What are the best web hosting providers for beginners? Glad you asked. With so many hosting providers out there, discover which hosting service provider is right for you.
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You’re ready to launch your brand-new website and can’t wait to get pageviews on pageviews. You just need to know how it all works…
Starting a blog or website is relatively easy. You don’t need much more than a WiFi connection. Plus, some semi-functioning skills with a computer.
But, it’s not completely plug-and-play.
To have a website, you need a domain and web hosting. Every website needs these two things to work.
You definitely want to take web hosting seriously. Cheap or unreliable shared hosting can put you in a bad spot. If you suddenly get a large amount of traffic, or if someone tries to hack your website, your entire site could be compromised.
How to Start a Blog 101:
- Register a domain.
- Get website hosting.
- Buy a website template.
- Do some keyword research.
- Create SEO-rich content.
- Before you get ready to launch your brand-new website, highly recommend starting with a web design template. You can instantly download yours in seconds.
- Next, you’re going to need to register a domain and get a web hosting account.
If you’re planning on having an online presence, reliable web hosting is necessary.
You’ll want to make sure that you choose the right hosting plan to keep your website fast and reliable.
What is web hosting and why do I need it?
Web hosting takes care of saving or “hosting” all your website files in one place.
You can’t have a working website without hosting. There wouldn’t be anywhere to host your website files, images, code, copy, or design.
How does web hosting work?
A website hosting provider hosts or allocates space on a web server to store your website’s files. The server is a piece of hardware or software that connects to other programs or devices like your ISP (internet service provider).
When a user enters your domain name in a web browser, the user’s computer connects to the server that your website is hosted on, showcasing all your content, images, and website design to the user.
Web hosting is what makes all of those components that make up your website available for viewing online.
While there are different types of web hosting, it’s not much different from the cloud your smartphone saves out its files to if you need extra storage space. Although, cloud hosting isn’t the only type of hosting out there.
How much does web hosting cost?
You can get various hosting plans based on how many site visitors and traffic your website might get or how many websites you need to host.
As your website gets bigger, the size and space you need to host all your files will grow. In general, hosting is an ongoing, but moderate business expense and the price you pay can increase over time.
How do I choose the best web hosting providers for beginners?
With so many different types of providers out there, there are thousands of web hosting services and varieties with different pricing plans. Plans can vary from free to expensive. With various options and specialized services to fit your business.
For beginners who don’t have a ton of site traffic or bandwidth, a domain costs about $10.99, and hosting costs about $7.99/mo.
Choose a plan based on how you intend to use your website and how many site visitors you get.
Do you have to buy a domain and web hosting separately?
You can buy your hosting and domain all from one place, get a website subscription plus hosting or buy them separately.
If you do buy your domain and hosting from two different providers, you’ll have to edit the domain DNS (domain name system) settings to connect the two.
It’s not difficult to do. And your domain registrar will often do it for you if you ask and they offer tech support.
What happens when you switch hosting or domain providers?
When you buy your domain, you own the right to use it and transfer it where and when you want to. This also applies to your web hosting if you choose to keep your domain but switch hosting providers.
When you switch hosting providers, your DNS server will also need to change.
To keep things simple and streamlined, it’s best to buy both your hosting and domain from the same provider. It’s easier to renew from the same provider and view everything under one dashboard. Then again, it’s also about the services/features you want or need for your website. Sometimes, that means using various providers.
If you’re going to buy a domain separately, Domain.com is one of the best of the best domain registrars.
What’s the difference between a domain name and web hosting?
In the world of websites, your domain is like the address to your house, and web hosting is the house where your files live that the address points to.
While they both work together to make your website work, your website hosting and domain name are two separate services. You can shop both around to get the best deal on the web.
Now, let’s compare some of the options available to you to get you the best web hosting provider for your website.
Here are some of the best web hosting providers on the web:
1. Bluehost
- High-performing with best-in-class service at a low price.
- Free SSD storage and SSL certificate
- Free domain registration, email, and unlimited storage.
- Rated #1 in best web hosting for small businesses.
- Automatic installation and updates
- Optimal uptime and page load speed
- Backed by WordPress.org as a recommended host.
- Money-back guarantee.
Rated the best for beginners, Bluehost was the hosting platform TOP TIER first started on. Plus, Bluehost is the WordPress.org recommended host (and has been since 2005!)
It’s simple to register, get set up, and connect your domain in seconds.
You can get free domain registration, a free SSL certificate, and more for less than your daily Mocha latte each week.
Plus, Bluehost has great storage and a user interface to manage everything in one place.
2. Hostgator
- Hosts about 2 million websites at the moment and is among the most popular in the industry.
- 1-Click WordPress installation.
- 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Drag and drop design and site builder
- Mobile responsive templates.
- Free hosting, domain names, and SSL certificates.
Among the simplest and straight to the point, Hostgator is great for beginners. Especially if you feel like you have an “entry-level” budget to spend on this scenario.
Hostgator will manage blog migration for free. Whereas, Bluehost would charge you $149.99 to migrate your site, for example. It’s great value and one of the most popular hosting providers for a reason.
3. iPage
- Best eco-friendly web hosting service.
- FREE domain for a year, FREE email address, and FREE website builder.
- SSL certificate included.
- Unlimited bandwidth.
- 99.9% uptime.
- 24/7 support.
- Special intro pricing as low as $1.99/mo*.
- Money-back guarantee.
iPage is one-stop shopping with some of the lowest entry-level pricing and all the features you need to get started. Plus, a ton of perks too.
They offer a 1-Click WordPress installation and drag-and-drop website builders to get you started in minutes.
Hands down, iPage wins the most eco-friendly web hosting provider. They make efforts to reduce their carbon monoxide emissions to offset energy use. Powered by wind, iPage has double times the amount to cover the energy that it uses.
With all the feature-adds in mind, there’s no denying that iPage offers some of the best value for beginners just learning how to start a blog and larger-scale organizations too. At the end of the day, the price is one of the most affordable web hosting providers out there.
4. HostMonster
- Incredible uptime that’s above average on the market at around 99.96%.
- Tons of security options to avoid getting your site hacked.
- Quick (and free) website builders.
- Instant setup with a free domain.
- 24/7 support.
- 1-Click WordPress installation.
HostMonster is reliable and has pretty much all the same feature sets as the others.
Plus, unlimited disk storage, unlimited domain hosting, and unlimited add-on domains. Free site builder add-ons and free domain names.
With this in mind, there are certainly some features that come at an extra fee. For example, HostMonster will charge you for a site backup and migration; whereas lots of other providers will do this for you, for free.
However, their basic plan offers pretty much everything you need. At $4.95/mo, you’ll get:
- Hosting for one (1) website with up to 50GB of space.
- Plus unmetered bandwidth.
- Additionally, you’ll also get a free SSL certificate and up to 5 email accounts with this offer.
- Plus, email storage of 100MB per email account.
With a 30-day money-back guarantee, you can try it out for yourself risk-free.
5. Rocket.net
- Cloudflare enterprise CDN
- Always-on security
- FREE site migrations
- Fully-managed
- 2-3x faster than cloud
Rocket will get you an effortlessly managed WordPress site that you can launch in 60 seconds. It’s an all-in-one managed WordPress hosting platform built for WordPress websites of all sizes.
6. Showit
- No coding skills needed.
- Completely customizable SEO.
- Web hosting included as part of the website subscription.
- Best-in-class 24/7 support.
- Unlimited storage space.
- Mobile optimized.
Admittedly, it would be a disservice not to mention Showit offering hosting as part of your subscription.
When you add files to Showit, such as images, graphics, music, video, and documents or pdfs; it automatically takes care of uploading and hosting these files for you. Everything is saved automatically and stored in the cloud.
Pssst… plus you can get a TOP TIER x Showit website template to fast-track your current website.
We’re semi-biased to recommend the platform. You know… considering, we built a bunch of beautiful products on it.
With that said, it’s because we love the platform, their customer support is incredible and it’s an encouraging space with a lot of like-minded creatives.
Best Web Hosting Providers
So, all things considered, which is the best hosting platform for beginners?
Hostgator and Bluehost are among the best for beginners but both iPage and Showit have real benefits too.
When you’re considering their accessible prices… Bluehost and Hostgator both have incredible uptime and reliability. Yet, Bluehost has almost double the page load speed compared to Hostgator. Which is a major technical must for good SEO.
In summary, both Hostgator and Bluehost offer a bunch of other great features. Such as an easy-to-use customized cPanel, tons of site tool add-ons, free domains, and free site builders — plus 1-Click WordPress installation, and more.
Which is the best web hosting providers for beginners?
Finally, Bluehost and Hostgator all have exceptional best-of-all-time customer service and tech support.
In the end, Bluehost has slightly better site security, and page speed with great value overall.
Hopefully, you’ve learned a bit about how hosting works and gleaned some insights into which provider is right for you.
Once your website is up and running, you’ll want to do some keyword research and start creating content. Your new website launch is going to be spectacular. We’ll go get the champagne.
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