There comes a point when most bloggers make the leap to self hosted blogging. This can be a scary experience if you are new to the process of hosting, domains, servers and what not. Fortunately, these days, a lot of hosting packages include “1-click install” scripts, which will do all the hard work of setting up a content management system such as WordPress for you.
Once you install WordPress, you are greeted with the familiar dashboard experience and it is as though you never left WordPress.com. The benefits however are extraordinary, you are now able to download all sorts of plug-ins and themes to modify your WordPress experience beyond what was achievable at WordPress.com.
Despite this, one major point still remains, who do you get to host your WordPress site for you?
Essentially you need two things:
- A domain name
- A hosting package
WordPress Hosting Comparison Sites
Wordpress Hosting
Top 5 Hosts
Web Hosting Search
Web Hosting Top
The Roxor
Who Comes Out on Top?
So which company is it that always seems to score top marks on all the review sites? Well, whilst there are some differences between the sites, these are my Top 5:
Winner: iPage
Thoughts
iPage is an extraordinarily cheap WordPress hosting solution, with unbelievable unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Customer service is fast and over “$450″ worth of extras such as Facebook and Adwords credit are included. You get what you pay for though, so don’t expect the blistering fast speed and quality of more expensive WordPress providers.
Customer Reviews
The Good: iPage is my new favorite web hosting company, hands down. They are the third company I’ve been with, but the first I’ve been truly happy with. Setup was a breeze, they are extremely affordable, and their customer service is the best. Keep up the great work! The Bad: After reading reviews, I went with iPage for hosting. While they give you unlimited space and bandwith, good luck using any of it if your site uses MySql, which is most of them. Simple small queries can takes up to 10 sec. I tried using Joomla, WP, Postnuke, even a calendar was slow as cold molasses. Even the control panel is slow.
Features
Unlimited bandwith, unlimited disk space, unlimited domain hosting and unlimited MySQL databases.
Pricing
$3.50 a month for the first 12, 24 or 36 months (Introductory price only, price includes domain) or £1.99 per month. It may be worth trying to close your page whilst ordering as you may receive a ‘limited time only, special offer’ with a reduction of up to $2.95 – didn’t work with UK prices unfortunately.
FatCow
Thoughts
FatCow is very similar to iPage. It is quite obviously run by the same people as iPage, as the websites, features, pricing and more are almost identical. As such, I struggled to find an actual difference in the hosting packages and the prices for the year are almost identical. FatCow does seem to have a greater emphasis on being green, however, looking at the iPage website you will see that they also boast being 100% green (although this fact isn’t as obviously made). This isn’t a bad thing however, as it means you get decent web hosting and a free domain for a very decent price.
Pricing
£30 per year (Normally £72) or $56 per year (prices include domain name)
Features
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free Domain Name
- Simple-to-use site builders
- Easy online store tools
- Blogs, photo galleries
- Legendairy Support
bluehost
Thoughts
Now bluehost is the hosting provider primarily recommended by WordPress. The price is a little more expensive, but it seems worth the price. You get all the great unlimited features of iPage and the like as well as the knowledge that you are in the hands of an industry leading company with amazing customer service, uptime and speed. It is hard to come by a bad review of bluehost and as such you will find a lot of people recommend them.
Pricing
$5.95 per month for 24 or 36 months (a lump sum of $142 or $214) or $6.95 per month ($83) for 12 months. A free domain name is included in the price and there is the option to go ‘pro’ for $19.95 a month.
Features
- Unlimited Domain Hosting
- Unlimited GB Hosting Space
- Unlimited GB File Transfer
- Unlimited E-mail Accounts
- Free Domain
- Free Site Builder w/ templates
- Secure Shell, SSL, FTP, Stats
- CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MySQL
- $75 Free Google Credit
- 99.9% Network Uptime Guarantee
justhost.com
Thoughts
Very cheap but only if you manage to find a 50% off or greater deal and sign up for more than a year. Again, the reviews for justhost.com are glowing. Uptime and speed are not an issue and the technical staff appear to be quite friendly. Definitely worth going with justhost.com if you don’t mind staying with them for a while (and the large upfront fee of 1+ years of hosting!)
Pricing
Quite varied:
- $5.95 monthly
- $3.95 per month for 6 months
- $3.49 per month for a year
- $2.95 per month for 2 or 3 years
- $2.45 per month for 4 years
Features
- Unlimited GB’s of Space
- Unlimited GB’s of Transfer
- Unlimited Domain Hosting
- Unlimited E-Mail Accounts
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Free Site Builder
- Free Domain Name
- Free Instant Setup
- Anytime Money Back Guarantee
Evohosting
Thoughts
Now, Evohosting is one you won’t find on recommendation sites, however, people amongst the community seem to readily recommend them. Evohosting is a UK based webhost whose hosting packages are a little pricey, especially compared to the above examples. But you definitely get what you pay for in terms of customer service, speed and reliability.
Pricing
- Starter Plan: £3.99 a month
- Home Plus: £6.49 a month
- Business: £8.99 a month
Prices are cheaper if paying biennially.
Features
Starter Plan:
- 500MB Disk Space
- 10 GB Bandwidth
- Continuous Data Protection
- 150+ 1-click install scripts
- Cloud Linux OS
- LiteSpeed Web Server
- Upgraded Control Panel powered by CPanel
- 1 MySQL database
- Free domain name
Unlimited Plan:
- As above but;
- 6.5 GB Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- An Extra 14 add-on domains and MySQL databases
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