Finding the right web host for your needs

Shared Hosting / Budget Hosting and Quality Hosts

Shared hosting is what the vast majority of the web sites are using and that is the type of hosting found here (except for the dedicated and VPS plans). If you’re a small business or need hosting for your blog or photo gallery, all of best web hosts in the quality hosting category will fulfill your basic need of web hosting. The cheap hosting category will cover personal and most small business hosting needs quite well too. Please read the reviews, they are filled with useful information about web site builders, whether or not you’ll get a pro-rated refund should you sign up for a long plan, and other useful information that we hope will save you some grief and some money.

The prices are low because it is shared hosting. This means that one server is used for a number of different web site accounts. Every account on that server shares the resources, which brings down the cost (a dedicated server is about $175.00 - $400.00 a month). Now, should there be an account that is hogging the resources — which occasionally happens — then your site will be affected with slow downs and other issues. Hosting companies keep track of this and, once made aware — either by the affected site owners or by their own internal monitoring, they shut off the the user monopolizing the resources. However, there are bumps for you when this happens. Some hosts, like Inmotion, load balance their servers, and they and don’t attract the type of user who is likely to monopolize the resources on the server. HostPapa does not load balance, but they watch their servers all day and night for and manually keep all the servers a peak performance. This is an occasional situation, but you should know this stuff anyway.

So how do you choose a web host that is right for your needs? This is where reading the reviews comes in handy and then visiting the sites of the hosts we recommend. We recommend contacting them with all your questions BEFORE you purchase. Many hosts have Live Chat, so you should be able to get your questions answered right away. Also look at their FAQ section, that helps.

Some shared hosting plans are better than others depending on your specific needs. For example, HostPapa, HostGator, WebHostingPad, and Inmotion offer excellent web site builders. With these builders, DIYers — without html knowledge — can can build their own web site and maintain it. HostGator is the best and easiest so far.

BlueHost, and HostGator, WebHostingPad, and InMotion have phone support 24/7. HostPapa has support by phone during business hours, but email support the rest of the time. HostPapa is also carbon neutral, green friendly. DreamHost is also green web hosting. All of the hosts have online support 24/7. Some hosts just don’t offer any phone support at all, and only use email or their ticketing system. It’s nice to talk with human when you run into difficulties, but some web users are experienced enough not to need phone support.

We’ve evaluated a lot of hosts and are adding more to the list, but so far we’ve only found two who pro-rate their refund if you cancel past the trial period. They are listed as the 2nd and 3rd host in our quality, shared hosting provider list. However, HostGator has a very low month-to-month plan, so that helps lessen the risk, even if they don’t, like so many others, pro-rate their refunds. InMotion does not oversell their servers and is the top rated host we recommend.

All of the hosts have web administration panels, either cPanel or their own home grown web panel. This allows you to easily set up email accounts and manage your hosting services.

Most of the hosts have Fantastico script installation, or some other type of easy script installation, which means you can install, with a click of a few buttons, some seriously awesome scripts for blogging, e-commerce, news, photo galleries, and content based data based driven web sites. You can literally open up an online store, get a blog going, start an online community, and get your photo gallery up without knowing the ins and outs of setting up a database, php scripting, and configuring your server. Explore our quality, shared hosting providers.

E-commerce Online Business Hosting

The web hosts reviewed on this site each have auto installer that give you with the ability to install leading shopping cart/store management scripts. These scripts have support through their user bases, on their respective forums and in their respective manuals. All of the scripts provided have a variety of skins, templates, or themes available for low cost or no cost (it depends on how picky you are). To accept credit cards, you can usually use PayPal instead of getting a merchant account with your bank or through an online merchant account provider. If you don’t want to use PayPal, you can use another payment gateway but you will need two things: a dedicated IP address and a SSL certificate. For a low monthly fee, the hosts reviewed by us will provide you with a dedicated IP address for your e-commerce needs, you only need this should you accept cards through a payment gateway other than PayPal. You will also need, should you decide not to use PayPal, a SSL (secure socket layer) certificate to get your site encrypted and protect your customer’s financial information. Some hosts provide a shared certificate, others do not. Read more about e-commerce hosting here (there’s an article below the chart). See our e-commerce hosting providers.

SSH Hosting

Secure Shell (SSH) access enables to use UNIX/Linux command line instructions to administer your web site. You can compress/decompress files easily, automate backups and other tasks (cron), change file permissions for complete directory structures, and more. Check out our top SSH hosting providers.

Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS)

For hosting standard web sites and blogs, shared hosting is generally a good fit. Virtual Private Server hosting (VPS hosting) will bring you about 50% up to the flexibility of a dedicated server, but at a much, much, much lower price! Check out our top VPS hosts.

Dedicated Server Web Hosting

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting is where the client leases an entire server and it is not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as you have full control over the server. Server administration is usually provided by the hosting company. For large e-commerce stores, large online communities, and the ability to have lots of control, a dedicated server is the way to go. See our dedicated hosting providers.