Chris

You’ve Seen Their Ads…But How Do They Stack Up?

Introduction

Company History

GoDaddy is a staple piece of the history of the internet. They have helped launch millions of websites since 1997. The founder of GoDaddy is Bob Parsons. He was a financial software services visionary who decided to come out of retirement to compete with Network Solutions for domain registration services.

In the last 22 years they have become largest ICANN-accredited registrar on the Internet. Their book of business is over 60,000,000 registered website domains. Their main hub of operation is a 270,000 square foot data center in Phoenix, AZ and they are quickly moving infrastructure into the AWS cloud. (Amazon Web Services)

My Personal Experience

I have been a GoDaddy customer since 2002 when I registered my very first domain. At that time, they weren’t offering hosting services, so I used other providers. (I have been a HostGator customer since 2008.)

I never thought to use them for hosting in the years since because I always thought of them as my Domain Registrar. I am a big believer in using tech companies for their core competency.

Despite having 17 years of experience with them as a customer for domain registration, my first hosting account with them was in 2019 when we launched this hosting review website.

Here is a link to our testing beacon website on GoDaddy services:

http://gd-openhostingreviews.com

Their average uptime and performance metrics are pretty decent:

Uptime – 99.96%
Response Time – 879 ms
WordPress Render Time – 455 milliseconds

With their very basic package, you get a decent 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth. Of course you get a free domain for the first year, and it is pretty darn cheap. Their introductory rates start at $2.99/month.

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	879 ms
Average Uptime	99.96% 15 minutes over 10 outages
Average Render Time	455 ms
Average Security Threats	5 attempts
Support	24/7 Live Chat - 24/7 Phone Support
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and more
Features	Unmetered bandwidth, 100GB storage, free email and free domain 1st year
Plans	Shared, WordPress, Cloud, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Not free
Pricing	Starting at $5.99/mo (renews at $8.99/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

For as large a company as GoDaddy is, I expect their performance to be solid. No one has time for their website to be down. It is critical for your website to be fast, no matter many people are visiting it.

GoDaddy has operated multi-million dollar infrastructure for years and should be able to deliver. We see well they are delivering their services every month with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon.

Here is a link to that WordPress site:

http://gd-openhostingreviews.com

In all our testing, GoDaddy has exceeded expectations for uptime and speed. They are also way ahead of most of the competition.

Here is a quick chart showing a breakdown of our GoDaddy performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 793 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 776 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 748 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 828 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 851 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 837 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 886 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 849 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 839 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 807 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 813 ms
Jun 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 866 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 887 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 870 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 916 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.64% average load speed: 915 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,033 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 939 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 964 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 874 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 936 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,003 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 950 ms

Quality of Support

GoDaddy offers several ways to contact them for support. You can reach their support via phone, email, and live chat.

They also have a Knowledge Base that is quite in-depth, but I found that it is hard to get straight to the point on some things.

I have a go-to method for quickly knowing how well the support techs are going to be able to help. All I do is start a support ticket and ask them a simple basic question.

It is a question that every Data Center Operator should be able to recall quickly:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

Pretty straight forward, what operating system is the server using. Nearly all web hosting companies are using Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS.

If the first level of support for any Data Center Operation can’t rattle this off the top of their head, or by send a quick IM, then it makes me question what is going on around there.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

So a few things to note about this interaction:

It was very painful. It was very difficult to figure out how to initiate a chat. It ended up being 20+ minutes of the agent “Dhanrani” fumbling around, and in the end I didn’t even get the answer to my question.

What made this even worse is the fact that other hosting provider that we have reviewed were able to answer this question within seconds of being asked.

A few positive notes:

Even though the chat was hard to find, GoDaddy puts their phone number everywhere and is easy to find. Their phone agents are very friendly, too.

The chat software did connect quickly and the agent “Dhanrani” verified my account before addressing any questions. Not all hosting companies do this and it leads them prone to social engineering attacks.

Affordability

GoDaddy is one of the lowest priced web hosting providers out there. For a single website you can get started on their basic plan for only $2.99/month. Their top-tier plan for high-traffic websites costs as low as $12.99/month.

This is great considering their uptime and speed results. Sometimes you get what you pay for when it comes to low-price hosting companies. Many in the bottom tier can’t deliver results like GoDaddy can.

Remember that these are introductory prices only. After your initial term is up, which is usually a year, the prices will be more. They do offer a money back guarantee, but we have read about some bad experiences from folks trying to take them up on it.

The more time you pay for upfront, the cheaper it is. I wanted want the damage would be with them if I only bought 3 months in advance. Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the GoDaddy Economy package for 1 quarter of the year:

Here is what their breakdown is for my renewal after my first three months was up. You don’t get much of a break until you purchase at least a month in advance.

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Economy Plan

The Economy Plan comes with hosting for one website at $2.99/month. (The plan renews at $7.99/month). The plan comes with 100 GB storage, unmetered bandwidth, free business email for the first year. Free domain name registration for the first year is also included.

Deluxe Plan

The Deluxe Plan includes all of the features of the Economy Plan, plus unlimited storage and domains. With this plan you can host unlimited websites for $4.99/month. (The plan renews at $10.99/month)

Ultimate Plan

The Ultimate Plan includes all the features of the Deluxe Plan plus some more performance enhancements for $5.99/month (renewing at $16.99/month).

The Ultimate Plan comes with twice the CPU and RAM as the Economy Plan and Deluxe Plan. It also comes with a free SSL certificate for the first year, premium DNS, and unlimited databases.

Maximum Plan

The Maximum Plan comes with everything the Ultimate Plan does plus some more $12.99/month (with a $29.99/month renewal). It comes with two times the CPU power and RAM memory of the Ultimate Plan which gives you two times “maximum site traffic” they call it.

A nice feature in the Maximum Plan is a free SSL certificate the entire term of your purchase, not just for one year like the Ultimate Plan.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for the first year, if you buy at least 12 months of service upfront. Then renews at $12.99/year.
• Easy Setup Process: Complete a three-page registration form. The form gives you a lot of upsells. Be sure to read through all of the boxes that are checked before moving on.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: The GoDaddy Control panel is very clean and it is easy-to-use once you click through it a few times. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Installatron for easy installation of popular open-source scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 5 or 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: GoDaddy’s check out process has a lot of Upsells. Mostly for extra SSL, data backup, and data security services.

Other Plans

If you need more services or features than the Shared Hosting plans we reviewed, then GoDaddy does offer other types of web hosting services. This including Reseller, VPS, Business Cloud, and Dedicated Servers.

Do We Recommend GoDaddy?

Yes, we recommend GoDaddy for hosting. However, we also recommend shopping around, too.

We really like GoDaddy’s speed and uptime.  Their pricing is attractive for the first term, and the renewal isn’t terrible. 

The main problem with GoDaddy that we have seen is that many of the basic features you need to run a website are all upsells and addons.  

Adding these upsells to your plan could easily double your costs, and the hosting providers on the top of our list include these features for no extra fee.

Visit GoDaddy.com

Gaining ground in the WordPress World

Introduction

SiteGround was formed in 2004 by University friends in Sofia, Bulgaria. They host over 2,000,000 domains in 5 data centers across the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.

Although they have been in operation for nearly 15 years, they remained somewhat obscure until they partnered with Joomla for a free hosted website solution in 2015.

Then they catapulted into marketplace recognition when WordPress.org listed them as a recommended hosting provider.

I was excited to open an account with them for this review. I had never hosted a website with them before, and I wanted to see for myself what they were all about.

SiteGround has developed their own speed optimization software, a custom WordPress plugin for performance, and their servers run on all Solid State Disk storage. I wanted to see what this all translated to in the real world.

So far, I am totally impressed. Their performance is outstanding based on our monitoring on our custom test beacon:

http://sg-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.98%
Response Time – 993 ms
WordPress Render Time – 91 milliseconds

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	993 ms
Average Render Time	116 ms
Average Uptime	99.98% 60 minutes over 6 outages
Average Security Threats	2 attempts
Support	Tickets 24/7 - Live Chat 24/7 - Phone 24/7
Apps	Supports more than 500 applications
Features	Unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage, free CDN, free backups
Plans	Shared, WordPress, Cloud, Reseller, Enterprise and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Free on GrowBig and GoGeek plans
Pricing	Starting at $3.95/mo (renews at $11.95/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

No one wants their website is down or run slow. In many cases you have less than a second to win over a new web visitor.

All companies that deliver technology solutions should strive to provide 99.95% uptime. Ideally a web server should load pages in less than 1 second. You should be able to track load time in milliseconds.

We are constantly monitoring the uptime and page load speed of SiteGround’s service. Then we publish our testing results on a monthly basis. We have setup a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon.

Here is a link to that site:

http://sg-openhostingreviews.com

Since we started our testing, SiteGround has consistently exceeded our expectations for uptime and page load speed. They are also beating out most of the competition.

Here is a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 726 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 819 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 99.88% average load speed: 1,041 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 695 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 740 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 879 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,210 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 912 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 1,276 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,293 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,327 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 999 ms
July 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,043 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,098 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,568 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,451 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,404 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,640 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 1,078 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 931 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 366 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 993 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 437 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 436 ms

Quality of Support

SiteGround makes it easy to get support. You can reach an agent 24/7 via phone, chat, or email/support ticket. Another thing worth mention is their self-service.

Their online Knowledge Base is powered by their own AI engine and the search returns amazingly accurate results:

Their Knowledge Base also has great starting points to get you to the information you need quickly for a lot of common scenarios. You can tell that they put a lot of thought into their customer experience:

I have a go-to test that I use to gauge the quality of support a hosting company has. I simply start a chat with their support agents and ask an easy question that any data center operator should know without thinking:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

It shouldn’t be too hard for them to know, or find out quickly, what Operating System they are using.

Nearly all Web Hosts are running Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. You can find out quite a bit about a Data Center Operation by finding out what version they are on and how easily the staff knows.

Staying up to date is important, for security and performance. The more a technology provider is staying on top of updates, the better they are being managed.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

I was ecstatic with my experience with SiteGround support. The support chat connect to Gabe within 5-10 seconds. Amazingly he answered my question accurately within less than a minute. (The worst chat in all of our testing was over 40 minutes, and they still didn’t answer the question.)

You could tell that Gabe knew the answer off the top of his head, like he should, and I was able to fit in a follow up question. All in less than 5 minutes. This was just stellar performance, and a head above the competition.

The chat software itself performed without any glitches, and I liked how it showed the support agent’s picture. Or at least what they want me to think how Gabe looks. I also liked the duration counter.

The only thing I thought could have been improved is that there wasn’t much account verification, except for the fact that I was already logged in. Besides that, it was top-notch support.

Affordability

SiteGround is an affordable web host. Their basic packages have an introductory offer of $3.95/month. You are required to purchase 12 months of hosting at the time of signup.

The basic package includes hosting for one website, 10GB of storage, and performance suited for ~10,000 visits. Their plans do come with unlimited data transfer.

Like nearly all web hosting companies, the advertised rates on their websites are introductory offers for new accounts. The regular priced for their basic package after renewal is $11.95/month or $143.40/year.

Here is a copy of my receipt from SiteGround of my initial purchase. I got their Basic package for 12 months:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

StartUp

This is SiteGround’s basic package for Shared Hosting. The price for the StartUp package starts at $3.95/month. This plan is geared for beginners just starting out with their first website.

GrowBig

The next tier plan from SiteGround is the GrowBig plan, the introductory price is $5.95. With this plan you can host unlimited domains and websites, and you also get almost the storage and performance than the StartUp plan.

The GrowBig plan comes with 20GB of storage and performance for ~25,000 website visits. This plan is really suited for websites that are maturing and growing in popularity.

GoGeek

The GoGeek plan is their highest tier plan and has an introductory offer of $11.95 per month. It has everything in the GrowBig plan plus 30GB of storage for your website, and performance for ~100,000 web visits.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: No, domain names are not included with any SiteGround hosting plans. They can be purchased a la carte for $15.95/year.
• Easy Setup Process: Just fill out an easy two-step registration form. The form will also let you register a domain name with them if needed.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: The Control Panel to manage your account is fairly average. Accounts use cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Softaculous and PrestaShop for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 5 or 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, and Discover.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.

Other Hosting

If you need additional features, Bluehost also offers other web hosting types, including VPS, cloud, and dedicated data center services.

Do We Recommend SiteGround?

Yes, we recommend SiteGround, without a doubt. SiteGround hosting is fast and they are very innovative. Their uptime is very solid and your site should stay online nearly all the time. It is even guaranteed.

They do a lot of advanced things to deliver their uptime and speed. SiteGround. Beginners may have to take some time to learn about hosting infrastructure to ensure they are taking full advantage of the features they are paying for.

We recommend that you signup with the longest term that you can afford. Their renewal rates are some the higher that we have seen.

Visit SiteGround.com

Do They Live Up To The Hype?

Introduction

I have been familiar with Bluehost since 2009. One of my clients at the time was hosting the website that I was redesigning for them on Bluehost. After their new website was online, I managed the hosting account for them for two more years.

In the 8 years since, I have done work for other Bluehost customers. Speed optimization, hacking clean-up, software installations, etc. I also live relatively close to their 50,000 sq. ft. data center and am decently familiar with their operations from local IT “shop talk.”

I also live relatively close to their 50,000 sq. ft. data center and am decently familiar with their operations from local IT “shop talk.”

In this review, I will be relying on the data that we have captured for our own testing, as well as the experience I had managing Bluehost accounts for other website owners.

Bluehost makes it easy to get a new website started because they include a free domain name for the first year, as well as free site builder tools, and a decent 1-click WordPress installation.

All plans come with 24/7 Live Support, a free SSL certificate, and unmetered traffic. For a little more money per month you can get unlimited file storage, free backups, and added security.

Their performance is excellent based on our test beacon:

http://bh-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.95%
Response Time – 952 milliseconds
WordPress Render Time – 337 milliseconds

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	1,216 ms
Average Uptime	99.95%
Average Render Time	1209 ms
Average Security Threats	14 threats
Support	24/7 Live Chat - Phone - Email
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and some website builders
Features	Unmetered bandwidth and storage, email accounts, free domain 1st year
Plans	Shared, Cloud, VPS and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Not free
Pricing	Starting at $2.75/mo (renews at $7.95/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

Most website owners are losing money if their website is down or people leave because it is slow. At a bare minimum a web hosting provider should be able to provide 99.95% uptime and load pages in less than 1 second.

We are performing a running monthly test of Bluehost’s speed and reliability with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon. Here is a link to that site:

http://bh-openhostingreviews.com

So far, Bluehost has been able to beat our expectations for uptime and speed. They are also beating out most of the competition. Below you will find a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 883 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 985 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 99.81% average load speed: 949 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.82% average load speed: 1,047 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 932 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 924 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 806 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 936 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 938
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 890 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 937 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.73% average load speed: 1,120 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,197 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 3,116 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 3,116 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.88% average load speed: 1,772 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 1,350 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,267 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 1,289 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,336 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 1,401 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 1,421 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 1,254 ms

Quality of Support

I like the variety of options that Bluehost offers to get help. Their online Knowledge Base is very in-depth and easy to use. To get to a support agent, you can use their chat, call toll-free, or open a support ticket.

The quickest way for me to judge the quality of support is to connect to their agents via chat and ask a simple question that most data center operators should know off the top of their head:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

This is the operating system. Almost all web hosting companies are using Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. You can learn a lot about a Data Center Operation by finding out what version they are on and how easily the staff knows.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

Overall, the chat session was very quick. It connected to agent Melrin Akash in less than a minute. I was glad to see that he verified the account, and that process took another minute or so. The entire interaction including follow up questions took about 10 minutes total.

The agent was very quick to let me know that the server running my website was CentOS 6. If that was my only question, then the chat would have been over in 3 minutes.

The agent struggled to understand my follow up question, but overall it was a positive experience. He/she did well with a question that probably doesn’t asked much. I have had a lot worse experiences with overseas first-level support.

The agent was very curious, very quick to get back to me, provided accurate information, and made sure I had everything I needed before disconnecting. The chat software was very easy to use and only had one glitch.

Affordability

Bluehost is one of the lowest priced web hosting companies out there. To get started is only $3.95 per month for their basic package for a single website. To upgrade to their highest package with more features, and unlimited websites, is only $13.95 per month.

This is a great bargain when you consider their uptime/speed, the features included in their packages, the free tools and easy-to-use management tool, and their track record.

Just remember that these prices are the monthly price if you purchase 3 years of service upfront. Prices are a little higher if you buy 12 months in advance. Unfortunately you don’t have the option pay month to month, which I think is sort of a bummer.

Keep in mind these prices are promotional introductory offers and the do offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on all purchases.

Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the Bluehost Basic package for 12 months:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Basic Plan

The Basic plan from Bluehost starts at $3.95/month. This is an ideal plan for someone starting out. It comes with everything you need to host a single website.

Plus Plan and Choice Plus Plan

The Plus and Choice Plus plan both have an introductory rate of $5.45/month. They give you the capability to host an unlimited amount of websites. These plans are ideal for website owners that run multiple sites with a good amount of monthly traffic.

The Choice Plus plan offers some handy features that the Plus plan doesn’t have. Features such as Domain Privacy as well as Site Backup and CodeGuard Security. Just remember that even though the introductory prices are the same, the Choice Plus plan does cost more upon renewal after your first year.

Pro Plan

The Pro plan starts at $13.95 month. It has the same features as the Plus and Choice Plus plans, allowing you to run unlimited websites. The main advantage to this plan is that your website(s) will be running on their High Performance server hardware.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for the first year. Then renews at $15.99/year.
• Easy Setup Process: Complete an easy two-page registration form. The form will also give you the option to install WordPress at the same time.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Control panel is very clean and easy-to-use. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Mojo Marketplace for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Add-ons: Extend your website functionality with add-ons like CodeGuard, SiteLock, Bluehost SEO Tools, Office 365, G-Suite, Google Ads, Constant Contact, and SpamExperts.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.

Other Plans

If you need additional features, Bluehost also offers other web hosting types, including VPS, cloud, and dedicated data center services.

Do We Recommend Bluehost?

Yes, we recommend Bluehost as a hosting provider. Especially for beginners who have never hosted their own website before.

Bluehost has consistently been near the top for speed and uptime in all our reports.

Plus, they have a great administration panel to manage your account and website.  Their security and support is on-point and reliable.  We like their money-back guarantee and they have some of the lowest prices out there.

There are, however, some things we don’t like that are important to keep in mind.  It is pretty annoying that they have a fee for site migrations. 

Most other hosting companies offer this for free and you would think they would too to get new customers.

Also keep in mind that the pricing is only an introductory rate.  The prices do go up on your renewal.  The best way to maximize the introductory rate is to secure a three-year plan, but this does make it more expensive upfront.

Despite some of their drawbacks, they offer a great experience and value.

Visit Bluehost.com

Consistently Solid For Us Since 2008

Introduction

I started using HostGator back in 2008.  I wasn’t happy with the hosting provider that I was using at the time, but they were one of the few at the time that offered plans for multiple domains. 

So, I was shopping around, and everyone was trying out HostGator because they were one of the first to offer unlimited domains and bandwidth.

I was excited to give them a try based on some online reviews, like you are reading now, and I am still hosting 7 websites on the same account I opened over 10 years ago. 

Their servers are well-managed and fast.  Their support has always been very useful, and their pricing is awesome.

In this review, I will be using my own experience with HostGator as a long-term customer, as well as the data that we have been capturing for our side-by-side performance testing.

HostGator makes it easy for anyone of any skill level to manage a website on their platform. Especially a WordPress site.

Their plans include a free domain on annual plans, free unlimited bandwidth, free SSL, and a really good one-click installation software.

Their performance is excellent based on our test beacon:

http://hg-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.97%
Response Time – 1,233 ms
WordPress Render Time – 316 ms

While HostGator is one of the best performing hosting providers on our list, there are a few things you should know about their pricing.

Let’s jump right into our deep-dive analysis of Host Gator.

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	1,233 ms
Average Uptime	99.97% 60 minutes over 9 outages
Average Render Time	354 ms
Average Security Threats	8 attempts
Support	24/7 Chat - Phone - Email
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento
Features	Unmetered bandwidth and storage, email accounts, free domain 1st year
Plans	Shared, Cloud, WordPress, VPS and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Single Free Site Transfer
Pricing	Starting at $2.75/mo (renews at $6.95/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

In a perfect world, your website is going to be online 100% of the time. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But, we don’t live in a perfect world.

Inside every data center the power goes down, hard drives fail, and servers have to be patched and rebooted.

Since we know we won’t get 100% uptime, the next best thing is the “gold standard” of the hosting world – 99.99%.

Every month we are running a test of HostGator’s speed and reliability (uptime) with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon.

Here is a link to that testing beacon site:

http://hg-openhostingreviews.com

So far, HostGator has beaten our baseline expectations for uptime and speed. They are also beating out most of the competition. Below you will find a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,048 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,069 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 1,096 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,065 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,014 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,107 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,250 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,352 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,178 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,081 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.88% average load speed: 1,250 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,299 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.79% average load speed: 1,363 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,310 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,344 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,212 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,179 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,193 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,288 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 1,529 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,526 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,202 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 1,078 ms

Quality of Support

HostGator has several different ways to get in-touch with their support. You can reach them via chat, phone toll-free, or open a support ticket.

They also have a decent Knowledge Base of support articles.

One of the ways I like to gauge the quality of support is to start up a quick chat ask a simple question.

This is a question that any data center operators should know right away:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

This is asking them the operating system of their servers. Most shared web hosting plans use Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS.

I like this question so much because it helps you quickly learn a lot about their operations.

Not only does it show you the competency of their first-level support, but it also lets you know how well they keep things up to date.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

Affordability

HostGator has very affordable plans.

To get started is only $2.75 per month for their basic Hatchling package for a single website. To upgrade to their highest package with more features, and unlimited websites, is only $5.95 per month.

This is a great bargain when you consider their uptime/speed, the features included in their packages, the free tools and easy-to-use management tool, and their track record.

Just remember that these prices are the monthly price if you purchase 3 years of service upfront. Prices are a little higher if you buy 12 months in advance. Unfortunately you don’t have the option pay month to month, which I think is sort of a bummer.

Keep in mind these prices are promotional introductory offers and the do offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on all purchases.

Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the Bluehost Basic package for 12 months:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Hostgator riffs off their alligator mascot for the names of their plans. It is pretty clever and a small breath of fresh air in an industry that is otherwise pretty sterile and clinical.

Hatchling Plan

The Hatchling Plan from Hostgator starts at $2.75/month. This is the plan you want those launching their very first website. The plan includes all the features required to run a single website.

One thing that I love about Hostgator is that even their basic plans included unmetered bandwidth, unlimited storage, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain.

In the past these were all extras with them. Amazingly, some of Hostgator’s competitors are still charging for these.

Baby Plan

The Baby Plan from Hostgator starts at $3.95/month. This plan comes with all of the features of the Hatchling Plan, but it allows you to run unlimited websites and email with it.

I have a Hostgator account with the Baby Plan with 6 websites running on it. They get a moderate amount of traffic and they all perform well.

Business Plan

The Business Plan from Hostgator starts at $5.95/month. This plan includes everything in the Hatchling and the Baby plans, plus a few extras. The Business Plan also includes a dedicated IP address and a Step-by-Step SEO Plan to help you with a your search engine visibility.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for the first year. Then renews at $16.00-$22.00/year depending on how many years you renew in advance.
• Easy Setup Process: Very simple! All you have to do is fill out a single page form. It is the easiest out of all the hosting companies we reviewed.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Their control panel is very easy to understand and you can switch between the Billing and Technical side effortlessly. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: Includes their custom QuickInstall tool that gives you OneClick installations to over 70 popular scripts such as WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 5 and 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase after Introductory Offer, but is lower than other popular plans.
• Upsells: Some Upsells on the sign-up form, but they disappear with a mouse click or two.

Other Plans

If you have other needs for your website(s), Hostgator offers other types of hosting plans like WordPress Optimized, Cloud, VPS, and Dedicated Servers.

Do We Recommend HostGator?

Yes, we have been recommending Hostgator to clients for years. As a paying customer for web hosting since 2002, Hostgator is the best experience I have had for performance and value.

Hostgator is consistently at the top of our performance testing, and I love that they are the only hosting provider on our list that has an Uptime Guarantee!

Visit HostGator.com

Are They Really “Green” and “High-Powered”?

Introduction

Company History

A2 Hosting was originally founded in 2001 in Ann Arbor, Michigan under the name Iniquinet. They rebranded under the banner “A2 Hosting” in 2003.

The “A2” is a play on the name of their hometown “Ann Arbor” which is also the home of their primary data center. Their other data centers are located in the Netherlands and Singapore.

Company Objectives

A2 Hosting strives to be known as “High Powered Hosting” provider. Speed and reliability for their customers is their top priority.

One of the ways they work to accomplish this is with their “turbo servers” that only have SSD hard drives. To back up their marketing hype, they offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee on all hosting plans.

They also partner with Carbonfund.org to purchase carbon offsets so their compute load is carbon neutral. Carbonfund.org recognizes A2 Hosting as being a Carbonfree® Business for over 10 years.

All of their plans come with a free SSL certificate, unlimited SSD storage, unlimited transfer, and free site migration. All good things we like to see!

Their performance is excellent based on our test beacon:

http://a2-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.91%
Response Time – 952 ms
WordPress Render Time – 159 milliseconds

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2021

Average Page Speed	952 ms
Average Render Time	227 ms
Average Uptime	99.91% 420 minutes over 66 outages
Average Security Threats	5 threats
Support	24/7 Live Chat
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento
Features	Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage, Free SSL, Anytime Money Back
Plans	Shared, WordPress, VPS, Reseller and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Free Site Transfer
Pricing	Starting at $2.96/mo (renews at $7.99/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

There are other hosting companies on our list that have better speed and uptime, but A2 Hosting is near the top. Because you only have a second or so to keep someone on your website, I am always looking for at least 99.95% uptime and a page load time in at least 700ms.

We are constantly testing A2 Hosting’s speed and uptime with a stripped down WordPress website as a testing beacon. Here is a link to that site:

http://a2-openhostingreviews.com

In our testing, A2 Hosting has been really close to our expecations. They are also beating out most of the competition. Below you will find a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.83% average load speed: 785 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.89% average load speed: 760 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 917 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.79% average load speed: 828 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.76% average load speed: 849 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.86% average load speed: 1,274 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.90% average load speed: 1,180 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,050 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 1,056 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 1,038 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 806 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.80% average load speed: 864 ms
July 2020 average uptime: 99.82% average load speed: 836 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,000 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,066 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,076 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.90% average load speed: 992 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 904 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 860 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 974 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 927 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 993 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 900 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.75% average load speed: 901 ms

Quality of Support

While great performance is something we all want and need, having a great technical partner when you have questions or something goes wrong is absolutely critical.

A2 Hosting makes it easy to contact their support. You can call their support, chat, or email in 24/7. What’s even better is that their support is very knowledgeable and give quick and accurate support.

I have a little test for gauging the quality of support for any technical services provider like Web Hosting companies. I connect to their chat and ask them a question they should be able to rattle off quickly:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

This question is good because everyone in the support pipeline should know the Operating System their servers are running. It also tells me if their systems are up to date.

Quick replies to technical questions, and up to date server infrastructure are key indicators of a well-oiled machine.

Here is a screenshot of my chat with A2 Hosting support:

This interaction with A2 Hosting support was great overall. The pop-up required me to authenticate my account, and it took about 5 minutes to connect. This was my only real gripe.

The outstanding part was that my support agent “Brendan” knew the answer to my question right away. It sort of blew me away.

The support at some of the other Web Hosting companies we have reviewed really got hung up on this one.

I was really happy to get the correct information, and in a decent amount of time. It was a kind of a pain to go through the extra step of authenticating my account with a Support PIN.

However, it is nice to know that someone “off the street” so to speak can’t just call in and jack up my account. A very good practice for cyber security and privacy.

Affordability

For the type of performance and uptime we have seen with our A2 Hosting account, they are very affordable. Especially with the bonus of great support.

You can get started on A2 Hosting for just $2.96/month on their basic plan. Their mid-tier plan is $3.70/month. Their top-tier plan has a “Turbo Boost” of performance and starts at $7.03/month.

These are introductory offers and to get these prices you have to buy 36 months of service upfront. The prices will go up when you renew the service after your initial purchase. This is pretty standard for the Hosting Industry.

One thing I really like about A2 Hosting is that they got rid of their 30 Day Money-Back Guarantee. Why is that a good thing, you say?

Because they replaced it with their “Hassle Free, Anytime Money Back Guarantee.”

Yup, they will give pro-rated refunds on cancellation requests after 30 days. I like their confidence!

Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the A2 Hosting Lite package for a month-to-month term:

You can see that without purchasing service upfront there is no discount and costs $9.99/month.

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Lite Plan

The A2 Hosting Lite Plan has an introductory price of $2.96/month. The plan will support one website. This plan was created with new website owners in mind. It has unlimited SSD storage and a free SSL certificate.

Swift Plan

The A2 Hosting Swift Plan has an introductory price of $3.70/month. It comes with everything in the Lite Plan, but you can host an unlimited number of websites, it is twice as fast, and it comes with free automated backups.

Turbo Plan

The A2 Hosting Turbo Plan has an introductory price of $7.03/month. It comes with everything in the Swift Plan, but they spice up your account so it is 20 times faster.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: No, domain registration is $14.95/year.
• Easy Setup Process: Complete an easy two-page registration form. The form will also give you the option to install WordPress at the same time.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Control panel is very clean and easy-to-use. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Softaculous for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 7, PHP 5 and 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, PayPal, Skrill, Check/Money Order, Bank Transfer.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.

Other Plans

If you have other web hosting needs, A2 Hosting offers other types of plans. They offer Reseller, VPS (Virtual Private Server), and Dedicated Server hosting plans.

Do We Recommend A2 Hosting?

Yes, we recommend their services.

A2 Hosting has shown to provide world-class service in all of our testing. They have responsive customer service and support. We really like that they offer free SSL certificates and SSD storage on all their plans.

We also really like that they offer one free site migration, and they have a money-back guarantee passed 30 days!

Visit A2Hosting.com

So you are wanting to build your very first website, but you aren’t sure where to find the best web hosting for beginners?

No problem, I know exactly how you feel. I remember when I built my very first website. It was clear back in 2002! I was so excited to get something online. I had spent months learning HTML and was tired of not having a website of my own.

While I was so excited inside, I was also totally petrified. I had no idea what web hosting really was, how to set it up, and how to keep it going without getting hacked and things like that. Plus, I did have a lot of money at the time, I was working my way through college.

Sound familiar?

Well guess what…if you feel that way, it is TOTALLY normal. When you are a beginner, taking the first steps can often be the hardest.

When you are launching a website for the first time, there are only two things that count:

• Easy
• Affordable (cheap)

The tricky thing is that not everything that’s easy is cheap, and not everything that is cheap is easy (or worth your valuable time.) It’s a good thing that you found this web hosting review, because I am going to help you find the middle ground.

How can I do this for you?

Well, it’s simple. I have built or supported hundreds of websites over the last 18 year. For myself, clients, and friends/family. I have seen so many web hosting companies, and dealt with their support. I am also a seasoned IT Professional, and have helped support a data center with over 1,000 servers running in it.

Even more importantly though, to make open and honest web hosting reviews, I setup a WordPress site of my own on 10 of the most popular web hosting companies so I can see how they really operate. I keep track of how fast they are, how often they go down, how good their support is, etc.

Based on everything I have seen and heard, here are the Top 3 Web Hosting Plans for Beginners:

• Hostinger – very fast and the most affordable
• Bluehost – best overall hosting company and works great out of the box
• SiteGround – best customer service and support

1. Hostinger

Affordable plans with knowledgeable support and easy-to-use site builder – starting at $0.99/month

Hostinger is the best place to start for beginners. Their basic plan starts for less than a dollar a month! It comes with plenty of bandwidth and disk space for a new website.

Their drag and drop website builder is a great way to get to get a site up and going. They also have an incrediable one-click WordPress installer that I used to get our WordPress site up in less than 10 minutes. All their plans all full-featured with everything you need.

One of the things I like about Hostinger the most is that they are an new and innovative player in the web hosting space. Their control panels are modern looking and very easy-to-use compared to others I have tried. It really makes life running a website so much easier.

Their support is top-notch and available via chat 24/7/365. I asked them a very technical question once and got an answer back within moments of sending it over to them. It was very impressive. Some of the other web hosting companies I have tried had to scramble for the answer, or not even answer at all. Ouch!

All Hostinger plans come with a free SSL certificate, which is very important for trust with your website visitors, and ranking in Google/Bing as well. Their servers are very quick, too. In our ongoing testing of Hostinger, I am getting 1,610 ms page load speed and 99.78% average uptime.

Long term, I recommend getting the Business plan with Hostinger. With this plan you get more features like unlimited websites and email addresses, faster CPU/RAM resources, a free domain registration, and daily automated backups (very important).

Pros

• Free SSL on all plans
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• SSD hard drives on all plans
• Best in class control panel

Cons

• No phone support
• Free domain registration only available on upgraded plans

2. Bluehost

Long-term track record and officially recommended by WordPress – starting at $3.95/month

Bluehost is the best overall web hosting company that I have tested and compared for features. They don’t offer prices as low as Hostinger, but out of the gate you are going to get a lot more.

Bluehost has gone out their way to make the WordPress experience easy and pain-free. This makes a lot of sense since WordPress is by far the most popular website platform, and one I highly recommend. Their one-click installer is very well thought out and works flawlessly.

Once you have WordPress installed, it is very easy to manage from the Bluehost control panel. It is also very easy to manage other aspects of your account like billing, email addresses, etc. Once you are familiar with managing your website, you can get deep into the management with the ever classic cPanel administration was well.

If WordPress isn’t quite your cup of tea, they also have a really great website builder. It is drag and drop and comes with a lot of different themes. Anyone can quickly find the colors and look/feel to match their niche or industry they are trying to serve with their website.

Bluehost has been around for a long time, and does have an official recommendation from WordPress. A large part of their success is due to the quality of their support. Their data centers are world class and servers are very fast. Our testing site on Bluehost is getting 1,216 ms page load speed and 99.95% average uptime.

All their plans come with a free SSL certificate that is easy to install, and a free domain registration. All plans also come with unmetered bandwidth and fast SSD storage. I recommend their Choice Plus plan because it comes with unlimited storage and automated backups using the CodeGuard tool.

Pros

• Free domain registration
• Free SSL certificate
• SSD storage
• Telephone support

Cons

• No month-to-month billing options

3. SiteGround

Emphasis on support and performance – starting at $0.99 for 3 months

SiteGround is a another web hosting company that is officially recommended by WordPress. They try to stand out of the crowd by placing extra emphasis on high-quality support and high performing web servers. They also charge a premium for it. They are one of the more expensive providers, so you have to weigh which is a more important benefit to you. Price vs. support.

SiteGround has a very extensive knowledge base with thousands of articles about hosting a website, and about WordPress. They are very thorough and up to date. They also tout their “no hold time” support line where you can get support over the phone. They also tend to help with WordPress specific questions than other web hosting companies.

They have developed software solutions that are supposed to make their hosting faster than others. However, this hasn’t really shown to be the case in our testing. They haven’t shown to be a stand out as far as speed goes. Our testing site gets 993 ms page load speed and
99.98% average uptime.

SiteGround has a very nice control panel, but it hasn’t been updated in awhile and can be a bit tricky to navigate. They offer you cPanel administration, and it was very easy to get a WordPress website installed on their platform.

I like how every plan comes with free SSL certificates and daily backups. These are both very important to running a successful website, and often get overlooked by beginners. All plans offer unmetered bandwidth and their basic plan offers enough resources for approx. 10,000 visitors per month.

Overall, SiteGround is a solid web hosting company. They are a bit more expensive, but they offer the additional support offerings. Perfect for someone who is looking for more guidance in their journey and is willing to pay extra for the benefit.

Breaking News: Starting in April 2020, SiteGround is no offering three months of their StartUp package for only $0.99. They are making this offer to help people get online during the COVID-19 challenges.

Pros

• Affordable COVID-19 introductory price
• Excellent customer support
• Extensive online tutorials
• Fast SSD storage and servers

Cons

• Few unlimited options – such as storage, etc.
• More expensive than others

Final Verdict – Which One is the Best Web Hosting for Beginners

All three of the web hosting companies listed above are fantastic web hosts for beginners. They all meet both criteria that are important for someone just starting with their website. Easy and affordable.

Deciding which one out of these three really depends on you. People’s preferences for features, levels of support, and their budgets will always widely vary.

So, to help you in your final decision, here is a quick summary of which type of beginners each of these web hosting providers is best for:

Hostinger is the best for someone who wants a cheap and stable web hosting platform.

Bluehost is best for someone who wants to build a WordPress site easily out of the box.

SiteGround is ideal for a beginner who wants to pickup the phone whenever they have a question and is willing to pay extra.

Overall, Hostinger and Bluehost are the two best web hosting providers that I recommend for beginners. They are have great prices, their support is top-notch, and they will give you everything you need to get your website started as soon as you sign up.

Thank you for taking time to read our review. If you have any questions or comments, then don’t please leave a comment below.

Are you trying to decide the best place to host your photography website? There are a lot of things to take into consideration. After all, you want the best possible experience for the people that are online to look at all your hard work.

After working with several clients who are very successful photographers, we have found the best solution for photographers who want to showcase their portfolio and manage interactions with their clientele. If you are looking for the best web hosting for your photography website, then this review is perfect for you.

We recommend that photographers create their own website, with their own domain name, and their own web hosting. Other solutions, like free blogging platforms (Weebly/Blogger) and cookie-cutter website builders (Wix/SquareSpace) are too basic and not flexible for most creatives like photographers.

You won’t have complete control over how the website look. They don’t lend well to managing aspects of your business like appointments, invoicing, and digital image delivery. You may find that you are restricted in hard drive space on the account. Most of all, these platforms may exercise editorial control over what you post or could just disappear as a platform altogether.

The Ideal Web Hosting Solution for Photographers

To get the most out of your online endeavors, we recommend that you self-host your own WordPress website using popular photographer themes like Divi or Astra. This gives you total control while having some of the attractive features of the blogging and website builder platforms previously mentioned.

In the rest of this review, we are going to discuss the best web hosting plan for a WordPress site. In our review we have taken into careful consideration the special needs of photographers:

• Unlimited Disk Space – Upload as many image regardless of the size or resolution.
• Uptime Performance – How often your website goes up and down.
• Speed Performance – How fast the website loads your photography.
• Ease of Use – How easy it is to launch the website and maintain it over time?
• Quality of Support – How quickly is it to get help when something goes wrong?
• Available Features – How many tools to run the website come with the package?
• Overall Value – How much benefit are you gaining compared to the costs?

Our Web Hosting Review Process

We built our very first website in 2002, and have built hundreds more since then. For ourselves, and for our clients. We know the ins and outs of the web hosting process because we have lived it everyday for nearly 20 years. We can quickly find a weak spot or gotcha, and we can also easily sniff out added benefits.

Besides our professional experience, we have taken an additional step and we have setup a WordPress site on 10 of the most popular web hosting companies available online. So we know these web hosting companies are like as one of their actual customers.

We have been through their setup and on-boarding process, kept track of their performance metrics for nearly a year, and engaged with their support staff to determine their skill level. We can make solid recommendations that not every online reviewer can.

Click here to learn about our Review Process in more detail.

Best Web Hosting for Photographers

Bluehost

Ranked 9.5 out of 10 – Best Overall

Unlimited Plans Available

Bluehost has been in operation since 2003 and hosts over 2,000,000 websites. They operate in the USA in a world-class data center. They are affordable, fast/stable, very easy-to-use, and have great customer service and technical support. We think they offer the most in all areas of web hosting. Most of all,
Bluehost has been recommended by WordPress.org since 2005. Highly recommended for beginners.

Customer Testimonials

“Great service and very professional. I think your email Spam Assassin should screen out spam better than it currently does. Thanks for all your qualified help over the years.” -Minuard J.

“I’ve been using Bluehost for about three years now. As shared-hosting providers go, they are a notch above similar providers. Speed is above average compared to others I’ve used in the past. Though I haven’t needed their support staff a lot in the past few years, the few times I have, they’ve been responsive and friendly. I have just renewed my hosting account for another three years and I can honestly recommend Bluehost to anyone looking for a stable and dependable hosting solution.” – Barry S.

Read our full Bluehost review.

DreamHost

Ranked 9.3 out of 10 – Best Speed

Unlimited Plans Available

DreamHost began hosting websites for customers in 1997. They are based in Los Angeles, CA and have approximately 400,000 customers. They are solid in their uptime and middle of the road in their speed performance. They don’t offer as many features as other web hosting companies on this list. They have been in business for a long time, and they are also recommended by WordPress.org.

Customer Testimonials

“I’ve been a DreamHost customer ever since I first started doing web design. Their customer service is outstanding and their hosting is super reliable at an affordable price.” -Jeremiah S.

“I love that DreamHost has one-click WordPress installs, which make setup a breeze! The interface is the most user-friendly platform I’ve ever worked with after 10-plus years of trying out many other competitors. I’m a happy, loyal, lifelong customer.” -Jennifer E.

Read our full DreamHost review.

GoDaddy

Ranked 9.0 out of 10 – Best Uptime

Unlimited Plans Available

Nearly everyone has heard of GoDaddy thanks to their Super Bowl ads and flamboyant Founder/CEO. They have a solid web hosting platform. One of our clients has had his website with them for nearly 8 years and has never had issue. They have the best performance for speed in all of our testing, but their support isn’t the best out there.

Customer Testimonials

“This is my second purchase of domain from them and everything is great. I made my gorgeous website from scratch and believe me everything is easy and fun. They offer many awesome templates too that will surely make your site look stunning.” -Kaylee N.

“I was with another web host for three years and the last few months were awful. I switched to GoDaddy and the experience has been great. Their tech support is 24/7, which my old host was not, and they have been able to address my questions and concerns.” -Steven M.

Read our full GoDaddy review.

Hostinger

Ranked 8.8 out of 10 – Best “Cheap” Plan

No Unlimited Plans Available

Hostinger is a relatively new player to the web hosting arena, but we have been very impressed with what we have seen from them. We put them near the top because of how inexpensive their plans are and how solid the performance and support is. It was very easy to get a site up, their management interface is very good, and their support staff knows their stuff.

Customer Testimonials

“This is the fifth hosting I tried to use, and I’m pretty sure I will never try another hosting. I don’t care about the designs, the reputation all I care the customer support until I found the Support from Hostinger. They’re fast and reliable.” -Kathrine

“Hostinger is the best in the world. 100% server speed like a lightning bolt. Customer service commendable. 5 stars rating…” -Sunday A.

Read our full Hostinger review.

SiteGround

Ranked 8.5 out of 10 – Best Customer Support

No Unlimited Plans Available

SiteGround has been in operation since 2004. The are also recommended by WordPress.org. They tout their custom “speed optimization” software that is supposed to make websites faster. They also invested heavily in their “Site Tools” control panel. Their speed optimization hasn’t improved the performance of our test website much. They have a very happy customer base. SiteGround is ideal for experienced website owners.

Customer Testimonials

“Very very very good support!! Very professional, profound and polite! Many companies should learn from Siteground how to provide high quality support! Excellent!! Thanks!” -Peter A.

“Have other options for hosting that are cheaper, but sticking with SG because the LIVE CHAT SUPPORT IS AWESOME. Thank you for keeping this available to help us.” -Benjamin T.

Read our full SiteGround review.

Photographer Web Hosting Ratings

Now that you are familiar with each of the web hosting companies in this review, lets take a closer look at the data we have collected in our head-to-head testing. We have a WordPress site on each of these web hosting companies, compile monthly performance and pricing information, and here are our ratings.

Unlimited Disk Space

We put this at the top of our ratings, because it is so important if you are running a photography website. There is nothing more frustrating than finding out down the road that you can’t upload anymore pictures! We had to knock down some web hosting companies, that we really like, down a notch because they don’t offer this feature.

Best Unlimited Plan: Bluehost is our overall pick for best web hosting for photographers.

	Host	Offers Unlimited Disk Space
1.	Bluehost	Yes
2.	DreamHost	Yes
3.	GoDaddy	Yes
4.	Hostinger	No
5.	SiteGround	No

Uptime Performance

Uptime is measurement of how often a website goes down. We use a tool called Pingdom to track our test websites 24/7/365. Whenever a site goes down for more than a second, we are notified and we also have access to a report that looks like this:

From this report you can see that from July 2019 to February 2020 our Bluehost site was up 99.94% of the time. There were 26 different outages for a total of 3 hours down in 8 months. You would think that websites would “always” be up, but that isn’t necessarily the case. 99.94% uptime is good performance.

Best Uptime: Tie between SiteGround and GoDaddy

	Host	Uptime
1.	SiteGround	99.98%
2.	GoDaddy	99.96%
3.	Hostinger	99.78%
4.	Bluehost	99.95%
5.	DreamHost	99.96%

Speed Performance

You need your photography web hosting to be very fast. Ideally, it should take between 1-3 seconds for a page on your website to load. If it takes longer than this, then people will not use it. Google takes this point into consideration when they rank pages. While several factors play into your website’s page load speed, you definitely want your web hosting to be as fast as possible.

Best Speed: DreamHost loads pages the fastest in our testing

	Host	Page Load Speed
1.	DreamHost	916 ms
2.	GoDaddy	879 ms
3.	SiteGround	993 ms
4.	Bluehost	1,216 ms
5.	Hostinger	1,610 ms

Ease of Use

Some web hosting companies make it easier for customers to setup and manage their website then others. The signup process varies from provider to provider. Some make it as easy as a snap of the finger, others are very painful. Some providers have brilliant control panels making it very easy to see your billing and manage your site, others are archaic and confusing.

Easiest to Use: Bluehost has the best management tools and easiest to get started

	Host	Ease of Use
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	Hostinger	4.5 out of 5
3.	SiteGround	4.5 out of 5
4.	DreamHost	4 out of 5
5.	GoDaddy	3.5 out of 5

WordPress Experience

While this is technically part of the Ease of Use category, we like to call out the WordPress experience specifically because so many people are using it to build their websites or start a blog. For this score we took into consideration how easy it was to get WordPress installed, and how well that WordPress website performed on the hosting company’s platform.

Best WordPress Experience: Bluehost and SiteGround both make WordPress super-simple and they are recommended by WordPress.org

	Host	WordPress Experience
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	SiteGround	5 out of 5
3.	Hostinger	4.5 out 5
4.	DreamHost	4 out 5
5.	GoDaddy	4 out 5

Quality of Support

Sometimes things can just go wrong with your website. Even seasoned pros get stumped on things that break and the right way to troubleshoot them. For our reviews we really drilled their support to gauge their knowledge level. You will notice that the scores in this category are nearly identical to the overall scores. In a lot of ways there isn’t much difference between these providers except for how the take care of their customers.

Best Support: We drilled Customer Support with some very technical questions. Bluehost and Hostinger came back with the correct information the fastest.

	Host	Quality of Support
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	Hostinger	5 out of 5
3.	SiteGround	5 out of 5
4.	DreamHost	4.5 out of 5
5.	GoDaddy	3 out of 5

Available Features

Besides your basic hosting, there are extras that are nice to have included. For example, free domain registration, SSL encryption, automated backups, security scans, migration services, etc.

Best Features: Bluehost and Hostinger gave us the most added features without extra fees.

	Host	Features
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	Hostinger	5 out of 5
3.	SiteGround	4.5 out of 5
4.	DreamHost	4.5 out of 5
5.	GoDaddy	4.5 out of 5

Overall Value

When you take everything into consideration, who gives you the most bang for the buck:

	Host	Overall Value
1.	Bluehost	9.5 out of 10
2.	DreamHost	9.4 out of 10
3.	GoDaddy	9.1 out of 10
4.	Hostinger	8.8 out of 10
5.	SiteGround	8.5 out of 10

Photographer Web Hosting Costs

Understanding Billing Periods

When most photographers sign up for web hosting for the first time, they assume there is a monthly charge. Why not, isn’t that how nearly everything else is? Some web hosting companies offer a month-to-month plan, but most don’t. The companies that do offer month-to-month billing make it more expensive.

It is common to see the best discount when buying 2-3 years of service in advance. Plus, it is a whole lot easier to not have to deal with another monthly bill. Here is an example of the kinds of discounts you can expect when you purchase services in advance.

Just remember to plan for your renewal date a few years down the road, and pick the web hosting for your photography website wisely from the start. Most only offer a 30 day money-back guarantee.

Understanding Introductory Offers

Remember that anytime you see an advertised price for web hosting, it is typically for first time customers. This is known as an “Introductory Offer.” They are usually 50-60% off the regular price that you will pay at your term renewal. (Another reason paying for more time upfront doesn’t hurt.)

Here is an example of the difference between the “Introductory Price” and the “Renewal Price” from Bluehost:

Just remember that when your plan renews, typically 2-3 years later, it will be for a higher monthly rate than when you first signed up. In our opinion, the prices are still very reasonable after renewal. We bring it up in this review so you don’t have any sticker shock later.

Average Cost

Most website owners, when asked, are paying anywhere from $5-$10 per month for their photography website’s web hosting. Here is a breakdown of the Introductory Offers being made by the web hosting companies on our list.

	Host	Plan Prices
1.	Bluehost	Plus – $5.95/month Choice Plus – $5.95/month Pro – $13.95/month
2.	Hostinger	Single – $0.99/month Premium – $2.89/month Business – $3.99/month
3.	SiteGround	StartUp – $3.95/month GrowBig – $5.95/month GoGeek – $11.95/month
4.	DreamHost	Starter – $2.59/month Unlimited – $4.95/month
5.	GoDaddy	Economy – $1.00/month Deluxe – $7.99/month Unlimited – $12.99/month

Free Web Hosting for Photographers

Generally speaking, you should avoid free web hosting offers. The old adage comes to mind – “you get what you pay for.” Most free web hosting offers out there require you to place a random ad on your website in exchange for the free web hosting. I can’t imagine a photographer wants to share space next to their hard work with an ad that you won’t have control over.

Plus they don’t offer any support to speak of, and you could really find yourself all on your own. Not a good position to be in at all. We really recommend that you purchase web hosting with Bluehost or DreamHost because the value they offer their paying customers. Out of all the web hosting plans that we reviewed, they really offer the best “out of the box” experience for running a website.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, we recommend Bluehost or DreamHost as the best web hosting for photographers. They both have proven in all our testing to be fast and reliable, easy to use, have knowledgeable and helpful support staff, and don’t break the bank.

They are also both recommended web hosts by WordPress.org for their software. Best of all, they have affordable plans that offer unlimited features like disk space and unmetered bandwidth. These are critical things to have to operate a successful photography website.

Wondering what web hosting company is going to be the best home for your church’s website? In today’s spiritually dangerous world, one of the greatest assets of your congregation is your church’s website.

Messages of love and concern can be shared, service and humanitarian efforts can be coordinated, and you can communicate directly to your church family.

With the advent of social distancing, now more than ever, it is important to keep a strong online presence. The web hosting company you choose will impact these important factors, so it is critical to make the right choice in your provider:

• Uptime Performance – How often your church’s website goes up and down?
• Speed Performance – How fast the website loads for your church members?
• Ease of Use – How easy it is to launch the website and maintain it over time?
• Quality of Support – How quickly is it to get help when something goes wrong?
• Available Features – How many tools to run the website come with the package?
• Overall Value – How much benefit are you gaining compared to the costs?

Our Web Hosting Review Process

We have been building and hosting web sites for ourselves, and our clients, since 2002. We have used a lot of different web hosting companies over the years, and we can easily spot their Pros and Cons.

In addition to that, we have actually setup a WordPress site on 10 of the most popular web hosting companies available online. So we know these web hosting companies like the back of our hands.

We have gone through their setup process, tracked their performance for nearly a year, and grilled their support staff to gauge their skill level. We can make solid recommendations that not every online reviewer can.

Click here to learn about our Review Process in more detail.

Best Web Hosting for Churches

Bluehost

Ranked 9.5 out of 10 – Best Overall

Bluehost has been in operation since 2003 and hosts over 2,000,000 websites. They operate in the USA in a world-class data center. They are affordable, fast/stable, very easy-to-use, and have great customer service and technical support. We think they offer the most in all areas of web hosting. Most of all,
Bluehost has been recommended by WordPress.org since 2005. Highly recommended for beginners.

Customer Testimonials

“Great service and very professional. I think your email Spam Assassin should screen out spam better than it currently does. Thanks for all your qualified help over the years.” -Minuard J.

“I’ve been using Bluehost for about three years now. As shared-hosting providers go, they are a notch above similar providers. Speed is above average compared to others I’ve used in the past. Though I haven’t needed their support staff a lot in the past few years, the few times I have, they’ve been responsive and friendly. I have just renewed my hosting account for another three years and I can honestly recommend Bluehost to anyone looking for a stable and dependable hosting solution.” – Barry S.

Read our full Bluehost review.

Hostinger

Ranked 9.4 out of 10 – Best “Cheap” Plan

Hostinger is a relatively new player to the web hosting arena, but we have been very impressed with what we have seen from them. We put them near the top because of how inexpensive their plans are and how solid the performance and support is. It was very easy to get a site up, their management interface is very good, and their support staff knows their stuff.

Customer Testimonials

“This is the fifth hosting I tried to use, and I’m pretty sure I will never try another hosting. I don’t care about the designs, the reputation all I care the customer support until I found the Support from Hostinger. They’re fast and reliable.” -Kathrine

“Hostinger is the best in the world. 100% server speed like a lightning bolt. Customer service commendable. 5 stars rating…” -Sunday A.

Read our full Hostinger review.

SiteGround

Ranked 9.1 out of 10 – Best Customer Support

SiteGround has been in operation since 2004. The are also recommended by WordPress.org. They tout their custom “speed optimization” software that is supposed to make websites faster. They also invested heavily in their “Site Tools” control panel. Their speed optimization hasn’t improved the performance of our test website much. They have a very happy customer base. SiteGround is ideal for experienced website owners.

Customer Testimonials

“Very very very good support!! Very professional, profound and polite! Many companies should learn from Siteground how to provide high quality support! Excellent!! Thanks!” -Peter A.

“Have other options for hosting that are cheaper, but sticking with SG because the LIVE CHAT SUPPORT IS AWESOME. Thank you for keeping this available to help us.” -Benjamin T.

Read our full SiteGround review.

DreamHost

Ranked 8.8 out of 10 – Best Speed

DreamHost began hosting websites for customers in 1997. They are based in Los Angeles, CA and have approximately 400,000 customers. They are solid in their uptime and middle of the road in their speed performance. They don’t offer as many features as other web hosting companies on this list. They have been in business for a long time, and they are also recommended by WordPress.org.

Customer Testimonials

“I’ve been a DreamHost customer ever since I first started doing web design. Their customer service is outstanding and their hosting is super reliable at an affordable price.” -Jeremiah S.

“I love tht DreamHost has one-click WordPress installs, which make setup a breeze! The interface is the most user-friendly platform I’ve ever worked with after 10-plus years of trying out many other competitors. I’m a happy, loyal, lifelong customer.” -Jennifer E.

Read our full DreamHost review.

GoDaddy

Ranked 8.5 out of 10 – Best Uptime

Nearly everyone has heard of GoDaddy thanks to their Super Bowl ads and flamboyant Founder/CEO. They have a solid web hosting platform. One of our clients has had his website with them for nearly 8 years and has never had issue. They have the best performance for speed in all of our testing, but their support isn’t the best out there.

Customer Testimonials

“This is my second purchase of domain from them and everything is great. I made my gorgeous website from scratch and believe me everything is easy and fun. They offer many awesome templates too that will surely make your site look stunning.” -Kaylee N.

“I was with another web host for three years and the last few months were awful. I switched to GoDaddy and the experience has been great. Their tech support is 24/7, which my old host was not, and they have been able to address my questions and concerns.” -Steven M.

Read our full GoDaddy review.

Church Web Hosting Ratings

Now that you are familiar with each of the web hosting companies in this review, lets take a closer look at the data we have collected in our head-to-head testing. We have a WordPress site on each of these web hosting companies, compile monthly performance and pricing information, and here are our ratings.

Uptime Performance

Uptime is measurement of how often a website goes down. We use a tool called Pingdom to track our test websites 24/7/365. Whenever a site goes down for more than a second, we are notified and we also have access to a report that looks like this:

From this report you can see that from July 2019 to February 2020 our Bluehost site was up 99.94% of the time. There were 26 different outages for a total of 3 hours down in 8 months. You would think that websites would “always” be up, but that isn’t necessarily the case. 99.94% uptime is good performance.

Best Uptime: Tie between SiteGround and GoDaddy

	Host	Uptime
1.	SiteGround	99.98%
2.	GoDaddy	99.96%
3.	Hostinger	99.78%
4.	Bluehost	99.95%
5.	DreamHost	99.96%

Speed Performance

You need your church web hosting to be very fast. Ideally, it should take between 1-3 seconds for a page on your website to load. If it takes longer than this, then people will not use it. Google takes this point into consideration when they rank pages. While several factors play into your website’s page load speed, you definitely want your web hosting to be as fast as possible.

Best Speed: DreamHost loads pages the fastest in our testing

	Host	Page Load Speed
1.	DreamHost	916 ms
2.	GoDaddy	879 ms
3.	SiteGround	993 ms
4.	Bluehost	1,216 ms
5.	Hostinger	1,610 ms

Ease of Use

Some web hosting companies make it easier for customers to setup and manage their website then others. The signup process varies from provider to provider. Some make it as easy as a snap of the finger, others are very painful. Some providers have brilliant control panels making it very easy to see your billing and manage your site, others are archaic and confusing.

Easiest to Use: Bluehost has the best management tools and easiest to get started

	Host	Ease of Use
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	Hostinger	4.5 out of 5
3.	SiteGround	4.5 out of 5
4.	DreamHost	4 out of 5
5.	GoDaddy	3.5 out of 5

WordPress Experience

While this is technically part of the Ease of Use category, we like to call out the WordPress experience specifically because so many people are using it to build their websites or start a blog. For this score we took into consideration how easy it was to get WordPress installed, and how well that WordPress website performed on the hosting company’s platform.

Best WordPress Experience: Bluehost and SiteGround both make WordPress super-simple and they are recommended by WordPress.org

	Host	WordPress Experience
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	SiteGround	5 out of 5
3.	Hostinger	4.5 out 5
4.	DreamHost	4 out 5
5.	GoDaddy	4 out 5

Quality of Support

Sometimes things can just go wrong with your website. Even seasoned pros get stumped on things that break and the right way to troubleshoot them. For our reviews we really drilled their support to gauge their knowledge level. You will notice that the scores in this category are nearly identical to the overall scores. In a lot of ways there isn’t much difference between these providers except for how the take care of their customers.

Best Support: We drilled Customer Support with some very technical questions. Bluehost and Hostinger came back with the correct information the fastest.

	Host	Quality of Support
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	Hostinger	5 out of 5
3.	SiteGround	5 out of 5
4.	DreamHost	4.5 out of 5
5.	GoDaddy	3 out of 5

Available Features

Besides your basic hosting, there are extras that are nice to have included. For example, free domain registration, SSL encryption, automated backups, security scans, migration services, etc.

Best Features: Bluehost and Hostinger gave us the most added features without extra fees.

	Host	Features
1.	Bluehost	5 out of 5
2.	Hostinger	5 out of 5
3.	SiteGround	4.5 out of 5
4.	DreamHost	4.5 out of 5
5.	GoDaddy	4.5 out of 5

Overall Value

When you take everything into consideration, who gives you the most bang for the buck:

	Host	Overall Value
1.	Bluehost	9.5 out of 10
2.	Hostinger	9.4 out of 10
3.	SiteGround	9.1 out of 10
4.	DreamHost	8.8 out of 10
5.	GoDaddy	8.5 out of 10

Church Web Hosting Costs

Understanding Billing Periods

When most customers sign up for web hosting for the first time, they assume there is a monthly charge. Why not, isn’t that how nearly everything else is? Some web hosting companies offer a month-to-month plan, but most don’t. The companies that do offer month-to-month billing make it more expensive.

It is common to see the best discount when buying 2-3 years of service in advance. Plus, it is a whole lot easier to not have to deal with another monthly bill. Here is an example of the kinds of discounts you can expect when you purchase services in advance.

Just remember to plan for your renewal date a few years down the road, and pick the web hosting for your church wisely from the start. Most only offer a 30 day money-back guarantee.

Understanding Introductory Offers

Remember that anytime you see an advertised price for web hosting, it is typically for first time customers. This is known as an “Introductory Offer.” They are usually 50-60% off the regular price that you will pay at your term renewal. (Another reason paying for more time upfront doesn’t hurt.)

Here is an example of the difference between the “Introductory Price” and the “Renewal Price” from Bluehost:

Just remember that when your plan renews, typically 2-3 years later, it will be for a higher monthly rate than when you first signed up. In our opinion, the prices are still very reasonable after renewal. We bring it up in this review so you don’t have any sticker shock later.

Average Cost

Most website owners, when asked, are paying anywhere from $5-$10 per month for their church’s web hosting. Here is a breakdown of the Introductory Offers being made by the web hosting companies on our list.

	Host	Plan Prices
1.	Bluehost	Basic – $3.95/month Plus – $5.95/month Choice Plus – $5.95/month Pro – $13.95/month
2.	Hostinger	Single – $0.99/month Premium – $2.89/month Business – $3.99/month
3.	SiteGround	StartUp – $3.95/month GrowBig – $5.95/month GoGeek – $11.95/month
4.	DreamHost	Starter – $2.59/month Unlimited – $4.95/month
5.	GoDaddy	Economy – $1.00/month Deluxe – $7.99/month Unlimited – $12.99/month

Free Web Hosting for Churches

Generally speaking, you should avoid free web hosting offers. The old adage comes to mind – “you get what you pay for.” Most free web hosting offers out there require you to place a random ad on your website in exchange for the free web hosting. Who knows what type of ads could be displayed to your congregation!

Plus they don’t offer any support to speak of, and you could really find yourself all on your own. Not a good position to be in at all. We really recommend that you purchase web hosting with Bluehost or Hostinger because the value they offer their paying customers. Out of all the web hosting plans that we reviewed, they really offer the best “out of the box” experience for running a website.

If you really are in a situation where the $30.00-$60.00 is a stretch for your church’s budget, then check out DreamHost because they will offer you a non-profit discount if you can provide a valid 501(C)(3) determination letter.

Conclusion

The bottom-line is that we recommend Bluehost and Hostinger for our top picks for hosting a church’s website. Both of these providers have proven to be fast and reliable in our performance tests. More importantly, from our experience managing our websites on their platform, they have the best overall experience without expensive add-ons. Their support staff has also shown to be very quick and helpful.