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Best Web Hosting Comparison & Top 25 Mega-Table for 2024

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Your tech and marketing stack is highly reliant on solid, fast, reliable, scalable web hosting.

Whether you're managing bare-server hosting with your IT team, or going with a fully done-for-you solution like Webflow, the classic practice of hosting files in the cloud to serve to customers is just as relevant in 2024 as it was 20 years ago, albeit with lots of progress and changes.

But how do you decide on such a technical decision?

Choosing the best hosting is super tough – for beginners and pros alike. There are hundreds of options, and every web host claims to be the best one out there. And there's no one best host for every person or company – all situations are different. You have to determine what's best for your business and wade through too many options and too much marketing speak.

Our ever-updated review site attempts to turn jargon into clear, plain English in a causal yet helpful way.

Shared Hosting Comparison

Shared hosting is what almost ever independent creator or small business should start with. If you need generally good and cheap web hosting, a stable hosting provider that's been around awhile, has fair pricing, and great customer support is where you want to start.

Unlike other review websites, we believe you should pay a little extra for quality shared hosting with better customer support. Unless you have literally $5 a month to spend on this, you should spend the extra $10-20/mo for great web hosting support. That's why we're being a bit more honest here and not purely pushing the hosts that are dirt cheap and convert really well, we want to find the best balance of value and price.

Cheap VPS Hosting

VPS Hosting is a step up from shared hosting and is a great place to try to improve on security and speed. Check out A2 Hosting's great VPS opportunity with turbo boost speeds.

7 Best Cheap VPS Hosting Companies

View more on cheap VPS hosting here ->

Best Managed Cloud Hosting Comparison

Looking for something a bit more scalable – for a business that needs to scale as well? Cloud hosting can be the perfect fit.

Here's a scoring of our favorite managed cloud hosting providers:

Top 14 Best Cloud Hosting Providers & Services

Best Enterprise, Scalable Cloud Hosting Comparison

If you're looking to go with the beasts of enterprise, and keep costs lower, here's the big Kahunas. We've included a few of the managed cloud hosts like Cloudways and Kinsta that operate on the cloud layer and can scale, with some added services in the middle.

Top Enterprise Cloud Hosting Providers & Services

All Hosting Companies Comparison Table (Our Research)

Ok, here's a big dump of all the data from our last research in one big table. It's definitely not the prettiest, but this should have virtually all the details you need. Use this as a jumping off point, and be sure to do your own comparisons for your own needs.

How should you compare web hosts?

If you're choosing a host for the first time, it can be overwhelming to try to figure out what you should be comparing web hosts on

Do you compare only by price?

By customer support?

By largest disk space?

It's really tough, since the features, wants, needs are different for everyone. Let's highlight a few.

1) Compare web hosts on value not price

You shouldn't compare web hosts just purely on the price.

If you've literally got $2 a month you can afford for hosting, well, maybe you'll just have to go with that. But if you can swing a few more dollars, there's a world of other things to compare that go into value beyond just price.

Price = the raw $ amount that the hosting will cost you

Value = what you actually get for that price

Let's use a hypothetical situation, you have two options:

  1. Web host A costs $30 a month, but you can only host one website, are only allowed 100 visitors a month, and you don't get email hosting
  2. Web host B costs $100 a month, but you can host unlimited websites, can have unlimited traffic, and it comes with email hosting

What's a better value? Clearly it's web host B.

2) Customer service for hosting is king

If you're not an experienced developer or techie, you're going to need premium customer service support at a hosting company.

In fact, if you look at all the bad web hosting reviews, the #1 thing that comes up is customer service.

People get royally pissed off if the customer service takes 45 minutes to get on chat.

In fact, good customer service from a hosting company can more than make up for lower quality features, speed, and uptime.

If this is huge for you, check out our ranking of hosts with the best customer service.

3) Check the uptime percentages

It's one of the most basic things you want in a host: that the website is actually live.

Ideally your web host would have 100% uptime. But that's statistically impossible (I think).

So it's really, really important to check uptime percentages with a hosting company. The good ones will release these stats for you. The bad ones will try to hide it.

In reality, 99% uptime is not that good. It means your website will be down for 87.6 hours a year. That's not good enough for me.

Look for hosts with 99.999999% uptime.

Other hosting features to compare

There are so many things to compare, it's bewildering, here's just a few of them:

The list goes on. What you need to do is create a list of your business needs and thoroughly research what's best for you!

Web Hosting Buyer's Checklist

We all love handy-dandy checklists. Here's one you can print out and put on your bathroom mirror to meditate on every morning as you're brushing your teeth:

The top 10 things to think about on the hosting checklist:

  1. 100% hosting uptime – this is ideal, not always gonna happen. Most will say 99.9999% uptime. Get as many 9's in there as you can. Something that's only 99% uptime means there with be 3 full days a year of downtime. So get that down to a few minutes or less per year.
  2. Super-fast hosting speed – a lot of hosts will say they're fast, not all will deliver. By the laws of nature there have to be a few that are truly the fastest. Dig into our fastest web hosting post for more.
  3. Money-back guarantee – since so many hosts do offer this, you should be wary of any fly-by-night providers that don't! 30 days is plenty, that should give you enough of a feel for things to be sure things are all right. If it's a host that's not well-reviewed, I would be wary of multi-year plans.
  4. Great customer support – for me, personally, this is #1. If you are a business owner, marketer, or member of the team that's not an IT person or web developer, you're going to be highly reliant on a hosting company's customer support team during different periods. Spend more money here.
  5. Free domain name – this is a nice kicker if you're on a bootstrapped budget. Larger businesses can ignore this one.
  6. Free SSL certificate – there was a time when unsavory providers would charge an arm and a leg for SSL. Now they often come free. There may be certain enterprise scenarios where you need more complex and advanced certificates. For most people, a host offering a free cert is a sign of trust and quality.
  7. High bandwidth – do you think there might be times you'll get spikes in traffic or go viral? You'll want to be aware of bandwidth limits. If you are a small local firm, or small blog, you're probably fine. If you may have fluctuating traffic periods, plan for higher bandwidth.
  8. Website backups – I've accidentally deleted a site. It totally sucked. Make sure your host does daily backups automatically for free. It's worth it.
  9. Multi-year discounts – companies like SiteGround push really great multi-year discount deals. For someone like SiteGround, who I trust, it's worth it. If you're evaluating an unknown hosting company, don't get married to them just yet.
  10. Easy control panel – some providers like SiteGround and Kinsta and WP Engine have created their own control panels that are pretty solid and easy to use. Others use cPanel or their own, which can sometimes be a disaster. If you plan to be managing the interface a lot, be very cognizant of this!

Looking for the best web hosting? Here are our top 10:

You'll inevitably have a set of needs depending on a multitude of factors:

There are all questions we seek to address on this page and beyond.

For starters, we've narrowed things down to the top 10 web hosts, and indicated which is best for you. But please poke around the site and dig deep to find other reviews and articles that better address your needs.

Why it's the #1 all-around best host:

  1. Amazing customer support
  2. Tons of features and WordPress tools
  3. Starts at just $3.95/mo

If you're a beginner to intermediate site manager, you can't go wrong with SiteGround. It's the overall #1 pick because it simply covers everything you need at a rock-solid price, and their customer support is 2nd to none.

If you don't have time to compare, just go with SiteGround. Read full review

 

Go to SiteGround

 

Why it's a solid #2 option:

  1. Fastest shared hosting – up to 20x faster
  2. Free hosting migrations
  3. Starts at just $2.99/mo

Looking for something besides SiteGround? A2 Hosting is a solid option with up to 20x faster shared hosting, 24/7/365 customer support, and loaded with features. The best part? Free migrations from your current host you're trying to ditch.

A2 Hosting is a solid, U.S-based web host. Read full review

Go to A2 Hosting

 

Why WP Engine wins WordPress:

  1. Engineered for WordPress sites
  2. Super-fast WordPress hosting
  3. Starting at $20/mo (with discount)

WP Engine started the whole WordPress hosting craze. Yes, they're more expensive than shared hosting, but at $24/mo to start, it's a drop in the bucket for real businesses on WordPress. Business hosting value with premium support? That's WP Engine.

WP Engine comes free with Studio Press themes. Read full review

Go to WP Engine

Why insiders love Kinsta:

  1. Free website migrations
  2. Tier-1 customer support
  3. Starting at $30/mo

Kinsta is taking off like a rocket. Those in the WordPress development and digital marketing space prefer Kinsta. You get top of the line developers handling customer support, super fast page load speeds, and features built for WordPress sites.

Is Kinsta the best WordPress host? Read Kinsta review

Go to Kinsta

Where Bluehost shines:

  1. Free domain name
  2. 99.9% uptime
  3. Starting at #2.95/mo

You've likely heard of Bluehost before – a super popular brand with extensive podcast ads. Are they good? With an easy interface, free domain, and solid features, they're great for beginners to start with.

Is Bluehost right for you? Read full review

Go to Bluehost

 

Why HostGator is worth it:

  1. Free website migrations
  2. 45-day money-back guarantee
  3. Starting at #2.95/mo

HostGator is another cheap shared hosting option for beginners. In addition, they have VPS, cloud, and other hosting options. We love the free migrations and 45-day money back – that's putting your money where your mouth is.

Want more HostGator hosting facts? Read full review

Go to WP Engine

 

What sets Liquid Web apart:

  1. Quality 24/7 support
  2. Focused on your WooCommerce store
  3. Starting at $39/mo

Liquid Web offers every type of business hosting, but what sets them apart is their managed WooCommerce hosting. With 2-10x faster performance, 24/7 support, and free migrations there's a lot to like.

Looking for robust WooCommerce hosting? Read full review

 

Go to Liquid Web

 

Why creatives like Flywheel:

  1. Real customer support
  2. Free migrations
  3. Starting at $14/mo

Flywheel has the managed WordPress hosting support and features of other premium hosts, but at a lower price tag that freelancers love. Plus they just rolled out their cloud platform build on Google Cloud. With 70,000+ creative customers, they're doing something right.

Are you the creative Flywheel was built for? Read full review

Go to Flywheel

 

Where GoDaddy wins:

  1. U.S.-based phone support
  2. Cheap hosting options
  3. Starting at $2.99/mo

GoDaddy is the #1 host by market share. They offer every host under the sun, so you can find something that works. We love that they have the cheapest WordPress hosting, U.S.-based phone support, and easy to use if all your domains are there.

But what are the drawbacks to GoDaddy? Read full review

Go to GoDaddy

 

Why Namecheap stands out:

  1. Unlimited bandwidth
  2. Works for small, simple sites
  3. Starting at $1.29/mo

There's no such thing as “real” free hosting, but Namecheap gets pretty close at a jaw-dropping $15.44 a year. If you have a ton of sites and are already using Namecheap for domains, their hosting is worth checking out.

With hosting this cheap, is it any good? Read full review

Go to Namecheap

 

Top Features of the best Web Hosts

SPEED AND UP-TIME RELIABILITY

 
Who wants a slow site? Nobody. A bad host can slow down your loading times and destroy your conversion rates. Good hosts load fast and optimize for scaling. Check out our ranking of the speediest web hosting companies.

FRIENDLY & 24/7 SUPPORT

 
There's nothing worse than “big-box” hosts that make you wait 45 minutes. You need fast, friendly, and knowledgable hosting support. This is crucial to your sanity. We found the top web hosts for customer support here.

EASY & FUNCTIONAL CONTROL PANEL

 
Some hosts just go with cPanel, some create their own. Either way, you need to know if you're getting something elegant, or a monstrosity from the 90s. Do that research before you buy.

REASONABLE PRICE

 
Reasonable means a lot of things. If you're a student, you need it as cheap as possible. If you're a real business, you need a fair value. If you're an enterprise it's more about results. Don't base your decision on pricing alone. Two cheap hosts with amazing features are SiteGround and A2 Hosting.

SECURITY BACKUP FACILITIES

 
How much will a hacked site cost you? You must prepare for the worst scenarios, and they will happen. From security to downtime, you need to know how your hosting company will support you through thick and thin. Make sure you have an SSL installed and prevent hacking and malware.

GUARANTEES

 
Don't roll the dice. Go with a trusted host that guarantees their work. From 60-day trials to anytime refunds. From 1,000 5-star reviews to a host swallowed up by a globo-corp – you need to know what you're buying.
 
See all reviews
 

What is a Web Host?

A web host is a service that stores files for you in the cloud to power your website. The best way to think about it is that all the files for your website are similar to a collection of Microsoft Word docs. Instead of storing the Word docs on your desktop computer, you’re storing them on someone else’s computer in a huge warehouse somewhere.
 
 
Your files are stored on something called a server, which is essentially very similar to a desktop computer. It stores your files along with many other files from many other people, for efficiency.
 

How Does Web Hosting Work?

 
Let’s get a bit more technical. Your website is made up of a collection of text, images, video, and code. This all has to be stored somewhere. Websites are made up of pages of HTML. Inside the HTML is your text, images, video, and other content. These HTML pages together link to each other and form your website.

Your website files have to be stored somewhere because anytime someone wants to visit your site, they’re requesting to look at your files. It’s similar to how if your boss wants to read that monthly report, he’s requesting to look at the PDF document, so you send it to him via email. A website is just like that except a bit more efficient. Instead of everyone emailing you every time they want to see your documents, you just put it public online so they can see the documents at any time.So all of your website files are stored on a server. While you technically can build your own server and have it sitting in your basement, it’s not the most practical thing to do.

One, if you’re not an IT person, it’ll take quite a bit of work to learn and set up.

Two, it’s not very secure to host your website in your basement because any flood, fire, or power outage would take down your site.

Third, it takes work and maintenance to keep servers running and up to date.

Web hosting companies handle all of this for you. They range anywhere from a few dollars a month to hundreds of thousands (if you're a corporation).

The hard work is deciding which option is the best for you. That's what we do.

Top Beginner Guides for Web Hosting Setup, Implementation, Migration and More & Why You Might Trust Me

As the founder of this esteemed website, I'm also just your average Joe. I started in the trenches with websites at 14 years old, learning from a neighbor (hey Alan!). I've learned most of what I know about the internet, marketing, and web hosting from spending hours upon hours of trying and failing on stuff online, from Tripod to Geocities, to WordPress and HubSpot.

Here's an assemblage of guides we've put together here on the topic.

  1. How To Change Your Web Hosting Without A Fuss – 10 Step Process (With Bonus Checklist) – changing hosts is a pain, this makes it easier.
  2. 7 Best Web Hosting Support & Customer Service Hosting Companies – great for those who want outstanding service.
  3. Best Web Hosts for Small Businesses – own a small business? You ain't got time for that nerd stuff.

Top Hosting Roundup Lists: Best Hosting by Type and Situation

  1. Best Cheap VPS Hosting – ball on a budget with cheap VPS options.
  2. Best Managed Cloud Hosting – leverage cloud hosting capabilities with a team to manage it for you.
  3. Best Cloud Hosting: Consider Cloudways or Google Cloud directly

Want to see something else? Any changes or updates? Drop us a line and we'll get a new version going!

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We love researching new web hosting and website building tools to bring you solid recommendations to make your life easier. We may earn a referral fee for some links we recommend, it’s how we keep the site running!

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