We tested DreamHost’s response speed by loading a basic WordPress website hosted on DreamHost every five minutes for two weeks, from computers situated in Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York.

Website hosts typically respond within 200 to 400 milliseconds. DreamHost did OK here, too, averaging 374 milliseconds throughout our tests. Once every few days we experienced highs of up to 1.96s, but these slower response times never lasted more than five minutes.

Note, too, that these performance results are a baseline, as DreamHost offers many more expensive packages. We’d expect to see even better performance when using its cloud, VPS, and dedicated servers.

Alternatives to DreamHost

DreamHost’s list of shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and cloud hosting is similar in scope to top competitors Bluehost and HostGator. In our testing, Bluehost sites were marginally faster than DreamHost’s sites, and HostGator’s customer support was better.

But DreamHost’s introductory prices are very competitive, and things get even better when you consider its modest standard pricing. Its introductory offer isn’t the bait-and-switch you get with most providers, and its standard rates are much better than those of Bluehost and HostGator. This means DreamHost should be significantly cheaper in the long run.

DreamHost's features compared to the competition

*No monthly plan; price based on annual plan

DreamHost: The verdict

DreamHost is a fine web hosting provider, particularly if you’re looking for a relatively simple web host that gives you everything you need without throwing in expensive bells and whistles.

There are no exciting marketing tools included, for example. You have to pay extra for email on the cheapest plan, and DreamHost doesn’t offer free 24/7 phone support. Servers are all US-based, too, which means DreamHost isn’t ideal for users in other regions, and the list of apps you can one-click install is pretty short.

While the lack of these types of features may put off some people, those just looking for a solid, dependable web host might find the lower price appealing. As noted, DreamHost does prominently advertise its introductory rate, but it’s not the setup for a bait-and-switch pricing model. Its renewal pricing is fair and consistently cheaper than that of its top rivals.

We also like that DreamHost offers a monthly plan. Many rivals require annual plans, or make their monthly rates exorbitantly expensive. And if you’re looking for a managed WordPress solution at a good price, DreamHost is ideal.

Our performance testing showed DreamHost is fast enough for almost all uses. You get a 100% uptime guarantee, too, which is outstanding. And we’re impressed at DreamHost’s proven commitment to keeping user details private and out of government hands.

Overall, we recommend DreamHost most to users whose top concerns are pricing, privacy, and dependability.

Further reading on web hosting

To find out more about the best alternatives to DreamHost, check out our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting? If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business.

If you're considering the best WordPress hosting for your WordPress site, make sure to look at our listicles outlining seven great reasons to choose managed WordPress hosting, and the four S's of managed WordPress: security, scalability, speed, and service.

So, want to know how to host a website? When it comes to hosting your small business website, you have several options. You can use the best website builder, get managed hosting from the best web hosting services, or self-host your website.

Your business website is critical to interacting with your customers and selling your products. Top web hosting services offer the speed and reliability you need—providing fast, available web browsing for every visitor.

In this guide, we’ll cover these three options, explore the features of each, and explain how to get your hosting in place. The right type of web hosting will ensure your website is there when your customers need it—whether that’s running an ecommerce store, building trust in your small business, or simply providing information.

The three main ways to host your small business website

Web hosting companies provide the technological infrastructure that runs your website. You decide on your website framework, structure your website, build it out, and add content. The hosting provider ensures your website runs on their servers and networks, so that people can access your content via their web browser.

Broadly, web hosting comes in several varieties:

• As part of a website building platform like Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify
• As a managed service from a hosting provider, where they take care of all website hosting needs
• As a self-hosted service from a hosting provider, where you do the heavy lifting

Let’s dig into each of these.

How to host a website on a website building platform

Website building platforms offer an all-in-one solution for your small business website needs. They feature premade templates together with drag-and-drop editors that make it easy to create a professional-looking site. Web hosting comes as standard—once you’ve designed and published your site, these services take care of all the infrastructure, so your website just works.

Features of website building platforms for web hosting include:

• Fast, simple, and easy-to-use
• No need for a separate service for web hosting
• Everything is included in the website subscription price
• Can handle low-to-medium numbers of concurrent visitors
• Perfect for businesses that only need standard website functionality
• May not work for businesses with highly technical needs
• Subscription prices can be challenging for businesses on a tight budget

Here are the steps you need to follow.

Step one: Choose a website building platform

You have plenty of choices on the right platform for your needs. You’ll find our guide to the best website builders useful, and we've given further insight into the best small business website builders and the best ecommerce website builders.

Step two: Design and build your website

All of the website building platforms have in-depth tutorials and training to put your website together. You can start with a professional template, add in the pages you want, create navigation, add content and images, then test everything out.

Step three: Get a domain name and subscription plan

You can often buy a domain name through the website building platform, or buy one separately and link it to the website builder. Once you’ve done that, choose the right subscription plan for your site —each platform offers multiple pricing tiers, depending on the functions you need.

Step four: Publish and enjoy worry-free hosting

Once you’ve built your website, just hit publish. The website building platform takes care of all your hosting needs, so all you need to do is add content and keep your website updated.

How to host a website using a managed hosting provider

Managed hosting providers offer the servers you need to publish your website, plus a range of other services to keep your website fast, safe, secure, and reliable. These extra features do vary between managed hosting companies, but often include:

• One-click installation for many website frameworks including WordPress, WooCommerce, Drupal, and similar content management systems
• Background security functions, like installing patches and updates and protecting against denial of service attacks or malware
• Balancing loads and traffic across the network and server infrastructure, so your website is resilient and responsive
• Backing up and restoring data so your information and content is protected
• Other services, depending on the website host

Why you might choose managed web hosting:

• Relatively easy to set up and install your website framework and content management system
• Provides a range of services out-of-the-box with minimal configuration required
• Can handle medium-to-high numbers of concurrent visitors depending on your hosting plan
• Great for businesses that may need more complex functionality
• Subscription prices vary substantially between hosts and the add-on services you need, but can be a challenge for budget-conscious businesses

Here are the steps you need to follow.

Step one: Choose a managed website hosting provider

We have a complete guide to the best web hosting services, with a breakdown of their prices, features, and add-on services. These providers offer a range of plans, from complete, managed services through to self-hosting.

Step two: Install your website framework and build your website

Once you’ve chosen a provider, you can install your website framework and content management system. WordPress is a great choice—it’s fairly easy to learn the basics, there are a ton of tutorials available, and plugins let you customise WordPress to do exactly what you need.

Step three: Get a domain name and choose your add-on services

Some managed hosting providers will offer a domain name purchase service, otherwise you can buy one separately and update the relevant settings. After you choose a domain name, look at the add-on services you get with each plan and choose the right level for your needs.

Step four: Publish and be aware of your website hosting

Your publishing options will vary depending on the website framework you’re using. Once you’ve published, sign into your hosting control panel every couple of weeks to ensure everything is running smoothly.

How to self-host your website

Many hosting providers also give you the option to self-host your website. They still provide the servers and networks that your website runs on, but you’ll need to take care of anything other than these basic services. This means you’ll be responsible for:

• Installing website frameworks
• Patching and updating security and software
• Backing up and restoring data
• Other areas, depending on the web host

Why you might choose self-hosting:

• It's the most inexpensive option for budget-conscious businesses
• It can handle low-to-medium numbers of visitors depending on your hosting plan
• You may have bandwidth speed and capacity limitations
• It may require additional engineering expertise and configuration

The steps you need to follow to set up self-hosting are very similar to managed hosting, with one exception. During step three, you will need to review all of the services you need and what’s provided on your hosting plan. If a service isn’t listed, then you’ll need to arrange for it.

A quick summary of how to host a website

Let’s bring it all together:

1. Decide on the hosting option you want—through a website builder, via managed hosting, or a self-hosting package
2. Use a website framework to design and build your website
3. Get a domain name and understand if you need extra, add-on services
4. Pay your subscription, and publish

For a business without complex website needs, a website building platform is a great choice—you get design, simplicity, and speed in one convenient package. For more complex websites, managed hosting is a good option, as it will take care of background tasks and security. Self-hosting is a choice for businesses on a strict budget, so long as you’re aware of the limitations.

It’s time to go build that website!

Further reading on web hosting

Check out our guide to the best WordPress hosting to find more platforms like WP Engine. We also offer a closer look at managed WordPress hosting and compare web hosting vs WordPress hosting to help you decide whether WordPress hosting is right for you. It's also worth learning how your web hosting impacts security, and if you're looking for a domain, find out how to choose a domain name for your website and what to consider when choosing a domain name.

WP Engine is a WordPress hosting platform that offers a wealth of advanced tools for WordPress developers. In our WP Engine review, we’ll help you decide whether this is the best web hosting service for building your WordPress site.

WP Engine review: Snapshot

WP Engine is a powerful managed WordPress hosting platform built with the needs of developers in mind. It includes essential features like automated backups, integrated development and staging environments for testing out changes, and top-notch performance. In addition, WP Engine offers 10 built-in WordPress themes and a simple block-based WordPress website builder.

WP Engine isn’t cheap, but for the money we think it offers far more powerful tools than Bluehost, one of its main competitors. That said, WP Engine can be daunting for first-time WordPress users. The platform is best suited for experienced site creators and WordPress developers who want to build flexible, scalable websites.

Score: 4.5/5

Read on for our full and detailed WP Engine review.

WP Engine’s competitors

How does WP Engine compare to its main competitors?

WP Engine: Key features

Themes

All WP Engine plans include 10 professionally designed themes that are mobile-responsive and SEO-friendly. They’re also compatible with WP Engine’s block-based website builder, so you don’t need to know how to code to build a WordPress website with these themes. You can switch themes at any time, and try them out in a development site before deciding to change.

Website builder

WP Engine includes a basic block-based website builder that lets you quickly add content to your website. The editor includes dozens of blocks for content like text, images, galleries, videos, and music. You can also add social media buttons, RSS feeds, and contact forms.

Note that the website builder tools can be used with any Gutenberg block-compatible themes, including themes other than those provided by WP Engine.

Automated backups

WP Engine makes it simple to back up your site. You can set the software to automatically back up your site once per day, or generate new backups on demand with just one click. Notably, you can also save backups of your staging environment. That can be very helpful when you’re testing out new code and want to make tweaks without losing your work.

Development and staging environments

Every WP Engine website includes three different hosting environments: a development environment, a staging environment, and a production environment.

The development and staging environments enable you to test out changes to your site, including everything from moving a few content blocks to rewriting your theme’s code. The development environment is specifically intended as a place where you can try out new code on your own, while the staging environment is shareable, so you can get feedback from collaborators and potential site users.

The production environment is where your live WordPress website is hosted. When you’re happy with changes to a staged site, you can push them live by moving your code from the staging environment to the production environment. Your previous live site is automatically backed up during this process.

CDN

WP Engine has a built-in CDN to improve your site’s performance. A CDN makes your website more quickly accessible to visitors around the world and protects your site against DDoS attacks. If you already have your own CDN, like Cloudflare, you can use that instead of WP Engine’s network.

WP Engine: What’s new in 2022?

Since the last time we reviewed WP Engine, the platform has made a few small but important changes. To start, as we’d expect, WP Engine has kept up with the latest developments in WordPress itself. All sites have now been updated to WordPress 5.7, the newest version of the WordPress software.

The company has also added single sign-on for all users. This makes the experience of using WP Engine a bit more seamless, since you only need to log in once to access both your WP Engine account and your site’s WordPress dashboard. If you have multiple websites with WP Engine, you can access all of them with a single login.

Finally, WP Engine launched its free Atlas Content Modeler plugin. This will mainly be of interest to developers, as it’s designed to streamline the process of creating content models while writing code for WordPress themes. The new plugin integrates with WPGraphQL, a tool frequently used by WordPress developers.

WP Engine: Pricing

WP Engine offers its Managed WordPress plan for business websites, and its eCommerce Solutions plan for online stores. The eCommerce Solutions plan includes a managed installation of WooCommerce and automated plugin updates, while there's also Advanced Solutions available for enterprises on request.

Pricing for both the Managed WordPress and eCommerce Solutions plans starts respectively at £24 and £59 a month for one website with 10GB of storage and 50GB of bandwidth a month, under the Startup level. You can scale up to building 30 sites under the Dedicated level, which requires conversations with sales.

There are also Professional, Growth, and Scale intermediate levels between Startup and Dedicated, with costs and features scaling up with the monthly or annual price. Storage and bandwidth are shared between all your sites, with up to 50GB of disk space and 500GB of bandwidth a month for 30 sites at the Dedicated level.

WP Engine lets you pay month-to-month, or you can pay annually for a 17% discount. In addition, WooCommerce hosting plans are available separately, across the same plan structure and ranging from £24 a month to £227 a month.

WP Engine’s pricing plans

Managed WordPress

WooCommerce

Testing WP Engine

We took WP Engine for a test drive to find out more about how this platform stacks up to other WordPress hosting options. Specifically, we used WP Engine’s tools to set up our WordPress website, and then tracked its performance for one week.

WP Engine: Building a WordPress website

We built a WordPress site using WP Engine’s integrated website builder. Getting set up was simple, since the platform comes with WordPress and a builder-compatible theme installed by default. So, we could simply launch a site and start creating right away.

We found that adding and customising content blocks is very straightforward. However, the degree of customisation that was allowed was very limited. For example, we could bold, italicise, or colour text, but we couldn’t change its size or font without editing our site’s theme.

In addition, we could drag content blocks around the page, but we didn’t have much control over how they were laid out next to each other, or how big they were.

Overall, the WP Engine builder was nice to have, but it was certainly no replacement for one of the dedicated best website builders. You’ll need to have at least basic CSS coding skills if you plan to make any significant changes to your site’s theme.

WP Engine: Performance

We tested out WP Engine’s performance for one week using Pingdom. Over the span of our test, our WP Engine site had an average response time of 525ms and a total uptime of 100%. While that’s not the fastest hosting we’ve tested, it’s quite good, and we’re pleased that our site experienced no downtime during our test.

Alternatives to WP Engine

WP Engine isn’t your only option for managed WordPress hosting.

Bluehost offers a similar managed hosting service that’s designed more for the average website owner than for developers. There are fewer tools for developers, which in turn makes the platform’s back end somewhat easier to navigate.

However, we found that this platform leaves out development and staging environments. We think these are well worth having, even if you’re just changing your site’s layout rather than modifying CSS code.

WP Engine and Bluehost compete closely on price. Bluehost's managed WordPress plans start at $29.99 a month for one website, comparable to WP Engine’s Managed WordPress plan. You’ll have to pay extra if you want a block-based site editor, however.

WooCommerce plans at Bluehost also start at £19.81 a month, which makes Bluehost slightly cheaper than WP Engine for setting up an online store.

If you’re on a tight budget, you may want to consider a cheaper option like Namecheap. Its managed WordPress hosting plans are very basic compared to what WP Engine offers, but you can launch a site with 10GB of storage space for just £3.98 a month. At that price, Namecheap includes on-demand backups, automatic plugin updates, and a development environment.

However, we found that this platform falls well short of WP Engine when it comes to security features. It also doesn’t include a WordPress website builder.

WP Engine’s features compared to the competition

WP Engine: Final verdict

WP Engine is a powerful platform for managed WordPress hosting. It offers a huge range of tools and features, including automatic backups, development and staging environments, and a built-in CDN. WP Engine also includes a basic WordPress website builder and themes to accompany it, which makes launching a site easier for non-developers.

WP Engine’s in-depth toolset can be somewhat overwhelming for beginners, and especially for those who are completely new to WordPress. However, the platform is well laid out, and doesn’t take long to get used to.

While WP Engine isn’t cheap, we think it provides an excellent bang for your buck. It’s comparable in price to Bluehost, but Bluehost’s basic WordPress plans don’t include a drag-and-drop site builder. Neither platform gives you much storage space if you have multiple sites, which is a significant downside for building content-heavy websites.

On the other hand, WP Engine’s basic hosting plan is more than six times the price of a Namecheap WordPress hosting plan. Namecheap is an excellent option for website creators on a budget, but it doesn’t offer a site builder or advanced security features.

Overall, we think WP Engine is a great choice for experienced WordPress website builders and WordPress developers. It offers all the tools you need to scale up your site while ensuring that your WordPress site runs smoothly.

Further reading on web hosting

Check out our guide to the best WordPress hosting to find more platforms like WP Engine. We also offer a closer look at managed WordPress hosting and compare web hosting vs WordPress hosting to help you decide whether WordPress hosting is right for you.

Registering a domain name is one of the first things that you need to do when starting a new online business, or building a site with the best website builder. A good domain name that’s catchy, easy to remember, and accurately describes your business can give your online presence a significant boost.

The best web hosting services all offer domain name registration, but should you use a separate domain name registrar instead? How does the domain name registration process work, and what makes a good domain name? We answer all these questions and more in this guide to domain names for small businesses.

What is an IP address?

First, let’s understand what an IP (Internet Protocol) address is. Every device directly connected to the internet has its own unique IP address so other devices can send data back and forth to it. An IP address might look something like 151.101.194.114 or 2001:4998:44:3507::8000.

While it is possible to connect to a website server using its IP address, it would be a big pain to remember all those numbers. Domains solve this issue.

What is a domain?

A domain is a human-readable name for an internet address. Domains are automatically translated into IP addresses by domain name servers (DNS), which work as the phonebooks of the internet.

Domains have multiple distinct parts, each with its own moniker. Let’s use www.itpro.com as an example.

• .co.uk is the top-level domain (or extension).
• itpro is the domain name.
• www is the subdomain, which is optional.

What is a top-level domain?

The last segment of your domain name, the top-level domain (TLD), is crucial. Popular TLDs include .com, .net, .org, and .co.uk. Initially, there were only seven TLDs, but as demands have increased, there are now over 1,500.

Top-level domains can be split into three groups: generic TLDs (gTLD), sponsored TLDs (sTLD), and country-code TLDs (ccTLDs).

• gTLDs are the most common domains and include .com, .org, .net, .biz, and .info. In 2011, the list of gTLDs was extended to over 1,200, including .money, .blog, .dog, and .motorcycles.
• sTLDs are special top-level domains, typically reserved for military, government, and education.
• ccTLDs are domains that represent a country (e.g., .cn is China, .in is India, .uk is the United Kingdom, etc.).

Registering a new domain name

Domain names are always rented, never bought. You will need to renew your domain name registration annually, though it is possible to set this to occur automatically. We recommend that you set your domain to auto-renew to avoid anyone else quickly grabbing it when it lapses.

Domain names are registered with a domain name registrar. Trustworthy domain name registrars with good prices include GoDaddy and Namecheap. Most website hosts also act as a domain name registrar, which makes the process simple. Many even offer you the first year of your domain name registration for free to entice you to choose them as your web host.

Using your website host to register and renew your domain name is fine, but be sure to check how much the website hosts charges for domain name renewal. The cost of a .com website is typically between £4 and £15 a year, but some website hosts charge up to £50 a year.

Buying an existing domain name

When you start your search for a great domain name, you’ll quickly realise that all the best domains have long been taken. In fact, many of the top names have been bought by people who don’t want to use the domain themselves, but are “squatting” on them, hoping that someone will pay a hefty sum for the name.

If there’s no website on the domain, you can see who owns a domain name by performing what is known as a WHOIS search on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) site and try to put in an offer. You can also find domain names for sale on marketplaces like SnapNames, Sedo, Flippa, and GoDaddy.

Buying an old domain name doesn’t give you an advantage on its own, but you may be able to accelerate your search engine rankings and traffic if the domain has been used in the past. If it has relevant backlinks or existing traffic or already ranks for certain key phrases on search engines, it could be worth a buy. Sites like Moonsy and Flippa can be used to find good aged domains.

Protecting your identity

We recommend that you use your own personal details to register your domain name. If you use an agent, they have control over your domain name. This could become a problem if, for example, you were to fall out with them or they go bankrupt.

It’s easy to check the WHOIS record on ICANN to find out who owns a domain. Anyone can see your name, address, and contact details, which isn’t ideal. Registrars typically offer to hide your personal details from WHOIS results for a fee. They’ll call this service something like domain privacy or WHOIS guard.

It shouldn’t cost more than £1 a month, and some website hosts, like DreamHost, include domain privacy for free on all accounts.

Choosing a domain name

Perhaps the most difficult thing in this process is choosing the right domain name for your business. Your domain name should be:

• Brandable — Make your domain name memorable and catchy.
• Pronounceable — Customers must be able to say your domain name out loud. This makes it easier to memorise and share.
• Easy to type — Avoid weird spellings and hard-to-spell names.
• Short — Aim for under seven letters and under three syllables.
• Descriptive — Give readers an idea of what you sell.

You should try to include important keywords relevant to your business in your domain name, but this is not as relevant to search engine rankings as it used to be. Avoid numbers and hyphens, though, because people can never remember whether to spell out numbers or when to include hyphens.

.com is the undisputed king of domain extensions if you aim for an international market. You may want to choose a country-code TLD if your content is focused on a particular country. This will make your website rank better in that country but may negatively affect results in other countries.

Transferring domain names

If you decide to change your website host, you can transfer your domain name. There are a few ways to do this. If you’re happy keeping your current domain name registrar, you can simply change the IP address that the domain name points to.

If you want to change to a new domain name registrar, this is possible by simply confirming your identity and entering the details of the new domain name registrar. The process for selling a domain name is the same. You can sell your domain name through marketplaces like GoDaddy and Sedo.

Conclusion

Domain names make the internet easier to use because we don’t have to remember a long string of numbers to get to a website. You can register a new domain name through a domain name registrar or your web hosting company. Also, you can protect your identity when registering a domain name by using a domain privacy service.

Sometimes it makes sense to buy an existing domain name rather than register a new one, but expect to pay more for it. However you source your domain name, make sure it’s brandable, pronounceable, short, descriptive, and easy to type.

Further reading on website builders and web hosting

Learn how to choose a domain name for your website, and why domain privacy is important, and what it means for your business. It's also worth looking into the best anonymous hosting solutions to protect your privacy.

When it comes to establishing a unique brand identity online, choosing a domain name for your business or personal website is a vital step, as well as selecting the best website builder to create the site and the best web hosting. Registering a domain name is simple, and varies in cost according to both the registrar and the domain extension you choose.

Additionally, many of the best web hosting services include a free domain name as part of their subscription plans. If you check out a number of well-known hosting providers, make sure to look at their offers for new subscribers, as you might well end up saving money.

However, if you’re wondering exactly how to choose a domain name for your website, this article will take you through some key considerations, and assist you in coming up with a top name idea and the right extension for your site.

Step 1: Understand traditional TLDs, new TLDs, and ccTLDs

Traditional top-level domain (TLD) extensions like .com, .net, and .org have always been considered the gold standard. Unfortunately, domain names containing common dictionary words with traditional TLDs are usually taken. Sometimes you have the option of registering them for a premium price, but that can run into hundreds of dollars.

It’s easier, however, to find traditional TLDs for domains based on unusual and unique brand names. In any case, if your chosen domain name happens to be available with a .com or .net extension, you should consider snapping it up.

If your business and most of your customers are based in a country that uses country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) like .co.uk, .ca, or .com.au, it’s best to stick with those extensions as locals are used to them. Registration of ccTLDs is often restricted to people living in those particular countries and ensures that you won’t be competing for domain names with the rest of the world.

Although old-school TLDs are still considered superior, you should also explore several newer and more descriptive extensions like .tattoo, .studio, .tech, .yoga, etc. These domain extensions are cheaper to acquire in many cases, and Google has stated that traditional TLDs have no ranking or SEO benefit over newer TLDs.

Step 2: Consider keyword-based domain names

Keywords are popular search terms that people use to find information on search engines. Having keywords in your domain name makes it clear what your business is all about.

For example, if you own a company called “Brendan’s Plumbing” in Ipswich, choosing a domain name like IpswichPlumber.co.uk might be more advantageous than BrendansCompany.co.uk. When a potential customer’s search term is right in your domain name, it’s a signal that you’re exactly what they’re looking for.

But that’s not the whole story. Until a few years ago, search engines like Google rewarded keyword-rich sites with higher rankings in their search results. SEO was all about including as many keywords as possible in website copy and domain names. But this policy created the potential for unscrupulous people to game the system by building low-quality websites with keyword-rich domain names and content.

As a result, such websites have come to be viewed as untrustworthy by both real people and search engines. Indeed, the search engines have altered their algorithms to discourage domain names with multiple specific keywords. And according to Google’s John Mueller: “There’s no ranking benefit associated with having keywords in a domain name.”

The best practice is to use keywords sparingly when registering a domain name. A website called IpswichPlumber.co.uk may not give you many SEO benefits, but it does signal a specific service and location to a potential customer. However, a domain like BestCheapIpswichPlumber.co.uk populated with low-quality content may trigger scrutiny and ranking penalties from search engines.

Step 3: Think about names that sound like brands

There are plenty of examples of unusual, creative, and sticky names that make for great brands. Names like Google, Twitter, Yandex, Yahoo, and Adidas are some examples.

The advantage of choosing an unusual word for your domain name is that it stands out, and is likely not trademarked. The disadvantage is that it may not be immediately memorable, and may require some marketing work to make it stick in people’s minds.

If you’ve already got an established brick-and-mortar brand, it may be worthwhile sticking to that as your domain name. If it’s not available as a .co.uk. .com, .net, or .org TLD, you might consider choosing from an ever-growing list of newer, more descriptive extensions like .tech, .space, or .yoga, depending on the nature of your business.

But if your venture will primarily be online, coming up with a creative and brandable name might be your best bet. Just write down some ideas on a piece of paper, say them out loud, and ask yourself if they feel like brand names. People generally have a keen instinct for what a good brand name looks and sounds like.

Step 4: Does your domain name pass the radio test?

The radio test is simple. If a person hears your domain name on the radio, will they understand, remember, and be able to spell it? This helpful technique ensures that your chosen name is short, simple, and memorable.

Of course, the radio test extends to all word-of-mouth advertising, including podcasts, talking about your online business at a coffee shop, or mentioning an email address associated with your website. Think about whether a potential customer will be able to recall your domain after hearing it once in passing.

Step 5: Stay away from hyphens, numbers, and misspellings

Many people use hyphens and numbers between keywords when their chosen names are unavailable. These elements can complicate an otherwise excellent domain name and make it harder to remember. Is it learn2kazoo.net, learntokazoo.net, or learn-2-kazoo.net?

Another reason to exclude hyphens is that since many visitors use mobile devices, typing a hyphen will require them to switch between keyboards. It’s best to avoid adding an extra step that may turn off potential customers.

You might think that having a weirdly spelled word would make your domain name stand out. Names like avidgardenr.com or catzanddogz.com may seem creative on paper, but they will be difficult for new customers to remember.

The same goes for abbreviations. Don’t shorten common words in your domain name, such as st for street or mgmt for management. Shorter domain names are generally better, but not at the cost of clarity.

Step 6: Watch out for trademarks

Before you settle on a name, it’s best to check if it’s already trademarked. This way, you can be sure that your chosen domain name is associated only with your brand, and does not get you into legal trouble.

Checking for trademarked names is easy and free. You can use the UK government's trademark search portal, the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website, or find several other resources with a quick Google search.

Step 7: Don’t forget to check social media

Is the name available as a Twitter handle? How about Instagram and Facebook? Before you settle on a domain name, ask yourself if you’d want the same name on social media as well.

Of course, many names are generic, and you can’t expect them to be available on popular social media sites. There may be numerous plumbers from Ipswich on Twitter and Facebook, and some may choose a handle like @IpswichPlumber. In this case, if you own IpswichPlumber.co.uk, you could settle for an alternative name on social media by adding numbers or letters to the handle.

Some names may be available on one platform but not another. Identify the most important social media platforms for your business, and make sure your chosen brand name or a close alternative is available on those sites.

Conclusion

It’s worth taking your time when picking a domain name. Great domain names are short, simple, unique, and memorable. Remember to brainstorm a brandable name, select an appropriate domain extension, and consider the radio test. It’s also best to avoid too many keywords, hyphens, misspellings, and numbers.

If you’re stuck, there are plenty of domain name generators online that can kickstart your creativity. Finally, don’t forget to check for existing trademarks and social media availability of your preferred domain name. Your domain name is an extension of your personality and reputation. Choose wisely!

Further reading on web hosting

Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs, and discover the best VPS hosting or best cloud hosting services. If you're looking to create a new website, make sure you look over the best website builders before making your choice.

If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting?

Before you create a website with the best website builder, you’ll need a domain. But how to choose a domain name? You want to make a good first impression, and so it not only needs to be memorable, but needs to send the right message about your website, and by extension your company.

It's vital to make the right choice from the beginning, and to be honest, alongside choosing a provider from among the best web hosting services, choosing a domain name is one of the most critical decisions you’ll need to make before getting your site online. Once you've got the right domain, you can ensure that your website can be found easily and often by your target audience.

While knowing that you need a memorable domain name is one thing, actually achieving this goal is easier said than done. We’ve compiled a list below of elements to consider when you begin your domain name search, and when choosing a domain name.

1. Keep it short

The more characters that potential visitors have to type in, the more likely they are to make a mistake and not reach your site. Some people will check their spelling, realise their error, try again, and still reach your site. But that may not always be the case. Some people will assume that there is a problem with your website instead and won’t bother trying again.

Research shows that the most common domain name length is 12 characters, so try and aim for around that mark.

2. Choose the right TLD

TLD stands for top level domain and is the collection of letters that goes at the end of the domain after the final period. At the beginning of the internet age, there were only a few choices of TLDs, with most sites opting to use .com.

Nowadays, each country has its own two- or three-letter TLD, and there are also specialty TLDs. The most common TLDs are:

• .co or .com — for companies
• .info — for informational sites
• .net – for internet infrastructure sites
• .org – for non-profits and other non-commercial organisations
• .biz – short for business, for those that don’t want .com
• .me – for personal sites and blogs

Many of these can be combined with two-letter codes representing countries to create national TLDs, like .co.uk for companies in the UK.

Many big businesses will purchase a selection of country-specific domains—e.g., example.com, example.co.uk, example.com.au, etc.—and then either redirect them to the one main site or create separate regionalised versions.

Choosing the right domain starts with choosing the right TLD, as it could be the difference between your site being found or not. We recommend choosing .com, as it is widely considered the best for commercial entities, especially those that operate globally.

3. Check existing domains

Once you’ve finished brainstorming domain name ideas, you then need to check to see if someone else has already registered any of them. Many domain name registrars, like GoDaddy, have tools for doing this.

It can also be a good idea to register domains that are obvious misspellings of the one you want to choose, so you can redirect them to your main website. For instance, if you wanted to register socialise.com, you could also register socialize.com. This way, if someone types in the wrong spelling, they’ll still reach your website.

On the other hand, don’t choose domains that are misspellings of established brands in the hope of getting some of their traffic, like Amazen.com or Gooogle.com. That could land you with a lawsuit.

4. Check the language

What we mean by checking the language is finding out whether a word that seems innocuous in English actually has any negative meanings in other languages.

If you’ve spent money on a marketing campaign that proudly features your new domain, the last thing you want to find out is that you’ve unintentionally insulted people in a foreign country or speakers of that country’s language in your own country.

One example of this is when the Ford Kuga was launched worldwide. It was only after the official launch that it was discovered that “kuga” is the word for the Black Death in the Balkans.

5. Search for existing trademarks

If another business has trademarked a word that you use in your domain, you could be in legal trouble, especially if the word you chose is one that’s been made up and not covered by common usage protections.

The knowem.com username search website is a good place to check, as it will show you words that have been used in existing trademarks, domains, and even on social media sites.

6. Avoid hyphens and numbers

Hyphens and underscores should be avoided because they can be easily confused. The same goes for numbers because they can often look like letters, e.g., a zero and a capital “O”, and the number 1, lowercase “l,” and capital “I.”

7. Consider focusing locally

Putting the locality in which your business operates in your domain name can help bring in searchers from surrounding areas.

For instance, if you run a shoe repair business in Boston, BostonShoeRepairs.com would be a good choice. However, you need to be aware that in this example, there is more than one Boston. There is the well-known one in Massachusetts, but there are also 15 others in the US, the original one in Lincolnshire, England, and a whole host of others in countries like South Africa, Ireland, Uzbekistan, Costa Rica, Columbia, Jamaica, Peru, Italy, Cuba, Bolivia, and Andorra.

So, you need to be careful and consider every angle when choosing a domain name.

8. Memorable is good

The easier it is to remember your website’s domain, the more likely it will be found and passed on by word of mouth. For people to tell others about your website, it helps if the domain is easy to pronounce. If you’re targeting a global audience, the domain should also be easy to say in languages other than English.

Coming up with something that meets all these criteria is a tricky task, but the time that you spend on getting it right will be rewarded with higher levels of traffic to your website.

9. Try a word generator

If you find yourself struggling for ideas, you could give online word generators like TextFixer a try. These online tools take key words and merge them together in interesting ways to come up with something unique.

InterServer is a full-service web hosting provider with four data centres in the US. In our InterServer review, we consider its key features and pricing, and compare it with the best web hosting services we’ve tested.

InterServer review: Snapshot

InterServer offers a complete range of hosting products, from shared hosting to dedicated servers, and it positions its pricing to be consistently cheaper than the majority of its competitors. Throw in its unlimited bandwidth and storage and free Cloudflare CDN, and it looks like a top buy.

However, InterServer’s speed, reliability, and customer support need improvement. SMEs requiring a solid, dependable host with useful technical support may regret choosing InterServer just to save a few dollars a month. Competitors like Hostwinds and HostGator offer a more reliable service with better technical support for a similar price.

Score: 3/5

Read on for the full InterServer review.

InterServer’s competitors

How does InterServer compare to its main competitors?

InterServer: Key features

InterServer's web hosting plans have unlimited storage space and unlimited data. All sites get free Cloudflare CDN, 24/7 support, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. A Price Lock Guarantee ensures your web hosting won’t skyrocket in price later at the host’s whim, and InterServer offers free migration for your website from other hosts.

InterServer offers a somewhat dated administration panel for your websites, domains, and DNS settings. You can buy, cancel, lock, and renew domains, make backups, administer mail, and set up SSL certificates all from this single admin panel. Automatic backups of your website, taken every week, can be downloaded here, and you can also order free hosting migration from another provider.

Many other hosting companies routinely include cPanel, a powerful and popular web hosting control panel tool that complements such in-house admin tools. It administers just about every aspect of your hosting, and offers management of email addresses, files, databases, domains, software, and security, all from one central page.

However, on InterServer, if you choose the cheapest hosting plan, then you’ll need to pay an extra 82p a month for cPanel. cPanel is included on the more expensive IS Boost plans, and is available for that price for other plans. There’s also an alternative, Direct Admin, that you can choose at no extra cost.

SitePad is the website builder that InterServer includes for free on its hosting plans. It’s a drag-and-drop editor for creating a website, similar to the best website builders available.

Web hosting from InterServer doesn’t include a SitePad license, though, so you can only use the free version of the site builder. This severely limits the usefulness of SitePad, as websites are limited to just three pages, and you can only choose from between 15 themes.

You can upgrade to a paid SitePad plan for £9.84 a year to unlock unlimited themes and pages. But at that price, there are many better, easier-to-use website builders on the market. SitePad’s interface is somewhat clunky, and to get best results you’ll need some web design experience, which largely defeats the point of using a website builder for the majority of users.

Rapid deployment of popular web-based software is possible with Softaculous, a program included with InterServer web hosting. Softaculous automates the installation of software, so instead of rummaging around with file managers or SSH, you can have a sophisticated website up and running in a matter of minutes.

Softaculous has one-click installers for over 450 apps. If you want to build anything from a customer support website to a social networking site, there’s typically an existing app you can install using Softaculous that will do the job.

InterServer: What’s new in 2022?

InterServer became popular in the shared hosting space for its singular, no-nonsense £4.10 a month plan. In 2020, InterServer changed to a more traditional web hosting pricing model with multiple service levels. Prices were bumped, too, so the cheapest option is now £5.74 a month after your introductory term.

This irked some users who preferred the simplicity of InterServer’s previous one-size-fits-all pricing, but InterServer’s new pricing is still very competitive.

InterServer: Pricing

InterServer differentiates its web hosting into 11 plans. Some of these include reseller plans, ASP.NET hosting plans, and managed WordPress hosting. You have the option of paying monthly, every six months, every year, every two years, and sometimes every three years. On the more expensive plans, you’ll get a discount of up to 20% for paying in advance.

InterServer, like many other hosts, has an introductory offer, so you can start out paying £2.05 a month. But you’ll quickly be shuttled to the full price, which starts at £5.74 a month.

InterServer’s pricing plans

* When paid monthly, after the introductory offer has expired

** When paid annually, after the introductory offer has expired

Testing InterServer

We tested InterServer by buying an IS Boost 2 Core plan and deploying a WordPress website on it. Then, using Uptime.com, we ran thousands of uptime, response time, and page load time tests from three locations in the US to get an idea of how fast and reliable the service is.

How reliable is InterServer?

InterServer guarantees a 99.9% uptime guarantee, but this doesn’t include any downtime caused by scheduled maintenance, hardware failure, or any networks not owned by InterServer, so it’s a rather weak guarantee.

Every five minutes for two weeks, we tested whether our website hosted with InterServer was available from Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas. InterServer was offline four times during this relatively short testing period for periods of up to 42 minutes at a time. This resulted in uptime of 99.61%, which is poor.

It’s possible this was a particularly unlucky time for InterServer, but four outages on different days during such a short testing period reflects poorly on the service, and suggests it’s unreliable. A significant number of online reviews note that they too have had problems with InterServer’s reliability over the past year.

How fast do InterServer websites respond?

Response time is a metric that can tell us how quickly a website will begin to load. A slow response time will see visitors clicking away from your website because it seems like it’s not loading at all.

InterServer averaged 651ms when tested from our three US locations, which is perfectly fine but not outstanding. In comparison, Amazon Lightsail's response time was 116ms, and InMotion Hosting responded in an average of 163ms.

How quickly do pages hosted on InterServer load?

Page load speed measures how long a page takes to load in its entirety. To fairly compare how quickly pages load on different website hosts, we use the same WordPress website on all hosts and access them from a single US location. We take multiple readings to make an average.

Despite its mediocre performance in uptime and response time tests, InterServer performed reasonably well in this real-world test. The page loaded completely in an average of 234ms. This relatively good speed is perhaps due to InterServer’s global content caching, which delivers cached versions of your content to users from servers located more closely to them.

In comparison, DreamHost, Amazon Lightsail, WordPress, and InMotion Hosting’s page load speeds were 139ms, 171ms, 473ms, and 739ms, respectively.

Alternatives to InterServer

InterServer’s low pricing and unlimited plans are certainly appealing, but several companies can trump it on many important metrics.

Since InterServer increased its prices, it no longer stands out in the marketplace as a particularly outstanding buy. You don’t get a free domain, and you have to pay extra for cPanel when you choose InterServer, so most users will end up paying approximately the same price as they would if they were to choose competitors like Hostwinds, Bluehost, or InMotion Hosting.

InterServer also cuts corners on support. Though it’s touted as a 24/7 service, live chat is frequently unavailable, and the outsourced technical support team lacks knowledge on the products. Often, they gave us conflicting or simply incorrect information in what appeared to be an attempt to finish the chat as quickly as possible. Similarly priced hosts like InMotion Hosting and Bluehost offer significantly better technical support.

For SMEs looking for solid, reliable, and fast web hosting, InterServer is a bit of a gamble. HostGator is a competitor that offers better average speeds and uptime at a price in line with InterServer. You get unlimited bandwidth and storage, too, and the technical support is better than InterServer’s. Hostinger is another hosting company that performed better than InterServer in testing.

InterServer's features compared to the competition

* Based on the non-introductory price of the cheapest plan when paid annually

InterServer: Final verdict

InterServer is an interesting website host with products that range from shared and VPS to cloud and dedicated hosting. Its low prices, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited storage, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and one-click app installation make for a solid foundation.

But during our testing period, our InterServer website went offline four times, and for multiple hours our website was unavailable. Even when the host was up, the site response times were relatively slow. There’s a possibility that InterServer has just been having a bad few weeks, so further testing would be required, but this shaky performance should be considered in any purchasing decision.

InterServer’s poor customer support can lead to a frustrating experience, too. Tech support is often unavailable, and they are prone to offering incorrect information.

Overall, InterServer is an okay hosting provider choice with a fair pricing plan, but it’s surrounded in the marketplace by many more worthy competitors.

Further reading on web hosting

If you like the look of InterServer’s unlimited services but not the service issues, check out our guide to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting? Learn how to choose a domain name for your website, and why domain privacy is important, and what it means for your business. It's also worth looking into the best anonymous hosting solutions to protect your privacy.

Domain privacy is a premium service that replaces your contact information with that of your service provider, therefore securing you against anyone who might be trying to access your details for malicious purposes. Alongside signing up to anonymous hosting from some of the best web hosting services, domain privacy is a simple way to keep your site and data safe.

When building a site with the best website builder, you sign up for a new domain for your site, and must enter your name and contact information in order to confirm your domain registration. This information, however, isn’t private. In fact, the contact details that you enter are visible publicly, and can be accessed by anyone using a WHOIS directory.

As you may have guessed, this can lead to a lot of privacy-related complications. Having your phone number and email address displayed publicly on the internet can expose you to huge amounts of marketing spam. It may even cause you to be targeted for domain hijacking or even identity theft.

In this article, we will discuss what makes domain privacy so important, and why it is a must-have for any business owner with a website.

Domain privacy: What is it?

Most domain names that you find on the internet are registered through an organisation called ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). According to ICANN regulations, domain owners must offer up their name and contact information when purchasing a new domain name. This information, in turn, is listed publicly on a database called WHOIS.

Once your information is entered into the WHOIS directory, anyone on the internet can access and view it using a free domain lookup tool. These tools are very common, and easily available to anyone with an internet connection.

Domain privacy is a paid service offered by many domain registrars, including GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Hostinger. It allows you to hide your contact information from the WHOIS directory by replacing your contact information with a random email address and the registrar’s own contact details. Domain privacy is often offered as a premium add-on whenever you purchase a new domain name.

Why is domain privacy important?

There are a few reasons why ICANN forces every website owner to publicly display their contact details. This practice makes it easier for law enforcement agencies to track people in case there’s illegal activity on their websites. It also helps lawyers hold website owners accountable in cases involving plagiarism and copyright infringement.

However, your contact information isn’t just displayed to law enforcement agencies or courts. In fact, it’s on a public database that almost anyone can access. There are quite a few reasons why some people might try to obtain your contact information from this database.

People might be interested in buying your domain, which is usually harmless. Replying with a simple yes or no is probably enough to make these communications go away. However, others might be trying to send you marketing spam over email or phone. In extreme cases, spamming can get really intrusive, and might seriously hamper your productivity.

Finally, hackers might use your contact information to hijack your website, or target you for phishing scams and identity theft. This is surprisingly common, and very deadly. Should they be able to get a hold of your contact information, they might go as far as to try and convince you to wire them money and provide them with your credit card details. These types of scams range from downright ridiculous to extremely convincing.

Domain privacy add-ons are typically very reasonably priced, from £2 to £20 a year, depending on your domain registrar. If you run a public business, you might wonder if there’s even a point to subscribing to domain privacy, since your contact information is already available publicly on your website. The answer is: maybe.

Hackers and spammers often use dedicated bots to crawl through WHOIS directories in order to find the contact details of people to spam. If your contact details don’t show up on the WHOIS records, there’s a good chance that your business will evade the attention of such systems and therefore be subjected to less spam.

However, if someone with malicious intent really wanted to find your contact information, they might still be able to get it from your website.

What about GDPR?

At this point, you might be wondering about GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)—the new set of data regulations aimed at protecting your internet privacy—and whether it comes into play in any of this. The good news is, it does.

Those protected under the European Union law will see their contact details redacted in WHOIS listings across the internet. This means that a note saying something like “redacted for privacy” will display in place of your contact information.

However, even if you are eligible for privacy protection through GDPR, your registrar might still be required to “onward share” your contact details with certain “trusted vendors”, such as domain registries. Whether these organisations also honor your privacy will depend on their individual policies and legislative jurisdiction.

In conclusion, if you seriously care about your privacy as a business online, you might still want to subscribe to domain privacy even if you fall under the jurisdiction of GDPR. Up next, we will cover how domain privacy actually works and what factors into it.

How can I acquire domain privacy for my business?

There are two ways you can acquire a domain privacy add-on for your business. You can either get it while purchasing your domain for the first time, or later, as a separate add-on purchase. Either way, you will enjoy the same benefits.

Almost every domain registrar, be it Domain.com, Namecheap, GoDaddy, Hostinger, or someone else, offers domain privacy add-ons to go with its domain registration options. Some of them even go as far as to add a domain privacy option to your cart by default when you are purchasing a new domain. Domain privacy doesn’t usually cost more than £20 a year.

You can also acquire the domain privacy add-on separately at any time or during domain name renewal. However, it’s a good idea to get domain privacy from the get-go, as there are online tools that can allow malicious actors to find historical purchase data for a given domain name, even after domain privacy has been enabled.

Conclusion

Domain privacy is a powerful tool that helps protect website owners from unwanted spam and malicious hackers.

If you are a business owner investing in an expensive website, getting the domain privacy add-on when building your website is very advisable. Even if your contact information is publicly displayed on your website, not having it show up in WHOIS records might protect you from spambots that exclusively check WHOIS data.

Further reading on website builders and web hosting

Learn how to choose a domain name for your website. It's also worth looking into the best anonymous hosting solutions to protect your privacy. It's also worth learning how your web hosting impacts security, and if you're looking for a domain and what to consider when choosing a domain name.

When you purchase a domain name via any of the best web hosting services or best website builders on the market, you’ll likely be greeted by a myriad of add-on features that you can purchase alongside the domain name. One useful feature—domain privacy protection—often leaves many wondering whether they should invest in it.

Because this feature generally comes at a small fee, many are hesitant about whether to purchase it. The truth is, anyone’s personal data is susceptible to cyberattacks and data breaches. Therefore, while the add-on isn’t mandatory, the extra security it provides to protect your website, personal information, and identity is definitely useful.

In this article, we’ll look at a few of the reasons why you should invest in domain privacy protection: it's also worth taking a look at our feature that outlines why domain privacy is important, and what it means for your business.

1. Because anyone can access your personal information

You may already know that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) requires anyone who owns a website (whether it’s for an organisation, a business, or just for fun) to provide full contact information for the domain that they are looking to purchase.

But did you know that if you’ve ever registered a domain, all of the contact details attached to your web hosting domain are publicly available to anyone on the Internet? This is all thanks to the WHOIS, a database that keeps a full record of who owns a domain and how to get in contact with them.

On the database, anyone can enter your registered domain name into the search bar, and retrieve your personal information. In addition to your phone number, email address, and mailing address, WHOIS will have information about who the domain registrar is, which city they’re located in, when the registration expires, and when it was last updated.

While the database was created to hold individuals accountable for their domain, hackers and spammers can misuse your data for dishonest purposes. If you’ve been spending the last five minutes trying to think of ways to trick your domain registrar, such that you do not have to provide authentic information and data so that you will not be left susceptible, we’re about to disappoint you: you’re only allowed to register a domain with authentic information.

That’s because all of the information that you provide will have to be verified before you can proceed with your registered domain. In fact, you may lose your domain name for violating WHOIS’s terms and conditions when you enter fake information. Besides, if you’re a business owner, the last thing you want to do is lose credibility by using a fake profile.

2. Because you can prevent data scraping

If you noticed that soon after registering your domain name you’ve been receiving a ton of marketing emails and phone calls, you may have been a victim of data scraping: the process of gathering information from publicly available sources, and saving it onto a spreadsheet or local file to be used for various purposes.

Many third-party vendors engage in data scraping to obtain personal data from public databases such as WHOIS, so that they can sell the information to businesses and organisations for a profit. With your personal information, organisations and pushy marketers can flood you with unwanted phone calls, spam email, and even snail mail. Investing in domain name privacy is, however, a practical way to prevent data scraping.

While data scraping may leave you susceptible to unscrupulous marketers, that’s not the worst that could happen. Having your information publicly available can also increase your risk of getting hacked, and having your identity stolen.

Furthermore, scammers who’ve obtained your information can send out emails under the guise of a legitimate company, to get you or your employees to open fake emails that can compromise your data. Such email phishing scams are common, and can affect even the most well-known organisations around the world. Essentially, domain privacy protection can help prevent your data from getting into the wrong hands.

3. Because you can avoid competitors who’re doing market research

Let’s face it: we all try to stalk our competition while we’re doing our market research. If you’re a business owner, you’ll know that there are competitors out there who want to find out exactly who you are, where you are, and how to get in touch with you.

With such valuable information, they can gain insight into your business and the way you operate, and you could lose your competitive edge as a result.

While there are many ways for your competitors to research you, having your information publicly available makes it that much easier for your competitors to steal your contact information and use it for their own business strategies. Investing in domain privacy protection will make it much harder for them to do this.

4. Because it’s quick and easy to add it

The option to add domain privacy protection is generally made available to you during the process of registering a new domain name. But if you had decided not to enable it at the start, you can still change your mind to add domain privacy to an existing domain name. Simply contact your domain registrar or hosting provider to purchase the add-on.

Why you may not want to invest in domain privacy protection

There is, however, one minor limitation of domain privacy protection: if you’re looking to sell your domain name in the future, potential customers or business partners who wish to buy your domain name will have a harder time getting in contact with you.

This alone should not deter you from investing in domain privacy protection, though, because you can always include a Contact Us page and choose what information you want your visitors to be able to see.

Conclusion

While there is no sure-fire way to protect yourself from data breaches, investing in domain privacy protection is a great place to start. You will be able to take your personal information off a public platform, which in turn prevents data scraping, ensures that your information does not fall into the wrong hands, and hides your valuable information from your competitors.

Besides, the best web hosting services should make the process of opting for domain privacy protection quick and easy. For a small fee and just a little effort, you’ll get a peace of mind and save yourself from the trouble of dealing with hackers and spammers.

Further reading on web hosting

Learn more about anonymous hosting, another option for you to improve your site's privacy, and discover the best anonymous hosting solutions. It's also worth learning how your web hosting impacts security, and if you're looking for a domain, find out how to choose a domain name for your website and what to consider when choosing a domain name.

SiteGround offers a selection of advanced hosting solutions, and you will often find it on lists of the best web hosting services. As our SiteGround review shows, its hosting solutions have a few flaws, but it’s certainly an option worth considering.

SiteGround review: Snapshot

SiteGround offers advanced web hosting solutions backed by a suite of excellent features. Its prices are a little high, but you get what you pay for. Rather than eliminating all but the essentials in an attempt to keep prices down, SiteGround aims to deliver all the tools you need to build and manage a new website.

On top of this, SiteGround is very easy to use. It boasts an excellent guided website setup, and the native management dashboard is well designed and easy to navigate. However, its performance, although not terrible, leaves a bit to be desired.

If you’re looking for a cheaper option, Hostinger is a stand-out option. But if you’re happy to pay a little more for a high-end hosting subscription, SiteGround is up there with the best.

Score: 4/5

Read on for our full and detailed SiteGround review.

SiteGround’s competitors

How does SiteGround compare to its main competitors?

SiteGround: Key features

SiteGround focuses on offering a large range of features over rock-bottom prices, and this is immediately obvious. Every plan is packed full of of extras, from beginner-friendly management tools to advanced integrations for developers.

The recently added SiteGround Client Area is very well designed and beginner-friendly. It contains everything you need to manage your hosting plans, websites, domains, and more. There’s a neat billing portal, as well as a marketplace where you can find extensions to add functionality to your site.

On top of this, SiteGround does a great job of catering to beginners. The management panel contains cleverly-placed hints and prompts that are designed to guide new users without impeding those with more experience.

Speaking of streamlined use, SiteGround’s domain registration portal offers an efficient, hassle-free way to register new domains. Its prices are a little high, and you will have to pay more for domain privacy, but it is convenient.

Another thing that SiteGround includes with its shared hosting plans is a full staging environment. This enables you to make changes to a duplicate version of your site, leaving your live site as is until you’re ready to publish them. This is a useful tool, as it reduces the risk of making costly mistakes while editing.

There are also a few tools to help you boost your website’s speed. For one, you will benefit from a full Cloudflare CDN integration. This utilises an interconnected global network to ensure your content is rendered as fast as possible. Advanced caching is also available through SiteGround’s own SuperCacher tool.

Last but not least, SiteGround’s security tools should provide a high level of protection for your website. Automatic daily backups are available, and there’s a built-in SSL manager. The SG Site Scanner can be used if you’re concerned about virus or malware activity, and you can even block malicious IP addresses if required.

SiteGround’s features are great. We’ve only just scratched the surface here, and there are tools for users of all skill levels.

SiteGround: What’s new in 2022?

SiteGround provides regular updates, patching bugs and adding new features to improve the hosting experience that it offers. It released a summary of the updates implemented in 2021, and there was a lot to like.

For example, loads of speed and performance-boosting features were added. These included a full MySQL overthrow, dynamic caching, and the implementation of off-site backups. New WordPress tools were added, including a SiteGround WordPress security plugin, and all accounts were migrated from cPanel to SiteGround’s proprietary control panel.

SiteGround: Pricing

SiteGround offers basic shared accounts, managed WordPress and WooCommerce options, advanced cloud hosting for larger businesses, and reseller hosting. In fact, its shared plans are identical to its WordPress and WooCommerce options.

Prices for a shared plan range from £2.99 to £7.49 a month for an initial 12-month subscription. However, these increase hugely to £11.99 to £29.99 a month on renewal, making SiteGround one of the more expensive options we’ve seen. These prices are the same for WordPress hosting

Advanced cloud hosting options range from £60 to £240 a month. You can also configure your own custom cloud to ensure you only pay for what you need.

SiteGround’s pricing plans

Shared, WordPress, and WooCommerce hosting

Cloud hosting

Reseller hosting

Testing SiteGround

Ease-of-use and performance are crucial considerations when selecting the right web hosting provider, and we spent some time testing both. To do so, we created a basic website with SiteGround’s cheapest shared hosting plan, and monitored its performance for a 14-day period.

How easy is it to create a website with SiteGround?

Creating a new website with SiteGround is very straightforward. When you log into your main dashboard for the first time, you will see a "Websites" tab at the top of the screen. We navigated here and found a useful, easy-to-understand list of instructions for getting started.

There are a couple of different options here, including the ability to migrate an existing site. You can also build a site with some of the best website builders and systems including WordPress, WordPress and WooCommerce, Weebly, or from scratch. If you have more hosting knowledge, you can install your own CMS.

We selected the WordPress option, and our site was published within a couple of minutes. The entire setup process was carefully guided, and we had no issues whatsoever. From here, ongoing management is completed via the main WordPress admin panel.

How does SiteGround perform?

To test SiteGround’s performance, we created a basic WordPress website and monitored its uptime and server response times for a 14-day period. The results were a little surprising.

As a high-end hosting option, we expected SiteGround to have excellent performance. But the 482ms average server response time sits at the high end of the acceptable range. For comparison, the best hosts give figures around 200ms.

In saying that, the minimum and maximum response times were only 438ms and 561ms respectively, showing little fluctuation. The 99.99% uptime figure is also great to see, and our site was only offline twice for a total of two minutes during the testing period.

Alternatives to SiteGround

SiteGround is an excellent web host, but its somewhat high prices and average performance will concern some users. There are plenty of alternatives on the market, and two of our favorites are Hostinger and Hostwinds.

Hostinger, for one, is known as one of the most affordable web hosts around. However, it’s also one of the most powerful, and it tops our list of the best web hosting services. This is largely because of its generous features, great security, and excellent performance.

Like SiteGround, Hostinger’s cheaper plans come with quite limited storage. But its customer service is excellent, and the native hPanel control panel is super easy to use. On the downside, there are no high-end hosting options, and renewal prices are quite high, but Hostinger is an excellent option for most users.

In a similar way to SiteGround, Hostwinds offers high-end hosting solutions that focus on features rather than price. Because of this, it’s a little more expensive than providers like Hostinger, but you really do get what you pay for.

For example, Hostwinds’ performance is among the best we’ve seen. Its customer service team is fast and responsive, and there are loads of options for those who need rapid scalability. The cPanel control panel, Softaculous one-click installer, and built-in site builder are all excellent tools for beginners, but there’s plenty for advanced users as well.

SiteGround’s features compared to the competition

*First term discount price

SiteGround: Final verdict

SiteGround is a highly-rated web hosting provider, and it’s easy to see why. Sure, its prices are a little high and its performance could be better, but these are minor flaws when compared to the services on offer.

For example, SiteGround makes use of an excellent native control panel. It offers loads of advanced features, including a full staging environment and built-in caching. Creating a new website is super-easy, and the user interface is beginner-friendly and intuitive.

Now, SiteGround is a little more expensive than many of the alternatives. However, this is a case of getting what you pay for. The customer service is excellent, and despite the below-average server response times, you can expect passable performance as well.

At the end of the day, we’d suggest considering SiteGround if you’re looking for a high-end hosting provider that focuses on delivering advanced solutions rather than the lowest prices. If you need a budget option, look elsewhere.

Further reading on web hosting

To find out more about the best alternatives to Siteground, check out our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting? . Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

Namecheap offers some of the best web hosting solutions for those on a tight budget. It provides very competitively priced shared hosting, advanced dedicated servers, and everything in between.

Namecheap review: Snapshot

You shouldn’t expect too many advanced features if you decide to use Namecheap. It does come with a neat website builder, the Softaculous one-click installer, a built-in CDN, and automatic backups, but there’s little else worth noting.

Competitors such as Hostinger, which offers similarly-priced hosting, and GoDaddy—a little more expensive—come with a much greater range of tools. For example, Hostinger is known for its excellent security features, which is something that Namecheap doesn’t really focus on.

As our Namecheap review shows, though, it’s a solid hosting provider that attracts people because of its low prices. Really, you will be doing well to find comparable hosting solutions for a lower price.

Score: 4/5

Read on for our full and detailed Namecheap review.

Namecheap's competitors

How does Namecheap compare to its main competitors?

Namecheap: Key features

Unfortunately, Namecheap is far from the most advanced web hosting provider we’ve used. It lacks certain tools and management features. There are still a few things worth outlining, though.

For one, Namecheap offers the Softaculous one-click installer, which enables you to install a range of scripts with minimal effort. These include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and various other popular apps.

Users will also benefit from the attractive automatic backup tool. This is available with all plans except the cheapest shared hosting option, and it enables you to schedule automatic backups for your website and all of its data and files.

There’s a free website builder included with all shared hosting plans. This is a little basic, but it features a drag-and-drop editor, more than 200 intuitive templates, and the ability to import your existing website for editing. You can also add ecommerce payment gateways and multi-lingual support, among other things.

The Supersonic CDN is another neat feature. This is designed to help you deliver your content as fast as possible by loading it from a nearby CDN server rather than your hosting server. All shared plans come with free access to the Supersonic CDN, which includes basic DDoS protection and up to 50GB of traffic a month. Premium plans are also available for those with more traffic.

Namecheap: What’s new in 2022?

Namecheap provides basic information about product and software updates via its native blog. Here, you will find a range of different types of content, including the aforementioned updates, informational articles, and eye-catching news from across the web.

On the whole, Namecheap is a reputable and widely-used hosting provider that we expect to remain at the forefront of the hosting industry going forwards. It doesn’t offer much in the way of advanced tools or features, but it remains a great option for those who want bare-bones hosting without all of the bells and whistles.

Namecheap: Pricing

Namecheap offers a range of domain registration and web hosting services, including shared, reseller, VPS, WordPress, and dedicated server hosting. There are three shared hosting subscription options, with prices ranging from £1.21 to £4.06 a month for an annual plan (£3.65 to £7.73 with monthly payments).

Reseller plans start from £17.02 a month, WordPress hosting ranges from £3.98 to £11.32 a month (with monthly payments), and VPS solutions begin at £8.05 a month. Or, you may like to go for a high-end dedicated server, with prices here starting at £40.08 a month.

It’s also worth noting that first-time Namecheap users will benefit from a 30-day money-back guarantee on selected plans.

Namecheap's pricing plans

Shared hosting

WordPress hosting

VPS hosting

Reseller hosting

*This price only applies to the first year of your subscription, and renewal prices will be significantly higher.

Testing Namecheap

In order to comprehensively compare Namecheap to the competition, we analysed a series of its features and tools to see how it performed. This included creating a WordPress website with its built-in website builder, checking its server response times, and seeing how simple it was to set up an SSL certificate.

How do you create a WordPress website with Namecheap?

After signing up for a new Namecheap subscription, you will be able to start creating a new website. However, this can be a little confusing, especially if you don’t have a lot of web development experience.

There are no automatic site creation processes or prompts, and you will need to head to your cPanel control panel to get started. WordPress or another CMS can be installed through the Softaculous one-click installer.

Here, you’ll have access to a number of configuration options. You can set your website’s name, description, and admin login details. Add a theme, if you would like, and hit the "Install" button. Installation took no more than a few seconds for us, and we were then able to start building our new site through the WordPress.org CMS.

Of course, you could use one of the best website builders or an alternative CMS if WordPress doesn’t suit your needs. Popular options such as Joomla and Drupal are available, along with various niche and lesser-known choices.

How does Namecheap perform?

To test the performance of Namecheap’s basic shared hosting plans, we used Uptime.com to monitor a test site for a week. This delivered an uptime figure of 100%, which is excellent. However, the average server response times were concerning.

For our Namecheap site, these ranged from a high 625ms to a very high 1.55s, with an average of 718ms. This is approximately double what we would consider competitive, as most shared hosts sit in the 200ms to 400ms range.

We also tested the speed of our simple site built on Namecheap’s shared hosting. According to Dotcom-Tools’ Website Speed Test, the average page load speed was 1.9s, which is terrible.

However, Namecheap may still be fast enough for those who are looking for a budget hosting provider. You will struggle to find anyone cheaper, and the performance metrics will be acceptable for some.

How easy is it to set up an SSL certificate?

The native Namecheap SSL tool can be used to install a new SSL certificate on your domain. This can be accessed via your cPanel control panel, and is intuitive and beginner-friendly.

However, the Namecheap SSL tool can only be used to add an SSL certificate that’s been purchased via Namecheap. Third-party certificates aren’t supported, which can make things a little difficult if you want to add one.

To use a third-party certificate, you will need to install it manually. This isn’t an easy process, but at least Namecheap offers decent documentation to help you out.

Alternatives to Namecheap

Namecheap offers some of the cheapest shared hosting solutions in the world, but don’t expect anything too fancy if you decide to use it. It does come with a cPanel control panel, which has become the industry standard, along with a free domain and a suite of streamlined one-click installations.

Prices for a Namecheap hosting plan start from an industry-leading £3.65 a month. And 24/7 live chat and online ticket support are available for those with issues.

Hostinger offers similarly priced hosting solutions, with its cheapest shared plan coming in at just £1.99 a month. However, this price is only available with a four-year subscription, and it will increase significantly for shorter subscription terms and on renewal.

On top of this, Hostinger boasts an intuitive, beginner-friendly hPanel control panel, which is arguably better than the popular cPanel. Both live chat and online ticketing are available when you need technical support, and one-click installations can be used for more than 100 different applications.

Meanwhile, GoDaddy is slightly more expensive, but it offers a great selection of different hosting options. Its cheapest shared hosting comes in at £3.99 a month, but its higher-end options are quite competitively-priced.

Like Namecheap, GoDaddy offers a cPanel control panel and a free domain. Take advantage of the Installatron one-click installer, and reach out to the support team via live chat or phone when you need help.

Namecheap's features compared to the competition

Namecheap: The verdict

At the end of the day, the main thing that Namecheap is known for is its rock-bottom prices. If budget is your main concern, it sits alongside Hostinger as one of the best hosting providers in the world.

For less than a couple of dollars per month, you will have access to a basic website builder, automatic backups, a built-in CDN, and the Softaculous one-click installer. Unfortunately, though, many advanced features are lacking or completely absent.

On top of this, Namecheap’s performance is a concern. The 100% uptime figure was excellent, but the slow page load speeds and long server response times will be deal-breakers for many people.

Installing a new SSL certificate is also quite difficult if you don’t purchase a premium option from Namecheap itself. Starting a new WordPress website was quite easy, though, which was nice to see. And if you have trouble, the 24/7 live chat and online ticketing support is more than adequate.

If you’re on a tight budget and price is your priority, Namecheap should be right up there with your top choices. For many, though, the company’s poor performance and limited features will simply be too much to overlook.

Further reading on web hosting

To find out more about the best alternatives to Namecheap, check out our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting? If you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

Liquid Web is right up there with the best web hosting services in the world, especially for larger businesses and enterprises looking for a high-end solution. As our Liquid Web review will show, this company offers a range of managed WordPress, cloud, VPS, and dedicated server hosting options.

Liquid Web review: Snapshot

All products are backed by modern server infrastructure, and Liquid Web is known to have some of the best performance in the industry. The managed WordPress solutions, provided through partner Nexcess, are excellent. Setting up and building your site is extremely straightforward, and you will benefit from a neat range of management tools.

In addition, Liquid Web boasts some of the best customer service we’ve seen. There aren’t any budget options, but the company still offers great value for money for websites that require that little bit more power.

Score: 4/5

Read on for the full Liquid Web review.

Liquid Web's competitors

How does Liquid Web compare to its main competitors?

Liquid Web: Key features

Liquid Web is quite expensive compared to many of the other options on the market, but it’s really a case of you get what you pay for. The exact features you gain will obviously depend on the type of hosting you require, but there are numerous advanced tools available for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

It claims that its customer service team includes “The Most Helpful Humans in Hosting.” This is obviously a biased claim, but there’s little to suggest that it’s incorrect. 24/7/365 support is available, and all support streams come with an initial response guarantee.

For starters, both phone and live chat support streams are backed by a 59-second initial response guarantee. Online ticketing comes with a 59-minute initial response guarantee.

One of Liquid Web’s standout product offerings is its excellent managed WordPress hosting, which is provided through its Nexcess platform. This is designed for those who want to create an ecommerce store, but there’s no reason you can’t build any other type of site with it.

Along with full technical management, you will benefit from unlimited pageviews, full root server access, and the ability to scale when necessary. All plans come with automatic daily backups, there’s a full staging site that you can use to test edits before sending them live, and all plans come with a selection of developer tools.

All VPS hosting plans come with the choice of three different control panels. Go for the popular cPanel, take advantage of the growing power of Plesk, or use the less popular but arguably even more powerful InterWorx interface.

Another standout feature is Liquid Web’s excellent selection of add-ons. You can purchase as many or as few of these as you would like, but the chances are that you will find at least a couple of useful tools here.

Liquid Web: What’s new in 2022?

Liquid Web is an industry leader in the cloud, VPS, and dedicated server hosting market, and it’s easy to see why. Each of its hosting products is backed by modern technology and infrastructure, and you can rest assured that you will benefit from reliable, high-quality service across the board.

Product updates are regularly posted in the company’s press room, and they provide great information about the new tools you can expect. Most recently, Liquid Web added StellarWP to its group of brands, enabling it to offer higher-quality managed WordPress solutions than ever before.

Recent partnerships with Threat Stack and Alert Logic are great to see. With these, you will benefit from better security than ever before, enabling you to rest assured that your website and its assets will be properly protected.

Finally, Liquid Web recently upgraded its dedicated server hosting options. By adding Intel Xeon Scalable technology, the company has made it even easier to add extra resources to your hosting plan and grow your website when required.

Liquid Web: Pricing

Liquid Web focuses on high-end web hosting solutions, with a selection of managed WordPress, VPS, cloud, and dedicated server options. There are no budget shared or unmanaged WordPress products, so look elsewhere if you want either of these.

The cheapest managed WordPress plan starts at £7.79 a month (renews at £15.58 a month after six months). High-end plans increase to £819 a month, but this provides some of the best managed WordPress hosting we’ve seen.

Linux VPS options range from £28.70 to £130.39 a month for an annual subscription, with Windows options ranging from £65.60 to £154.99 a month. Advanced cloud hosting starts at £217.31 a month, and dedicated physical servers begin at £163.19 a month.

Liquid Web's pricing plans

Below are a sample of each of Liquid Web's types of hosting plans - we've chosen to show one of each in comparison given there are many options.

*Monthly prices for managed WordPress plans double after the first six months.

Testing Liquid Web

In order to comprehensively compare Liquid Web to the competition, we analysed a series of its features and tools to see how it performed. This included creating a WordPress website, checking its server response times, and seeing how simple it was to set up an SSL certificate.

How do you create a WordPress website with Liquid Web?

Liquid Web’s managed WordPress solutions are offered through Nexcess, a partner brand that falls under the Liquid Web umbrella. With these, creating a WordPress website is very straightforward. A 14-day free trial is available for new users, and you won’t even have to add payment details to take advantage of it.

When you sign up for your first account, you will be guided through a short (optional) tutorial to help you get started. The WordPress software will automatically be installed for your first site, which means that starting your build is as simple as heading to your WordPress dashboard and beginning to add your own content.

You will benefit from numerous management tools through the native Nexcess control panel. These are all targeted at WordPress users and will help you optimise your site’s performance and design.

How does Liquid Web perform?

To test the performance of our LiquidWeb site, we monitored uptime and server response times across a seven-day period. We used the popular Uptime.com monitoring program.

For starters, we saw a 100% uptime figure, which is literally as good as you can get. The average server response time came in at just 214ms. This is right up there with the best performance we’ve seen, so you can rest assured that your site will be fast and responsive.

In general, the server response times stayed between 180ms and 300ms, suggesting that performance is consistent. There were five small spikes above 300ms, including one that stretched to 721ms, but these were brief and shouldn’t cause too many issues.

How easy is it to set up an SSL certificate?

Adding an SSL certificate to your website is crucial to ensure that your files and data transmissions are secured and protected from prying eyes. The exact process of adding SSL certificates will vary according to the type of hosting you’re using, but it’s an extremely easy process with Liquid Web’s managed WordPress solutions.

By default, your site won’t have any SSL certificate installed. You will have the option to either purchase a third-party certificate through Nexcess, or import your own certificate.

Purchasing a premium certificate may be worth considering if you’re going to be dealing with a lot of sensitive customer information. However, there are numerous free options that you can import, and these will provide more than enough protection for the average WordPress site.

Alternatives to Liquid Web

Liquid Web offers high-end hosting solutions targeted at larger businesses and enterprises. It doesn’t have any real budget options, and you should look elsewhere if low prices are your number-one concern.

Fortunately, though, all of Liquid Web’s plans come with full technical management, enabling you to focus on your site and its content. Daily backups are available with the managed WordPress and selected other plans, and all users will benefit from impressive 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support.

Another popular option is Kinsta, which focuses on managed WordPress hosting. It’s a little more expensive than Liquid Web, but it’s among the best managed WordPress hosts we’ve seen.

One thing that Kinsta is known for is its excellent performance. All plans come with automatic daily backups, and the entire service is aimed at beginners and those with little technical management experience.

Cloudways offers advanced cloud hosting solutions that rival Liquid Web’s high-end plans. It enables you to choose hosting from five different cloud networks, including Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. This versatility is excellent, and you won’t find comparable cloud hosting at a lower price anywhere.

In addition, Cloudways cloud hosting is backed by 24/7 live chat and online ticketing. Free site migrations are available, all plans are highly scalable, and there are no lock-in contracts or long-term commitments required.

Liquid Web's features compared to the competition

Liquid Web: The verdict

All things considered, Liquid Web is a top hosting option for large websites that require advanced server infrastructure. Budget shared and cheap unmanaged hosting offerings are notably absent, but the selection of managed WordPress, VPS, dedicated server, and cloud hosting options is excellent.

In addition, all of Liquid Web’s products are backed by premium customer service and a range of advanced features. Setting up a new WordPress site with the managed WordPress hosting options shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes, and there’s a 14-day free trial that enables you to test the platform.

Another thing that Liquid Web stands out for is its excellent performance. Our test site had 100% uptime across our seven-day test period, and the average server response time was among the best we’ve seen.

The bottom line: If you have money to spend on an advanced hosting solution, Liquid Web is definitely one of the best options available. But if you’re looking for a budget option, you will need to go for a different platform.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs, and discover the best VPS hosting or best cloud hosting services. If you're looking to create a new website, make sure you look over the best website builders before making your choice.

Hostwinds offers a series of hosting plans for different uses and requirements, and ranks among the best web hosting services as a result. There’s a hosting plan for everyone, with options ranging from cheap shared hosting to advanced cloud hosting and dedicated servers.

Hostwinds review: Snapshot

Although it’s a little more expensive than some competitors, our Hostwinds review will show that this company offers excellent value for money across the board.

On top of this, every aspect of Hostwinds’ service is backed by advanced tools and excellent performance. Shared hosting comes with a leading 99.9999% uptime guarantee, and we saw nothing to suggest that this is an exaggeration. This places the company among the best web hosting services on performance alone.

In addition, you will benefit from a neat cPanel control panel. Installing scripts and apps is very straightforward thanks to the Softaculous one-click installer, and there’s even a Weebly-based site builder to help you get started.

If you’re looking for a solid hosting provider with a range of great features, Hostwinds is a decent option. But if value for money is your priority, competitors such as Bluehost and Hostinger could be better suited to your needs.

Score: 4.5/5

Read on for the full Hostwinds review.

Hostwinds' competitors

How does Hostwinds compare to its main competitors?

Hostwinds: Key features

Although Hostwinds is a little expensive compared to some of the alternatives, it boasts an excellent selection of advanced tools and features. Along with the necessary basics, you will benefit from unlimited storage and bandwidth and a suite of management tools.

For starters, Hostwinds offers a basic version of the Weebly website builder with every shared hosting subscription. It’s a little limited, but it’s a great way for those with little time and tech skills to get online.

Another neat tool is the Softaculous App Installer. With this, you can install a selection of CMS, scripts and other useful programs to help you get the most out of your hosting account. Simply select the script you want to install and follow the prompts. In general, installations shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

If you’re transferring an existing website to Hostwinds from another hosting provider, you will love the free site migration service. In short, the Hostwinds technical support team will take care of the entire migration, transferring your site and its files to your new server.

Hostwinds also offers built-in Cloudflare integration, which enables you to optimise your site’s performance and security. Benefit from the power of one of the world’s largest CDNs and take advantage of the built-in DDoS protection.

Hostwinds: What's new in 2022?

Hostwinds is in the process of overhauling its website and hosting plans, addressing ongoing issues with the aim of improving the customer experience.

For starters, the entire website has been re-designed, removing the broken links and navigation issues that we’ve found so frustrating in the past. Multi-lingual support has also been added, making Hostwinds that little bit more accessible to non-English speakers.

The support site has also been updated, with mobile accessibility added to all tutorials. The product documentation, which was sometimes a little dense and hard to navigate, has been separated into clear blocks, and new content is being added regularly.

On top of this, the company has recently discontinued its Reseller hosting line. Existing customers won’t be affected, but new subscriptions are unavailable at the current time. Overall, it’s nice to see Hostwinds addressing issues that have been around for a while.

Hostwinds: Pricing

Hostwinds offers a selection of hosting options, including shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated servers. There are three shared options, with prices ranging from £4.30 to £6.76 a month for an initial subscription. Note, though, that prices will increase significantly on renewal.

Managed and unmanaged VPS hosting is available in both Windows and Linux flavours across a wide range of options for storage, RAM, and bandwidth. Linux VPS starts at £6.76 a month for a managed plan or £4.09 a month for an unmanaged solution. Windows VPS starts from £10.45 a month for managed hosting or £9.01 for unmanaged.

Cloud hosting starts from 0.0057 per hour (approximately £4.09 a month), while more advanced dedicated servers are available from £86.93 a month.

Hostwinds' pricing plans

Shared, business, and reseller hosting

*We’ve listed the standard prices here. Expect to receive a discount of up to 50% for your first billing cycle.

Testing Hostwinds

In order to comprehensively compare Hostwinds to the competition, we analysed a series of its features and tools to see how it performed. This included creating a WordPress website, checking its server response times, and seeing how simple it was to set up an SSL certificate.

How do you create a WordPress website with Hostwinds?

Creating a new WordPress site with Hostwinds is a very straightforward process. Hostwinds offers the Softaculous one-click installer, which you can use to install WordPress—or other programs—to your hosting in a matter of minutes.

When you log into your cPanel control panel for the first time, you will be prompted to install WordPress and start your first site. Simply click on the button, configure any of the settings you would like to, and hit install.

The full installation process took us no more than a couple of minutes, which was nice to see. A placeholder theme was added to aid with the site creation process, and a selection of useful tips was provided to help beginners get started.

Once you’ve installed WordPress, you can begin customising your site by navigating to your WordPress admin panel. Here, you will find all of the expected editing and site management tools. You will also be able to access the full theme and plugin libraries as required.

How does Hostwinds perform?

To test Hostwinds’ performance, we created a simple WordPress site and monitored it using Uptime.com. Both availability and server response time was monitored regularly over a seven-day period, and the results were great to see.

For one, our tests returned a 100% uptime figure, which is as good as you can get. This is consistent with Hostwinds’ industry-leading 99.9999% uptime guarantee.

The average server response time of 285ms was also nice to see. This places Hostwinds’ shared hosting up there with the best performing on the market. What’s more, the response times were very consistent, with few spikes and a slowest response of just 524ms.

How easy is it to set up an SSL certificate?

Installing a valid SSL certificate is crucial to ensure that all data transmissions to and from your website are encrypted and protected from prying eyes. Many hosting companies provide streamlined SSL management tools, but Hostwinds isn’t one of them.

Instead, it relies on the stock standard cPanel SSL tools. With these, you can install and manage your SSL installations, but it’s not the simplest process we’ve seen.

By default, a self-signed SSL certificate will be installed. This is better than nothing, but we’d recommend upgrading to a third-party SSL for added security. If you follow the prompts to add a custom SSL, HostWinds will encourage you to purchase a premium certificate.

However, it generally isn’t necessary to pay for an SSL certificate unless you have a large site dealing with a lot of sensitive data transmissions, especially with the suite of free third-party options available.

To install a free SSL certificate from a third-party source, you will need to upload it directly within your SSL management panel. This is relatively easy to do, but beginners with little experience will likely become confused by the technical terminology that’s used.

Alternatives to Hostwinds

Hostwinds has worked through some major improvements over the past few months, and it now sits alongside the best hosting options on the market. It is a little expensive, though, with the cheapest shared hosting plan starting from £6.50 a month.

This does, however, unlock access to an excellent range of features, so the value for money is still great. You will benefit from a full cPanel control panel, as well as good support, unlimited storage and bandwidth, and a great selection of security and data backup tools.

Another popular option is Bluehost, which offers budget hosting from just £6.50 a month after the discounted initial term. This makes it one of the more affordable options available, and the company has a great reputation as a beginner-friendly host.

With a base-level plan, you will be restricted to just 50GB of SSD storage. Like Hostwinds, though, Bluehost offers a free domain, top-notch support, and streamlined one-click installations. However, its security tools could be better.

Alternatively, you might like to use Hostinger if you’re on a tight budget. Its shared hosting starts at just £2.99 a month, and you won’t find better value for money anywhere.

As to be expected, hosting that’s this cheap does come with limitations, and you will only be able to connect one website with 30GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth. Hostinger is known for its excellent security tools, though, and its native hPanel control panel is arguably even more beginner-friendly than Hostwinds’ cPanel.

Hostwinds' features compared to the competition

Hostwinds: The verdict

All things considered, there’s a lot to like about Hostwinds and its web hosting products. It offers everything from cheap shared hosting to advanced dedicated server and cloud solutions. And everything is backed by the power of modern server infrastructure and a range of great features.

One thing that stands out about Hostwinds’ shared hosting is its great performance. During our tests, we experienced 100% uptime and industry-leading server response times.

Hostwinds also makes it easy to start a new site, with full access to the Softaculous one-click installer and a basic Weebly website builder integration. Benefit from the power of the Cloudflare content delivery network, and ensure your site is fully secured at all times.

On the downside, Hostwinds isn’t the cheapest host we’ve seen. Competitors like Hostinger present better options for those on a tight budget. Installing an SSL certificate will require some technical knowledge, and the company really doesn’t advertise its prices very well.

At the end of the day, though, there’s a reason why Hostwinds is one of the world’s most popular web hosts. It offers excellent service across the board, making it an option well worth considering.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs, and discover the best VPS hosting or best cloud hosting services. If you're looking to create a new website, make sure you look over the best website builders before making your choice. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting?

As part of our search for the best web hosting services, we took a closer look at eco-friendly hosting solutions. With its 300% renewable energy match and other green actions, GreenGeeks is a clear leader in this space.

GreenGeeks review: Snapshot

GreenGeeks offers competitively priced hosting solutions backed by excellent security and a range of other neat features. You will have to sign up for a long-term plan to access the best prices, though, and the self-help resources on offer are very basic. Competitors like Hostinger certainly offer much more budget-friendly hosting, which is worth keeping in mind.

We also monitored GreenGeeks’ performance over a two-week period, and the results were generally positive. Creating a new WordPress site is quite straightforward, and in general, there’s a lot to like about this company and its web hosting solutions—particularly if you’re concerned about the environmental impact your website may be having.

Score: 4/5

Read on for the full GreenGeeks review.

GreenGeek's competitors

How does GreenGeeks compare to its main competitors?

GreenGeeks: Key features

Although it’s mainly known for its eco-friendly hosting solutions, GreenGeeks still offers numerous attractive features with its hosting products. One notable absence is the lack of an native website builder, but the inclusion of a basic Weebly-based builder means that this certainly isn’t a dealbreaker.

GreenGeeks markets itself as the world’s leading environmentally friendly web hosting provider, and we’ve found nothing to suggest that this isn’t the case. A huge amount of energy is used across the globe to run and maintain the data centres required for the internet, and this can have significant environmental impacts.

In an attempt to create the most eco-friendly hosting possible, GreenGeeks uses a 300% green energy match strategy. Basically, this means that the company purchases and injects three times as much renewable energy into the grid as it uses. It also works with One Tree Planted to plant a tree for every new hosting account started on its platform.

All websites built with GreenGeeks hosting will benefit from a number of integrated security tools. The shared hosting plans come with a free SSL certificate and automatic backups, as well as proactive security scanning and server monitoring.

If malware or other security issues are found, the team will work with you to ensure they’re dealt with as soon as possible. There’s a powerful firewall protecting all servers, which is designed to reduce the risk of hacking and other security breaches. All of the company’s hardware and infrastructure is fully redundant, ensuring your site remains online as much as possible.

Another thing that stands out is GreenGeeks’ range of data centre locations. It boasts three data centres in the USA, one in Canada, and one in the Netherlands. By selecting a centre that’s close to your main audience, you can ensure your site's performance and reliability will be as good as possible.

All GreenGeeks users can take advantage of a number of attractive guarantees. For one, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, which essentially means that you can test the platform without risk. However, note that you won’t be refunded any domain registration, setup, or transfer fees.

There’s also a neat 99.9% uptime guarantee. This is quite normal across the hosting industry, but it’s still something that’s good to see. The quality-of-service guarantee also promises 24/7 email support and live chat and telephone support.

GreenGeeks: What’s new in 2022?

Unfortunately, GreenGeeks doesn’t release specific information or make large announcements when it updates its products. This can make it a little difficult to keep track of recent changes.

In saying that, it’s immediately obvious that the company is committed to staying at the forefront of the hosting industry. It’s a leader when it comes to green hosting, and it offers a suite of advanced features that are up there with the best in the industry.

The bottom line: you can rest assured that GreenGeeks will continue to integrate new tools to ensure it grows as a hosting provider.

GreenGeeks: Pricing

GreenGeeks offers a selection of hosting products, including shared, VPS, WordPress, and reseller hosting. There’s also a Weebly-based website builder (from £2.04 a month), and all shared hosting plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The most basic shared hosting starts at just £2.42 a month, but you will have to sign up for three years to access this price. Monthly payments are much higher at £8.98 a month.

VPS hosting ranges from £33.58 to £92.42 a month. WordPress hosting ranges from £2.48 to £9.20 a month. Both of these options are available with monthly billing and on from there to three years. In the tables below, we’ve taken a closer look.

GreenGeek's pricing plans

Shared hosting

VPS hosting

Reseller hosting

WordPress hosting

*GreenGeeks offers monthly, annual, biannual, and triannual billing with its shared hosting products. Monthly prices decrease with longer subscription terms

Testing GreenGeeks

In order to comprehensively compare GreenGeeks to the competition, we analysed a series of its features and tools to see how it performed. This included creating a WordPress website, and checking its server response times.

How do you create a WordPress site with GreenGeeks?

Before you can create a website with GreenGeeks, you will need to register a new account. This is quite a straightforward process, and you shouldn’t have too many problems if you follow the prompts.

Once you’ve signed in to your account, you will find that there are a few different options for starting a WordPress site. There’s a Quick Launch Wizard available via the GreenGeeks dashboard, or you can head to your control panel and use the Softaculous one-click installer to get started.

Softaculous can be used to install any of a great number of apps and other programs with the click of a button, making it a great option for beginners with limited tech skills. But we took advantage of the Quick Launch Wizard, and we were very impressed with how easy it made things. First, follow the prompts and specify that you want to build your site on WordPress.

Then, you can choose whether or not to have a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate installed, select a theme from the WordPress.org template library, and add any of a number of popular plugins. Hit the "Create My Website" button, and you should have access to your new WordPress site within minutes.

The entire process took us no more than two or three minutes, and then we were able to access the WordPress management dashboard and all of the editing tools that come with it.

How does GreenGeeks perform?

When you’re choosing a web hosting provider, it’s extremely important to consider its performance record. To test GreenGeeks’ performance, we created a simple WordPress website and monitored its uptime and server response times using Pingdom.com’s monitoring tools.

Over a 14-day period, there were a few interesting things to note. For the first two or so days, the average server response time sat around 1500ms, with a maximum of 1580ms. This is extremely slow, and represents terrible performance and very slow servers.

However, after the first two days of testing, the average server response time dropped significantly, hovering consistently at less than 350ms. The minimum response time was 241ms, and the overall average came in at 407ms. This is okay, and the results look much better if the first two days are discounted as anomalies.

Now, our WordPress site was offline for a total of one hour and 22 minutes, which gave an uptime of 99.59% across the test period. This outage occurred at the end of the first two days, coinciding with the decrease in server response times. Because of this, we can assume that the GreenGeeks team switched our website to a different server, or made significant configurational changes to improve overall performance.

Alternatives to GreenGeeks

If you’re looking for a hosting provider with a commitment to environmentally friendly business practices, you just can’t go past GreenGeeks. It boasts a 300% renewable energy match, which basically means that for every unit of energy it uses, it injects three renewable units into the grid via various methods.

GreenGeeks is a little expensive, though, and Hostinger certainly takes the points if you’re looking for a budget solution. Its cheapest shared hosting plan comes in at just £1.99 a month, and the selection of tools on offer has to be seen to be believed.

For example, Hostinger is known for its excellent security features, which clearly eclipse GreenGeeks’. Its shared hosting plans are a little underpowered, with limited storage and bandwidth, but the sheer value for money here makes it a great option for small websites.

DreamHost is another popular alternative to GreenGeeks, particularly for those who are concerned with environmentally-friendly hosting. Although the company doesn’t advertise it heavily, a closer look at DreamHost’s business practices reveals a commitment to sustainability—even though it’s certainly not as active in the field as GreenGeeks.

In addition, DreamHost offers a decent selection of hosting products, with its cheapest shared plans starting at just £1.63 a month. All shared hosting plans come with a free SSL certificate, generous storage, and unmetered bandwidth, although it’s worth noting that customer support is a little limited.

GreenGeeks' features compared to the competition

GreenGeeks: The verdict

All things considered, GreenGeeks’ web hosting solutions are among some of the best on the market. Its price structure is a little complicated, but it offers some of the most affordable shared hosting available.

In addition, it’s extremely easy to sign up for a new account and start your first website. The Quick Launch Wizard will guide you through the process of creating a WordPress site.

The performance of our test site was a little interesting. After the first few days, it was almost flawless, although the high server response times and significant downtime at the beginning of the monitoring period was a little concerning.

The bottom line here is that we’d highly recommend considering GreenGeeks if you’re looking for a competitively priced, reliable hosting provider. Its eco-friendly solutions are an added bonus, particularly for those concerned about their impact on the environment.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Once you've found the best website builder, and are looking for cheaper hosting, look into the best cheap web hosting for your next project, or even the best free web hosting if you're on a tight budget. If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business.

Do you want your site to focus on European and UK customers? Ensure your chosen host is among the best European web hosting providers. Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

In our Cloudways review, we take a look at one of the best web hosting services, in the sphere of the best cloud hosting, on the market.

Cloudways review: Snapshot

Cloudways offers a selection of powerful, highly configurable managed cloud hosting options, and it’s known for its excellent performance and great value for money. Its cloud hosting solutions are among the best we’ve seen.

The company brings a neat combination of power, affordability, and extra features, making its hosting a viable option for everything from small WordPress websites to international ecommerce stores.

Its prices are slightly higher than those you would pay for the equivalent shared hosting, but there are no long-term contracts or deceptive introductory price offers. Hourly billing is available, which means that you will only ever pay for what you need.

In addition, Cloudways services are backed by a suite of neat features, industry-leading performance, reliable servers, and a very friendly customer service team. If you’re looking for a highly scalable host that enables you to upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time, Cloudways is worth considering.

Score: 4.5/5

Read on for our full Cloudways review.

Quick competitor comparison

How does Cloudways compare to its main competitors?

Cloudways: Key features

Cloudways is known as a high-end cloud hosting company, and it naturally offers a suite of excellent features to complement its services. One thing that stands out immediately is the company’s focus on security.

For example, you will be covered by everything from dedicated firewalls and DDoS attack protection. The company boasts advanced bot detection and blocking, two-factor authentication, and automatic security patches to ensure your website is protected at all times.

Another standout feature is Cloudways’ custom PHP app installer. Automatic installation is available for WordPress, WooCommerce, Laravel, and Magento, but you can add custom apps with the click of a button. Simply install a custom app, launch it, and follow the prompts to add whatever scripts you require. A little developer knowledge will be useful here.

One of the keys to Cloudways’ excellent performance with WordPress websites is its proprietary Breeze WordPress plugin. This caching plugin is designed to help you reduce page load times, integrate with a CDN, and minify your code files. It’s automatically installed when you add the WordPress app to your server, and it’s designed to be easy to use and beginner friendly.

All Cloudways users will also have access to 24/7 real-time monitoring services. Along with the expected security monitoring, you will benefit from resource usage, server health, and various other types of useful monitoring tools.

Last, but certainly not least, Cloudways offers a selection of add-ons that you can use to manage and add functionality to your website. For example, there’s a number of email add-ons, a CDN, and a DNS Made Easy app for streamlined DNS management.

Cloudways: What’s new in 2022?

Cloudways features an Updates Tips and Tricks category as part of its blog. Expect one to five-plus articles to be posted here a month. These tend to detail minor updates, and the platform doesn’t appear to have changed a great deal in the past 12 months.

The most recent update, at the end of December 2021, discussed the Cloudways Staging 2.0 staging area for website testing. The Breeze WordPress plugin, developed by Cloudways, for Cloudways users, is regularly updated.

Cloudways: Pricing

Cloudways’ pricing is a little on the complicated side. This is largely due to the number of hosting options available.

For starters, you can select from five cloud networks, including DigitalOcean, Linode, VULTR, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud. These all come with a selection of different subscription options, and some networks are further separated into Standard and Premium plans. Hourly and monthly payments are available, but there are no long-term subscription discounts.

To give you an example of what this looks like, we analysed the DigitalOcean plans a little further. Prices for the Standard plans range from £8.41 to £67.25 a month, with premium options coming in at £10.09 to £80.70 a month. Custom plans are also available, enabling you to select the exact amount of storage, RAM, and bandwidth you require.

All plans on all networks come with a suite of features including free SSL certificates, dedicated firewalls, unlimited app installs, and automatic backups.

Cloudways’ pricing plans

*Significant discounts are available with longer-term subscriptions, and you may be required to pay more on renewal.

Testing Cloudways

To test Cloudways, we created a simple WordPress website and monitored its uptime and server response times for two weeks. The majority of websites are built on WordPress, so it’s important to perform tests to determine how well a host is suited to doing this.

How easy is it to create a WordPress website with Cloudways?

Installing WordPress on your new Cloudways server is a very straightforward process. To begin, head to the "Applications" tab at the top of your main management dashboard. Select the "WordPress" option, hit install, and wait a couple of minutes for the platform to do its work.

You will be given a temporary domain name, enabling you to start building your website without a custom domain. Your WordPress admin login details can be found on the Application page, enabling you to log into your dashboard and begin designing.

All things considered, creating a new WordPress website with Cloudways is very easy to do, and you shouldn’t run into any issues.

How well does Cloudways perform?

After a 14-day test period with Pingdom’s website monitoring tools, we can comfortably state that Cloudways is one of the best-performing hosts that we’ve tested.

For starters, we experienced 100% uptime across the test period. While this could be slightly deceptive due to the short testing time frame, it’s still a huge tick in the platform’s favor.

The average server response times were also excellent. They varied from 261ms to 351ms across the test period, with an average of just 288ms. This means that Cloudways sits at the faster end of the 200 to 400ms response time range that we look for with entry-level hosting. Its performance clearly isn’t anything to be concerned about.

Alternatives to Cloudways

Cloudways is one of the best cloud hosting platforms that we’ve used, but it’s certainly not the only option worth considering.

For example, Hostwinds offers comparable cloud hosting solutions. Its cloud subscriptions start at £0.0058 an hour (approximately £4.20 a month), and these include full management, a 99.9999% uptime guarantee, free website transfers, and more. In addition, Hostwinds uses a cPanel control panel, which is quite intuitive and easy to familiarise yourself with.

It boasts multiple server locations across the world, and you will benefit from some of the best customer service we’ve seen. We’d recommend Hostwinds if you’re looking for a powerful hosting solution for anything from a basic personal blog to an international ecommerce store.

Another popular alternative is Hostinger, especially among those on a tight budget. It doesn’t offer comparable cloud hosting products, but its shared hosting plans start from just £1.99 a month for the first three years. What’s more, all of the company’s hosting solutions are backed by some of the best security practices we’ve seen, and a friendly, knowledgeable customer service team.

Hostinger uses a tidy, native hPanel control panel, which is arguably even better than the widely-used cPanel. Server resources are a little limited with the cheapest shared plans, but it remains our favorite option for those starting a small, basic website on a tight budget.

Cloudways’ features compared to the competition

Cloudways: Final verdict

All things considered, Cloudways clearly offers some of the most versatile web hosting solutions on the market. Its cloud hosting plans are available with hourly billing and no lock-in contracts, and they can be scaled up or down at any point in time.

In addition, Cloudways prices are very competitive. Its cheapest £4.20 a month plan is slightly more expensive than some of the cheapest shared hosting plans on the market, but the value for money on offer is extraordinary.

For one, Cloudways’ hosting is backed by an excellent selection of advanced features. You will be able to take advantage of things like integrated security, 24/7 server monitoring, custom PHP app installation tools, a native WordPress caching plugin, and a suite of add-ons.

Installing a new WordPress website takes no more than a few moments. It’s a beginner-friendly, straightforward process that you shouldn’t have any problems with. In addition, Cloudways boasts excellent performance and reliable server infrastructure.

The bottom line here is that Cloudways is a high-quality, reliable cloud hosting provider, offering some of the best hosting solutions we’ve seen. We’d highly recommend considering it if you’re looking for something a little more powerful than standard shared hosting.

Further reading on web hosting

To find out more about the best alternatives to Cloudways, check out our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting? Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

Once you have built your shiny new website, you will next need to find a way to host it online. Most businesses need an office; but all websites need web hosting, as without it they can't have a presence on the internet.

Web hosting is a service whereby you pay a web host, and they provide you with resources that you'll need to run your website on the internet.

These resources depend on the type of hosting you go for, and the price you pay. You're given access to a certain amount, and it usually concerns storage space and network bandwidth, which are allocated on one or more physical servers in a data center owned by the web hosting provider of your choice.

A wide variety of web hosting services are available, from free web hosting all the way up to enterprise-level packages, and depending on the technical requirements of your site, and your own personal technical knowledge, you can pay for and use these to access adequate site resources for your website.

Below, we'll walk you through everything you need to know, so that you can then make the correct choice for your site's web hosting.

What is web hosting?

A website needs resources to stay online. These resources include such things as storage space for the site’s content, and network bandwidth to let visitors smoothly access it. While the storage makes sure that you have enough space to store all your site’s files, bandwidth is the capacity of data that can be transferred between the website and its users.

The resources are obtained from a server—which is really just a powerful computer that’s connected to the internet at all times. Typically, a web hosting provider will have a large number of servers spread across one or more remote data centers. Depending on the plan you go for, the provider will allocate a set amount of resources on these servers for your website to use.

Web hosting: free or paid?

A question that a lot of budding website owners seem to ask is whether they should invest in a paid web hosting provider, or just choose a free one. Free web hosting services are indeed available, but they are limited in nature and often come with certain strings attached.

Mostly, they are a way for a web hosting provider to advertise their more powerful paid hosting plans. For example, free web hosting will often limit the amount of storage space you can use or the number of visitors who can access your website in a given month. Services may even display intrusive advertisements on your website.

These things can greatly impact the functioning of a professional site, which is why the best free web hosting is only recommended when you are working on a personal project with no financial implications. If, however, you are using your website for professional or business purposes, a paid hosting plan is a must-have.

What are the different types of web hosting?

There are different types of web hosting services available in the market. They differ in aspects such as server speed, disk space, network bandwidth, and various secondary features. Depending on your specific circumstances, you can choose a plan with the resources that fit your needs and budget. Below are a few common forms of web hosting.

• Shared hosting is a type of web hosting where a single server is shared by hundreds of websites. Because the servers are shared, their resources are divided between multiple websites, and result in lower server speed and higher response times. This is good for small websites, but established businesses and professionals will probably require something more powerful.
• VPS hosting, via a virtual private server (VPS), is a virtual section with set resources created within a physical server. Unlike shared hosting, each server is divided into only a few virtual servers and shared between five or 10 different websites. This reduces server load, and gives each website ample resources to function. Virtual servers are therefore costlier than shared servers.
• Dedicated hosting is the most expensive form of web hosting, in which a single site takes up an entire server. This ensures that the maximum amount of resources are available at all times for exclusive use by the website. Dedicated hosting is only necessary for very large sites that boast a huge audience.
• Cloud hosting is a new form of web hosting where a single site is hosted across multiple virtual servers, so it continues to function even when one server goes down. This ensures that your website is guaranteed maximum uptime.

Who are the best web hosting providers?

There are several tens, if not hundreds, of web hosting providers vying for space in the website industry. Because of the sheer number of options available, choosing the right hosting provider can prove quite challenging. We have outlined our top picks in our guide to the best web hosting services elsewhere, but here's a summary of the top web hosts in the market right now to make your search a little easier.

Hostinger

Based in Europe with more than 30 million users, Hostinger provides powerful yet affordable web hosting options across different price ranges. It has data centers in the USA, UK, Singapore, Lithuania, and the Netherlands.

Hostwinds

Hostwinds is the leading web host when it comes to dedicated hosting, and it offers powerful configurations for both general and high-demand users. Across its range of highly-customisable hosting products, Hostwinds is a great option for businesses looking to scale up their website, and even its cheapest packages are packed with strong features.

Namecheap

Namecheap's range of cost-effective web hosting plans don't compromise on quality, and it offers hosting for WordPress, resellers, VPS, and dedicated servers, as well as shared hosting plans. Starting at £2.21 a month, most plans have limitless features, ranking it among the best unlimited web hosting, while it also offers beginner-friendly, knowledgeable support.

What kind of web hosting is right for you?

Generally speaking, the three things to look out for in any great web hosting provider – apart from storage and bandwidth – are server speeds, uptime guarantees, and customer support.

A good web host will always offer great speeds and reliable uptime, along with dedicated round-the-clock customer support. You should generally look for at least 99.9% uptime and 24/7 customer support from all hosting providers.

When choosing the right web hosting provider and plan, you have to keep in mind both short-term functioning and long-term scalability. Some hosting providers are easier to upgrade and transfer out of than others. Some even offer dedicated upgrade options and website migration tools.

However, no one web hosting company will be able to offer you a great deal in all these aspects, especially if you have budget constraints. This is where you will have to prioritise based on your business’s needs. As long as you stick to a reputable provider, however, you shouldn’t run into any issues.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Once you've found the best website builder, and are looking for cheaper hosting, look into the best cheap web hosting for your next project, or even the best free web hosting if you're on a tight budget. If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Once you've found the best website builder, and are looking for cheaper hosting, look into the best cheap web hosting for your next project, or even the best free web hosting if you're on a tight budget. If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business. It's also worth looking into the best anonymous hosting solutions to protect your privacy. Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs.

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most-adopted cloud platform; it is made up of over 200 different cloud data services using data centers around the world. AWS has three main products: EC2, Glacier (a virtual machine service), and S3, Amazon’s low-cost storage system. AWS accounts for about 13% of Amazon's total revenue and is used by companies such as Netflix, LinkedIn, and Facebook/Meta.

AWS: an introduction

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is something you’re not necessarily aware of; not everyone knows just how important it is to the modern internet.

Most of the best web hosting services rely on AWS in at least some capacity, and many of them are essentially just resellers of AWS services. In this article, we’ll look at what AWS is and take a more focused look at AWS hosting, one of the types of services AWS offers.

What is cloud computing?

Early internet services essentially ran on standalone servers. Remote computers would directly contact a single server to request a webpage, for example. But this type of system scaled poorly, with servers often overloading if many people tried to use a service all at once.

The technology quickly evolved into server farms, where the load is balanced across multiple servers, allowing for more concurrent users. A single company running its own server farm can be said to be running a private cloud, with the best cloud storage and the best cloud hosting just two areas where cloud computing is utilised in this way.

Cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are public clouds. They too have massive server farms and data centers, but they offer a way for individuals, businesses, and even governments to rent a small share of these resources on a pay-as-you-go basis. Public cloud computing platforms are often referred to collectively as “the cloud”.

What are the advantages of using cloud computing?

Cloud computing offers some incredible advantages to businesses.

• It's significantly cheaper than building and maintaining server farms of your own
• You can deploy applications quickly
• It’s easy to scale up (and down) as your needs grow
• There is high reliability, thanks to the massive infrastructure
• You can leverage pre-existing systems for backups, databases, virtualisation, etc., instead of re-inventing the wheel
• You don’t have to worry about how it works behind the scenes

More on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS is Amazon’s cloud computing platform, and the largest cloud infrastructure in the world. Canalys reports AWS made up 32% of worldwide cloud infrastructure in Q1 2021, with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud making up 19% and 7% each, respectively.

AWS is a sprawling, complex mix of over 200 separate services. For example, Amazon S3 is the main AWS service for storing, uploading, and retrieving data. It’s very versatile, but the most popular use of S3 is in the scalable, low-cost, high-speed storage of files.

Amazon EC2 provides scalable computing. You can use EC2 to create virtual servers according to your requirements or run large-scale computations on your company��s data.

Another popular AWS service is Amazon Glacier, which is an online web storage service for the long-term archival of data. With Glacier, you can store information for months, years, or even decades, all at a super-low cost.

Many of the web’s big hitters use AWS services, including Netflix, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Baidu, Reddit, and Adobe.

What is AWS hosting?

When we discuss hosting, we typically mean website hosting. But while this is certainly something that AWS can do, it’s worth noting that AWS also offers other types of hosting.

Application hosting, for instance, is when you leverage AWS’s many services to create an application. You can then use that application in your business or sell it as a service to other companies through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

If you have many large files, you might also consider file hosting on AWS to lower data transfer and storage costs. Or you can use database hosting on AWS for just your company’s databases if you need to be able to access them globally, for example.

There are also other types of hosting available through AWS. For instance, Amazon GameLift can be used to deploy, operate, and scale cloud servers for online multiplayer gaming.

AWS for web hosting

When we drill down to web hosting in particular, AWS again offers you a wealth of options.

For super-simple, one-page, static websites, you can use AWS Amplify. It costs 12p per GB served and 0.02p per GB stored, so a web page with 10,000 users per day would cost approximately £60 a month. Amazon S3 object storage can also be used in a similar fashion to serve up static pages or files at a low cost.

Simple websites can be hosted using Amazon Lightsail, which is essentially a VPS service. Lightsail includes all the infrastructure you need to create a website capable of dealing with low–medium amounts of traffic. You get a virtual machine, SSD storage, a static IP address, DNS management, and a set amount of data transfer, all for a price starting at £2.85 a month.

If you expect to need five servers or more, you’ll need something bigger. Enterprise-level web hosting on AWS typically uses Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2). With EC2, you rent multiple web servers, usually situated in several separate data centers around the world. Coursera and Lamborghini are two examples of companies using EC2 for their web hosting infrastructure.

Cloud hosting providers that use AWS

Despite the potential advantages, most SMEs don’t host their websites directly with AWS. A business will typically go to web hosting providers like Bluehost, HostGator, Hostinger, or DreamHost. These services offer a more accessible means of building, managing, and maintaining a website.

But many of these services, under the hood, run on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. So even when you aren’t directly buying your web services from Amazon, you are often using AWS nevertheless.

WP Engine, which provides managed WordPress hosting, is an example of a web hosting company that uses AWS for all the hosting it sells. There are also companies like Cloudways that explicitly offer managed AWS hosting, simplifying the process of using AWS for web hosting and adding a layer of technical support for end-users.

Conclusion

AWS is the largest cloud computing platform in the world, with millions of servers running in hundreds of data centers around the globe. As a public cloud provider, it offers over 200 web services that businesses can leverage on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Most often, renting services from AWS is significantly cheaper than implementing the service yourself, because of the substantial cost of the physical hardware. Other clear advantages of using cloud services include scalability and reliability.

AWS offers various hosting services. For website hosting, you can build basic sites with AWS Amplify or Amazon S3, dynamic sites with Amazon Lightsail, or enterprise-level sites with Amazon EC2.

Whether or not they explicitly mention it, many web hosting companies use large cloud computing services like AWS for some or all of their infrastructure. Through reselling, they offer easy access to the benefits of large-scale cloud computing while shielding customers from most of the complexity.

AWS, therefore, has long been a pivotal part of the internet as we know it, and looks destined to continue to be relevant for decades.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs, and discover the best VPS hosting or best cloud hosting services. If you're looking to create a new website, make sure you look over the best website builders before making your choice.

So you're building your small business website, and you want it to be as reliable, secure, fast, and available as possible. This all comes down to how you choose to host your site—when it comes to the best web hosting, you have three main options:

1. If you've used one of the best website builders like Squarespace or Wix, they will host your website for you
2. If you're using a different platform, like WordPress via a WordPress website builder, or similar, you can choose to buy unmanaged hosting
3. If you're using a different platform, you can also choose to use managed hosting

Website builder hosting is perfectly good. Squarespace, Wix, and similar small business website builders are perfect for starting out, and they're built to scale, up to a point. When you're starting to move into high-traffic territory, or you need more specialist features on your website, then you may want to move to a different type of hosting.

Unmanaged hosting means that you will handle all the technical stuff in terms of running your website yourself. This may include installing patches and updates, handling backups of your site content, and managing security for your site.

Managed hosting is a service provided by a web host who takes care of most or all of the aforementioned technical tasks for you. Web hosts who provide managed hosting will have a team of engineers, who deal with everything from system upgrades and security issues to data backups and hardware replacement.

Unmanaged hosting for small business websites

Unmanaged hosting is the cheapest type of web hosting you can buy. While that's certainly good for your wallet, it's often a false economy. When you use unmanaged hosting, you take on a lot of responsibilities for your website. These include:

• Staying aware of bugs that could compromise your website security
• Installing security updates as soon as they come out
• Monitoring security patches in case they create problems
• Maintaining your website hardware and infrastructure, including making sure your servers are running fast and efficiently, taking backups, and similar tasks
• Handling hardware failures: for example, if the physical server dies you need to sort out hosting elsewhere, or restore from a backup
• Handling network failure handling: for example, if the network connection fails elsewhere, you may need to sort out connectivity elsewhere

As you can see, this means you need a fair amount of technical expertise, and these are skills you'd need to build prior to launching your website.

Managed hosting for small business websites

Managed hosting means that you pay a web hosting provider to take care of the technical aspects of your website. Typically, the best web hosting companies will focus on:

• Setting up your publishing platform, like WordPress, with just a couple of clicks
• Testing security and software updates and patches
• Installing all software updates and security patches as soon as they become available
• Tracking the network infrastructure to make sure everything is working efficiently
• Monitoring your servers to see if they're overloaded or need maintenance
• Balancing traffic so your website is fast and reliable
• Restoring from backups should a hardware failure happen

Managed web hosting services have access to the latest tools, software, updates, and best practices. They also have specialists on staff to deal with technical matters.

Managed hosting is the best option if you don't want to worry about your website's stability or security. These hosts will take care of all the technical aspects of your website for you, meaning you don't need any technical skills—just a desire to make sure that your website is always available and secure, which is a great thing for your small business.

In our dedicated comparison of managed vs unmanaged web hosting, we noted that there are many components involved in running web servers, including not only the hardware, but also the operating system and many various software tools. With any managed hosting plan, you get a selection of additional management features, which are designed specifically to help your website run easier.

Additionally, managed hosting packages usually offer more in terms of technical support, while in contrast unmanaged hosting plans offer few, if any, extra features along these lines. What you'll get is a basic server with the operating system installed, and not much more.

In this case, it's up to you to install everything, starting from the basic software required for running a website, such as Apache, Ngnix, or PHP.

Business reasons to choose managed vs unmanaged web hosting

So far, we've focused on the technological reasons why managed hosting is a better choice. But, let's take a look from a slightly different angle—what that means for your business.

Uptime and stability

You don't want to spend your time, money, and effort getting people to your website only for it to be unavailable when they click a link. Managed hosting companies will continuously monitor your website's availability, and either fix any problems themselves, or email you if your site goes down.

This means everything will get back up and running quickly, minimising downtime and ensuring customers can find and buy from you.

Speed and reliability

Slow websites mean your visitors are more likely to bounce from your site, or look elsewhere for products or services. Reliability is key if you want people coming back again and again to place orders with you.

Managed hosting companies have tools that determine where bottlenecks in your site exist, so the host can keep them running fast, often without any input from you. Load balancing is another managed hosting perk that keeps your website running quickly, by distributing traffic evenly across servers.

This all means a faster-loading site that will attract new customers and build loyalty with existing ones.

Security and backups

You want customers to feel safe on your website, especially if you're running an ecommerce store or gathering personal or payment information.

Managed hosting providers will make sure your site is protected from spam and malicious threats. They will also ensure your internal network remains secure, protecting any files or sensitive information that could be accessed by hackers.

Your website could fail due to natural disasters, human error, or hardware failure. In this case, your managed hosting company will completely back up your site on a regular basis.

Managed hosting services will have the expertise to restore your website quickly and efficiently in the event of a catastrophe, ensuring you don't lose valuable business time or revenue.

Look for the long-term benefits of managed hosting for your website

Ultimately, unless you want to become a web hosting expert, managed hosting is a better option for your small business. Although you'll pay a little more, the biggest benefit will be your peace-of-mind.

You can commit all of your attention to building your small business—focusing on marketing your products and services, building great customer relationships, and optimising how you run your organisation.

Further reading on web hosting

If you're considering the best WordPress hosting for your WordPress site, make sure to look at our listicles outlining seven great reasons to choose managed WordPress hosting, and the four S's of managed WordPress: security, scalability, speed, and service.

Finally, check out our interview with managed WordPress hosting provider Pressidium, to learn more about this type of web hosting.

InMotion Hosting is a huge web hosting provider serving over 250,000 customers, with data centres in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. It offers shared, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting with 24/7/365 technical support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

For our InMotion Hosting review, we tested its performance over two weeks to see if it should be considered one of the best web hosting services on offer today.

InMotion Hosting review: Snapshot

InMotion Hosting offers a wide range of different hosting products. It has great support, and prices are competitive. But if you choose the cheaper plans, you’ll find the limitations on the service quite restrictive. Even on more expensive plans, we found the performance to be relatively poor.

While InMotion Hosting isn’t a bad host, alternatives like GreenGeeks and DreamHost give you better performance for a similar or cheaper price.

Score: 3/5

Read on for the full InMotion Hosting review.

InMotion Hosting’s competitors

How does InMotion Hosting compare to its main competitors?

InMotion Hosting: Key features

With so many hosting products, InMotion Hosting can be a lot of things to different people. Small sites can get started with shared hosting via an introductory $2.49 a month plan, whereas enterprises can get VPS or dedicated hosting plans for projects that require more processing power.

With shared web hosting, the more you pay, the better performance you get. But even on the cheapest Lite plan you get unlimited bandwidth, five subdomains, a website builder, and free SSL, while all sites are hosted on fast SSD storage.

You’ll use the AMP (account management panel) to perform administration on your website. AMP is a web-based administration interface that’s popular in the web hosting industry, and InMotion Hosting uses a slightly stripped-down version.

AMP looks quite dated today, but it gets the job done. Here, you can change billing details, manage your domains, submit support tickets, and change security settings. Each of your sites will be listed here too, and you can make website transfer requests, add and remove email accounts, and make backups.

InMotion Hosting’s favoured website editor is BoldGrid. This software runs on top of the popular WordPress content management system, while adding a drag-and-drop editor for easier website building.

You get a Premium key for BoldGrid with a hosting account, netting you access to over 200 page designs, premium support, and an automated backup solution. Installing BoldGrid is a matter of clicking a few buttons, though you’ll have to search for your activation key in the administration panel.

BoldGrid is quite a good website builder. It doesn’t have the versatility or the gorgeous templates of the best website builders like Wix or Squarespace, but its designs are modern, responsive, and well optimised. You can access your website code (something not all builders allow), and the interface is intuitive. But BoldGrid doesn’t have support for ecommerce, which limits its usefulness.

To access some of InMotion Hosting’s more complex features, you'll log in to cPanel, another popular hosting management tool. cPanel offers a lot more control and tools than AMP. Here, you can administer email addresses, spam filters, and autoresponders. You can manage your domains, subdomains, and redirects, and set up Google Analytics to monitor how users are engaging with your website.

cPanel offers a wealth of stats on how your site is performing, including CPU, disk, and database usage. At a glance, you can see whether you’ll soon need to upgrade to a bigger plan. You can administer MySQL and PostgreSQL databases here too, and install PHP and Perl packages. Git version control can be used for code management. There’s a file manager, terminal, and security administration.

cPanel may initially look intimidating, but it’s extremely useful to have all these tools available from one interface, and most users won’t need to delve into its every menu.

You can also speed up software deployment with Softaculous. It’s a one-click install application for popular apps, so in a matter of minutes you can have a fully functioning website without worrying about any of the tedious setup. Softaculous supports over 400 apps, from CMSs like Joomla to project management apps like Kanboard.

InMotion Hosting: What’s new in 2022?

InMotion Hosting keeps on top of software updates, and in September 2021 upgraded to WordPress 5.8.1. This is a security and maintenance release of WordPress that patches some security bugs.

In August 2021, it revamped its support centre with a new WordPress design that makes it easier to browse through more than 5,000 support articles. It has a larger search bar, new navigation, and breadcrumbs so you can better find the information you need.

InMotion Hosting: Pricing

InMotion Hosting’s most inexpensive shared hosting plan costs the equivalent of £2.04 a month if you pay three years in advance. After your first term, this triples to the equivalent of £7.78 a month. Only the high-end Pro plan can be paid monthly, with the cheaper plans requiring a 12-month, 24-month, or 36-month contract.

It also has a wide range of other pricing plans available across VPS, WordPress, and dedicated hosting, which we've detailed below. Some of these are also unable to be paid monthly, while others offer monthly, annual, biannual, and triannual contracts.

InMotion Hosting's pricing plans

Shared hosting

WordPress hosting

VPS hosting

Dedicated servers

* After introductory offers expire

** First price is with cPanel, second with bare metal

Testing InMotion Hosting

Three things you need in a good website host are reliability, responsiveness, and speed. To test these metrics on InMotion Hosting, we bought a Pro shared hosting plan and deployed a basic WordPress website using it.

Using Uptime.com over the course of two weeks, we performed thousands of automated tests to see how quickly InMotion Hosting responded.

What is InMotion Hosting’s uptime?

InMotion Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which sounds good, but that still allows your web host to be offline around 43 minutes each month. Some competitors go further, such as SiteGround (99.99% uptime guarantee) and DreamHost (100% uptime guarantee).

In our testing, our site was up 100% of the time. While we would need to perform testing over the course of a year or more to get more accurate results, InMotion Hosting got off to a good start here.

How fast do InMotion Hosting websites respond?

Response speed measures how quickly a website will begin to load. If your site doesn’t start to load immediately, your visitors are going to notice, and potentially take their business elsewhere. A slow response speed will also have a detrimental effect on your search engine rankings.

We averaged the response speed of our website after taking over 2,000 measurements from Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York. InMotion Hosting responded within 163ms on average, which is OK. Looking more closely at the data however, response times weren’t consistent.

Each day saw most responses around the 120ms mark, but with frequent spikes to 250ms and sometimes up to 1600ms. Whatever the underlying reason for this inconsistency, it certainly means your site will feel less responsive for visitors from time to time.

How does InMotion Hosting’s page load speed compare?

How fast a website’s pages load in their entirety comes down to several factors. Poor networking, oversubscribed servers, or unoptimised software can cause sites to load slowly. To test page load speed fairly across providers, we use a newly-installed WordPress website and perform speed tests from a single US location.

InMotion Hosting’s page load time averaged 739ms. This is pretty slow. To put the results in context, the same website hosted on DreamHost loaded in 139ms, Amazon Lightsail in 171ms, and WordPress in 473ms.

This makes InMotion Hosting the slowest host we’ve reviewed in recent tests, and this was when using the most expensive Pro plan. However, it may be possible to improve results by installing WordPress plugins designed to speed up your website.

Alternatives to InMotion Hosting

Disregard all the flashy introductory offers, and the entry-level plans from InMotion Hosting, Bluehost, and Hostwinds aren’t so different in pricing. Still, both competitors undercut InMotion Hosting while offering similar or more features.

It has the poorest uptime guarantee of the bunch, and it’s only applicable on shared hosting if you choose the most expensive plan. However, long-term testing has shown that InMotion Hosting websites rarely go offline.

We asked Bluehost twice about its uptime guarantee on shared hosting accounts. Technical support first said it was 99.99%, and later said 99.5%. There is no mention of a guarantee on the Bluehost website. It doesn’t offer any plan where you can pay monthly, and our performance testing showed it lagged far behind the competition in response time, which means your sites are likely to load slowly for visitors.

Hostwind's technical support said it too offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee on all its plans, and 99.9999% uptime on its fully managed services. Overall, you get more with Hostwinds despite its cheaper price—unlimited disk space, databases, email accounts, and subdomains are all included on all plans.

InMotion Hosting's features compared to the competition

* Based on the non-introductory price of the cheapest plan when paid annually

InMotion Hosting: Final verdict

InMotion Hosting scores relatively well on most fronts. With cPanel administration, Softaculous one-click installs, and SSH access, its shared hosting plans offer a lot of flexibility. BoldGrid, a website builder for WordPress, is also an excellent inclusion you won’t typically find elsewhere.

But it’s undercut by newer competitors that offer better performance for a similar or lower prices, and its plans have quite limited quotas on things like email addresses.

Our experience with InMotion Hosting’s support team has always been good, so if support is the most important thing to you then we can recommend this service. Otherwise, it's still a fine web host, but it doesn’t offer much more than its cheaper competitors.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs, and discover the best VPS hosting or best cloud hosting services. If you're looking to create a new website, make sure you look over the best website builders before making your choice.

A2 Hosting is regularly listed among the best web hosting services due to its focus on performance, competitive prices, and versatile selection of hosting solutions. However, our A2 Hosting review revealed some interesting and unexpected facts about this provider, showing that it’s not quite as good as it may appear.

A2 Hosting review: Snapshot

A2 Hosting is a well-known web hosting provider that offers everything from basic shared hosting to fully managed dedicated servers. Its prices are competitive, though expensive on renewal, and it has one of the best customer service teams we’ve seen.

Creating a new website with A2 Hosting is extremely straightforward due to the inclusion of the Softaculous one-click installer. However, it doesn’t live up to its reputation as a high-performing host. During testing, both its uptime and its average server response time fell well below the thresholds we would expect for a reliable shared host.

At the end of the day, A2 Hosting is a viable option that’s far from exceptional. It’s certainly better than overly simplistic hosts such as HostGator and Bluehost because of the number of features it includes. But if you’re looking for a more advanced option, we’d recommend paying slightly more for a high-end provider like Hostwinds or SiteGround.

Score: 3.5/5

Read on for the full A2 Hosting review.

A2 Hosting’s competitors

How does A2 Hosting compare to its main competitors?

A2 Hosting: Key features

A2 Hosting offers great transparency, outlining everything you can expect from its services in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. One thing that stands out is the company’s anytime money-back guarantee.

With this, you can essentially request a refund if, at any point during your subscription, you’re not happy with the service you’re receiving. Unless you cancel in the first 30 days, you will only receive a refund for the remainder of your subscription, but it’s still a neat little feature.

Another attractive tool is A2’s free site migration service. With this, you can bring an existing WordPress website to your new A2 hosting account with a minimum amount of fuss. Simply fill in the provided migration request form, and your site will be transferred within 48 hours.

To keep its clients happy and protected from malicious third parties, A2 Hosting uses a suite of security tools. For starters, it uses the HackScan tool to proactively monitor all accounts, detecting and blocking attacks before they can have negative impacts. DDoS protection is available, and you will even benefit from a dual firewall and an on-demand virus scanner.

There’s also a suite of data collection and analysis tools available through the A2 Hosting cPanel. You can monitor things like bandwidth usage and site errors, while keeping track of visitor numbers and various other audience statistics.

Last but not least is A2’s customer service, which stands out as excellent. All users will have access to 24/7 phone, email, and live chat support. The team prides itself on rapid, knowledgeable responses, and you shouldn’t have to wait more than a few seconds for a live chat reply.

A2 Hosting: What’s new in 2022?

A2 Hosting does a great job of keeping its customers up to date with new developments. In fact, it has an entire section of its blog dedicated to product updates, and you can expect at least a couple of posts a month.

As recently as September 2021, A2 Hosting added the WordPress Toolkit to the cPanel control panel. This comes in Deluxe and Standard form, and includes a suite of management tools to help you get the most out of your WordPress site.

In August 2021, the AlmaLinux operating system was made available for new customers due to the upcoming retirement of CentOS. Support for the Magento ecommerce CMS was also added to A2’s managed hosting solutions, and there are loads of other small updates that you can check out.

A2 Hosting: Pricing

A2 Hosting offers four shared hosting plans, with prices ranging from £2.51 to £10.92 a month with an initial three-year subscription. These prices increase significantly after your initial term, and you can expect to pay £9.24 to £21.85 on renewal. You will pay the equivalent to the renewal price if you would like to subscribe on a month-to-month basis rather than for a longer term upfront.

Along with its shared hosting solutions, A2 Hosting offers a number of other options. These include managed WordPress (from £10.92 a month), managed and unmanaged VPS (from £4.19 a month), and unmanaged and managed dedicated server hosting (£109.27 a month) options.

A2 Hosting’s pricing plans

Shared hosting

WordPress hosting

VPS hosting

Dedicated servers

Reseller hosting

All prices are for the first term - prices increase after the first year

Testing A2 Hosting

To determine how easy A2 Hosting is to use, and how well it performs, we undertook two separate tests. First, we created a simple WordPress website linked to our hosting account. Performance was monitored using Pingdom’s uptime monitoring tools over a two-week period.

How easy is it to create a WordPress website with A2 Hosting?

Creating a new A2 Hosting account is a straightforward process. The checkout is tidy, providing clear information about the company’s price structure and any introductory/long-term discounts. There are a number of payment methods available, including credit/debit card, PayPal, PayULatam, and bank transfer.

When you log in to your A2 Hosting account, you will be taken to the account management dashboard. This is intuitive, though it has a slightly dated appearance. Here, you will find links to both your cPanel control panel and the Softaculous one-click installer.

To get started with a WordPress website, simply click on the Softaculous button. You will see WordPress as one of the first available scripts to install. Follow the prompts, and you should have your site up and running in minutes. No special technical or web development knowledge is required, and we had no issues whatsoever.

How well does A2 Hosting perform?

After creating a small WordPress website and monitoring it with Pingdom’s uptime-monitoring tools, we were very surprised with the results. Nearly everything A2 Hosting does is done with performance in mind, and it heavily advertises its “turbo” servers.

This made us even more surprised to see A2 Hosting’s average server response time come in at 822ms, which is well outside of the 200–400ms range we expect from shared hosting. With slow servers like this, you will have a lot of trouble achieving a decent page load time, and the user experience will suffer.

A2’s uptime didn’t live up to expectations either. Despite offering a 99.9% uptime guarantee, we were left with a sub-standard 99.42% uptime figure after two weeks of testing. Our server experienced two outages for a total of two hours down. This isn’t a be-all and end-all test due to the short time period, but it certainly raises questions about A2 Hosting’s long-term reliability.

Alternatives to A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a popular option that has built a reputation for performance and feature-rich hosting packages. However, it just didn’t stand up to our expectations, and we’d recommend considering a few alternatives.

For example, Hostwinds boasts excellent performance across the board. With its cheapest plan starting at £4.30 a month, it is a little more expensive than A2 Hosting. But it’s known for its feature-rich solutions ideal for larger websites and businesses.

Like A2 Hosting, Hostwinds comes with the Softaculous one-click script installer, making it extremely easy to start a new WordPress website. It also boasts 24/7 live chat, email, and online ticketing support. You will even get a free domain name with all subscriptions.

SiteGround is another excellent option for those looking for a high-end host with a focus on performance. It boasts a tidy native control panel, rather than the cPanel dashboard most hosts go with. You will be able to select from various data centre locations.

In addition, SiteGround’s 24/7 support team is known to be knowledgeable and responsive. Prices start at a competitive £2.99 a month, although you will need a long-term subscription to access the best prices.

A2 Hosting’s features compared to the competition

*These represent the lowest introductory prices for each provider. Expect to pay more on renewal and for short-term subscriptions

A2 Hosting: The verdict

All things considered, A2 Hosting offers decent hosting solutions that are let down by one simple thing—its poor performance. Its prices are competitive, it’s backed by a suite of excellent features, and its customer service is among the best we’ve seen. If only its uptime and server response times came in a little better, A2 Hosting would be up there with the best hosts we’ve used.

All A2 Hosting plans do come with a suite of attractive features. Those with an existing website will love the free site migration service, the anytime money-back guarantee is the best we’ve seen, and there’s a neat set of security tools to keep your site protected.

In addition, you will be able to choose from a selection of shared, VPS, WordPress, and dedicated server plans. Shared hosting starts at just $2.99 a month for an initial subscription, which is up there with some of the more affordable options we’ve seen.

Creating a new WordPress website is a very straightforward process. A2 Hosting uses a cPanel control panel coupled with the Softaculous one-click installer, enabling you to install a new WordPress site in just a few minutes.

The bottom line: If you can look past A2 Hosting’s poor performance, everything else about it is great. There are options for businesses of all sizes, and there’s every chance that you will experience better performance than us if you have a high-end shared plan or a VPS server.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs, and discover the best VPS hosting or best cloud hosting services. If you're looking to create a new website, make sure you look over the best website builders before making your choice.

Unlimited web hosting sounds too good to be true, but not only does it exist, many of the best web hosting services provide unlimited packages. These plans aren't just empty promises: they provide users who don't want limitations on their hosting or to face barriers on resource use with a great, limitless hosting option.

Regardless of the hosting type, unlimited web hosting plans are available from multiple providers. However, remember that not every host will provide unlimited resources on every plan. It's key to bear in mind that some will restrict resources if you use too much, or will only offer unlimited hosting on high-end plans.

It can be difficult when choosing a web hosting provider offering unlimited site resources to know which one to pick. Don't compromise on great performance, speeds, quality customer support, and particular special features and tools. Below, we've analysed, ranked, and reviewed top unlimited web hosting providers to find the best services available.

The top 3 best unlimited web hosting providers

Hostinger: a leading host with options for unlimited plans

One of the most capable web hosting providers, Hostinger has a few products that give no limitations on most resources. You do have a limit on disk space (up to 100GB SSD) and subdomains (100), but that still should be enough for most users.

Hostwinds: strong range of unlimited packages

Hostwinds has a wide range of products, from shared hosting up, that offer unlimited hosting, so you have more choices than usual. Unlimited bandwidth, disk space, domains, and subdomains are all available, and there are some extras, like a free SSL certificate.

GreenGeeks: unlimited features across premium plans

Eco-friendly host GreenGeeks offers shared hosting with unlimited websites, bandwidth, and disk space, plus nightly backups or Cloudflare CDN integration, to name just a couple of extra tools. WordPress plans also have unlimited features including email accounts, while VPS plans offer unlimited sites and subdomains.

Which is the best unlimited web hosting provider?

Generally speaking, all of the providers mentioned below offer capable hosting services, so you won’t be making a mistake no matter what you choose.

That being said, we prefer Hostinger's selection of hosting products, which have no limitations across most resources bar a limit on disk space for all plans and subdomains. However, most plans above entry-level offer unlimited bandwidth, and nearly all offer unlimited SSL certificates.

Hostwinds is a great choice for beginners and more advanced users. Even its lowest priced shared hosting plans provide unlimited bandwidth and storage, and while that's not the case for VPS web hosting or cloud hosting, business and reseller hosting provide unlimited features too.

GreenGeeks has a powerful set of shared hosting plans with unlimited sites, bandwidth, and disk space (above the Lite package, which still has unlimited bandwidth). Alongside other extras, WordPress and reseller plans add unlimited email accounts and sites and subdomains respectively.

Namecheap, HostGator, Bluehost, and DreamHost all also offer hosting plans across hosting types that provide unlimited resources of one kind or another.

The best unlimited web hosting providers, compared

The best unlimited web hosting providers available

Hostinger

The leading web host offers some unlimited features

SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwith: Unlimited (bar exceptions)
• Storage: No
• Websites: No
• Subdomains: No

REASONS TO BUY

• Unlimited bandwidth offered on all but cheapest plans

REASONS TO AVOID

• No unlimited storage, websites or subdomains available on plans

Score: 4.5/5

The best web hosting service currently available, Hostinger has a selection of hosting products that have no limitations across most resources, throughout its range of plans and packages.

Unfortunately, it does have a limit on disk space for all plans (the highest you can reach is 300GB SSD with the most expensive cloud hosting package) and subdomains (100), but most plans above the entry-level, cheaper packages offer unlimited bandwidth, and nearly all plans also offer unlimited SSL certificates.

While most of the more expensive plans have an upper limit of 300 websites, this is not a figure most businesses would exceed. While this isn't as comprehensively impressive as some of the other providers below, Hostinger's services and offerings across the board are the best available, which should be enough for most users.

Read our in-depth Hostinger review.

Hostwinds

Unlimited shared, business, and reseller hosting

SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwith: Unlimited (select plans)
• Storage: Unlimited (select plans)
• Websites: Unlimited (select plans)
• Subdomains: Unlimited (select plans)

REASONS TO BUY

• Unlimited bandwidth and storage across shared, business, and reseller plans

REASONS TO AVOID

• Only certain plans covered, and not all elements are unlimited

Score: 4.5/5

Hostwinds features highly on this list because even at the level of its lowest pricing plans, namely its cheapest shared hosting, you can take advantage of unlimited bandwidth and storage. While this isn't the case for VPS or cloud hosting, that offer unlimited hosting, its more expensive business plans and reseller hosting provide the same unlimited features.

The top level of all three hosting packages includes unlimited websites too, while other extras include free SSL certificates, meaning that below the more advanced, enterprise-level hosting, Hostwinds offers the most unlimited features.

Read our full Hostwinds review.

GreenGeeks

Eco-friendly hosting with options for unlimited features

SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwith: Unlimited (select plans)
• Storage: Unlimited (select plans)
• Websites: Unlimited (select plans)
• Subdomains: Unlimited (select plans)

REASONS TO BUY

• Unlimited sites, bandwidth, and storage for all premium shared hosting and WordPress plans

REASONS TO AVOID

• VPN plans have limitations on certain factors

Score: 4/5

An eco-friendly hosting provider, GreenGeeks has a powerful set of shared hosting plans with unlimited websites, bandwidth, and disk space for all plans above the Lite package (which still has unlimited bandwidth), plus you also get extras like nightly backups or Cloudflare CDN integration.

The same levels of unlimited hosting are available with its WordPress hosting plans (again, bar the cheapest which still has unlimited bandwidth), with unlimited email accounts added. While the VPS plans are limited, the reseller plans offer unlimited websites and subdomains despite bandwidth and storage restrictions.

Read out comprehensive GreenGeeks review.

Namecheap

The cheapest web hosting with unlimited tools

SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwith: Unlimited (select plans)
• Storage: Unlimited (select plans)
• Websites: Unlimited (select plans)
• Subdomains: Unlimited (select plans)

REASONS TO BUY

• Good unlimited coverage in shared and reseller hosting packages

REASONS TO AVOID

• WordPress hosting has more restrictions

Score: 4/5

Namecheap offers very affordable unlimited hosting across its shared hosting plans. You get unlimited bandwidth on all plans, unlimited websites and subdomains on plans above the cheapest package, and unlimited disk space for select plans, with a free website builder or free Supersonic CDN also included.

WordPress hosting sadly does not have the same level of freedom, though reseller plans do again include unlimited bandwidth, websites, and subdomains.

Read our detailed Namecheap review.

HostGator

Competitive pricing for unlimited features

SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwith: Unlimited (select plans)
• Storage: Unlimited (select plans)
• Websites: Unlimited (select plans)
• Subdomains: Unlimited (select plans)

REASONS TO BUY

• Good range of unlimited options across shared hosting plans

REASONS TO AVOID

• Only websites and bandwidth unlimited on more complex hosting plans

Score: 3.5/5

HostGator offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space on its starter plan, but if you want no limitations on your domains and subdomains, you’ll have to choose a higher-tier plan.

However, note that you’ll need to be fully compliant with their Terms of Service, and you’ll need to only utilise disk space and bandwidth in the normal operation of a personal or small business website. Generally, this is nothing to worry about, but just bear in mind that the policy exists.

Unmetered bandwidth is also available across its dedicated and VPS packages, while its reseller hosting offers unlimited websites.

Read our full HostGator review.

Bluehost

Unlimited hosting across the shared hosting board

SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwith: Unlimited (select plans)
• Storage: Unlimited (select plans)
• Websites: Unlimited (select plans)
• Subdomains: Unlimited (select plans)

REASONS TO BUY

• Beyond starter plans, unlimited resources for hosting included across types

REASONS TO AVOID

• Not as many unlimited options on more complex hosting packages

Score: 3.5/5

Bluehost is one of the best web hosting providers available, and fittingly the vast majority of its shared hosting plans, bar the starter plan, provide unlimited websites, bandwidth, storage, domains, subdomains, and parked domains.

Again, as you increase the level of hosting required, the limitations on these factors does creep in, but its range of shared hosting plans are among the most competitively-priced, meaning that access to unlimited web hosting is cheap to obtain.

Read our comprehensive Bluehost review.

DreamHost

Unlimited hosting across a range of plans

SPECIFICATIONS

• Bandwith: Unlimited (select plans)
• Storage: Unlimited (select plans)
• Websites: Unlimited (select plans)
• Subdomains: Unlimited (select plans)

REASONS TO BUY

• Great unlimited coverage across shared and VPN hosting

REASONS TO AVOID

• Only unlimited bandwidth for WordPress hosting plans

Score: 3.5/5

DreamHost is a good alternative to the providers we already mentioned. When it comes to shared hosting, the Unlimited plan gets you pretty much everything with no limits, and you get an SSL certificate pre-installed. Its VPN plans also include unlimited bandwidth, websites and subdomains, while WordPress plans enjoy unlimited bandwidth too.

Read our detailed Dreamhost review.

Unlimited web hosting FAQs

What is unlimited web hosting?

Unlike many shared hosting plans available, unlimited web hosting plans don’t put a hard cap on resource usage. This means you'll have more flexibility to manage your site without restrictions. In most cases, hosting providers have the following resources set to unlimited.

Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted between a site and visitors’ browsers. It can determine how fast a website will load, and how many users can simultaneously open the same page. Having unlimited bandwidth means your site will be able to adjust to traffic surges. In turn, you won’t be charged if your site has to use more bandwidth than the usual amount.

The storage space is where you will host your files, including code scripts and multimedia. With unlimited storage, it’s possible to upload as many files as necessary. This makes it an excellent feature for content-heavy websites like blogs and portfolios. However, make sure to go with a hosting plan that offers SSD storage, as these run much more efficiently and have better performance than HDDs.

Most unlimited hosting plans let you create as many websites as you like at no extra charge, which is great if you run several online projects. Some web hosts also offer unlimited subdomains, so you can create multiple sites using the same domain name. Parked domains are additional domain names that point to your website. You can register them to secure misspelled versions of your main domain name, and avoid losing potential traffic.

What do hosting companies include in unlimited plans?

The term “unlimited” doesn’t mean the shared hosting plan has infinite resources. Rather, it means that the service has ample supply for multiple small to medium-sized websites, so much so that you probably won’t hit the usage limit.

Some examples are personal blogs, online resumes, and small business sites, which don’t need a lot of support in the first place. They don’t take up a lot of storage space and only garner a few thousand visitors a month, leaving a lot of resources unused.

So, as long as your website is manageable for a shared hosting server, you have nothing to worry about. Of course, it’s best practice to check the fine print before making a purchase.

Most hosting companies include what counts as usage abuse in their terms of service. Some take it a step further by detailing what you cannot do with your website to avoid hitting the limit, such as creating a file-sharing or streaming site.

If your website is nearing its resource limits, your hosting provider will send you a warning to reduce your usage. Otherwise, the overuse will impact the performance of your website and those of other users sharing the same server partition.

How we review the best unlimited web hosting services

When reviewing any web hosting providers, we create a website and sign up to a hosting plan. We test server response times and uptimes for a two-week period, because these factors are absolutely key to site performance. If your site is unresponsive, or goes offline, this can mean loss of business and revenue for your company.

If a builder's included in the hosting provider's set of features, we'll test out the website building process; if one isn't included, we'll examine another important or unique tool, and use another provider's site builder. Security is paramount, so we determine how easy it is to set up an SSL certificate with a given host, while studying how comprehensive their general web security is.

We also test out how responsive the web host's customer service and support teams are, because in the event of an issue with your site, you'll need to know how fast they are to respond and how reliable and knowledgeable they are. We also taken an in-depth look at pricing, because many hosting packages can be confusing thanks to large, initial-term discounts.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Once you've found the best website builder, and are looking for cheaper hosting, look into the best cheap web hosting for your next project, or even the best free web hosting if you're on a tight budget. If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business.

Do you want your site to focus on European and UK customers? Ensure your chosen host is among the best European web hosting providers. Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts. Also check out our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting.

Learn how to choose a domain name for your website, and why domain privacy is important, and what it means for your business. It's also worth looking into the best anonymous hosting solutions to protect your privacy.

When choosing from the best web hosting services, if your business is globally-focused then providers offering the best European web hosting are worth a look. By this, we mean that it's highly recommended to choose a host with data centres close to your customers, as server location can play a significant part in determining your site's overall performance.

If you have a customer base largely situated in both the EU and the UK, or one or the other, it's wise to find a provider among the best European web hosting services, because they will have data centres based in the region. What this means for your site is that it will perform better for European and UK customers, because when they visit the site, the regionally-based servers will load the site quickly.

As a consequence, there are a large range of options available, and below we've reviewed and listed the best European web hosting providers either based in or possessing data centres in the region, evaluating them on hosting performance and overall quality as well as their location.

The 3 best European web hosting providers

Hostinger

Hostinger: affordable, EU-based host

Hostinger is one of the most popular and affordable web hosts, with pricing starting at less than £2. Its range of advanced tools and competitive prices are rounded out with package benefits including unlimited websites, email accounts, and bandwidth; a native control panel; and a wide array of other top features.

Hostwinds

Hostwinds: top choice across hosting types

Hostwinds' quality plans cover all hosting types, and as the master of dedicated hosting, its servers boast powerful configuration features for both general and high-demanding power users. Its highly-customisable products mean that it's an attractive option for those looking for scalability, while even cheap packages are filled with strong features.

Wix

Wix: best website builder with hosting

Wix isn't a web host per se, but is our choice for the best website builder. Alongside industry-leading templates and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, the free plan and three paid plans include the full builder, with attractive pricing seeing benefits added including unlimited bandwidth, one free domain for a year, ad-free sites, and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Which are the best European web hosting providers?

For us, the best European web hosting provider is Hostinger, which is also our top pick for a wealth of other hosting categories such as the best web hosting for small business and the best VPS cloud hosting. Its top features and competitive pricing rank it top, alongside the fact that it's a European-based provider of hosting services.

Hostwinds also places highly thanks to its large range of quality web hosting plans and packages, across dedicated hosting, shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and much more. Wix, the best ecommerce website builder and the best small business website builder, also features due to its high-spec builder, and its great hosting offerings packaged with the site creator.

UK-based tsoHost is ideal for users based in the UK or who want a UK base, with a legacy in web hosting bolstered by powerful, affordable pricing. For professional hosting, Liquid Web is a top pick, with European data centres offering high-level security and monitoring.

GoDaddy's European data centres embolden its leading performance levels across secure, competitive packages; while Bluehost's UK presence and competitive pricing, alongside speed and security, ensure it's included.

The best European web hosting services available

Hostinger

Affordable, EU-based web host

REASONS TO BUY

• Excellent performance
• Decent support resources
• A great selection of hosting products

REASONS TO AVOID

• SSL installation can be confusing
• Prices could be clearer

Score: 4.5/5

Hostwinds has a huge range of quality plans, making it a good choice for almost any kind of hosting. As the master of dedicated hosting, its servers boast powerful configuration features for both general and high-demanding power users.

Offering high levels of customisation, even its cheapest packages are packed with strong features, with shared hosting starting at £1.99 a month. The provider also offers the Zyro website builder, if you're looking to tie in hosting and site creation.

Read our comprehensive Hostinger review, and our interview with Zyro CEO Giedrius Zakaitis about the company's biggest successes, challenges, and plans for the future.

Wix

The best website builder with web hosting

REASONS TO BUY

• Tons of flexibility
• Great searchable knowledgebase
• Drag-and-drop simplicity

REASONS TO AVOID

• No template switching
• Some third-party apps are expensive
• Wix Editor can be daunting for newbies

Score: 4.5/5

Wix isn't a true web hosting provider, but it's the best website builder out there, and if that's something you need, they'll make a great choice.

It offers one free plan and seven paid plans ranging from £4 a month to £27 a month, personal and business plans offering such features as unlimited bandwidth, 10GB of storage space, the Visitor Analytics and Site Booster apps, and one free domain for a year.

Read our comprehensive Wix review and our interview with Head Product Manager Michal Bignitz.

tsoHost

One of the longest-running UK hosts

REASONS TO BUY

• Transparent pricing
• Good range of plans for any UK business

REASONS TO AVOID

• Cheaper options exist
• Lacks 24/7 live support

Score: 4/5

tsoHost is a good pick for UK users, especially if they use WordPress, as the provider has some powerful plans.

It's one of the longest-running UK web hosts, offering everything from affordable cloud hosting to high-end dedicated server across versatile plans. Transparent pricing and stable performance anchor well-specified packages.

Liquid Web

Best choice for professional users

REASONS TO BUY

• Excellent high-end option for larger businesses
• Leading uptime and performance metrics
• Friendly, knowledgeable support services

REASONS TO AVOID

• Quite expensive
• No budget hosting options

Score: 4/5

Liquid Web offers top-notch quality and advanced features more suited for professional users across its wide range of web hosting plans.

It provides various expert managed hosting services for all types of users and requirements, and its European data centres provide professional-level virus and spam defense systems, deep system monitoring, key software installation, updates, support, and free external migrations. If you're looking for website creation too, it offers WordPress plugin add-ons and WooCommerce plans for ecommerce.

Read our full Liquid Web review.

GoDaddy

Web hosting mainstay offering a European base

REASONS TO BUY

• Very competitive prices
• Beginner-friendly user interface

REASONS TO AVOID

• Deceiving pricing structure
• No email support

Score: 4/5

GoDaddy is a web hosting giant with a wide range of products and great quality support. It often ranks among the best web hosting providers, offering a range of solutions for businesses of all sizes.

It’s known for great performance backed by data centres in Europe, as well as the US and Asia, with competitive prices, a range of extra features, and good security.

Read our GoDaddy web hosting review and our hosting comparison pitting Bluehost vs GoDaddy.

Bluehost

Leading hosting provider with a UK presence

REASONS TO BUY

• Feature-rich shared hosting plans
• Beginner-friendly cPanel control panel
• Impressive 24/7 support

REASONS TO AVOID

• Deceptive introductory prices
• Terrible performance
• Underpowered VPS and dedicated server plans

Score: 3.5/5

Bluehost is regularly found to be one of the best web hosting services generally, and since it has a UK presence, it's only natural to put the company on our list.

It continues to impress in almost every aspect in a competitive market, delivering the complete package of speed, security, versatility, and not least superb reliability for just £2.43 a month. Its 60-day money-back guarantee also lets you trial the service before you commit.

Read our Bluehost review, and our comparisons of Bluehost vs HostGator and Bluehost vs DreamHost.

Advantages of using the best European web hosting

In terms of the advantages of hosting a website in Europe, firstly it's worth noting that no matter where your customers are based, you'll want to be able to reach them quickly. Choosing one of the best European web hosting services is one way to ensure that, as such providers will have a data centre close to your audience.

This is important, because the closer a data centre is to the user, the faster that data can transfer between the server and the user's browsers. This, consequently, means that your webpages' loading speed will be quicker. All of this ensures that your site provides a better user experience, which will make it more likely that visitors and customers will continue to use the site (which can also rank higher in search results).

While data centre location isn’t a significant SEO ranking factor, it can help search engines determine which local SERPs your site should appear on. Specifically, if your IP address points to a location in Europe, users in the region will most likely find your webpages, and this goes as far as city-based searches too.

Since May 2018, all websites targeting EU audiences have to abide by GDPR, or EU’s data protection laws. If you don't comply, you can face non-compliance penalties. Luckily, the best European web hosting services will uphold the GDPR, and while choosing hosting based in the EU doesn't automatically make a site GDPR-compliant, it can go further towards ensuring customers' personal data is protected.

Even when you know everything there is to know about web hosting, choosing the right provider can be tricky. Luckily, all the providers mentioned in this guide have servers based in Europe, and are very capable web hosts for a range of needs and uses, ranking them among the best European web hosting services available.

Several providers offer a wide range of hosting products, so depending on your needs (you might need WordPress, VPS, managed, or dedicated packages, for example), some may be more suited to you than others. In any case, you can hardly go wrong no matter what you choose: take your pick, and enjoy your new provider.

How we review the best European web hosting

First of all, we look to see if the host has European or UK data centres: beyond that, as with reviewing any web hosting provider, we build a site and sign up to a plan. Once the site is live, we then test server response times and uptimes over a two-week period: these factors are integral to site performance. An unresponsive or offline website can mean a loss of trust in and revenue for your business.

We'll test out the site builder too if it's included: if not, we'll examine a platform-specific tool or feature, and create a site elsewhere that we can then host with the service. We test how easy setting up an SSL certificate is, as part of a wider examination of how comprehensive web security is with that service.

In the event of an issue you can't solve, customer support is vital. That's why we test the responsiveness of customer support and service teams, and how knowledgeable they are. Finally, we study pricing in detail, because large, initial discounts for your first term can balloon into very expensive packages down the line.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Read our ranking of the best cheap web hosting, and learn how to choose a domain name for your website, and why domain privacy is important, and what it means for your business. It's also worth looking into the best anonymous hosting solutions to protect your privacy.

Check out our guide to managed vs unmanaged hosting to find out which is best suited to your needs, and discover the best VPS hosting or best cloud hosting services. If you're looking to create a new website, make sure you look over the best website builders before making your choice.

Web hosting continues to serve as the bedrock of any online presence, whether you are creating your very first website, managing a growing portfolio of projects, or scaling an established business into new markets. Selecting the right hosting provider today goes far beyond simply considering storage space or monthly bandwidth limits. Modern businesses also need to evaluate factors such as performance, website loading speed, built-in security features, regulatory compliance, flexible pricing, finding the best website builder, and the ability to support future growth.

With a crowded marketplace and hosting companies often using complex or unclear pricing structures, it is increasingly important for decision‑makers to understand industry best practices. Priorities should include guaranteed uptime, reliable customer support, transparent renewal terms, strong SSL and backup options, as well as clarity on where and how customer data is stored.

This guide outlines the essential features to prioritize in 2025 and highlights the providers currently setting the industry standard.

Best web hosting services

Web hosting remains the foundation of any digital presence, whether you're launching your first site or scaling an established business. Choosing the right provider is no longer just about storage or bandwidth – it's about performance, security, compliance, and future growth. With a crowded market and often confusing pricing structures, businesses should focus on best practices such as uptime guarantees, built-in security, transparent renewal costs, and where their data is hosted. This guide highlights what to look for and our picks of the providers that set the benchmark in 2025.

Wht to look for in a web hosting service

• When choosing a host, there are several best practices to keep in mind:
• Performance and uptime: A strong SLA for uptime (ideally 99.9% or better) helps ensure your site stays available and responsive.
• Transparent pricing: Watch out for cheap introductory rates that rise steeply after the first term.
• Security as standard: SSL certificates, firewalls, DDoS protection, and regular backups should be included.
• Scalability: Look for providers offering VPS or cloud hosting so you can expand as traffic grows.
• Sustainability: Consider eco-friendly hosting that offsets or reduces energy use.
• Compliance and data residency: If your audience is in the UK or EU, check where your data is hosted to align with GDPR.
• Customer support: 24/7 access to technical help is essential, particularly for business-critical sites.

What are the best web hosting services?

Our top recommended web hosting providers

We’ve focused on a shortlist of providers that represent best practice in today’s market. Each excels in a particular category — whether it’s affordability, flexibility, sustainability, or advanced WordPress capabilities.

Hostinger – best value all-rounder

Hostinger offers excellent value for money without cutting corners. Its hPanel control panel is intuitive, SSL setup is streamlined, and Cloudflare CDN integration is built in. Plans range from shared to VPS and cloud hosting, with Zyro’s website builder bundled in. While renewal prices are higher than the initial offer, overall performance and features keep Hostinger at the top of our list.

UK Intro Pricing: From £1.49/month for the ‘Single’ plan on a 48-month term. Renewal rates are £7.99/month. ‘Premium’ and ‘Business’ UK plans sit at £2.99/month (renew £10.99) and £3.49/month (renew £13.99) respectively.

Features & Usability: Includes free SSL, weekly or daily backups (depending on plan), free domain (sometimes), AI-powered site builder, Smart WordPress auto-updates, CDN, mailbox, and staging tools.

Strengths & Caveats: Outstanding affordability makes it great for long-term budget hosting. Interface is beginner-friendly with strong AI tools, though renewal pricing jumps significantly.

Read our full Hostinger review for more information

WP Engine – best for WordPress users

WP Engine specialises in managed WordPress hosting with tools designed for developers and experienced site owners. Daily backups, development and staging environments, and integrated performance features make it ideal for scalable business or eCommerce sites. It’s not the cheapest option, but the depth of its WordPress expertise is unmatched.

UK Pricing: Startup plans begin at £16/month, with tiered options—Professional £32/month, Growth £60/month, Scale £152/month, and custom Core plans from £312/month.

Features & Support: Fully managed WordPress hosting via Google Cloud with CDN, staging environments, plugin automation, backups, WP-PHP updates, WooCommerce optimisation, development tools, and high-end security.

Strengths & Caveats: Designed for businesses needing reliability and advanced WordPress features. Cost is high, making it less ideal for basic sites.

Read our full WP Engine review for more information.

Cloudways – best for flexible cloud hosting

Cloudways provides a pay-as-you-go model across major cloud networks including AWS, Google Cloud, and DigitalOcean. It combines flexibility with performance, offering 24/7 support, SSL certificates, and automatic backups. Businesses that want more control over their hosting environment without being tied to a single provider will find Cloudways a strong choice.

UK Pricing: No explicit UK-specific pricing. Global pay‑as‑you‑go plans begin at $11/month (≈ £8–9) for the ‘Micro’ tier with 2 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 50 GB storage, 2 TB bandwidth.

Features & Add‑Ons: Managed across major cloud providers (DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP, etc.), with stacks optimized with Nginx, Apache, Redis, etc. Offers autoscaling (Autonomous), SafeUpdates, CDN, firewall, free migration, backups, and performance tools.

Strengths & Caveats: Full control and scalability for advanced users; pricing varies by region and resource needs.

Read our full Cloudways review for more information.

GreenGeeks – best eco-friendly hosting

GreenGeeks positions itself as the world’s leading green hosting platform, offsetting three times the energy it consumes. Beyond its sustainability credentials, it offers solid shared and WordPress hosting with unlimited bandwidth, nightly backups, and Cloudflare CDN integration. It’s particularly attractive for small businesses and site owners keen to reduce their environmental footprint.

UK Pricing: Plans from $2.95–$8.95 USD/mo, which is approximately £2.40–£7.30/month. Renewals go up to $12.95–$29.95 USD (~£10.50–£24). (Specific UK GBP pricing not listed.)

Sustainability & Performance: Offsets 300% of power consumption, recognized as EPA Green Power Partner. Offers LiteSpeed servers, SSDs, nightly backups, CDN, WAF, malware protection, and a WordPress toolkit

Strengths & Caveats: Ideal for eco-conscious users with decent performance and tools. Renewal costs rise steeply.

Read our full GreenGeeks review for more information.

SiteGround – best feature-packed business hosting

SiteGround stands out for its advanced features, from staging environments to powerful caching tools. Its support and security features are excellent, though prices rise significantly after the first year. For businesses willing to invest a little more for reliability and rich functionality, SiteGround is a strong contender.

UK Pricing (12-month prepaid, ex VAT):

StartUp: £1.99/month, renews at £13.99/month

GrowBig: £3.99/month, renews at £23.99/month

GoGeek: £5.99/month, renews at £34.99/month

Features: Offers managed WordPress features including auto‑install, staging, WP‑CLI, free CDN, domain, email, daily backups, advanced caching, WooCommerce, renewable energy matching, and showcase-level performance tools.

Strengths & Caveats: Powerful, business-grade features with top-notch support. Intro pricing is attractive, but renewals are high.

Other providers such as Bluehost, HostGator and DreamHost are widely used, but for this guide we have focused on the hosts that demonstrate best practice in performance, security, and overall value.

Our pick of the best web hosting services, compared

The benefits of choosing the right host

Only with the right host can your site perform at its peak. Fast loading speeds capture visitor attention and boost search rankings. Reliability matters too -- strong uptime commitments mean your site remains accessible and responsive. Security should be included as standard, from SSL certificates to malware protection and automated backups. Finally, responsive customer support ensures that whether you're a novice or experienced developer, help is always on hand.

Web hosting FAQs

What types of hosting are available?

Shared hosting is affordable but limited. VPS hosting offers more resources in a shared environment. Dedicated hosting provides maximum performance at a higher cost. Cloud hosting delivers scalability, while managed WordPress hosting is tailored for WordPress users.

How much does web hosting cost?

Shared hosting can start at just a few pounds a month, while VPS and cloud hosting are moderately priced. Dedicated servers and enterprise-grade plans can exceed £80 per month. Always check renewal rates carefully, as introductory prices often increase significantly.

Is free hosting worth it?

Free hosting can be suitable for hobby sites or testing projects, but businesses should invest in paid services. Paid hosting includes SSL certificates, more bandwidth and storage, and proper support, all of which are vital for credibility and security.

Conclusion

The best web hosting choice depends on your business priorities. Focus on providers that combine reliable performance with transparent pricing and robust security. Our recommended shortlist sets the standard for best practice, giving you confidence that your site will remain fast, secure, and ready to scale.

When it comes to finding the best web hosting services, paid providers are always best for your needs. However, if you're just starting with websites, you'll be looking to any ways that you could defer costs until you have a solid turnover. Some small business owners in this situation turn to the best free web hosting for their first site - or are tempted to.

Is free web hosting good?

If you're struggling with budgets, then the best free web hosting services can seem like an easy and perfect option. However, free web hosting isn’t as good as it might appear to be on the surface.

Should you try to choose a free web hosting service, remember that free hosts aren’t anywhere near as good as premium options. Generally speaking, you'll have to deal with security vulnerabilities, poor performance, and limited features. You may also be faced with strict resource constraints, and you’ll likely be left to fix things yourself if anything goes wrong.

Should you have a strict budget, taking this route means dealing with its tight limitations, including a lack of reliability, limited disk space, and slow speeds. Most free web hosts aren’t actually free, with unusable hosting, a lack of security and management tools, and extremely poor customer service. You'll almost certainly run into problems with many "free" hosts once you've signed up.

It can be hard to find decent free web hosting, and our advice is - if budget is an issue - to take a look at our guide to the best cheap web hosting. Here, you can see how you can save without going for free web hosting, as it usually cuts corners.

The 3 best web hosting services right now

We've outlined below our top three best web hosting services, which while not free do instead offer competitively-priced web hosting that's secure, reliable, supported by hosting experts, and evidenced by strong performance figures.

• Hostinger: best all-round web hosting service
  Hostinger is the best overall, VPS, and cloud hosting provider, with advanced tools, an excellent native control panel, and more. Premium Shared Hosting is exclusively available for £1.99 a month, and includes 100 sites, 100GB SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth and MySQL databases.
• Cloudways: a top cloud hosting provider
  Cloudways offers flexible, powerful cloud hosting across customisable, pay-as-you-go plans. Benefits include managed hosting, free SSL certificates and site migrations, and more, with packages starting from £8.41 a month for 1GB RAM, 25GB storage, and 1TB bandwidth.
• WP Engine: best hosting for WordPress
  WP Engine's powerful managed WordPress hosting offers automated backups, integrated development, and more. High-level performance and leading tools are ideal for scalable, flexible sites, with its Startup package £24 a month for 10GB storage and 50GB bandwidth.

Below, we've tested a range of providers to find the best free web hosting services, as for many there will be little to no other option. Having identified available options that are worth your consideration, we'd also point out that many of these providers are designed to compel you to upgrade to a paid plan once you've hit their constraints.

What are the best free web hosting services?

InfinityFree and Byethost are recommended free hosts, especially if you’re looking for advanced features and generous server resources. Additionally, FreeHostingNoAds, FreeWebHostingArea, AwardSpace, FreeHosting.io, GoogieHost, FreeHostingEU, and HyperPHP are all options worth considering.

One particular free host worth highlighting is 000webhost, which is managed by Hostinger, an industry leader in the hosting space. Although it offers very limited storage and bandwidth, you can rest assured that it provides secure, reliable service.

Our pick of the best free web hosting services, compared:

The best free web hosting services available

InfinityFree

Best free web hosting overall

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• 99.9 percent uptime
• Unlimited disk space and bandwidth
• No ads

REASONS TO AVOID

• Middling speeds

InfinityFree is about as good as a free web hosting service gets. For a start, you get unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and subdomains. There are no forced ads on your website; InfinityFree states that it makes enough money from the ads on the control panel to support the service. It’s been around for over eight years, so you know that your site is unlikely to just disappear one day if the company goes bust.

InfinityFree also has a 99.9% uptime guarantee. We like that you can install over 400 applications through the Softaculous one-click script installer. This makes setting up a WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal site a breeze. InfinityFree even offers free DNS, SSL, and CloudFlare CDN support. As many paid hosts charge for these services, it’s impressive to see in a free host.

In our performance tests, load times were unimpressive but not terrible. But if your website takes off, you can easily upgrade to InfinityFree’s £5.77 a month Ultimate Premium plan for unlimited daily hits and faster server response times.

ByetHost

A professional free host to get you started

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 5GB
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: 1

REASONS TO BUY

• Unlimited bandwidth
• 24/7 support
• Site builder with templates

REASONS TO AVOID

• 10 MB maximum file size

ByetHost is an Ohio-based web hosting company with shared hosting, virtual private servers, and dedicated servers. Its free plan is basically an introduction to its services (and you are encouraged to upgrade to a more powerful paid plan once you’ve set up your website). You get 5GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and five email addresses.

Other features include unlimited MySQL databases, an online file manager, and Softaculous auto script installer. Support is good too, with a handy knowledge base, a busy community, and 24/7 tech support.

FreeHostingNoAds

A no-frills free hosting company

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 1GB
• Bandwidth: 5GB
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Modern website design
• Straightforward plans
• 99.9 percent uptime

REASONS TO AVOID

• 15 MB file size limit

FreeHostingNoAds is a free hosting product from respected web hosting provider Runhosting. Its plan is relatively modest: 1GB of storage, 5GB of bandwidth, and free email.

We actually like these types of plans that are straightforward and don’t over-promise on a free service. You get a file manager, FTP support, a free app installer, and support for PHP. If you don’t want to code your website yourself, you can use the free website builder. As the name suggests, FreeHostingNoAds doesn’t put any forced ads on your website.

On the downside, the one-click installer only supports three applications, file size is limited to 15MB, and an SSL certificate costs £25.

FreeWebHostingArea

An old-school free host for programmers and web developers

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 1.5GB
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: 1

REASONS TO BUY

• Automatic backups
• Fast SSD hosting
• 99.8 percent uptime guarantee

REASONS TO AVOID

• Basic control panel

FreeWebHostingArea has been offering free web hosting since 2005, making it one of the longest-running free web hosts on the internet. It’s an interesting option because it's run and maintained by volunteers. Your site will be deleted if it doesn’t get any visitors for a month.

With this plan, you get 1.5GB of web space, three MySQL databases, unlimited bandwidth, and automatic backups. That’s more than you get with some paid plans. But the ancient design of the FreeWebHostingArea website tells you that there are few creature comforts offered by this web host.

There’s no one-click installer or web-based drag-and-drop design interface, for example. Essentially, you should only choose this web host if you’re a seasoned web developer who knows how to use FTP, and how to set up web applications manually.

AwardSpace

A free web host with a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 1GB
• Bandwidth: 5GB
• Subdomains: 3

REASONS TO BUY

• 99.9 percent uptime
• One-click installer
• No ads

REASONS TO AVOID

• 15MB file size limit

AwardSpace is a web hosting provider that sells cloud hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. Its free web hosting plan is intended to get you interested. You get 1GB of disk space, 5GB of bandwidth a month, three subdomains, one MySQL database, and one email account. This is just about enough for a small personal website.

AwardSpace uses its own app installer called Zacky. With the free plan, you can only install WordPress, Joomla, or Grav. With a paid plan, however, you can use Zacky to install around 30 popular web applications. There’s also a drag-and-drop website builder, but on the free hosting plan, you’re restricted to creating a single-page website with it.

000Webhost

One of the longest-running free web hosting services

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 300MB
• Bandwidth: 3GB
• Subdomains: 1

REASONS TO BUY

• 99 percent uptime guarantee
• Cloudflare protection

REASONS TO AVOID

• Poor security history
• Web pages are watermarked

000Webhost is a product from Hostinger, one of the world’s largest web hosting companies. 000Webhost has been around for over a decade and has accumulated over 18 million users. Its free plan is quite limited—you only get 3GB of bandwidth per month, 300MB of disk space, and one subdomain.

Features like SSL certificates, backups, 24/7 support, and email accounts are only available on the paid plans. 000Webhost suffered a massive data breach in 2015, where millions of account details were stolen. Though steps have been made to shore up security, 000Webhost only barely makes our list, as it’s been usurped by more secure free services that have more features.

Learn more about Hostinger and its paid web hosting by reading our comprehensive Hostinger review.

FreeHosting.io

Unlimited disk space and bandwidth on a free plan

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: 3

REASONS TO BUY

• cPanel support
• Softaculous one-click install tool

REASONS TO AVOID

• Poor customer support
• Websites are often suspended for arbitrary reasons

FreeHosting.io has 10 years’ experience in web hosting. It's easy to sign up for a free site and have it up and running in a matter of minutes. Freehosting.io’s free plan gives you unlimited bandwidth and disk space, three MySQL databases, and up to three subdomains.

Administration is done through cPanel, and you have a simple site builder for creating a website using a drag-and-drop interface. What’s exciting is the support for Softaculous, a tool that you can use to install a wide range of popular website software with just one click. There are over 400 scripts to install, from content management systems to project management tools.

But FreeHosting.io is a smaller outfit that doesn’t have the proven track record of some of the other entries on this list. The FreeHosting.io support forum is full of customers complaining that their website has been suspended, seemingly without cause. We were unable to get a response from technical support on the issue, so we’d hesitate to put an important website on this host.

GoogieHost

Many features—if you can get a free account

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 1GB
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• cPanel hosting
• 1GB SSD storage
• No ads

REASONS TO AVOID

• Site feels a bit sketchy

GoogieHost is a free hosting company located in Lucknow, India. It's been running for eight years and has over 200,000 users. That said, the service can feel a little sketchy, since it’s no coincidence that GoogieHost could be mistaken for GoogleHost.

The company’s website even states that it “ran into many problems” with Google because of this. GoogieHost has been re-tooled as a non-profit organisation, presumably to get around the legal issues of using such a similar name to Google.

But if you can look past all that, GoogieHost is quite an impressive free host. It has servers in the USA, UK, and New Zealand, and the company promises a 99.95 percent uptime. While it has its own control panel, you can also use the popular cPanel to manage your website.

Free plans get a massive 1GB of storage space—on fast SSDs, no less. You also get unlimited bandwidth, free subdomains, two MySQL databases, and free email. It even has a free website builder and Softaculous auto script installer.

Upon signing up for GoogieHost, you have to tell the team why you want a free account. We suspect that this is a way to weed out new members unlikely to want to upgrade to a premium account in the future.

FreeHostingEU

Ad-free hosting with severe limitations

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 200MB
• Bandwidth: 4TB
• Subdomains: 5

REASONS TO BUY

• Web-based email
• No forced ads

REASONS TO AVOID

• Limited disk space
• Maximum file size of 15MB

FreeHostingEU has free web hosting, though the desire for you to upgrade to one of its paid hosting plans (from £4.14 a month) is clear. The free service has significant limitations: you can’t upload any file over 15MB in size, your disk space is restricted to a paltry 200MB, and you have a 4TB bandwidth limit. As you might expect, these limitations are removed when you pay for advanced hosting.

While there are installers for WordPress and Joomla on the free plan, you don’t get access to the rest of the installers without being on a paid plan. These include phpBB, Drupal, Elgg, MediaWiki, Moodle, and Zenphoto. Ecommerce tools like Zen Cart, osCommerce, and PrestaShop are also locked off behind the paywall.

FreeHostingEU is about as basic as you can get with free web hosting, and the limitations of the service will probably have you wanting to upgrade or look elsewhere.

HyperPHP

Ad-supported free plan

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Unlimited disk space and bandwidth
• cPanel administration

REASONS TO AVOID

• Slow FTP
• Forced ads on web pages

HyperPHP is a web hosting provider with a free plan that is well-specified, with “unlimited everything”—as long as you adhere to the terms and conditions of the service. You get cPanel administration, an online file manager, FTP access, and up to 400 MySQL databases.

There’s a drag-and-drop Site Builder tool, and with the Softaculous app installer, you can easily install over 400 popular web apps, including WordPress, phpBB, Dolphin, Geeklog, and pH7CMS. Unfortunately, on the free plan, PostgreSQL and webmail are not supported and obtrusive ads are injected into your web pages. Premium plans with no ads start at $4.99 a month.

How we test free web hosting

In order to test free web hosting, we create a new account with hosts we want to test. Then, we create a simple website with each host, with each site's performance monitored using Uptime.com over a set period.

During this long-term monitoring period, we focus on the two main metrics, uptime and server response times. Additionally, we undertake short-term testing with Dotcom-tools and Bitcatcha, specifically to analyse page load speeds.

In order to comprehensively test every platform, we perform complete analyses of every aspect of a host's service. This ranges from control panel and user interfaces to resources and security measures.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Once you've found the best website builder, and are looking for cheaper hosting, look into the best cheap web hosting for your next project, or even the best free web hosting if you're on a tight budget. If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business. . If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting?

When you look for the best web hosting for your business, budget and costs will always be a huge factor. If you're on a tight budget, the best cheap web hosting can offer you a great middle-ground between the risks of the best free web hosting and the higher costs of certain hosting plans across different types.

While some very cheap hosts exist in this market, that area is a false economy, providing you with limited disk space, poor performance, and a lack of reliability. You need to balance your need to save money with the need to fulfil your business requirements.

Choose a host that offers top performance, support, and all the features and tools you require. We've compiled the very best cheap web hosting services below, and believe that our selections offer above-average uptime, great customer service, useful and comprehensive features, and fair pricing plans.

One integral point to remember before you buy is that many hosts will advertise a low introductory price for the first year, but will raise this for following years. Bear this in mind when looking around, and making your final decision. Read on, and find the best cheap web hosting provider for your website!

The 3 best cheap web hosting providers

Hostinger: the best web hosting provider

Hostinger's cheapest shared hosting plan, Single Shared Hosting, costs 99p a month for the first term, and £2.99 a month after, with restrictions. However, its Business Shared Hosting plan is only £3.99 a month and £8.99 a month on renewal, and has next to no restrictions across hosting parameters.

tsoHost: leading UK host with top cloud hosting plans

tsoHost's Economy cloud hosting plan costs £3.99 a month, and stays at this price after the first year. It includes a free domain name; 100GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth; 100 1GB mailboxes; a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee; cPanel; one-click app installer; and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

GoDaddy: veteran host's competitive shared hosting

Web hosting and domain registration giant GoDaddy's Economy plan is £3.99 a month for the first term before increasing to £6.99, and includes 100GB of storage, unmetered bandwidth, free Microsoft 365 email for the first year, a one-click installer, and the industry-standard cPanel control panel.

What is the best cheap web hosting available?

Our top choice for the best cheap web hosting is Hostinger, with the web host also our top choice for best web hosting, best VPS hosting, best cloud hosting, best VPS cloud hosting, and best WordPress hosting. Single Web Hosting costs 99p a month, and £3.99 a month after the first term. However, Business Shared hosting plan has no restrictions, and is only £4.99 a month and £13.99 on renewal.

UK-based host tsoHost ranks second thanks to its reasonably priced cloud hosting packages, with its Economy plan (£3.99 a month) staying at this price after the first year. This plan includes a free domain name, 100GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, 100 1GB mailboxes, a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee, a cPanel control panel, a one-click app installer, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

GoDaddy's Economy plan is worth mentioning too, starting at £3.99 a month for the first term before increasing to £6.99. This plan from the web hosting and domain registration veteran includes 100GB of storage, unmetered bandwidth, free Microsoft 365 email for the first year, a one-click installer, and the industry-standard cPanel control panel.

We also recommend HostGator, Domain.com, InterServer, IONOS by 1&1, iPage, One.com, and 123 Reg among our best cheap web hosting options, with all providing different hosting packages at competitive rates.

The best cheap web hosting providers, compared

The best cheap web hosting available

1. Hostinger

A good range of cheap plans

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 10GB
• Bandwidth: 100GB
• Subdomains: 2

REASONS TO BUY

• Free SSL certificate
• Free domain name
• Great introductory price

REASONS TO AVOID

• Twice as expensive after the initial term

Score: 3.5/5

Hostinger’s cheapest plan, Single Web Hosting, costs just 99p a month for the first term. After that, you’ll pay £2.99 a month. If you pay 48 months in advance, the first four years come to just £47.52 in total.

But this ultra-cheap plan has severe limitations. You’re given just 100GB per month, 30GB of disk space, and one email address. No automatic backups of your website are taken, but you do get a free SSL certificate, 24/7/365 support, and a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.

Though it’s more expensive at £3.99 a month (£8.99 on renewal), the Business Web Hosting plan from Hostinger has all restrictions removed, so you can have unlimited websites, email accounts, and traffic.

Read our comprehensive Hostinger review and our interview with CMO Daugirdas Jankus.

2. tsoHost

UK cloud hosting on the cheap

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 100GB
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Transparent pricing
• Free domain name
• 99.9 percent uptime

REASONS TO AVOID

• Lacks 24/7 customer support

Score: 4/5

tsoHost is a top British hosting company that offers everything from cloud hosting to customized dedicated servers. Its inexpensive cloud hosting packages are a good choice for a UK company looking to get off the ground.

tsoHost’s Economy plan costs £3.99 a month. This is a discounted price for paying annually, and it should be noted that there’s no increase in price after the first year.

With this plan, you get a free domain name, 100GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, and 100 1GB mailboxes. Other highlights are a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee, cPanel control panel, one-click app installer, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you need more from the service, there are three more expensive plans that you can upgrade to. As tsoHost offers cloud hosting instead of shared hosting, it’s easy to scale your service up or down as you see fit.

3. GoDaddy

Economy hosting that leaves room to grow

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 100GB
• Bandwidth: Unmetered
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• 99.9 percent uptime guarantee
• Fast speeds

REASONS TO AVOID

• Average pricing
• Free email is only for one year

Score: 4/5

The GoDaddy Economy plan costs £1 a month for the first term before increasing to £6.99 for subsequent terms. For this, you get 100GB of storage, unmetered bandwidth, and free Microsoft 365 email for the first year.

All plans include a one-click installer for over 150 popular apps, like WordPress and Joomla, and you get the industry-standard cPanel control panel at no extra cost. On the Economy plan, though, you can only host one website.

GoDaddy makes it easy to upgrade to its more powerful plans via a one-click purchase. Therefore, you could choose GoDaddy Economy at first and later expand to GoDaddy’s £9.99 a month Ultimate plan when you have more traffic. Finally, at the moment the company is offering its managed WordPress hosting for 70% off via coupon code GDD1mwp.

Read our GoDaddy web hosting review, our comparison pitting Bluehost vs GoDaddy, and our GoDaddy website builder review.

4. HostGator

An unlimited plan at a fair price

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Free domain name and SSL certificate
• No limit on storage or bandwidth
• 45-day money-back guarantee

REASONS TO AVOID

• Add-ons not detailed in purchase
• Steep increase after first term

Score: 3.5/5

HostGator is a top option if you like “unlimited everything” plans. With the cheapest plan, Hatchling, you get support for a single domain, a free WordPress website transfer, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain name. Disk space, subdomains, FTP account, MySQL databases, and email addresses are unlimited too.

You get all this for an introductory price of £2.30 a month if you sign up for three years. After the intro period, you’ll pay £6.95 a month, which is still reasonable. Besides the good pricing you get a generous 45-day money-back guarantee and a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.

HostGator is a little frustrating however, because its website only shows low introductory prices, and hides prices you’ll pay when you renew in the fine print. For example, when you sign up for a shared hosting plan, it automatically adds a service called SiteLock that scans your website for malware daily. It’s listed as £2.50 a month, but a small disclaimer states that after 12 months, you’ll be billed £29.99 for each following year. We prefer hosts to be clearer with their pricing.

The company routinely updates its web hosting and website builders deals online, and if you use the coupon code SNAPPY, you can access a range of savings on VPS hosting, shared hosting, the Gator Website Builders, and WordPress hosting.

Read our HostGator review, and our comparison of Bluehost vs HostGator.

5. Domain.com

An excellent price for a fully-featured web hosting plan

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Free domain name
• Free SSL certificate
• Solid price

REASONS TO AVOID

• No cPanel on the Basic plan

Score: 3/5

Domain.com's most popular web hosting plan is also its cheapest—the Basic plan costs just £3.13 a month, whether you purchase a one-year, two-year, or three-year plan. However, hidden away in the fine print is the renewal price: £4.17 a month.

It’s not a huge price increase compared to many on this list, and indeed, the renewal price is still excellent value for money, but we feel that Domain.com should make this information more prominent during the checkout process.

The Basic plan includes support for one website, 10 MySQL databases, and an SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt. You get unlimited disk space and bandwidth too, subject to terms and conditions.

Read our Domain.com review.

6. InterServer

A fast, unlimited plan that never goes up in price

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Price is locked in forever
• Fully-featured unlimited plan
• Fast servers

REASONS TO AVOID

• No free domain

Score: 3/5

InterServer is a web hosting company that offers standard web hosting, active server page hosting, VPS hosting, cloud storage, and dedicated servers. At £2.05 a month, it’s one of the cheapest hosts on our list, and we do like that the price you pay to sign up for is locked in forever, and the plan is quite well featured.

You get unlimited disk space, email accounts, bandwidth, FTP accounts, and email forwarders. There’s more: you also get free SSL certificates, RAID and Cloudflare caching, automatic malware scanning, weekly backups, and a free website migration.

With the one-click installer, you can easily install over 450 popular cloud apps, including software like WordPress, Joomla, osCommerce, Magneto, phpBB, YetiForce, and ownCloud. If you’re looking for a cheap web host that has transparent pricing and doesn’t cut any corners, InterServer is a good bet.

Read our InterServer review.

7. IONOS by 1&1

A great price on a capable service

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 10GB
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: 10,000

REASONS TO BUY

• Great price
• Good DDoS protection
• Free domain for one year

REASONS TO AVOID

• Only 10GB disk space

Score: 3/5

IONOS by 1&1 advertises its Plus plan as £1 a month, but this is a gimmick, as after the first year, you pay £8 a month. For a cheaper ongoing price, you can choose the £2 a month Standard plan.

It’s got 100GB of storage, 10 email accounts, and support for just one website, but it’s easy enough to upgrade if you need to expand, and unlike that plan, the Standard plan only increases to £5 a month after the first year.

With IONOS, you’re not locked into a long contract, so it’s easier to make these business decisions on the fly based on your current requirements. Other features include automatic daily backups and site scans, DDoS protection, a one-click installer for over 70 applications, 10 MySQL databases, a free domain for a year, 10 email accounts, a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee, and 24/7 customer service.

Learn about IONOS' MyWebsite website builder in our 1&1 IONOS MyWebsite review.

8. iPage

Enticingly low introductory price on an unlimited plan

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Free domain name
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• SSL certificate

REASONS TO AVOID

• Much higher price after initial term

Score: 3/5

iPage is a cheap hosting product that’s owned by Endurance International Group (EIG). This huge conglomerate also owns HostGator and Domain.com, and as one of the largest web hosting providers on the internet, EIG can offer great deals.

If you choose a three-year plan with iPage, you’ll pay £1.66 a month for the first three years. After that, the price balloons to £6.68 a month, so factor that into your buying decision. With this plan, you get a free domain name, SSL certificate, and domain transfer. Disk space, bandwidth, and domains are all unlimited, subject to fair use.

Certain services, like daily automatic backups, domain privacy, and WordPress optimisation, cost extra. A wide range of ecommerce solutions are available for setting up a shop, and there’s 24/7 phone and chat support.

9. One.com

Low introductory price, but not many features

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 50GB
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: Unlimited

REASONS TO BUY

• Outstanding prices
• Hosted on fast SSDs

REASONS TO AVOID

• Only 50GB storage space
• Prices double after the initial term

Score: 3/5

If you’re looking for the best price with a well-known web host, Denmark-based One.com is a reasonable choice. Its plans start at just 99p a month, with a renewal price of £4.99 a month after the first term.

With this cheap plan, you get 50GB of SSD storage, unlimited traffic, automated backups, 100 email accounts, and 75 Google Ads credit. Features such as one-click WordPress installation are reserved for One.com’s more expensive plans. One.com has over 1.5 million active users, and there are five pricier plans that you can upgrade to if you need more webspace.

10. 123 Reg

Attractive hosting solutions with the option to upgrade

SPECIFICATIONS

• Disk space: 100GB
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Subdomains: 25

REASONS TO BUY

• Over 125 one-click applications
• 30-day money-back guarantee

REASONS TO AVOID

• 40 percent price increase after year one
• 5GB mailbox size

Score: 3/5

123 Reg is a well-known brand in the UK that started as a domain name registrar and moved into web hosting. Now it offers a range of reasonably-priced hosting plans. The cheapest one is the Starter plan, which is £3.99 a month for the first year, paid annually. After the first year, prices are bumped 40 percent.

With the Starter plan, you get a free domain, one mailbox, 100GB of web space, unlimited bandwidth, and 10 1GB MySQL databases. Email mailbox size is only 5GB, which is a little tight compared to the competition.

123 Reg has three more expensive plans if you find yourself needing more webspace, email mailboxes, or CPU power. This makes it easy to expand in the future.

What to look for in a cheap web host

When looking for a cheap hosting provider for your site, it’s important to bear quality in mind, as most major hosts have a range of cost-effective plans, but not all provide the same level of value.

The best web hosting providers offer excellent support, reliable uptime guarantees, and fast server response times as well. A cheap shared hosting plan won’t offer the same server speeds or support as the most expensive dedicated hosting.

It's also worth remembering most hosts will cap maximum storage and bandwidth on cheaper plans, so you must make sure you choose the plan that works for your business.

What's the difference between free and cheap web hosting?

Some web hosts offer limited versions of their services for free, but these are usually meant to help customers get a sense of hosting before signing up. Free web hosting rarely ever offers the same number of features as paid hosting, and imposes many restrictions to cap usage for economic feasibility.

Only go for free web hosting if you want to test-run things before launch, or if you require a site for personal use. Professionals and business owners should always consider paid hosting.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

If you're looking for further savings across web hosting, check out our buying guide for the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting?

Do you want your site to focus on European and UK customers? Ensure your chosen host is among the best European web hosting providers. Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

Hostinger offers some of the world’s best web hosting services, and it’s used by a huge number of people across the world. It offers a range of budget-friendly hosting solutions, including shared, WordPress, VPS, and cloud hosting.

Hostinger review: Snapshot

As our Hostinger review will show, there’s a reason why this hosting provider is so popular. It offers arguably the best budget hosting on the market, and there are virtually no flaws to speak of.

On top of this, Hostinger’s native hPanel is excellent. It boasts great security integrations, one-click Cloudflare installation, a nifty website builder, and a built-in domain registration portal, among numerous other tools.

Score: 4.5/5

Read on for the full and detailed Hostinger review.

Check out this exclusive Hostinger deal:

• Get Hostinger's Premium Shared Hosting for £2.12 a month
  We currently have an exclusive deal from Hostinger for its Premium Shared Hosting plan, which is currently available for an exclusive monthly price of £2.12. This package offers 100 websites, 100GB of SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth and MySQL databases.

Hostinger's competitors

How does Hostinger compare to its main competitors?

Hostinger: Key features

Hostinger is one of our favourite web hosting companies due to its affordable yet feature-rich plans. It offers virtually everything you will need to build a website, although it’s certainly targeted at small business owners and personal users.

Unlike most other leading web hosts, which usually offer a cPanel control panel, Hostinger boasts its own native hPanel dashboard. This is actually quite similar to cPanel, but it has been cleverly designed for ease of use while still offering the expected tools.

For starters, you will find information about your website and resource usage on the left of the screen. View your IP address and server location, and monitor your storage, email account, and subdomain usage to ensure you don’t reach your plan’s limits.

You can also access numerous tools via the icons on the main dashboard. Manage your account, set up email addresses and webmail accounts, configure domains, and customise more advanced settings as required.

Hostinger also offers one-click Cloudflare installation, which is great for those who would like to take advantage of the program’s advanced security features. At its most basic, Cloudflare is a CDN that’s designed to boost site performance. However, it also boasts DDoS protection and an advanced DNS firewall.

If you’re a newbie without much web development knowledge or experience, you will love Hostinger’s Zyro website builder integration. With this, you can start a new site with just a few clicks, customising its appearance via the intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

One thing that stands out here is the advanced AI site creation option. Basically, you can tell the Zyro builder what you need and it will put together a custom template that’s designed specifically for your needs.

Then, you can edit virtually every aspect of your site. Zyro certainly isn’t the most powerful editor available, and you won’t have nearly as much design flexibility as you would have if you had used WordPress, but it’s a neat little tool nonetheless.

The built-in domain registration portal also stands out as excellent. Here, you will be able to register or transfer a domain to your account, enabling you to manage things from one central dashboard. Hostinger’s domains are also very competitively priced, with cheaper options starting from just 99p a year.

Hostinger: What's new in 2022?

As a leading web hosting platform, Hostinger naturally provides regular updates to ensure it remains at the forefront of the industry. In recent months, the company has announced partnerships with various other digital platforms, along with an update to PHP 8.0.

One noteworthy partnership connects Hostinger users with Fiverr. If you look under the website category on your hPanel management dashboard, you will notice "Digital Marketing" and "Business Service" options. These basically enable you to hire an industry expert to provide professional assistance.

Overall, though, Hostinger’s web hosting continues to stand out from the competitors. It provides a modern service, and you can expect it to continue to update its hosting plans with the latest technology and useful integrations.

Hostinger: Pricing

Hostinger offers a wide range of web hosting products, including shared, cloud, WordPress, and VPS solutions. This makes its prices quite complicated.

At the cheapest end of the spectrum, there are three shared hosting plans ranging from £1.99 to £3.99 a month with an initial four-year subscription. Its Premium Shared Hosting plan is currently available for an exclusive monthly price of £2.12. Expect to pay more on renewal, and if you would like a shorter subscription term. For example, the cheapest monthly plan comes in at £9.99 a month.

WordPress hosting is slightly more expensive, with prices starting at £1.99 a month for the cheapest plan. VPS options start at £3.95 a month, and cloud hosting ranges from £7.99 to £69.99 a month.

Hostinger's pricing plans

Shared hosting

WordPress hosting

VPS hosting

Cloud hosting

*This is the annual cost of a four-year subscription. Expect to pay significantly more per year for shorter subscription terms.

Testing Hostinger

In order to comprehensively compare Hostinger to the competition, we analysed a series of its features and tools to see how it performed. This included creating a website with its built-in Zyro website builder, checking its server response times, and seeing how simple it was to set up an SSL certificate.

How do you create a website with Hostinger?

When you sign into your Hostinger account for the first time, you will be prompted to get started with a new website. After you answer a few simple questions related to the type of site you plan to build and your experience, Hostinger will recommend a platform to get started with.

These include the integrated Zyro website builder, WordPress, or any of a range of alternative CMSs. You can also migrate an existing website or start from scratch and do things the way you want.

Now, this process will be a little annoying for those with more experience. There didn’t appear to be any way to skip the initial setup, and it took us at least 10 minutes before we could access our management dashboard.

How does Hostinger perform?

To test the performance of Hostinger’s shared hosting, we created a simple website and used Uptime.com to monitor it for a ten-week period. And we weren’t disappointed.

For one, we benefited from an excellent 100% uptime across the test period. This is great to see and essentially means that you shouldn’t have any trouble with your site being offline unexpectedly.

We also analysed the server response times, which ranged from 171ms to 1.73s. The spike to 1.73 seconds is a little concerning, suggesting that the servers were overloaded at that time. However, occasions like this were rare, and the 382ms average server response time is great for basic shared hosting.

A quick look at page load speeds uncovered even more good news. We tested the speed of our site using Dotcom Tools’ Website Speed Test. The average load time from 16 global locations came in at 878ms, which is right up there with the best we’ve seen.

The bottom line: You can expect top performance if you use Hostinger’s shared hosting.

How easy is it to set up an SSL certificate?

Installing an SSL certificate is one of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s security. Hostinger offers free SSL certificates across the board, but you will still need to work through the setup process to activate yours.

Fortunately, this process is extremely straightforward. Head to the "Home" tab of your account management panel, and you should find a quick link to "SSL setup". Follow the prompts, select the website you want to install a certificate on, and Hostinger will take care of the rest.

One thing that was nice to see here was that even if your domain isn’t pointing to Hostinger yet, you can still work through the SSL setup process. Hostinger will complete the installation automatically as soon as your domain is connected.

Alternatives to Hostinger

Hostinger is a leading web hosting provider, particularly for those who are looking for budget shared hosting. Two of its main competitors are InMotion Hosting and iPage, which both provide cheap yet reliable shared hosting.

For one, InMotion Hosting offers highly affordable hosting that’s perfect for long-term users. Its cheapest plan comes in at £2.04 a month for a three-year subscription, and this only increases to £2.86 a month with annual billing.

All of InMotion’s shared plans come with a cPanel control panel, along with a free SSL certificate and domain name. Along with this, you will benefit from unlimited bandwidth across the board, a suite of one-click installations, and a range of security tools that rivals Hostinger’s.

iPage is another great option for those on a tight budget. Its cheapest Go plan includes unlimited site connections, unlimited storage, and a free domain name. Prices start from just £1.63 a month with a 36-month subscription (increasing to £2.45 a month with annual billing).

Unfortunately, iPage uses a sub-standard vDesk control panel that just can’t compare to Hostinger’s hPanel. It’s confusing and lacks some of the expected features, and it will be a turn-off for many.

Hostinger's features compared to the competition

Hostinger: The verdict

A thorough analysis of Hostinger and its products reveals that it offers great hosting services across the board. It’s up there alongside the best shared hosting providers in the world, but comes in at a fraction of the price of many competitors.

One standout feature is Hostinger’s native hPanel control panel. We’d argue that this is as good as, if not better than the widely used cPanel, which is generally considered to be the industry standard. The hPanel interface is intuitive, easy to navigate, and packed with a great selection of tools and configuration options.

Along with this, Hostinger users will benefit from a range of other tools, including a nifty integrated website builder, streamlined SSL setup, a full Cloudflare CDN integration. Uptime and other performance metrics were excellent, and starting a new website shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes.

All things considered, it’s hard to identify any flaws with Hostinger and its web hosting services. Some users will be constrained by the relatively low storage limits, and there are no dedicated server or other high-end options.

Because of this, Hostinger presents as an excellent option for personal and small business websites. However, you may find it a little underpowered if you plan on hosting a high-traffic site or a large online store.

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Once you've found the best website builder, and are looking for cheaper hosting, look into the best cheap web hosting for your next project, or even the best free web hosting if you're on a tight budget. If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business.

Do you want your site to focus on European and UK customers? Ensure your chosen host is among the best European web hosting providers. Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

Though you might not realise it, web hosting can have a significant impact on your web security, and website performance. The best web hosting services provide comprehensive security features that prevent the worst from happening, so be careful about which platform you go for.

Choosing the wrong hosting provider can, at the worst, expose you to both downtime and exploitation by malicious parties. Below, we outline everything that you need to know: what is web hosting security, and why should you seriously reconsider using shared hosting for your website?

Shared hosting becomes a shared responsibility

Low-cost shared hosting is a common choice among businesses looking to stay within a tight budget, but there are a few important web security considerations you should be aware of. Since shared hosting involves numerous sites stored on the same physical server, problems can occur.

For example, it’s possible for your site to be compromised as a result of issues with another site, especially if permissions for file and directory access are weak. Essentially, this means you can be directly affected by another party’s problems.

You could suffer various consequences, including downtime, poor performance, and injected code and attack files if another site on your server doesn’t implement the correct security fail safes. Because of this, you can be forced offline or have sensitive data compromised, even if you do everything right.

Exploited sites could mean offline suspension

In some cases, hosting providers choose to suspend exploited sites until malicious content is removed. This is due to the fact that other people sharing the same server could be affected if action isn’t taken.

If you’re using a reliable, security-conscious host, your site could be taken down with little to no warning. They will often take rapid action to close sites before malware or attack files spread to other users or even to your viewers. In short, your site will be put into quarantine to prevent harm to the provider’s reputation, and this can result in your online presence being eliminated completely.

If your site is a major part of your business, you could experience a significant amount of lost income.

Don’t get suspended

When a site is suspended, it could be offline for some time—or at least until you spend some time removing harmful files or code. And unfortunately, this does become your responsibility. Unless you’re using managed hosting, you will have to look after your own security and deal with problems on your own. This can be time consuming and can lead to extended downtime.

If you use managed private server hosting, all security features are usually taken care of by your host. This means that it would be their responsibility to deal with problems and get you back online. Having to deal with an exploited server can mean a lot of work for you, which leads to the next section.

Your hosting provider dictates how time consuming security is for you

The amount of time and energy you have to put into security generally depends on two things: the type of hosting you sign up for, and the host you’re using. Security can be an absolute nightmare with low-quality providers, but the opposite is true if you use a reliable host. Most providers sit somewhere in the middle, so it’s important to do your research.

How to find the right hosting provider

If you find the right host, you will often be able to assign your in-house employees to different tasks and use their time more efficiently. It’s therefore very important to think carefully about your website’s security. If you do decide to go for shared hosting, make sure you spend some time identifying the best plan for your needs.

Try and find a reliable provider with a focus on security to reduce the amount of time you have to spend on menial management tasks. Consider asking the following questions to potential hosts:

• Is there an uptime guarantee?
• Are there any DOS protection tools?
• What happens if my site is dead?
• What security integrations are included?
• How are backups handled and what does the restoration process involve?

Finding out the answers to these questions will help you understand how different hosts look after security considerations, allowing you to choose a reliable option that’s suited to your needs.

Security best practices

Finding the right host is a good start, but understand that you will still need to actively manage your site’s security. A good host will provide a solid security base, but it’s up to you to use the tools at your disposal to protect your site. Consider doing the following to make sure your site is safe and secure at all times.

• Use an SSL certificate to encrypt data transmissions
• Give different users different levels of access
• Make sure security updates are installed ASAP
• Consider the best anonymous hosting solutions
• Rotate passwords regularly
• Use a secure SFTP as opposed to normal FTP
• Store backups offline
• Use an automatic malware detection and removal tool
• Ensure all plugins and extensions are safe and from a trustworthy source
• Monitor your site for suspicious activity and/or traffic

Further reading on web hosting and website builders

Once you've found the best website builder, and are looking for cheaper hosting, look into the best cheap web hosting for your next project, or even the best free web hosting if you're on a tight budget. If you're searching for hosting for a small business website, take a look at the best web hosting for small business.

Do you want your site to focus on European and UK customers? Ensure your chosen host is among the best European web hosting providers. Finally, if you've got a WordPress website or are looking to create one with one of the best WordPress website builders, the best WordPress hosting is ideal and is provided by many of the best web hosts.

When creating a website with the best website builder, and choosing the best web hosting services, it's worth remembering that most of your site's traffic will come from searches via engines such as Google, and SEO is a term grouping together the steps you can take to improve your rankings.

Once your site appears above competitor sites on search engines for the terms relating to products and services your business supplies, you can dominate your market. As a result, website owners spend huge amounts of money and time undertaking SEO work on and research for their sites.

This can include optimising existing pages to make it easier for search engines to read, creating relevant and expert content, and increasing the inbound links to your site from other authoritative websites.

All of these elements make a site more likely to answer a question posed by a search engine user, and in turn mean your website will place higher in a given search engine's results. It's thought by most SEO specialists that Google alone considers over 200 factors in deciding which sites to display for a given search query.

One of these is the web host used to host your site, and here, we discuss five ways in which a poor choice of host, without taking into account the hosting services available, can have a negative effect on your search engine rankings.

1. Slow website speed

If you choose a cheap web hosting company, then your website may load slowly for visitors. Apart from making for poor customer experiences, a slow site will be penalised by search engines, making your rankings in results drop. Google has specified that the time a website takes to load is an important factor it takes into account when deciding the order it lists sites on search engine results.

A good web host will have excellent networking infrastructure, and won’t host too many sites on the same servers, helping to keep your website running fast. You also need to consider ways you can optimise your pages so they load as quickly as possible.

This includes removing redundant scripts, compressing images, and stripping out third-party widgets you don’t use. Google Webmaster Tools can be used to diagnose and address the cause of website speed issues.

2. Website downtimes

Worse than a site that loads slowly is a site that doesn’t load at all. When yours is unavailable, it makes for a terrible customer experience, and your potential buyers will simply go to your competitors.

If your website goes offline because of issues caused by the web host, you can be sure that search engines will take note. If your site is frequently unavailable, Google will flag it as unreliable, and therefore unlikely to offer the excellent customer experience they try to promote. Your site will drop down the search engine rankings.

If your website goes offline for an extended period, it will be dropped from search engine results completely. When shopping around for a web hosting provider, note companies that guarantee a certain uptime percentage. The best web hosts will guarantee your website will be up 99.99% or even 100% of the time.

3. Database connection failures

If you’ve ever seen an "Internal Server Error" or "Database Connection Failed" message when you have tried to visit a website, this means the site is having problems accessing the files needed to display content to you. It could be a configuration error, but often it’s caused by a database being concurrently accessed by too many people.

This can happen when an article or video has gone viral on social media and thousands of people are trying to view it at the same time. Good hosting has safeguards to make sure servers don’t get overloaded. Files are cached on alternative servers, and popular pages can be offloaded so that the number of connections to the database is reduced.

Upgrading to a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server is another way to increase reliability and durability. With a VPS, your website is allocated a set share of the web server’s resources, so if another website on the server experiences a rapid boost in traffic, you won’t be affected. If you use a dedicated server, you’ll have the entire server to yourself.

4. Using shared hosting services with spammers

If you use shared hosting, it means your website will be on the same server as hundreds or thousands of other websites. If any of these other websites are run by spammers, scammers, or other nefarious types, the IP address may be flagged as malicious. Your website’s search engine rankings could drop like a rock if it’s considered to be in a bad neighborhood.

A good web hosting company will immediately kick spammers from their servers, minimising the chance of this happening. If you’d like to check which websites you’re sharing an IP address with, you can use a reverse IP lookup service.

5. Incorrect TLD

Top-level domains (TLDs) are the parts of the domain that come after the dot (e.g. .com, .net, .org.) Though there have been attempts to popularise other TLDs like .co, most people still expect your website to have a .com TLD. Using other TLDs makes your website harder to remember, and can cause a loss of traffic.

TLDs do affect Google search engine rankings, but not by too much. The TLD of a site is just one of the hundreds of ranking factors Google uses to rank websites, but using a .com TLD will help your SEO efforts because your website’s name is more memorable, making it easier for people to share with others.

If you are targeting a specific country, using a geographic suffix such as .co.uk is a reasonable alternative to .com, as Google will boost your site in local results.

Conclusion

Performing good SEO is of utmost importance to the success of an online business, but don’t overlook the effect web hosting has on your search engine rankings. A site that loads slowly, has frequent downtimes, or shares hosting services with known spammers will certainly appear lower in search engine results than it could do.

Consider this when choosing web hosting services for your website. Allocate more of your budget to hosting, so that your SEO efforts are not compromised by poor infrastructure.

Further reading on website builders and web hosting

Learn how to choose a domain name for your website, and why domain privacy is important, and what it means for your business. It's also worth looking into the best anonymous hosting solutions to protect your privacy.

Check out our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re still unclear about why you need hosting, you can find out more in our article asking what is web hosting?

A company's website is an integral and essential element of a business, and in our digital age, even more so. A key part of having a website is choosing the best web hosting service to host your site with (as well as the best website builder to construct it with), and this can be difficult with so many web hosts available.

One way to approach this process is by reading guides discussing different elements of web hosting, whether you're looking for the best web hosting, the best free web hosting, the best unlimited hosting, or the best cloud hosting. It's also advisable to read reviews of web hosts, and then put a shortlist together, before deciding on the web hosting provider that seems like the best fit for you and your business.

The next step is to decide on the right type of hosting that you need, and different websites require different solutions, with it being important to choose the correct one for your business. These can range from standard, unmanaged hosting through to dedicated, high-end and managed servers.

Here, we compare managed vs unmanaged hosting, and explain the differences between the two, as well as why - ultimately - managed hosting is the better option for businesses.

Managed vs unmanaged hosting: What’s the difference?

There are many components involved in running a web server, from the hardware to the operating system and various software tools. A managed hosting plan has a selection of additional “management” features installed, ones that are aimed at helping your website run easier. Managed hosting plans also usually offer more in the way of technical support.

Unmanaged hosting plans, in contrast, don’t offer any (or few) of these extra features. You’ll get a basic server with the operating system installed, and that’s about it. It will be up to you to install everything else, such as basic software required for running a website, like Apache, Ngnix, or PHP.

Unmanaged plans are cheaper because the hosting provider doesn’t do as much of the work. Not all hosting companies offer managed solutions, but if you want to spend more time on creating content for your website than on the nitty-gritty details of running a server, it is worth finding one that offers this type of service. It could save you time and money.

What benefits can managed hosting offer to my website?

We've outlined a number of points that illustrate the benefits of managed hosting below.

Backups

Backups are an extremely important part of running a website. Without any, you risk losing your site completely if disaster strikes. If you’ve chosen a good web hosting company, check that it provides daily backups and keeps them for at least a week, if not longer.

If an incident occurs that stops your website from functioning, the web host will be able to restore your site’s files and database from those backups.

Technical support

Technical support is a crucial component of what hosting providers offer. If you ever need help, you want to know that there will always be a team of people who are ready to respond. Even before signing up, you can get a gauge on how good a provider’s support will be by contacting their team via phone, live chat, or email to see how they respond.

If you get prompt and efficient answers from the pre-sales team, it’s a good indication that the technical support will offer a similar standard of service.

Routine operations and maintenance

A fully managed service should take care of everything that goes on behind the scenes to keep a website running. Such tasks include keeping the operating system up to date and secure and customising the server to your exact requirements if you request it. It also can help with installing third-party applications, talking to your website developers about any technical issues, and offering recommendations on how to improve your site’s performance.

A good hosting plan should include monitoring of the server and website and the ability to respond quickly to any issue. It should also have a migration service to help you move your website from your current provider, if you have one.

Web security

Web security is just as important as support when it comes to web hosting. A fully managed hosting plan should have a full suite of security features, such as installing a local firewall as standard, actively scanning your website for malware, and blocking unauthorised attempts to log into the website’s control panel.

Another good reason for considering a managed hosting solution is if your website runs on older software that can’t be upgraded or has other special requirements. With a managed service, the hosting company should be able to configure a server to your liking. When assessing providers, it’s a good idea to ask if support is offered for third-party companies.

This way, if you’re using specialised software from a third party and need assistance with technical queries, you can request help from your hosting company.

Further reading on web hosting

Learn more about anonymous hosting, another option for you to improve your site's privacy, and discover the best anonymous hosting solutions. It's also worth learning how your web hosting impacts security, and if you're looking for a domain, find out how to choose a domain name for your website and what to consider when choosing a domain name.