When I was setting up my first website, I had lots of problems choosing a hosting provider. The pricing plans outlined on their sites seemed confusing, and some of the extra features they claimed to offer didn’t make sense. The trend hasn’t changed, but now I know how to separate wheat from the chaff. Here are the web hosting providers that offer the best value for money.
Which Web Hosting Provider Offers the Best Value for Money
Digital marketing is the future. According to Workswit IT Solution, 95% of small businesses spend on digital marketing. Digital Advertising and Marketing reports show that the advertising industry will hit $1.5 trillion by 2030. To keep up with this trend, every business needs a website and a reliable hosting provider.
The issue is that there are lots of hosting providers out there. There’s competition down to the rabbit hole, where providers offer prices so cheap that they aren’t able to provide professional services. At the same time, there are those expensive host providers that still don’t provide proportionately high-end services.
Luckily, I have done the hard part for you. I have reviewed many hosting providers, and here is a list of web hosting providers that offer the best value for money.
Bluehost
Started in 2003, Bluehost is one of the biggest names in the industry, with over 1.7 million users. I have started with Bluehost because it’s the official hosting provider recommended by WordPress. So, if you’re setting up your site using WordPress CMS, like most of us, Bluehost will definitely give you the least technical troubles of installing, running, and backing up your WordPress site.
The platform offers a 63% discount and free Site Builder templates. The templates give you an automatic site design and layout. You only need to work with page builders like Elementor with simple drag-and-drop- tactics, add your text, and images, and your site is ready to go.
The platform has 4 hosting tiers: Basic, Choice Plus, Online Store, and Cloud. As you can guess, the Basic plan is the cheapest, costing $11.99 per month, but discounted to $2.95 per month. It gives you access to one site hosting, 10GB of SSD storage, and customer support through live chat.
The Choice Plus tier costs $21.99 per month but is discounted to $5.45 per month. The plan gives you access to 3 website hostings, 40GB of SSD storage, and phone call and chat customer support. The Online Store plan is similar to the Choice Plus but costs $26.99 per month, discounted to $9.95 per month. The difference between the two plans is the added option to sell online products in the Online Store tier.
Finally, we have the Cloud option, which is relatively new. It’s the plan that boasts world-class speeds with a guaranteed 100% network uptime. To me, this is a solution to the main Bluehost limitation: lagging under high traffic. The plan starts at $29.99. It gives you access to 50 websites, 225 GB of SSD storage, 150 vCPU computing power, and priority in the chat and live phone call customer support.
The platform gives you a free domain name and SSL certificate for the first year. So, to get started, you’ll only be paying for the discounted hosting plans, and you’re good to go. Note that after using the free domain, it means you’ll renew the domain through Bluehost under their pricing plans, which I consider a bit pricey.
Hostgator
Hostgator is another monster of a hosting provider that started in 2002, a year earlier than Bluehost. The platform has a massive user base, having hosted over 2.5 million websites. Hostgator also has crazy offers, like a free domain name and free SSL certificate for one year.
WordPress comes installed, and all you need is to start designing your site. The control panel is easy to use even for beginners. I love how HostGator assigns experts to help you if you’re migrating the website. Probably that’s why beginner bloggers get stuck between Bluehost and Hostgator because of their ease of use.
Hostagor offers three tiers: Baby Plan, Business Plan, and Pro Plan. Baby Plan is the basic level for beginners and costs $4.5 per month, including 70% off. This plan gives you access to 2 websites, 20GB of SSD storage, live chat and phone customer support, basic email, unmetered bandwidth, Cloudflare CDN, 2 vCPU computing power, and Malware Scanning.
In short, it’s like this plan falls between Bluehost’s Basic plan and the Choice Plus, and offers the best value for money. Business Plan costs $6.25 per month, including a 69% off. The plan includes all features of the Baby Plan but with 40GB SSD storage, access to 3 websites, daily website backup for one year, domain privacy for one year, and 3 vCPU computing power. Pro Plan costs $13.95 per month, including a 48% off.
The plan includes all features of the Business Plan, but with access to 5 websites, 100GB SSD storage, and 5 vCPU computing power. Hostgator promises a 99.9% uptime. But what I love most about HostGator is the 30-day refund guarantee if you’re not happy with their services. So, no risks in giving them a try.
Namecheap
As the name suggests, Namecheap is the web hosting provider that offers the best value for money. No wonder the platform hosts around 4,996,634 websites, which is more than the websites hosted on Bluehost and Hostgator combined. To start with, Namecheap gives you free supersonic CDN, free automatic SSL installation, and a free website builder.
Namecheap has three plans: Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar Business. Stellar plan costs $1.48 per month during the first year and $4.48 per month afterward. This plan gives you access to 20GB of SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, 2 backups per week, over 100 apps with 1-click installation, 50 FTP users, 3 domain hostings, and 30 subdomains.
Stellar Plus plan costs $2.38 per month the first year and $6.48 per month afterward. It offers everything Stellar plan offers, plus unlimited SSD storage, unlimited FTP users, unlimited hosted domains and subdomains, and auto backups.
The Stellar Business costs $4.98 per month the first year, and $9.48 afterwards. It offers everything Stellar Plus offers plus personal nameservers. It also has a higher file inode limit of 600 compared with 300 for the other plans. However, this plan has a cap of 50GB SSD storage. Another thing I like about Namecheap is that all plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Final Thoughts
The above 3 hosting providers offer great value for money, but I think Namecheap is the overall winner. Another thing, in most of these providers, the middle tier offers the best value for money.
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