# What Hosting Service do You Use for Your Website?



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 17, 2020)

And why did you choose it? Price? Speed? Reliability? Customer Service?

And if you've had issues with any of these companies, please let me know.

I'm putting up a new site and I'm not sure if I want to go back to my old host, Siteground, which was terrific in every way, but costs more than other hosts. I'm not sure if my site will get enough traffic to require the full service that Siteground offers. 

Thanks!

Reid


----------



## Vonk (Aug 17, 2020)

I use ipage for a wordpress site that I made with only modest technical experience. I did have to contact them about wordpress setup, and they were helpful and quick in response. I expect there may be cheaper options, but the dashboard facilities are comprehensive. Only disappointment was having to pay extra for https - but that is common to most packages.


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 17, 2020)

I have experience creating Wordpress sites. So any help with website building is not important for me. I just want a good host at a good price.


----------



## Vonk (Aug 17, 2020)

Define a good price?


----------



## Rory (Aug 17, 2020)

I was an early adopter of Netlify, which was and is in the forefront of hosting static rather than dynamic sites. If you want to use WordPress or similar, look elsewhere. If you are comfortable with, or want to learn about, static sites, Netlify is an excellent option. Here are two Wikipedia pages about it:

Netlify: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netlify
Static Web Pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page

Before I moved to Netlify, I was a satisfied client of Media Temple's shared hosting (called Grid) for many years: https://mediatemple.net

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Temple

I do think that for many people Squarespace and similar services are a good solution: squarespace.com

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squarespace

Netlify is the only one of these services that offers a free hosting tier. The cost of paid hosting varies.


----------



## Rory (Aug 17, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I have experience creating Wordpress sites. So any help with website building is not important for me. I just want a good host at a good price.



I made my post above before seeing your particular interest in WordPress. One of Media Temple's areas of expertise is WordPress. See its page on "Managed WordPress Hosting": https://mediatemple.net/webhosting/managed-wordpress


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 17, 2020)

Vonk said:


> Define a good price?


MochaHost has WP plans for $2.48 and $3.98 a month. They have lifetime guarantees. The price is guaranteed to never go up. There are many Hosting services that give you a year at a low price, but then go up 400% in the second year. 

So MochaHost has about as good a price as you can get in the long run.


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 17, 2020)

Rory said:


> I was an early adopter of Netlify, which was and is in the forefront of hosting static rather than dynamic sites. If you want to use WordPress or similar, look elsewhere. If you are comfortable with, or want to learn about, static sites, Netlify is an excellent option. Here are two Wikipedia pages about it:
> 
> Netlify: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netlify
> Static Web Pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page
> ...


I need WordPress because I use Divi, which is a WP plugin. WP is kind of like Windows and Divi is kind of like my DAW. (It doesn't matter if there's something better than Cubase--I'm invested in Cubase.) I also own some very cool plugins that I use within Divi. 

But I need a WP host. And I'm not sure if in a year I want to pay $150 a year to host it.


----------



## Rory (Aug 17, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> But I need a WP host. And I'm not sure if in a year I want to pay $150 a year to host it.



Media Temple's "Managed WordPress Hosting" costs more than you want to pay.


----------



## JonS (Aug 17, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> And why did you choose it? Price? Speed? Reliability? Customer Service?
> 
> And if you've had issues with any of these companies, please let me know.
> 
> ...


Great prices, great value, always give great deals when renewing, great tech support, very stable servers, unlimited server space, great options!!!

https://www.ipower.com/join/index.bml?AffID=575639&amp;LinkName=ipower web hosting


----------



## gtrwll (Aug 17, 2020)

I host my site currently at GitHub Pages, because it’s free for a a small portfolio site. It needs some work to get going though, so I’d not recommend it if you’re not up to a bit of research on how things work.

Planning on moving to paid solutions, since I’m going to need an online shop on my site at some point, and that’s not allowed at GitHub.


----------



## Rory (Aug 17, 2020)

gtrwll said:


> I host my site currently at GitHub Pages, because it’s free for a a small portfolio site.
> 
> ...
> 
> Planning on moving to paid solutions, since I’m going to need an online shop...



He wants a WordPress site. Github Pages, like Netlify (see post #5), is fundamentally for static sites. Discussions on the internet about trying to run WordPress on Github Pages make it sound like it isn't a fun way to spend time. For your new site, Netlify is worth checking out.


----------



## webs (Aug 17, 2020)

How long until your current siteground plan expires? And are you wanting your new wordpress host to offer email service as well, or strictly web hosting? One possibility is lock in multi-year on sale under new email address with siteground. Can get the relatively expensive "GoGeek" plan for cheap that way, but, that plan is more cost effective if you run multiple sites, email, etc. 

I've helped folks on, been an affiliate for, and personally used siteground, ionos, wp-engine, hostgator, godaddy, and others for wordpress, and also more marketing-oriented platforms including clickfunnels, leadpages, infusionsoft, shopify, convertri, etc. and... I share your favorable view that "for the money" siteground is quite solid. But they are not the cheapest. I also tend to avoid hosts that are in the EIG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_International_Group). Others may be able to report favorable experiences with them, but I can not.

As you probably already know, siteground is moving their hosting onto the google cloud platform, so while I don't have direct knowledge of this possibility... I wonder if you could get a cheap or free wp hosting on google cloud? I did a quick quora search that (https://www.quora.com/Can-I-host-my...ever-using-their-Always-Free-Products?share=1) and it seems possible, but with some work/effort down the road. One of those time vs. money kinds of things.

If you didn't need or at some point no longer needed divi-specific wp hosting, I would recommend this up-n-comer in the marketing space (with a free lifetime plan) that is a bit divi-visual-builder like and supports basic commerce (think infoproducts more than full multi-product ecom store). If you're wanting to migrate dozens of posts and pages... maybe not the right fit, but for a simple site, its going to be quite a contender.


----------



## webs (Aug 17, 2020)

Eh... I just read up more on the google cloud idea, and I suspect it's not likely to be a good option (but maybe that'll spark another idea somehow...


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 17, 2020)

JonS said:


> Great prices, great value, always give great deals when renewing, great tech support, very stable servers, unlimited server space, great options!!!
> 
> https://www.ipower.com/join/index.bml?AffID=575639&amp;LinkName=ipower web hosting


iPower looks great. I will definitely investigate. Thank you!


----------



## darcvision (Aug 17, 2020)

gtrwll said:


> I host my site currently at GitHub Pages, because it’s free for a a small portfolio site. It needs some work to get going though, so I’d not recommend it if you’re not up to a bit of research on how things work.
> 
> Planning on moving to paid solutions, since I’m going to need an online shop on my site at some point, and that’s not allowed at GitHub.


you can use stripe for creating online store. here's the tutorial of creating online store (reactjs) 

i'm planning to create my own website, but i dont know if using github is good idea, because sometimes github emailed me about security problem in my website, but at least is free. also if you're need database, google firebase is free and easy to use.


----------



## SergeD (Aug 17, 2020)

You could have a look on Hostinger and related reviews. Very affordable, easy to setup a Wordpress site, and a lot of plugins available.


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 17, 2020)

SergeD said:


> You could have a look on Hostinger and related reviews. Very affordable, easy to setup a Wordpress site, and a lot of plugins available.


I am considering them. 

However, last August Hostinger revealed that up to 14 million users may have been impacted by a security breach. This kind of thing happens to the best of companies, but it does make one worry.


----------



## Polkasound (Aug 17, 2020)

I've been using LowestHosting for a long time, hosting several websites there. $3.95/month. They are very reliable. Almost no downtime in all those years. Their customer service is always on the ball, too.

I hosted a couple sites on iPower several years ago, but they were hacked. iPower insisted it wasn't their fault and intimated it must have been mine, so I left them.


----------



## SergeD (Aug 17, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> last August Hostinger revealed that up to 14 million users may have been impacted by a security breach.



Yes last year, but I rely on their good reputation.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer (Aug 17, 2020)

Godaddy has reasonable hosting plans for Wordpress.


----------



## gtrwll (Aug 17, 2020)

stefandy31 said:


> you can use stripe for creating online store. here's the tutorial of creating online store (reactjs)
> 
> i'm planning to create my own website, but i dont know if using github is good idea, because sometimes github emailed me about security problem in my website, but at least is free. also if you're need database, google firebase is free and easy to use.




Thanks for the tip, gonna check that out! Learning ReactJS has been on my list of to-do things so this would be a good project for that. 

I haven't had that problem with Pages though.



Rory said:


> He wants a WordPress site. Github Pages, like Netlify (see post #5), is fundamentally for static sites. Discussions on the internet about trying to run WordPress on Github Pages make it sound like it isn't a fun way to spend time. For your new site, Netlify is worth checking out.



Didn't see the later post about WP, thought the original post was just looking for experiences in general. Thanks for the tip, gonna check that out too!


----------



## JonS (Aug 18, 2020)

Polkasound said:


> I've been using LowestHosting for a long time, hosting several websites there. $3.95/month. They are very reliable. Almost no downtime in all those years. Their customer service is always on the ball, too.
> 
> I hosted a couple sites on iPower several years ago, but they were hacked. iPower insisted it wasn't their fault and intimated it must have been mine, so I left them.


I’ve been with ipower for two decades and I’ve never been hacked.


----------



## tav.one (Aug 18, 2020)

I use Siteground for my own and some of my friend's websites.
I've used *Godaddy* - it's the worst, please stay away.
Then I used *Inmotion Hosting* for 3 years, it's good but not as fast.
Last year I upgraded to Siteground, it's much faster and customer service is top notch.

I'm planning to go cloud based hosting for my upcoming e-commerce "Beat" selling website, so ultimately I'll be using *Digital Ocean* through *Cloudways *for all my sites. That one is just $10/mo and totally scalable.
But Customer service isn't as good as Siteground.

So if you expect to grow big, want best value for money and know your way around/won't need support much - Digital Ocean through Cloudways.
If you want to get top notch support that goes above and beyond but have average needs in terms of CPU, Traffic, etc. then Siteground is best for you.

PS: I also use Divi for all my websites.


----------



## tav.one (Aug 18, 2020)

I've never seen a discussion about hosting without 1 million affiliate links. This thread has just 1, such a breath of fresh air 🍃


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 18, 2020)

tav.one said:


> I use Siteground for my own and some of my friend's websites.
> I've used *Godaddy* - it's the worst, please stay away.
> Then I used *Inmotion Hosting* for 3 years, it's good but not as fast.
> Last year I upgraded to Siteground, it's much faster and customer service is top notch.
> ...


Thanks. At this point I don't know if this site is even going to work out. It might grow big, but more likely it won't grow at all. It's an experiment. I could end up taking it down before the year is up for all I know. 

I'm thinking that I might as well go cheap with something like Hostinger and then move to SiteGround if by any chance it catches on. Based on your recommendation I will get in touch with Inmotion before I make my choice. 

I do have domains with Godaddy but would never host there.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer (Aug 18, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I do have domains with Godaddy but would never host there.



What are your reasons? ust asking, because I used them for over ten years with zero issues (not with Wordpress, though). The only reason I recently went over to Wix is because GoDaddy removed their native music player app.


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 18, 2020)

Jeremy Spencer said:


> What are your reasons? ust asking, because I used them for over ten years with zero issues (not with Wordpress, though). The only reason I recently went over to Wix is because GoDaddy removed their native music player app.


Hosting companies who offer low prices do so by sharing many sites on one server. From everybody I've talked to, Godaddy really puts a LOT on one server, which can lead to problems like slow loading. This may never have happened for you, but it is likely to happen for the kind of sites I build. 

When I had a web business, I had a server totally dedicated to my business. But once there was a spike in activity--and my server crashed at the absolute worst time. So I had to migrate to a bigger server. 

With this stuff it's about finding the right balance and only paying for what you need. And having room to grow. As I will be working on my site for a month or two without revealing it to the public I have the option of moving to another plan or another host if it just isn't working. 

I don't know, the more I think about this, I might just go to SiteGround. They have such great customer service.


----------



## Polkasound (Aug 18, 2020)

JonS said:


> I’ve been with ipower for two decades and I’ve never been hacked.



That's good to know. It was about 10-15 years ago. I had two sites hosted there. One day while managing my files via FTP, I found folders filled with hundreds and hundreds of porn-related materials. There's no way anyone could have guessed my password, so I felt it may have been an isolated inside job.


----------



## creativeforge (Aug 18, 2020)

Since 1998, I have been hosting with BlueHost, InMotion, Hostgator, MediaServe and LightningBase, and a few others that have been sucked up by BlueHost.

As well, BlueHost installs its own software (MojoMarketplace) in your WordPress site as it installs WordPress, which I found invasive. And they had huge issues with customer service. However it looks like they fixed that part.

For dedicated WordPress site, I found LightningBase to be perfect. They have outstanding support too and affordable pricing for dedicated WP sites.

Since I have a few sites I have managed over the years, I am now permanently with MediaServe. Still paying the same price as 5 years ago, as 10 years ago. Excellent support as well.

The main decision for me was the fluctuation of prices, with most others, including the domain names, and quick and accessible support.

I also moved all my domains to one site called OnlyDomains.com. Stable pricing too. 

Renewals can be pretty brutal if you go in on a promotion which allows you to pay $3/month for 24 months. If the regular price is $9.99/month, and it automatically renews, and you haven't changed your renewal to manual, or the time from 24 to 12 months, your credit card wiull have a chick out of it.

Hope this helps!


----------



## Synetos (Aug 18, 2020)

*BANDZOOGLE* 
This is a super site for artists/bands web presence.


----------



## Pier (Aug 18, 2020)

Web dev with 20 years of experience here.

@TigerTheFrog how much do you want to spend per month?


----------



## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 18, 2020)

Pier said:


> Web dev with 20 years of experience here.
> 
> @TigerTheFrog how much do you want to spend per month?


It's not as simple as that. It's what the plans become after a year or two. Some go from $4 to four times that. And also what they feature. I'm finding every comment to be very useful and I'd very glad I started this thread. They will all help me make my decision. 

It's not like buying a string library. Most of these have money back guarantees.


----------



## creativeforge (Aug 18, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> It's not as simple as that. It's what the plans become after a year or two. Some go from $4 to four times that. And also what they feature. I'm finding every comment to be very useful and I'd very glad I started this thread. They will all help me make my decision.
> 
> It's not like buying a string library. Most of these have money back guarantees.



Consider however that most hosting will give you 30 days refund no questions asked. So depending on where you go, there is a safe space of testing. And many of them will offer FREE migration (disclaimer: my experiences with BlueHost has been HELL for migrating to and from it).

Price fluctuation: I learned not to fall for "too good to be true promotions." One price all the time has been a real boon for my emotional health. 

1- find out what you need now.

2- speculate on what you MAY need in 2 years, or according to the expansion of needs you will have.

3- go on chat with the hosting you consider and ask all your questions until you understand all you need to.

4- you can also choose to start at the beginning and use FREE hosting like *WordPress.com* (WordPress also has an independent self-hosted software which you can install on your own hosting, but they offer this free version which they host - it has limitations), also *Weebly* or *Wix*. That can give you a hands-on way to understand what you're getting into and help you create a short-list of needs.

Cheers.


----------



## Bman70 (Aug 18, 2020)

I've used a DigitalOcean droplet for several years now, at $5 / month. I'm running an nginx server to host several domains, but wouldn't recommend because it's easy to fall behind in updating and security. I don't have anything hugely important up on the server so it's not a big deal for me. *Apparently you can now install Wordpress on DigitalOcean*, and run a website that way. Only for hardcore geeks though:








How to Install WordPress in DigitalOcean


How to install WordPress in DigitalOcean. Put your WordPress site in the cloud, with cloud hosting from DigitalOcean. Sourav walks you through installation.




www.wpexplorer.com


----------



## Pier (Aug 19, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> It's not as simple as that. It's what the plans become after a year or two. Some go from $4 to four times that. And also what they feature. I'm finding every comment to be very useful and I'd very glad I started this thread. They will all help me make my decision.
> 
> It's not like buying a string library. Most of these have money back guarantees.



Oh yeah I'm aware 

I was going to suggest some good options but I wasn't sure of your price point.

In hosting you usually get what you pay for (unless you're using one of those terrible services like GoDaddy, HostGator, etc).

On the very low end I would go with a solid shared host. I used CrocWeb for years (still have a couple of domains with them). Super fast support and very affordable if you get a 3 year plan.

On the medium end I'd go with a VPS + some service to manage it. Something like Digital Ocean + RunCloud. Unless you have a trusty sys admin do not manage your own VPS, so many things can go wrong.

On the high end I'd go with WPEngine or Kinsta, although this would be overkill for a low traffic site.

In any case, Wordpress is quite slow so you should *always* use a CDN (eg: Cloudflare is free) and a caching plugin like TotalCache. With those in place you will be able to serve a lot of traffic even with a modest hosting service.


----------



## Pier (Aug 19, 2020)

creativeforge said:


> you can also choose to start at the beginning and use FREE hosting like *WordPress.com*



Take note that the free plan will insert ads in your site.









WordPress.com Ads


We sometimes display advertisements on your blog to help pay the bills. This keeps free features free! We only run them in limited places, and we do not show ads to logged-in readers, which means o…




wordpress.com







> At WordPress.com, we sometimes display advertisements on your free blog or site to help pay the bills. This keeps free features free! The ads your viewers will see are determined by their location, browsing histories, and other factors.





> To eliminate ads on your blog entirely, you can purchase one of our paid plans.


----------



## Pier (Aug 19, 2020)

Bman70 said:


> I've used a DigitalOcean droplet for several years now, at $5 / month. I'm running an nginx server to host several domains, but wouldn't recommend because it's easy to fall behind in updating and security. I don't have anything hugely important up on the server so it's not a big deal for me. *Apparently you can now install Wordpress on DigitalOcean*, and run a website that way. Only for hardcore geeks though:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yeah I wouldn't recommend that unless you know what you're doing.

Installing Wordpress is easy, but then you need to mess around with certs, firewalls, and whatnot.

I've read that DO is working on a managed service called DO Apps that will solve all this automatically (much like Heroku) but there's no ETA AFAIK.


----------



## darcvision (Aug 20, 2020)

i tried to create my own website using github, and i think its good alternative for design my own website rather using wix. i'm using soundcloud and bandcamp for showcasing my music, because i think its more safer rather i store it inside server(firebase etc), and people doesn't care too much about audio quality. i'm also make it responsive for mobile users.








Ste Fandy | Composer







stefandy29.github.io


----------



## Pier (Aug 21, 2020)

stefandy31 said:


> i tried to create my own website using github, and i think its good alternative for design my own website rather using wix. i'm using soundcloud and bandcamp for showcasing my music, because i think its more safer rather i store it inside server(firebase etc), and people doesn't care too much about audio quality. i'm also make it responsive for mobile users.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yeah if you have a static site Github is great. Vercel is also great.

I actually did a benchmark of static hosts a couple of months ago:









Pier Bover - Static Hosting Benchmark 2020


A benchmark of the most popular static hosting services in 2020 (and some more)



www.pierbover.com


----------

