* When picking the best web hosting, there are thousands of service providers to compare. And all provide different levels of features, performance, ease of use, and price ranges – not to mention different discounts and savings at checkout.With all of the noise out there from both hosting companies jockeying for your attention, these web hosting reviews will give you two simple takeaways:
1. How to pick the best host for you.
2. How to save the most money at checkout with the most significant discounts (up to 90%).
Over this years I have set up sites, done site migrations, and managed more hosting providers than I can count. And the truth is: unless you are a large site with thousands of pages and massive levels of traffic, plenty of hosts will work out for you just fine. It is 2020, and hosting technology, performance, and site speed keep getting better.
Whether you are starting a blog, an online store, local business, or enterprise brand, let’s pick the best host and save money in the process.
Let’s get started.
Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links where I may receive a small commission for at no cost to you if you choose to purchase a plan from a link on this page. These are merely the tools I fully recommend when it comes to hosting a website.
What is the Best Web Hosting?
The best web hosting services provide reliable site speed, security features, uptime, ease of use, and integrations that your website needs. My top picks are Bluehost, Hostinger, GreenGeeks, WP Engine, HostGator, Siteground, Cloudways, Dreamhost, iPage, and HostPapa.
Most hosting companies give you steep introductory discounts and make it easy to get started. My hosting reviews will show you the companies that match exactly what you need while saving you money in the process.
1. Bluehost.
Best Web Hosting Service Powering Over 2 Million Websites Worldwide
Bluehost is my #1 hosting platform recommendation, with a free domain, free SSL included, 1-click Wordpress install, FTP, and 24/7 customer support. Their plans start at (60% off), and they have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
They are an all-encompassing platform tailor-made for WordPress and powering over 2 million websites. Their easy-to-use interface allows you to sign in, choose your domain, one-click install WordPress, choose your themes, and create your site. They launched in 1996, and they now have a staff of over 750 employees. They have a 99.99% uptime, making them a very reliable option.
With average load times under half a second, site speed won’t be an issue. With my WordPress site and their cheapest plan, I leveraged a few easy plugins and was able to get my desktop site speed to 100. One of the most significant selling points for me was their security and integration with Cloudflare – a content delivery network (CDN). This CDN prevents DDoS attacks and fake traffic from all kinds of different sources.
Using a CDN also increases site speed by allowing you to host your web files on their worldwide network of servers. This service shortens the time it takes to fetch data from your server based on a visitor’s location.
If you are reading other web hosting comparisons and looking for extra features, Bluehost also integrates with different software in their MOJO Marketplace. For example, if a customer needs shopping cart software or e-commerce functionality, installing software is easy.
Here’s how to get started:
- Go to Bluehost.com and click Get Started
- Choose the plan you want
- Either enter a new name or select one you own
- Enter your account information, account plan, and billing information
- I would uncheck the add-ons Sitelock Security and Codeguard Basic
- Click Submit and you’re ready to go!
I recommend you get started with their Basic Plan for $2.95/month, which is 63% off their regular price.
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: Basic Plan at $2.95/month
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout: $106.20
- Savings: $181.44
2. Hostinger.
Fast and Affordable at a 90% Discount ($0.99/month)
Hostinger is my #2 web hosting company because of its speed and price. They’re currently offering a massive 90% discount on paid plans with prices starting at $0.99/month. You can get four years of web hosting for $47.52.
Using Hostinger allows developers to learn to code and experiment with PHP, FTP, cPanel, and MySQL without the added cost. By using free hosting sites and learning PHP, you can learn to build free WordPress sites and hone your skills at the same time.
Hostinger is excellent for beginners. You can learn to build free WordPress sites and hone your skills at the same time. They have a super knowledgeable 24/7 multilingual (20+ language) Customer Success Team and are known to pick up a live chat in less than two minutes.
They are also of the fastest web hosting providers with an average page load speed under 200 ms and guaranteed uptime of 99.9%.
Hostinger has a custom, easy-to-use dashboard – hPanel. The design is clean and straightforward, which is what you need when building a site. Additionally, they are running a massive sale offering free SSL certificates and domains.
Hostinger provides a free WordPress site with 1-click installation so that you can start your blog free of charge in minutes. They also have their Zyro website builder with 1000’s of templates.
The steps to get up and running with their services are easy:
- Go to hostinger.com and click get started.
- Choose your hosting plan – the best savings are with the $0.99/month plan for 48 months.
- Enter your email and create a password.
- Choose either WordPress or build your site.
- Edit and publish your site.
If you want a powerful host on a budget with one of the fastest loading times and an incredible 90% discount, I recommend you get started with Hostinger for $0.99/month ($47.52 for four full years of hosting).
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: Single Shared Hosting at $0.99/month
- Term: 48 months
- Total cost at checkout: $47.52
- Savings: $432
3. GreenGeeks.
Best Green Web Host ($2.95/mo)
GreenGeeks is an environmentally friendly web host with over ten years of experience. They boast both a 99.95% uninterrupted time and feature load times under 500ms.
They have data centers in the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands – specifically Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, Montreal, and Amsterdam, which is a strong international setup.
They’re an interesting choice if you’re looking for an environmentally-conscious web host.
GreenGeeks confirms that they buy 3x the amount of wind energy credits to account for the energy used to power their platform. They’re a Green Power Partner with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
If you sign up for their services, you get unlimited file storage, bandwidth, and email accounts, and get to enjoy their strong performance – and get a free domain. And they don’t just slap WHM/cPanel on a dedicated server and call it a day like some other hosts – they go deeper than that.
They have a cool feature called their hosting account isolation setup. Using a VPS, container-based approach, they provision accounts with dedicated computing resources and secured virtual file system (Secure vFS). Secure vFS ensures accounts are unable to access other accounts, protecting your site against malware and other malicious activity.
They do have slightly higher $9.95 renewal fees than their $2.95 Eco-Site Lite introductory price, but you can lock in the pricing for three years.
Ultimately, you’ll pay $116.15 at checkout, and save $252.00 (70% off) with their promo code 10YEARSGREEN.
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: EcoSite Lite at $2.95/month
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout: $116.15
- Savings: $225.85
4. HostGator.
Great Cheap Web Hosting Service ($2.78/month)
HostGator is a well-known hosting provider based in Houston and hosts over 9 million websites. They are one of the cheapest options out there, with plans starting at $2.78/month on 36-month plans and savings from 30-60%. Make sure to check their renewal rates, as they are slightly higher than their introductory rates.
To get started, their speed clocks in barely under one second, so they aren’t the fastest option but better than average. They also hit a 99.98% uptime, which is better than the industry average of 99.94%.
They make the website building process easy, with simple drag and drop functionality and the ability to add unlimited domains. They’ll also assist with free migrations within the first 30 days of your sign-up.
They also offer 24/7 customer support through live chat, email, and phone, and they have pretty good response times.
They offer three main plans, including Hatchling, Baby, and Business. The higher-tier plans include dedicated IP addresses and SEO tools to grow your online presence. Additionally, they have a 45-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with your purchase.
Overall, they are one of the best web hosting sites on the market and #2 on my list.
Here’s how to get started:
- Go to HostGator.com and click Get Started.
- Choose a domain (or add one you own).
- Pick your billing cycle. For the most savings, select the $2.78/month plan for 36 months.
- Enter your billing info.
- Click Checkout and you’re all set!
Recommend you try the Hatchling plan and get started for $2.78/month.
How to Save:
- Plan: Hatchling at $2.78/month
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout: $100.08
- Savings: $150.12
5. WP Engine.
Best Professional and Enterprise Hosting ($31.50/month)
WP Engine is a managed hosting company based in my town of Austin, TX. They primarily focus on speed, security, and scalability. Their Managed hosting is specifically built for WordPress sites and comes at a higher price. It’s not precisely hosting, but dedicated services to keep your WordPress site live.
Site speed is where WP Engine excels.
While other providers may include customized servers, you can still get bogged down by installing a lot of WordPress plugins. But with WP Engine, they have a network of servers with more aggressive caching than other providers. You’re not allowed to install other caching plugins in WordPress because their caching is so personalized.
WP Engine provides daily backups of your files so you can keep your peace of mind. They also have reliable customer service and high-end custom plans for the enterprise. However, if your needs aren’t as advanced, you have to weigh the pros and cons.
Their startup plan starts at $31.50/month and includes 25k visits/month, 50GB of bandwidth, CDN and SSLs, and robust performance tools. Each program comes with a content delivery network (CDN) for faster load times and staging environments so you can test things out before going live with changes.
If you are looking for one of the best premium managed web hosting companies, give WP Engine a test run and get 10% off your first payment.
How to Save:
- Plan: Startup at $31.50/month
- Term: Monthly
- Total cost at checkout: $31.50
- Savings: $3.50
6. SiteGround.
Best Client Satisfaction ($3.95/month)
SiteGround has offered hosting software since 2014, and they pride themselves on fantastic customer support. They had a 98% client satisfaction rate in 2018 and respond to phone calls in seconds, reply to support tickets within 10 minutes on average, and are available 24/7 via chat.
In addition to customer service, performance is a significant benefit for SiteGround users, as they had an average 99.99% uptime in 2018. They built their platform on Linux containers that are very stable, even with random traffic spikes. They also have excellent page load times under 750ms.
They boast the most significant discounts on one-year terms if you don’t want to pay for 3+ years. Basic plans start at $3.95/month (plus a $14.95 setup fee), which includes a free Let’s Encrypt SSL, daily auto backups, unmetered traffic, and up to 10,000 visitors/month.
If your someone sick and tired of lousy service and want to work with the industry’s best customer support team, give SiteGround a try today. You can also read my full review of SiteGround vs Bluehost to compare these two web hosting giants.
How to Save:
- Plan: StartUp at $3.95/month + $14.95 setup fee
- Term: 12 months
- Total cost at checkout: $62.35
- Savings: $81.53
7. Cloudways.
Best Managed Hosting for Experienced Users ($10/month)
As their name suggests, Cloudways uses a scalable cloud platform built for speed and simplicity. Unlike shared web hosting, cloud servers give you more dedicated resources, which can help with speed and stability.
It’s a robust hosting service for web developers, as it allows PHP developers to deploy containerized applications and other advanced features. Besides, to support PHP7, Cloudways supports many other high-performance technologies like HTTP/2, Nginx, and Redis.
All Cloudways customers can add cloud servers to their accounts at any time. You can also set up a virtual cloud server in under a minute. WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) used with Cloudways (not surprising), followed by Drupal, and Magento.
Pricing is tiered based on the server specs you choose and the cloud provider. It starts as low as $10/month, and there is a free 3-day trial. It seems like a short trial, but it gives you enough time to dive into the platform and test its functionality. And if you’re looking for security, they provide SSL certificates with domain mapping.
If you’re an experienced developer and want more control, Cloudways is a good option.
8. DreamHost.
Fast, Secure Web Hosting with Purpose ($2.59/month)
DreamHost is a host that manages over 1.5 million sites use worldwide. They offer a 100% uptime guarantee and an impressive 97-day money-back guarantee.
All sites come pre-installed with a free SSL certificate and WordPress firewall for added security. VPS Basic provides two virtual private servers to each customer to increase speed, scalability, and performance.
They also have multiple caching layers, auto-scaled memory, and these isolated servers to improve speed further.
Additionally, every customer of their DreamPress platform gets built-in server caching and a static IP. These servers are super quick to respond to web requests as a proxy with the Apache and PHP WordPress stack.
You can get started with the DreamHost Shared Starter plan for just $2.59 per month.
First, sign up and enter your domain information. Next, you’ll also want to deselect Dreamshield Protection and 1 Mailbox if you don’t need email yet.
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: Shared Starter at $2.59/mo
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout:$93.24
- Savings: $99.91
9. iPage.
One-Size Fits All Hosting Best for Local Businesses ($1.99/month)
iPage is an excellent platform to build, market, and grow your small business website because of its low-cost offerings and easy website tools. It’s a decent choice for local businesses on a budget because it includes a website builder, and access to WordPress or Weebly, which allows anyone to build an e-commerce site.
I don’t recommend using iPage or Weebly for e-commerce if you’re looking for one of the cheapest options on the market. With an entry-level set of tools and stable performance, iPage gives you everything you need to get set up online quickly. You get a free online store, PayPal integration, and six different options for shopping cart software.
Their website builder is limited to just six pages. However, they have hundreds of templates and themes and integrate with content management systems (CMS) like Joomla and WordPress.
They also offer a free custom website, email address, and $200 worth of free ad credits for search engines like Google and Bing.
Plus, with the link below, you can claim 70% off hosting and get a free domain registration at the super-low price of $1.99/month.
How to Save:
- Plan: Web hosting plan at $1.99/month
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout: $71.64
- Savings: $216
10. HostPapa.
Powerful Web Hosting to Get Your Business Online ($3.95/month)
HostPapa entered the dedicated hosting space in 2002 and expanded to full-service web hosting in 2005. They quickly became a leader in the web hosting for small business, as they offer everything a small business would need to run their site.
These services include hosting, domain registration, 400+ business apps to connect to, and both the option of an easy drag-and-drop website builder or WordPress installation depending on your interest.
HostPapa has th
