- Home
- /
- What is web hosting?
- /
- Web hosting companies comparison and reviews
Table of contents
Introduction
Generally, web hosting companies offer clients the service of managing their websites. They allow you to construct your website and manage it on their platform for it to be accessible to internet users. Therefore, for potential users to locate your site, you need a reliable and efficient web host.
Five of the main web hosting companies in the world, Siteground, BlueHost, GoDaddy, Hostgator, and Dreamhost, will be compared in this review to guide readers on the choice of a web hosting platform that fits their needs.
Comparison method
Since the hosting platforms offer close and competitive services, the comparison will be based on the following basic performance criteria.
- Uptime
- Speed
- Price
Uptime
A server’s uptime is the total length of time it has been active. Typically, this is expressed as a percentage, say “99.9% uptime.” The uptime is a great indicator of how well a web hosting company maintains its services. Any website you host with a hosting company should remain online if it has a high uptime percentage, indicating that its servers remain operational.
Speed
The quantity of data your website can send to users in a specific period is known as the bandwidth. Although most web hosts measure and price bandwidth in gigabytes (GB), others may offer “unlimited bandwidth.” The best way to comprehend bandwidth functions is to see it as a pipe’s diameter. More water can be delivered at once through a huge pipe than through a small pipe. That is due to the greater ability of a bigger pipe to do so. The ability to transport more website data simultaneously depends on the available bandwidth.
Price
The cost of hosting a website on a company’s server is usually invoiced monthly or annually. However, some web hosting providers provide significant discounts for longer payment terms.
Siteground web hosting
SiteGround is a widely-used platform. The WordPress features in SiteGround are popular for speed and excellent customer service. Also, SiteGround doesn’t have a difficult user interface and appears to be highly directed at hosting WordPress websites or webpages.
SiteGround is among the best web hosting service providers in terms of high uptime. The company boasts 99.99% uptime (according to data from March to August 2022), and for speed, the company provides 356 ms (from March to August 2022). Also, their customer service representatives are proficient and efficient. A CDN (Content Delivery Network), an SSL certificate, and email addresses are included with each of their packages.
Any data transmitted back and forth between a user’s device and a website, including sensitive information like IP addresses or credit card numbers, is protected due to the SSL. Hackers and other cyber attackers might readily obtain sensitive data if unprotected. SSL is included for free with all plans from SiteGround.
SiteGround offers unmetered bandwidth, 10 GB of storage, a Website Builder, free email, free SSL and CDN, and a daily backup for the hosted websites (The backup helps to increase the hosted site’s redundancy and eliminates the risks of losing important data). As affiliate of the company we know the quality of the service and recommend it to our clients. Users may choose from various hosting options, including shared, WordPress, cloud, reseller, enterprise, and dedicated servers.
SiteGround offers three options for their subscriptions, with prices ranging from $3.99 to $10.69 each month. The options, of course, provide different utilities to the users. The GrowBig and GoGeek plan from SiteGround are worth considering since they include all the additional high-end services. At a greater speed, GrowBig provides a staging area, a tool for collaboration, and an ultrafast PHP configuration. In a situation where you need to host your clients’ websites, GoGeek offers ample server capacity and a white-label management panel.
BlueHost web hosting
Regarding WordPress hosting, BlueHost is one of the best hosting brands with excellent customer reviews. They are officially recommended by “WordPress.” You do not have to worry about your website being sluggish with BlueHost, even during high-traffic periods. They are the preferred option for hosting small businesses’ websites.
BlueHost has an uptime of 99.98% (from March to August 2022), with a total outage of just one hour. Although there were a few bad months (May and July 2022) with below-average uptime, BlueHost generally has very good uptime.
BlueHost provided an average load speed of 420 ms (from March 2022 to August 2022). Even if it’s not the most optimal performance we’ve observed from hosting websites, it’s still sufficient to support standard websites. They have also been improving their loading time month after month.
Numerous applications, including WordPress, phpBB, Joomla, Drupal, and more than 75 open-source projects, are supported by BlueHost web hosting. It includes quality features like unrestricted bandwidth, 10 GB of storage, free domain registration for the first year, a free SSL certificate, free CDN, spam experts, domain privacy, and a one-click WordPress install.
Furthermore, BlueHost offers various hosting packages, including shared, WordPress, VPS, reseller, and dedicated servers.
The total price for the four BlueHost plans ranges from $2.95 to $13.95 per month. All the plans include necessary features, such as free SSLs and domains. But starting with the Plus plan, you may host an infinite number of websites. And that costs just $2.00 more each month than the least expensive option. Also, for an additional $1.00 per month, the Choice Plus plan offers additional security features, including domain privacy and automated backups (first year only).
These two options are initially reasonable, but here is a tip for you: Choice Plus renewal costs less than the initial subscription, making it a more cost-efficient choice over time. Especially in light of the fact that daily backups are no longer available after the first year. With higher speed and processing capability, the Pro offers extra features like backups and dedicated IPs. However, the renewal fee ($26.99 per month) is simply too high to be viable in the long run for small businesses.
GoDaddy web hosting
With more than 20 years of service delivery in the field, GoDaddy has the tools and hosting capacity to assist bloggers, online companies, web designers, and developers in creating and maintaining websites. GoDaddy provides reliable and efficient WordPress hosting plans with one-click updates so that customers can easily access the most recent features for their websites.
Given the relatively expensive plans compared to other hosts, GoDaddy compensates for that by providing one of the best average website response times at 280 ms (from March 2022 to August 2022).
GoDaddy averaged an amazing uptime of 99.98% from March 2022 to August 2022. According to the statistics, it means in 365 days, GoDaddy servers were only down for 90 minutes.
GoDaddy offers four shared hosting packages (Economy, Deluxe, Ultimate, and Maximum), with prices ranging from $5.99 to $19.99 per month. One website with daily backups is provided to customers with the basic plan. Storage of up to 25 GB is also provided. Aside from the basic plan, the other three options cost $7.99, $12.99, and $19.99 a month, respectively. These are rather expensive for small businesses.
Generally, these costs are a little high. In addition to all of that, GoDaddy charges for typical features such as site migration. But the quality of service is topnotch, and users get what they are paying for.
HostGator web hosting
HostGator has been rated well for more than ten years because of its numerous servers and dependable service. HostGator is mostly recognized as a shared hosting service, but it also offers respectably dedicated and VPS alternatives in case you need to grow your website. HostGator is largely designed for the semi-technical user and places a lot of emphasis on WordPress and its ease of use. Because of this, installing WordPress on HostGator is a breeze. Simply fill in the required information by clicking on the “Install WordPress” option on the dashboard.
Hostgator offers free SSL, server monitoring, automatic backups, and DDoS protection. They also have an incredible average server uptime of better than 99.99%, with a downtime of only five minutes.
HostGator’s speed is not as promising as its uptime, as it averaged 714 ms (from March 2022 to August 2022). Three different plans are available from Hostgator, with the Hatling plan costing $2.75 per month and allowing the connection of 1 website with unlimited SSD storage and bandwidth. Free SSL certificates, limitless free email addresses, and a domain are also provided. The Baby plan ($3.50/month) and the Business plan ($5.25) include a new Cloudflare CDN that provides up to 2.5x quicker website loads.
DreamHost web hosting
DreamHost is a web hosting company in Los Angeles that hosts 1.5 million websites, and 750k+ WordPress installs. DreamHost shared hosting is a wonderful choice for bloggers, designers, and small companies, even if it only offers two shared hosting options.
According to statistics from March to August 2022, DreamHost’s average load time was 1730 ms, a comparably slow rate. Apparently, this is one of the most crucial aspects to consider when selecting a host. Slow loading times can have an impact on your overall SEO, in addition to having an impact on visitor bounce rates (not to mention Google rank). And this will lead to lost revenue for customers or business owners.
With more than 10 hours of downtime over a six-month period, DreamHost’s average uptime is roughly 99.77%. That’s poor since it can also result in fewer people visiting your website and less revenue for you.
DreamHost offers unlimited bandwidth and storage, free SSL, a free domain for the first year, automated backups, and other services, even if their uptime and performance have declined.
DreamHost offers two different sorts of plans: the beginner plan costing $2.59 per month and the unlimited plan costing $3.59 per month.
Summary
With very close and competitive features, the five web hosting companies offer variable performance benchmarks in terms of their standard speed, uptime, and cost.
The choice of web hosting service provider one should go for is directly dependent on the requirements of the website one intends to host. For instance, if your website will provide services requiring quick responses, GoDaddy will be the obvious choice in this case.
| SiteGround | BlueHost | GoDaddy | HostGator | DreamHost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | 356 ms | 420 ms | 280 ms | 714 ms | 1730 ms |
| Uptime | 99.99% | 99.98% | 99.98% | >99.99% | 99.97% |
| Price (Starting from) | $3.99/month | $2.95/month | $5.99/month | $2.75/month | $2.59/month |
The table compares five web hosting companies using the three criteria. Though the cheapest, in terms of speed and uptime, Dreamhost offers the poorest service. Hostgator is also a bit slower than others (Siteground, BlueHost, and GoDaddy). The good side is that Hostgator is cheaper than these three and yet offers a good uptime, making it a dependable choice.
There is a tradeoff between the cost and performance of web hosting companies. GoDaddy, by far, is the fastest and most expensive. If you are going for any other of them, you will not get the efficiency that GoDaddy offers from any other. GoDaddy provides the best performance. Their service is also very reliable, with good uptime.
Siteground and BlueHost are good alternatives to consider if you are not going for GoDaddy. Alongside GoDaddy, they offer good speed and generally positive customer reviews in terms of performance and reliability.