Ionos Hosting
Ionos has been in business since 1998, helping millions of customers establish an online presence for over three decades. It’s a reliable hosting provider you might want to rely on if you don’t want anything to do with the technical aspects of creating a website. At Ionos, you’ll find a variety of hosting solutions best suited to meet your needs, as well as additional services to get you online faster.
| Ionos pros | Ionos cons |
| Excellent customer support | Not suitable for large businesses |
| Reliable and secure provider | Hosting for Windows is more costly |
| Cost-effective hosting |
When it comes to hosting solutions, Ionos offers a few options. Clients can choose between web, dedicated, ASP.NET, or VPS hosting. And for a bit of spice, it also provides deployment automation, allowing you to build and deploy static sites, single pages, and PHP apps directly via GitHub.
Still, the best part about Ionos is that it will get your website up and running in no time and for a fraction of the price. It’s one of the cheapest service providers in this industry, but it doesn’t sacrifice speed or security to make its services more available. On the contrary, Ionos guarantees a 99,9% uptime, which is a good indicator their servers perform well. Furthermore, some plans even include a free SSL certificate for securing the connection between your website and visitors or a site scanner for optimal security.
Source: Ionos
If you’re wondering how much Ionos would cost you, let’s take its shared web hosting plans as an example, as it is one of the most popular choices among business owners. By the way, shared hosting refers to a hosting model that utilizes one server environment to host multiple websites, which is what makes it the cheapest and, therefore, the most popular.
Before proceeding, remember that these are shared web hosting tiers only; you can find the rest of the available services on the Ionos official website.
| Essential | Starter | Plus | Ultimate |
| $4/month for 12 months, then $6/month | $6/month for 12 months, then $8/month | $1/month for 12 months, then $12/month | $10/month for 12 months, then $66/month |
| Hosting for one website only | Hosting for 10 websites | Hosting for Unlimited websites | Hosting for Unlimited websites |
| 10 GB storage | 100 GB storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Free domain for a year and an SSL certificate | Free domain for a year and an SSL certificate | Free domain for a year and an SSL certificate | Free domain for a year and an SSL certificate |
| 10 databases | 50 databases | Unlimited databases | Unlimited databases |
| 30-day money-back guarantee | 30-day money-back guarantee | 30-day money-back guarantee | 30-day money-back guarantee |
Hosting is not the only type of service you’ll find at Ionos. This hosting provider offers a website builder that will save you time with templates, customization features, and a website design service if you have something specific in mind. So, instead of working with several parties to get the desired results, you can get your dream website and secure and fast hosting all in one place.
Bluehost Hosting
Since its inception in 2003, Bluehost has been dedicated to providing clients with the best service. Whether you’re a novice who has never written a line of HTML code, or a pro who only wants to improve efficiency, Bluehost offers a range of services to get you on the web ASAP.
| Bluehost pros | Bluehost cons |
| Decent speed | Uptime could be better |
| Easy to use | Can be costly if you opt for additional features |
| A generous service provider |
Bluehost could be a perfect solution for you, regardless of the size of your website. It offers shared, dedicated, VPS, and WordPress hosting, as well as more niche-specific solutions such as web design, digital marketing, or WooCommerce integration.
Source: Bluehost
Of all the available options, shared hosting is, of course, the cheapest. Now Bluehost is a higher-end alternative to providers such as Ionos, for example. However, even its most affordable plans come with useful features and additional goodies, making the cost-benefit ratio satisfactory for millions of clients so far.
For instance, the basic shared hosting plan comes with a free domain for a year, 10 GB of SSD storage, and a complimentary CDN. In addition to that, clients get free SSL and custom WordPress themes for their websites. See, not bad.
Of course, the more you pay, the more features you’ll enjoy. The subscription above the basic plan comes with four times more storage, malware scanning tools, website backup, domain privacy, and unlimited websites.
Now that you know about its most budget-friendly hosting services, here’s how the most expensive Bluehost tiers compare in terms of price and features.
| Standard plan | Enhanced plan | Premium plan |
| $125.99/month for a 36-month term | $159.99/month for a 36-month term | $209.99/month for a 36-month term |
| 4 core / 8 thread | 8 core / 16 thread | 8 core / 16 thread |
| 1 TB HDD storage | 2 TB HDD storage | 2 TB HDD storage |
| Unmetered bandwidth | Unmetered bandwidth | 30 GB of RAM |
| cPanel with Root access | cPanel with Root access |
Another good indicator that Bluehost may be your ideal hosting provider is its rating on Trustpilot. Bluehost has almost 4,000 5-star reviews on this platform and an overall rating of 3.9. Still, one of the main reasons I’d recommend Bluehost is that it’s very supportive of users’ needs, as much as a hosting company can be.
For example, their selection of e-commerce tools and features is beyond comprehensive. And besides hosting, Bluehost offers clients website building, domains, digital marketing, or WordPress guidance services. Not only that, no. Bluehost provides learning opportunities by sharing resources and teaching people how to build their online identity and set up the perfect website with minimal help.
HostGator Hosting
HostGator came to life in 2002, one year before Bluehost entered the market. And with over 20 years of experience, this company has built a reputable, trusted brand that has helped almost three million websites get online and stay there for good. The company stands for freedom, support, and reliability, and their way of doing business has shown that these aren’t just empty words – HostGator is indeed one of the most trusted web hosts out there.
| HostGator pros | HostGator cons |
| Excellent support, different options too | Plans could be arranged in a better manner |
| A trustworthy brand | Support varies based on your subscription |
| Unmetered bandwidth |
HostGator provides clients with standard hosting solutions such as shared, VPS, dedicated, or WordPress plans, but it also offers reseller hosting. This hosting type allows you to earn money by selling HostGator hosting on your website, which can be a good option if you’re already in this industry. If you opt for reseller hosting, you’ll get total flexibility and freedom to manage your website and benefit from HostGator services.
However, if reseller hosting isn’t your cup of tea, I’d still recommend HostGator. It’s speedy and reliable, and the prices match every budget. Dedicated is drastically more expensive than the other plans, but if we compare HostGator’s dedicated hosting to other service providers, it still falls in the cheaper category.
Source: HostGator
Each tier has enough to get you going, and almost all plans offer unmetered bandwidth and sufficient storage space. That said, HostGator is perfect for mid-sized businesses and startups looking into affordable hosting solutions.
If you’re wondering how much it might cost you, check out the table below for more information about the HostGator shared hosting plans.
| Hatchling plan | Baby plan | eCommerce plan |
| $2.75 – introductory offer | $3.50 – introductory offer | $5,25 – introductory offer |
| For one website only | Up to five websites | Unlimited websites |
| Free domain for a year | Free domain for a year | Free domain for a year |
| One-click WP installs | One-click WP installs | One-click WP installs |
| Chat support | Phone and chat support | Cloudflare CDN |
| $500 Google Ad credits | Dedicated IP and an SSL upgrade |
Of course, what would a hosting company be if they didn’t offer additional services such as website building? HostGator’s website builder is intuitive and fast, allowing you to set up everything from the largest elements to the smallest details in the most efficient manner. However, if you don’t know where to begin or what your website should look like, getting in touch with HostGator’s design team will get all your worries out of the way.
Which Hosting Solution Is the Best Option?
If you’re new to website building, you might be debating which hosting type best suits the website you want to create. This crash course will help you determine your options and choose the right solution with confidence, so let’s start with fundamentals.
Every website that exists on the internet is hosted on a server. Back when web hosting companies weren’t a thing, people had to configure their own servers, which required a lot of technical skills and equipment. However, with the rise of hosting solutions, people don’t face these obstacles unless they’re eager to host a website on a server of their own making.
Photo illustration: Freepik
To go a step further, web hosts are helpful because they provide the necessary hardware and technology that replaces manual server configuration. Once you pay for a hosting plan, your service provider will provide adequate server space and ensure the hardware is secure and well-maintained.
Clients can nowadays choose between various hosting solutions simply because they have different needs. That said, you can currently find four main hosting types on the market:
- Shared hosting – as the name suggests, this solution allows different clients to cut website hosting costs by sharing resources on one server with each other. This is ideal for small websites, as they don’t require much server space.
- Dedicated hosting – with a dedicated hosting solution, clients get an entire server to themselves. Enterprise-level websites with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of monthly visitors are usually the ones requiring dedicated hosting. And since the entire server is reserved for one client, this is the most expensive hosting solution.
- VPS hosting – this is essentially an upgrade to your shared hosting plan. With VPS hosting, you’ll still share a server with other users, but not as many as you would with shared hosting.
- Cloud hosting – cloud hosting relies on both physical and cloud servers. It spits a physical server into multiple virtual counterparts, making more room for scaling. This immediately means faster connections and minimized downtime.
Do you see now why choosing the right type of hosting is essential?
If you go with shared hosting (which comes with limited sources), but your website has, let’s say, 100,000 monthly visitors, the server you’ll use won’t have the capacity to provide a seamless user experience. Your website’s load speed will significantly decrease, and users won’t be able to access certain elements, such as pictures or videos.
On the other hand, if a startup opts for dedicated hosting while still having a narrow client base, it’ll waste money that could be invested in other more important expenses. And trust me, hosting can be expensive, especially if your primary choice is a dedicated plan.
With that in mind, it’s imperative to determine or at least guess, your current needs before committing to a hosting plan. Let’s say you have an Instagram page with 500,00 visitors, and you want to set up an online shop or a blog that you’ll promote on your account. If that’s the case, shared hosting is probably not what you’re looking for.
