Jordan Bishop
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Are you shopping around for a good web hosting service? If so, you’re likely wondering which one is the best option for your website. In this complete guide to web hosting services, we’ll look at some of the most popular providers and break down what each has to offer.
We’ll also discuss factors to consider when making your decision to be sure you’re selecting the right provider for your business.
Whether you’re running a fully remote business that relies on a website for its online operations or you’re managing a more traditional brick-and-mortar business that only needs a website with a blog, by the end of this post, you’ll know everything you need to choose the perfect web hosting service for your website in 2022.
Types Of Web Hosting Service
Before we cover what the best web hosting services are, you should know that several different types of web hosting services exist.
It’s important to understand the differences before making your choice, because each type of service has its own set of pros and cons, making them ideal for different businesses.
Here are the three most common types of web hosting services:
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most popular type of web hosting service.
With shared hosting, a single server hosts several different sites at once. This is a cost-effective option for individuals and small businesses with modest traffic levels.
The biggest advantage of shared hosting? It’s affordable.
However, because your site shares a server with other sites, you may experience slower load times and less security than with other types of hosting services.
Also, it’s far more likely to experience downtime with shared hosting than other types of hosting, simply because if one website on the server experiences an issue, it can affect all of the other sites as well.
So, now we get to the problems. A typical problem with shared hosting occurs when one of the hosted websites experiences a surge in traffic, crashing the whole system and therefore taking down all the sites that shared the server.
Because of this, shared hosting isn’t a great option for websites that frequently receive traffic surges – as many news sites do…
Dedicated Hosting
On the other side of the spectrum, we have dedicated hosting.
Dedicated hosting is a type of web hosting in which your website has its own server. This is a more expensive option than shared hosting, but it offers several benefits: including improved performance and security.
Because your website is the only one hosted on the server, you have complete control over the resources and can customize the environment to meet your specific needs.
The main downside of dedicated hosting is that it’s more expensive than other types of web hosting services. In addition, unless you’re familiar with server administration, you’ll likely need to hire someone to manage the server for you.
VPS Hosting
VPS (virtual private server) hosting is a type of web hosting that falls between shared and dedicated hosting in terms of price and features.
With VPS hosting, your website shares a server with other websites, but you have your own virtual environment that’s isolated from the other sites on the server. This provides you with more control over the resources your site has access to, but it’s still more affordable than dedicated hosting.
The main advantage of VPS hosting is that it combines the best features of shared and dedicated hosting at a more affordable price point. However, because your site shares a server with other sites, you may still experience some performance issues.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a more recent type of web hosting that’s becoming more popular in recent years.
As its name suggests, cloud hosting services host your website on a cluster of servers, which provides you with increased scalability and redundancy.
The key advantage of cloud hosting is that it’s scalable. This means you can easily add more resources as your traffic levels increase. In addition, because your site is hosted on multiple servers, it’s unlikely to experience downtime due to server issues.
However, cloud hosting can be more expensive than other types of web hosting services.
How To Choose The Best Web Hosting Service?
The most important features to look for when choosing the right web hosting service for your website are:
Loading Speed
The loading speed of your website is one of the most important factors in determining your success online. If your website takes too long to load, visitors will likely leave before they can see what you have to offer. Therefore, it’s important to choose a web hosting service that can provide you with fast loading speeds.
Allowed traffic
The average level of traffic your website receives will determine how much bandwidth you need. If you have a lot of traffic, you’ll need more bandwidth. If you have less traffic, you’ll need less bandwidth. You should choose a web hosting service that can provide you with the right amount of bandwidth for your needs to optimize costs.
Uptime
Uptime is a website KPI that measures the time that your website is up and running as a percentage. The higher the uptime, the better so your site is always available to visitors. However, this comes at a cost. That means you have to find the right balance between what you pay and the number of conversions you lose due to servers being down.
This depends very much on the type of site you run. If you’re running a streaming service website like Netflix, having your website down even for an hour can be catastrophic, while it’ll be almost inconsequential if you’re just running a blog.
Price
Of course, one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web hosting service is price. You want to find an affordable service that provides you with the features you need, but you also don’t want to sacrifice quality.
Storage
The amount of storage space you need will depend on the size and type of website you plan to host. If you have a lot of high-resolution images or videos, you’ll need more storage space than someone who just has a small personal blog.
Other features to look out for
Support: When something goes wrong with your website, you want to be able to get help from your web hosting service as soon as possible. That’s why it’s important to choose a service that offers 24/7 customer support.
Security: If you’re handling sensitive information on your website, you’ll want to ensure it’s secure. Choose a web hosting service that offers security features like SSL certificates and firewalls.
Backup: If something goes wrong with your website, you’ll want to have a backup so you can restore it quickly. Choose a web hosting service that offers automatic backups or gives you the option to create manual backups.
Migration: If you’re moving your website from one web hosting service to another, you’ll want to make sure the process is as smooth as possible. Choose a web hosting service that offers a good migration service.
Eco-friendliness: If you’re an environmentally-conscious consumer and want your web hosting service to reflect that, you may want to consider services like GreenGeeks, or similar companies that provide all the traditional services but with the added value of an eco-friendly operation model.
#1 Best Overall Web Hosting Service in 2022: HostGator
HostGator is just about the most popular web hosting service on the market, and for good reason. It’s affordable, offers a variety of plans to choose from, and provides customers with great features like unlimited storage space, 24/7 customer support, and free SSL certificates.
They offer everything from dedicated hosting to VPS services and shared hosting. They also offer their own website builder and a special plan for hosting WordPress websites. Add in a free domain, free website migration, a free SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, and a guarantee of 99.9% uptime, and you’re laughing.
In terms of pricing, shared hosting services start at $2.75/mo and go all the way up to $89.98/mo for a dedicated server. Finally, they offer one of the fastest load times in the US.
#2 Most User-Friendly Web Hosting Service: Bluehost
Bluehost is another popular web hosting service that offers a variety of plans to choose from. They offer shared, VPS, WordPress, and dedicated hosting services.
What puts Bluehost on this list is its user-friendly interface. Their control panel is easy to navigate, and they offer a one-click install for WordPress websites. They also provide 24/7 customer support and a free SSL certificate.
In terms of pricing, shared hosting starts at $2.95/mo, while VPS plans start at $19.99/mo. If you’re looking for a dedicated server, you’ll be paying $79.99/mo. So, the cheaper plans are slightly more expensive than HostGator’s, but their dedicated hosting prices imply saving around $120 per annum compared to the overall leader.
#3 Best Web Hosting Service For Speed: Cloudways
Cloudways is a bit different from other web hosting services on this list. They don’t offer traditional shared, VPS, or dedicated hosting plans. Instead, they offer a cloud-based platform that gives you the flexibility to choose from various cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Vulture, and more.
One of the benefits of using Cloudways is that you can scale your website quickly and easily. As you increase quality backlinks to the website and start getting more traffic than usual, you can increase your resources without migrating to a new host.
They also offer 24/7 customer support and a free SSL certificate. In terms of pricing, plans start at $12/mo for the basic plan with Linode cloud hosting and go all the way up to $274.33/mo for the premium, full-featured plan on Amazon Web Services.
You need the speed if you plan to launch and host an online game or something similar that requires high bandwidth and low latency. When it comes to speed, Cloudways is the best option this 2022. Cloudways excels in several speed metrics. It doesn’t just provide the fastest web page load time; it also offers the fastest time to first byte (TTFB) and time to first paint (a measure of the time it takes to make the first render of a web page).
This web hosting service is particularly fast in Europe, and it’s also pretty fast in the US. However, it’s not the fastest option in ASIA and other parts of the world, so it’s important to consider location when choosing a hosting service based solely on speed.
#4 Best Shared Hosting Service: Hostinger
If you’re looking for a cheap, entry-level web hosting service, Hostinger is a great option. They offer plans starting at just $1.99/mo for WordPress sites, one of the cheapest you can get.
Even their most basic plan includes 100Gb SSD storage space, unmetered bandwidth, 100 websites with free weekly backups, and even 100 unique, domain-based email accounts with 1Gb extra storage each. You also get a free domain name and SSL certificate with this plan. And, if you need more resources, you can always upgrade to one of their higher-tier plans.
In terms of speed, Hostinger is pretty fast. They use SSDs for all their plans, which helps to increase loading speeds. They also offer Cloudflare CDN on all their plans, which further improves loading times by caching your website’s content on servers worldwide.
One thing to keep in mind is that Hostinger doesn’t offer 24/7 customer support. However, they have a pretty comprehensive knowledge base and FAQ section that can help you troubleshoot most issues on your own.
#5 Best VPS Hosting Service: InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting is a great option if you’re looking for a reliable and affordable VPS hosting service. They offer plans starting at just $19.99/mo, which is great for a server with 2GB RAM, 90GB SSD storage, a 2 TB bandwidth, and a free SSL certificate.
One of the best things about InMotion as a VPS provider is their high uptime. THey implement triple failover redundancy, which increases server availability to 99.99%, which is 10x more reliable than other options like HostGator, which ensures uptime of 99.9%.
#6 Best Dedicated Web Hosting Service: AccuWeb Hosting
While most of the providers on this list, including this one, offer at least the three basic types of web hosting, AccuWeb Hosting specializes in dedicated server hosting. This is the best option if you’re looking for raw power and performance for your website or application.
While the price point is a bit high, starting at $105/mo if you’re hosting in the US, what you get is truly unique. The most basic service offers a dedicated dual-processor, quad-core Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 running at 3.5 GHz. You’ll have a bandwidth of 20TB all to yourself and can choose between SATA and SSD options.
This is the best option if you need to host a web page that will run high-resource applications like video streaming, live chat software, or gaming servers. Just be aware that you will need a pretty big budget to make this work.
The Bottom Line
So, what’s the best web hosting service for you in 2022? It really depends on your needs and budget.
If you’re looking for a cheap, entry-level shared host, Hostinger is a great option. If you need more power and want a VPS provider with high uptime, InMotion Hosting is a good choice.
And if you’re looking for raw performance and don’t mind spending a bit more money, AccuWeb Hosting is the best-dedicated server hosting provider around.
Keep these things in mind when making your decision so that you can choose the right provider for the next big thing on the internet.
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