Finding a good web hosting company is an eternal struggle. I’ve gathered my findings here, for the benefit of my fellow bloggers and online entrepreneurs.
I spent a long time reading reviews on WebHostingTalk.com. That’s the best source of unbiased reviews. WARNING: avoid web hosts that come up in Google searches like “Best web hosts” or appear on websites called “Top 10 web hosts.” They’re almost all spam links who bribed their way to the top of those lists.
For what it’s worth, my web designer friends regularly say to avoid GoDaddy. Other popular web hosts like Dreamhost and Bluehost have gotten mixed-to-okay reviews. For registering domain names, I like using NameCheap over GoDaddy.
There’s no one perfect web host, but there were certain ones that got consistently good reviews. To make it easier, I broke them up into different categories.
Shared hosting
You can think of shared hosting as having a standard-sized store space in a shopping mall. You save money, but you’re limited in resources with all the other stores in your building.
HostGator, A Small Orange, StableHost, and HawkHost (my current host). Those last two have been especially fast at responding to complaints posted on WebHostingTalk, which impressed me.
Site5 is excellent for Drupal and WordPress, according to Josh Cohen, a member of a travel bloggers group I’m in.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Having a VPS is like renting the big corner space in a shopping mall. It’s like being a department store.
Dedicated Server
At this level, you’re not sharing space with everyone. You’ve got your own lot, like a big-box retailer.
Rackspace and Liquid Web. These guys are really good–and really expensive. I wouldn’t spend the money unless I was consistently getting tons of traffic every month. A lot of the major players like Netflix use Amazon. If you go for an “unmanaged” server, you’ll need to be your own system administrator. That requires serious Linux and IT skills.
Cloud Hosting
The mall equivalent would be those “pop up” shops that only do business at certain times of year. Think Halloween costume stores or calendar stores. They need to scale up and down with fluctuating demand.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the main one I know of.
WordPress specialty hosts
Going with a specialty host is like shopping at a boutique, instead of big discount store. You expect narrow, specific service.
Page.ly, WP Engine. With the massive popularity of WordPress, some companies have focused exclusively on optimizing web hosting for WordPress.
Web Applications Hosting
Not to sound unromantic, but web app hosting is like renting a warehouse or factory. You don’t care about pretty appearances, you just want infrastructure that will get the job done. You want to get your hands dirty and do the electrical wiring and plumbing yourself.
These services are aimed more at programmers who want to be able to manually configure everything, and have the technical skills to do it.
Nearly Free Speech – Popular with hackers, because it offers freedom to tweak things. Also fees are based purely on resource usage, so hosting low-traffic websites can be incredibly cheap.
WebFaction – I’ve heard the main reason programmers like them is that they allow full shell access, which most shared hosting plans don’t allow. So you get more control like having a server, yet still keep the cheap prices of shared hosting. There were some comments that their control panel was harder to use, since they cater to developers and not rookies.
Heroku – Originally for Ruby on Rails apps, now they host apps written in other languages and frameworks as well.
Google App Engine – Python and Java. I’ve heard getting Django (a Python framework) to work on GAE can be a hassle.
Linode – popular with developers of web apps.
Tip: to find hosts for your favorite programming language or web framework, just Google “Heroku for [language/framework].”
Signs of a good web host:
–Unlimited add-on domains
–Unlimited databases
(If these two features aren’t offered, it’s because the company wants to upsell you to a more expensive hosting plan. Let’s say you have a cool idea and want to set up a new website. Then you can’t because you’re only limited to 5 domains or 5 databases.)
–Caps on bandwidth and storage. These may seem like a bad thing, but it proves that the company isn’t overloading their servers.
–Multiple channels to contact tech support: support tickets, live chat, phone hotline, etc.
–Choice of various 1-click auto installers like Softaculous, Installatron, and Fantastico. My personal favorite is Softaculous because they notify you of WordPress updates immediately. Fantastico is my least favorite, since they’re slow to update things.
–Up-to-date versions of PHP, MySQL, Python, Ruby on Rails, etc.
Signs of a bad web host:
–Unlimited bandwidth
–Unlimited storage
(If a host really offered these two things at a ridiculous price like $1.99 a month, companies like Amazon and Google wouldn’t be spending a fortune on servers and data centers. “Unlimited” hosts are probably restricting their users in other ways, like domains or databases.)
–Lack of visible contact information
–Old versions of PHP, MySQL, etc.
Conclusion
Random observation: I’ve noticed that some web hosts with predatory names get better reviews, e.g. HostGator, HawkHost, and another one called SharkSpace. In contrast, there’s Fat Cow Hosting, which gets horrible reviews. So if they’re not the predator, they’re the prey?
Photo: Server rack. Jamison Judd / Flickr.