Which Hosting Plan is Best for You?
Table of Contents
Shared Web Hosting Plan is the Best Cheap Option for Beginners
The type of web hosting plan that you choose for your website or online business depends upon the requirements of your website, the kind of user base that you are targeting and the amount of control that you require over the workings of your hosting plan. The success of your website can be dependent upon the hosting plan you choose, so it is important for you to choose a plan that is well suited for your website and its needs. For most websites on the web today a regular shared web hosting plan is the best option. We focus mainly on shared hosting in our web hosting reviews because it is the most used and affordable web hosting solution available. However, if you have a more established website with thousands of daily visitors or require the ability to do server customization not available on regular web hosting plans, we recommend you look into getting a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server. Now let’s compare the best web hosting services, beginning with the most popular type, shared web hosting plan.
Web Hosting Review
| Hosting Company | Monthly Fee |
|---|---|
|
InMotion Hosting |
$119.95/month |
|
100TB |
$201.15/month |
|
Single Hop |
$199.00/month |
|
A2 Hosting |
$119.99/month |
|
JaguarPC |
$109.00/month |
|
Hostgator |
$139.00/month |
Tip: Most websites on the Internet are using shared web hosting accounts. I’m not referring to the most visited sites e.g. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc., but out of the number of individual websites on the web today, the majority of them are on shared servers. If you are starting a website this would most likely be your best hosting option.
Reseller Hosting
VPS Hosting
Dedicated Servers
With a reseller hosting plan you can sell your allotted resources to web hosting to clients. Most people utilize reseller hosting to start their own web hosting company due to the low start up cost and automatic billing/account setup systems that are included. While some use reseller plans for their own websites because they prefer the option of having separate control panel accounts for each of their websites. Reseller hosting is a step above a regular shared hosting account that opens up more options.
A virtual private server (VPS) makes use of virtualization software to install several virtual servers on the same physical server. The difference between this type of a hosting solution and shared server hosting is that in this case resources are assigned to each account separately and no user can make use of the resources allocated to some other user. Since each virtual server acts as an independent server users have the option of customizing the server according to their needs; something that is not possible in case of a shared hosting plan.
Best VPS Hosting
In a dedicated server hosting plan, each user is assigned their own physical server for his or her exclusive use. This means that the server is not shared by any other user and the owner of the plan has access to all the resources on the server. A dedicated server hosting plan offers the user the ability to host a number of websites, configure the server according to their needs and manage the resources of the server according to his or her own wishes. Large, high resource intense websites with tons of visitors should consider a dedicated server.
Best Dedicated Servers
Deciding on Web Hosting – Important Factors
When it comes to shopping around for web hosting service, you’ll have a ton of options to choose from. With thousands of web hosting companies in the market, it can be quite the deeming task to settle for the best hosting service that suits your needs. Before you even consider shopping around and checking out the various offers, you need to understand what your web hosting needs are. Without knowing what you exactly need, you’ll end up paying for services that you probably won’t even use. We will be going through some important decision-making factors that should help you when deciding on web hosting for your website(s).
Understanding Your Needs – It is very important for you to know what it is that you need from a web hosting company, apart from the usual web hosting service. This will ultimately depend on the type of website you are planning on hosting. For example, are you looking to host a static personal website with a few pages and images or are you hosting a small business website that will be getting a considerable amount of traffic? If you’re going to be running an online shopping site, you’ll require ecommerce and merchant services, which some hosting companies offer. Based on your requirements, you should be able to know how much bandwidth, space and other server resources you need.
Web Hosting Features – The web hosting industry has become one of the most competitive online markets serving webmasters and companies are always increasing the services they offer. Several companies offer attractive web hosting features that could be useful for many businesses such business listings in directories, toll-free numbers, website security and more. When deciding on a web hosting company, you should definitely contrast and compare the web hosting features that are provided, as one hosting company may offer something more valuable for your specific requirement. Among these extra features, you will always have the usual database, email and hosting features.
Speed and Reliability – The speed and reliability of the hosting service you intend to purchase will be an issue that would constantly be coming up. Once you’ve found the hosting company of your choice; you need to know just how good their uptime and server speed is. Many people rely on the speed test, but that really does not say much about the user experience. The best way to get an indication of the speed of the server, you should actually visit a website that is hosted by that server. As for the uptime, the best thing you can do is ask for an uptime report that shows detailed data for more than one month, if possible.
Web Hosting Support – When it comes to the web hosting industry, one very important aspect that keeps customers happy is the level of customer support. You should only be giving your business to the best web hosting companies that have qualified and timely customer support. Having to wait around for several hours for an answer is not the definition of excellent customer support. With the bar raised so high up in customer service, many of us now expect web hosting companies to offer either a toll free number or a live chat system, or a combination of both. Finding the right hosting company with award winning 24/7 customer support should not be difficult, as there are a fair amount of options available.
Hosting Limitations and Specifications – The most common type of web hosting is shared web hosting and with it, you will become aware of several limitations. In a shared hosting environment, you do not have access to 100% of the server resources, hence the name, shared hosting. In order for all the users to have a pleasant user experience, the hosting company will set limitations on the CPU usage. Most hosting companies will set the maximum CPU usage to about twenty-five percent for a maximum of one to two minutes. If your website(s) seem to use much more than that, you may be asked to upgrade your hosting plan to a more reasonable plan such as a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Dedicated Server.
Administration & Control Panel – Depending on the control panel you have used in the past, you may prefer to use one specific platform. For those of you who have used web hosting in the past, you may have played around with cPanel, which is considered to be the most popular web hosting control panel. Prior to giving a hosting company your business, you could find out the control panel that you will be given. With a few companies, you will have the option of choosing between two or more different control panels. However, in most cases, you will work cPanel, a modified version of cPanel or a stand-alone platform developed by the hosting company e.g. vDeck. Regardless of what the case may be, you should always try out the control panel demo just to get a feel for the usability.
The Company’s Reputation – The overall level of customer satisfaction that a hosting company has will make a huge difference when you are trying to decide on a hosting company. As you go through various web hosting reviews, if a particular web host has a noticeable amount of negative feedback or bad hosting reviews, it should make you think twice before giving them your business. The hosting industry has become so competitive and quite large, making it very easy for customers to find the perfect hosting solution. Even if the web hosting company has a lot of good hosting reviews and positive impressions from customers, you should still do some research such as finding out how long the company has been in business for. If the company has been around for several years and has maintained an excellent track record; it really does say a lot about the company.