Top Web Hosting Services And Their Features

When looking for a web host, you need to check a few items off your list to determine which host would be sufficient for you. Creating a list of hosts is a bit tricky if you don’t know what to look for in a host. However, you don’t have to look anywhere else. In this article, you are going to learn about hosts, their features, pricing, and, finally, their pros and cons.

Top Web Hosting Services

Top Web Hosting Services And Their Features 01

Bluehost

Bluehost

Bluehost was founded by Matt Heaton and started way back in 1996 as a company called 0catch.com. After some years doing free hosting, it was renamed Bluehost in 2003 and has now grown into a sizeable company with over 700 employees and 2 million domains hosted.

The company has also been in partnership with WordPress for over ten years. Bluehost has a dedicated team that provides WordPress support together with a group of engineers wholly dedicated to WordPress core development. This partnership has led Bluehost to have affordable and high-quality WordPress hosting India.

Bluehost also supports the growth of the open-source community. How? By using open-source software, e.g., server scripts and internal tools, to build their systems.

As mentioned previously, Bluehost covers over 2 million domains. As such, the Bluehost cPanel is one of the most used control panels existing today. Most users like it because of its smooth and easy to use interface. This has led it to become the standard for most hosting companies.

Bluehost Features

Fast Server Speeds

Bluehosts’ server speeds are suitable for the majority of website owners. While Bluehost’s loading speeds are not the fastest in the hosting industry, they are sufficient for most website owners. Although speed varies with each hosting package, even the slowest plan (shared hosting) has some of the most competitive speeds around. With top tier plans, you get even faster load times and more resources.

You can improve loading speeds with other bundled tools that are supported by Bluehost. Tools such as CloudFlare CDN store copies of your site on various servers around the world. If someone wants to access your site, they are served a version stored in a server closest to their physical location. That vastly improves loading speeds.

Incredible Server Uptime

Uptime is essentially the amount of time that your site is online. Bluehost offers a high industry uptime of around 99.9%. Even for their low-level plans, you never have to worry about your website being offline. Moreover, when you choose a high tier plan like dedicated server hosting, you can get almost 100% guaranteed uptime.

With high uptime, your site gets more visitors, thereby giving you more revenue and good user experience.

Bluehost is Beginner Friendly

Nowadays we have many tools that help us create new websites with little or no prior experience. However, the process of building a new website may seem daunting and tricky to new users. Steps such as getting your site online, registering your domain, and designing your site may discourage new users.

You will be pleased to know that Beginners are catered for by Bluehost. They have an onboarding process that’s geared toward beginners. The process explains confusing elements clearly. That makes it easier for new users to make decisions regarding hosting packages and features. Besides the onboarding experience, Bluehost has a clean and user-friendly interface that guides you as you interact with the site.

Besides, if you still need help, there are plenty of walkthroughs and tutorials on Bluehost to help you navigate hosting.

Exceptional Track Record

Bluehost must be doing something right. The company has been around for many years. When you go online, you will find various positive testimonials of clients that have hosted their sites on Bluehost. Also, WordPress (the company that powers over 30% of the internet) has officially endorsed Bluehost.

Bluehost has a glowing reputation. Most reviews and personal experiences online depict a host that seeks to keep its customers happy and satisfied. Also, WordPress has endorsed Bluehost. 

Bundled Daily Backups

Most hosts adopt a carefree attitude when it comes to backups. This makes it risky because, in case of anything happening to your site, you won’t have a fallback plan. With Bluehost, you get daily backups and site restoration on all hosting plans no matter how cheap. Although the backups have a specific limit depending on price, they are still backups nonetheless.

With Bluehost, you get automated daily backups of your site, no matter the hosting package. Although the backups have their limits, they still help. However, if you are more keen on backups and site integrity, you should get a higher tier package or use third-party backup software. In case anything happens to your site, you restore it from a backup. Instead of creating a new website all over again.

Scalability and Flexibility

With Bluehost, you can quickly scale up as your needs increase. You get a wide variety of plans that enable you to scale up as your site grows. You can quickly move from various plans without having to worry about your data. Also, while migrating from one hosting plan to another, Bluehost promises zero downtime. With their server management tools, you can check your servers’ resources to know when it’s the right time to move to a better hosting plan.The company will ensure your site never goes down during the move from one package to another.

App Library

Bluehost has a massive application library that lets you use different software and services. Bluehost has a big library of applications to help you be more productive. You can get various services and software that help your site to have more functionality. For instance, you can enable e-commerce functionality and CloudFlare, and besides, you can also plug your hosting account into Google Apps. Letting you have an even larger plugin library.

Good Customer Support and Documentation

Bluehost offers a wide variety of Customer support options. With excellent customer support, your mind is kept at ease to let you do other things fully. Bluehost has an excellent support team that offers help via email, phone, live chat, and well-detailed documentation. They have experts who deal with every sort of technical issue you might experience with a website. You get live chat, phone support, and even social media support. When you contact the support team, you can rest assured that you are speaking with an expert who has probably solved the issue you are facing. 

Moreover, you can find well-documented walkthroughs, tutorials, and resolved issues in Bluehost’s extensive library. Also, with all the hundreds of tutorials and walkthroughs, you can rest assured that any issue you experience will be sorted.

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee which you can get if you don’t like their services. This makes it easier for potential clients to try Bluehost without fear. You can get a refund as long as you cancel within 30 days of purchasing hosting. The offer may not be as long as other hosts; however, it encourages many people to use Bluehost Besides putting them at ease.

Bluehost Has Custom Themes

You can choose from thousands of themes, and then you can customize them to create that perfect website.

Bluehost Pricing

Shared hostingBasicChoice plusPro
 $2.95/month$5.45/month$13.95/month
Bluehost Shared Hosting Plans
VPS hostingStandardEnhancedUltimate
 $29.99/month$39.99/month$69.99/month
Bluehost VPS Hosting Plans
Dedicated hostingStandardEnhancedPremium
 $89.98/month$119.88/month$139.99/month
Bluehost Dedicated Hosting Plans

Bluehost’s Pros

  • Free Domain: With Bluehost, you get a free domain name for one year.
  • Free SSL Certificate: With each domain name purchased on Bluehost, you are given a free SSL certificate.
  • Bluehost Has Easy Installs: It’s easy to install your favorite CMS. For instance, you get easy 1-Click WordPress Install.
  • Excellent Support: There is 24/7 Support. You reach out to the Bluehost team, and your issues are sorted.

Bluehost’s Cons

  • Unlimited Hosting Is Limited: The term “unlimited” hosting means that Bluehost will do its best to provide necessary resources for all of those on unlimited hosting plans to grow their sites. However, if your website is consuming large portions of server resources such as storage and memory, you might need to upgrade your account. If not, you will notice slow loading speeds and poor site performance. However, if you stay within the terms and conditions, you don’t have to worry about a thing.
  • Bluehost Has Higher Renewal Prices: Just like most hosts, Bluehost offers low introductory rates to get your business. However, once the time to renew comes around, you get to experience the real prices, which are quite high. Therefore, when renewing your plan, keep in mind that you are paying a higher rate than your introductory one.
  • Costly Upgrades and Additional Features: Most upgrades and additional features are quite expensive. If you want server and security upgrades, you should expect a higher monthly fee. If you have a newer site, you can stick with the stock options to avoid such costly upgrades.
  • No Free Site Migration with Bluehost: Most hosts offer free site migration services but not Bluehost. If you would like to migrate your site over to Bluehost, you need to pay a fee. That may put some people off.
  • No Windows Hosting: There is no support for sites that require a windows server. Bluehost is a Linux-only hosting company. If you have a site requiring a windows server, your website won’t be hosted.

HostGator

Hostgator

HostGator is hosting company founded 17 years ago. It is among the biggest hosting providers worldwide. Currently, it boasts a user base of over 10 million domain names.

It has a cloud platform that has, among other things, high speed, superb scalability, and seamless resource allocation, which makes managing your sites a breeze.

HostGator Features

Customer Support

HostGator has excellent tech support with its live chat and toll-free phone number. You get 24/7 customer support via telephone, email, social media, or online chat. HostGator offers a ticketing system where you won’t be skipped for someone who came later. Besides, you get excellent tutorials, walkthroughs, support forums, and videos for all your issues.

Fast Server Speeds

74% of web users will abandon a site that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Thus, Loading speed is crucial for any aspiring website. With HostGator, you are promised good speeds, and they certainly deliver. HostGator has fast speeds, even in its cheapest hosting packages. Tests performed on their server speeds have shown that they are exceptionally fast for beginner websites. However, your site’s speed also depends on your settings and practices. Therefore, ensure you optimize your site.

First Time User Discounts

For the first time HostGator customers, you get excellent discounts when you sign up for hosting. By the time you are renewing your plan, your site will hopefully have made some money.

Free Site Migration and Installs with HostGator plans

If you’re switching to HostGator from another host, you sign up, and the HostGator team takes care of the technical details. You don’t have to pay additional fees for site migrations. Finally, if it’s your first time using HostGator, you also get free one-click installs of your favorite CMS.

Solid Server Uptime

When selecting a web host uptime is an essential factor to consider. As such, HostGator promises a 99.9% uptime, and if the service-level agreement is breached, HostGator gives you free hosting. That is good for your site because every minute your site spends offline, you lose revenue besides delivering the terrible user experience. HostGator promises compensation if your uptime is affected as a result of their activities.

HostGator Has Unlimited Hosting

You are free to use unlimited resources, e.g., unlimited databases, unlimited disk space, and unmetered bandwidth. You can get all these advantages if you only stay within the terms and conditions and are not using the most basic hosting packages.

If you want to take advantage of unlimited hosting of HostGator, you should not do the following;

  • Create above 100,000 files via cPanel
  • Check more than 30 emails or send above 500 emails per hour
  • Run more than 25 cPanel processes at the same time
  • Use more than 25% of the server’s CPU for more than 90 seconds

For new users, it’s a bit hard to do the above.

Site Builders

HostGator has easy to use site builders that let you install content management software with a single click. You can opt for WordPress – the choice of most bloggers, or Joomla.

Intuitive easy to use Interface

The HostGator login area is simple. Once you login to the cPanel, you will find all options neatly arranged in specific categories. Also, you can always use the search bar to find anything hidden.

Manage Multiple Domains

HostGators’ Baby and Business Plan let you add an unlimited number of domains to your shared hosting plans. You can easily manage multiple domains using the same Hostgator plan.

Unlimited Bandwidth

HostGator has no bandwidth limits. This means that you will never be charged a fee for going above your bandwidth. You also don’t have to worry about your site going down because of traffic.

Unlimited Disk Space

With HostGator, you get unlimited disk space. You can add as many files as you want without worrying that your server space will be full.

Shared and Private SSLs

Hostgator ensures all its sites have Secure Socket Layer protection. With cheaper plans, you get shared SSL certificates while with premium plans, you can get private SSL certificates for added security.

Shared and Private IPs

You can get private IP addresses in the premium plans as opposed to shared IP addresses in the cheaper hosting plans.

Automatic Domain Renewal

With HostGator, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to renew your domain. You get automatic domain renewal before your domain expires. This is a useful feature that prevents you from losing your website.

Affordable Pricing

You get a wide variety of plans that are pocket-friendly and fully featured.

Reseller Hosting

It’s easy to start your own web hosting company using Hostgator servers. You can opt for reseller hosting, which is a good option for business-minded webmasters.

HostGator Pricing

Shared Hosting Hatchling Plan Baby Plan Business Plan
 $3.75/month$4.50/month$6.25/month
WordPress Hosting Baby Plan Business Plan Pro Plan
 $4.50/month$6.25/month$13.95/month
VPS Hosting Snappy 2000 Snappy 4000 Snappy 8000
 $34.99/month$51.99/month$93.99/month
Dedicated Server Hosting Value Server Power Server Enterprise Server
 $89.98/month$119.98/month$139.99/month

HostGator Pros

HostGator is User-Friendly

It has a very clean and comfortable to use control panel.

45-Day Money-Back Guarantee

You are free to try the services of HostGator at no risk. If you are not satisfied, you can cancel your hosting plan within 45 days for a full refund.

Good Support

HostGator’s support staff available 24/7/365 to assist you with any issues on your hosted site via telephone or live chat.

Good Uptime

HostGator boasts 99.99% uptime; thus, your clients won’t go online to find your site missing.

HostGator Cons

Free Backup Limitations

With HostGator, you get free backups, but they are not that good. For you to backup your site, you need to log in to your cPanel and do the backups manually. To get automated backups, you need to pay extra money. Moreover, HostGator’s automated backups are inadequate – only one week of backups will be kept. Thus, if you want quality backups, you need to perform them using a third-party backup service. 

Inconsistent Speeds

HostGator may be fast; however, there are plenty of reports that show load speeds vary. For instance, you may notice that sometimes, your site loads fast while other times, you might see that your website is quite slow.

HostGator’s Renewal Fees Can Be Expensive

Signing up for a hosting package is cheap, but then when renewing, the rates skyrocket. That is a common practice across the hosting industry. To avoid the high prices for a time, you have to sign up for the longest hosting during account creation.

Delayed Online Chat Support

Despite HostGator having a helpful team, the waiting time to use support can become quite long. Live chat, in particular, can alternate between right away to a few minutes. It can be quite frustrating if you have an urgent issue.

The Website Builder is Overpriced

If you use a web builder of HostGator to create more than simple pages, you risk running into the limits. The only way to build an excellent large site is to upgrade your package to one of the paid plans. When you add this price to your hosting price, you find that you may end up spending more than you might want to have your site online.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy

GoDaddy is among the world’s largest internet domain registrars. The company provides domain registration as well as;

  • Web hosting
  • SSL certification
  • Email marketing
  • Website builder
  • Website security
  • E-commerce solutions

Founded in 1997, GoDaddy has grown to become the world largest host managing over 60 million domains. Due to its size, it has a market share of about 6.5%, and as of 2018, it officially became the largest web host in the world.

GoDaddy Features

Easy to use

GoDaddy has made the process of acquiring domains and hosting easy to the average user. As the years pass by the company has improved its services and technology to keep up with the competition. You can easily install all your favorite content management software, for instance, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal with one click.

Good prices

GoDaddy hosting offers plenty of choices for clients. The company has always relied on low pricing to get more customers. You can get various server options such as dedicated servers and VPS plans.

Help & Support

As with other hosts, GoDaddy offers a 24/7 phone line (Mon-Fri, 5 am-6 pm) and a live chat feature to help you solve your hosting issues. If you don’t have the patience or you’re working during those hours, you can get plenty of information from GoDaddy’s library and forum.

Social Media Integration

With GoDaddy, you get Social media integration in the website builder. You can connect your Facebook page and add various icons and links to other social pages.

GoDaddy has Good Analytics

GoDaddy allows you to use Google Analytics. The feature helps you keep track of all visitors coming to your site.  You can track pages most viewed, and even the amount of time spent on your website.

SEO & Marketing

With GoDaddy’s brilliant SEO wizard, you can now target specific people for marketing, and the wizard suggests the best keywords to optimize your site. That helps your website to rank higher. 

Besides, if you’re on the eCommerce plan, you get personal SEO guidance from an expert to help you scale up your marketing.

Easy Domain Registration

Setting up a domain is comfortable with GoDaddy. You get a simple easy to follow a guide, and even absolute beginners have an easy time navigating.

Security

All GoDaddy hosting packages include SSL (secure socket layers) security. SSL is a feature that makes sure data passed between a web server and a browser is private.

Excellent loading times and uptime

GoDaddy has a 99.99% uptime average and excellent loading speeds. With GoDaddy you don’t have to worry about bandwidth limit; a sudden influx of visitors to your site won’t crash it. If it does GoDaddy will give you a refund for the downtime you experience.

GoDaddy offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee with good load speeds.

Money-back guarantee with no expiration date

Since most hosting companies offer few days’ money-back guarantees, GoDaddy takes it to the next level by providing a lifetime money-back guarantee that never expires.

Free credits

To get more clients, GoDaddy offers free advertising credits such a $100 in Google AdWords for every $25 spent. They also include Bing and Facebook ad credits to help you advertise your business.

Web design

With the many web templates available at GoDaddy, you can also get personalized web design from the GoDaddy team. The professional web designers will make sure you have a gorgeous customized site.

Good Security

GoDaddy has invested plenty of resources to ensure security for their clients. For instance, you get regular data backups, even if you are using the cheapest plan. Thus if you are considering an extremely secure host, Godaddy is your best bet.

Backups and Restores

GoDaddy has an automatic backup feature on its website builder. With the autosave feature, you don’t have to keep reminding yourself to back up your site.

GoDaddy’s Pricing

Web Hosting Managed Hosting VPS Hosting Dedicated Server Hosting
$6.99/month$11.99/month$8.99/month$159.99/month

GoDaddy’s Pros

GoDaddy Has Quality WordPress Auto-Install

With Go Daddy, you don’t have to worry about installing WordPress wrong. You get an auto-install which is done correctly and saves time. The process is made easy for beginners and regular users alike, once you purchase hosting, there is a small option for auto-install.

You can also get a separate WordPress hosting product that though expensive, offers upgrades and security, among other benefits.

Good Support

GoDaddy offers 24/7 phone support, and that is a good deal for people who need constant help.

GoDaddy Integrates Products Well

It has excellent apps. Also, integrations are a breeze. Moreover, you can integrate your site with Google Apps, which opens a whole new world of applications and services.

GoDaddy Is Cheap

There are plenty of packages, such as their economic plan, which is $7.99/month at renewal. However, you can always get coupons for longer commitments, which can push hosting plans down to even $1.00/mo.

GoDaddy Gives Unlimited Bandwidth

GoDaddy does not throttle your bandwidth if you suddenly get an influx of visitors.

Choose Between Linux and Windows Servers

Depending on your needs, you can have Linux hosting or windows server hosting.

GoDaddy has good loading speeds and guaranteed uptime.

Finally, it has an easy to use control panel.

GoDaddy’s Cons

Hosting Feature Limitations

GoDaddy keeps a short leash on hosting features. For instance, they have arbitrary limits on databases and bandwidth. That can be quite annoying, especially if you have no idea what is happening to your site.

Account Lock-in

Whenever you want to move on from GoDaddy, the process is tedious. You are bombarded with annoying upsells and obstacles that make the entire process a nightmare.

GoDaddy Has Fewer Features

There is a lack of depth to some of its features with less creative freedom available. Also, their sites aren’t as visually appealing as other website builders’

Terrible Discounts

With some GoDaddy plans you have to sign up for three years to benefit from the advertised discounted prices;

Namecheap

Namecheap

Namecheap’s Features

Free Domain and Migration

Namecheap has been known to provide cheap domain names. When you sign up, you get a free domain name. If you would like them to host your domain for you, they will do so free of charge.

30-day Money-Back Guarantee

You get a good 30 days to check and see if Namecheap suits your needs. If not, you can get a full refund.

Value Loaded Plan

The cheapest plan of Namecheap has excellent performance as compared to other hosts’ basic plans. With the plan, you get unmetered bandwidth, a cPanel, and WordPress.

Also, you get a free SSL certificate valid for a year, two backups a week, 50 email addresses, 50 MySQL databases and you can host three websites using the plan. Those are plenty of features.

Great Customer Service

Namecheap offers good support. You get phone support and an excellent live chat feature, which is very reliable and works very fast. Besides, there are many tutorials and videos available online to help you in case of trouble.

Namecheap has an Easy to Use Interface

Their site is easy to navigate, and unlike other hosts, they don’t keep on trying to sell you features or packages you might not need. Namecheap’s interface is also straightforward. Options are kept in a tidy sidebar; this way, there’s no clutter.

High-Security Standards

Each time you purchase a domain, you get a complimentary free year of Namecheap’s WhoisGuard protection service. Besides, each account is secure, and important updates are sent directly to your email.

Also, Namecheap’s domain manager has never been breached as opposed to many of its competitors. They have also included privacy protection in all their hosting plans. That way, you can’t forgo security.

Namecheap’s Pricing

Shared Hosting Stellar Stellar Plus Stellar Business
 $4.48/month$6.48/month$9.48/month
VPS Hosting Pulsar Quasar Magnetar
 $9.88/month$15.88/month$28.88/month
Dedicated Server Hosting Xeon E3-1241 v3Xeon E-2136Dual Xeon Silver 4208Xeon E-2234Xeon E-2236Dual Xeon Silver 4310T
 $54.88/month$71.88/month$148.88/month$62.88/month$71.88/month$155.88/month

Namecheap’s Pros

Reliability

Namecheap is a well-known brand that has been around for 15 years; thus, they are very reliable. Plenty of reviews are available to prove Namecheap’s reliability.

Cost-Effective

With Namecheap, you get cheap domain names. Besides, when you get hosting with Namecheap, you get free and fast migration of your site from other hosting providers.

Backups

Namecheap ensures that backups are done daily. You don’t have to worry about losing your data.

Easy to use

Namecheap’s design and interface are very user-friendly. It’s also quite easy and quick to register and get started.

Fewer Advertisements

Adverts can be annoying. It’s comforting to know that Namecheap does not keep on showing additional features that you should buy when you sign up.

Namecheap’s Cons

Plan Limitations

Namecheap has limits on its disk spaces, domains, databases, and email addresses. It can be suitable for small sites. Also, the lower tier plans are heavily limited as compared to the middle and top tier plans

Allocations & Performance

Namecheap’s Speeds are excellent, and they are better than most big brands. However, performance is sometimes limited. For instance, Namecheap Servers have;

  • Low memory allocations to their accounts.
  • Have low limits on auto-installs of WordPress.

Namecheap Doesn’t Specialize in Hosting

Namecheap is a domain registrar. Most people prefer to buy a domain from Namecheap but hosting from another company.

Most companies that offer both hosting and domain registration usually charge high prices. The lack of specialization in one option makes companies have average service.

Money-Back Guarantee Is Short

Namecheap’s money-back guarantee is 14 days. That is a short time compared to other hosts.

Namecheap’s Bonus Offers

Namecheap tends to overprice some of their upgrades. For instance – dedicated IP addresses that are necessary for installing SSL certificates charge $24/year while other hosts charge $2 or bundle it for free. Also, installing SSL certificates is quite hard and usually requires help from an expert.

Summary

In this article, you have learned all about hosts and their various features. In summary, you have learned about Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy, and finally, Namecheap. You can make your selection based on the pricing, features, or pros and cons. The one thing to remember is that all these hosts have their advantages and disadvantages.

Also Check: 4 Best GoDaddy Alternatives

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