Best Web Hosting Services of 2020

What Is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is the service provided by hosting companies that allows you to store your website files so that they are accessible to people surfing the web. An easy way to think about it is that hosting is the foundation up which you build your website.

The technical part of web hosting involves the type of servers that are used and how they are optimized for specific platforms such as WordPress. Certain hosts such as Bluehost and Hostgator have optimized their servers in a way that makes WordPress sites run blazingly fast.

What’s the Difference Between Shared, VPS and Dedicated Web Hosting?

Shared

Just like its name suggests, shared hosting is a type of hosting where multiple website owners share the same server. This is the most economical form of hosting as the costs of running and maintaining the server is split between all the users. The main drawback with shared hosting is that it tends to be slower than a VPS or dedicated server. This isn’t an issue for most website owners but as your traffic increases or your online store starts to grow then many people opt for VPS or a dedicated server so that they can speed up their website. 

VPS

VPS stands for “Virtual Private Server” which is a type of hosting that isn’t limited to a single server and enables you to scale your website’s resource usage horizontally by drawing on a pool of processing power, memory and storage. VPS is noticeable faster than shared hosting but with this increased performance comes additional cost.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated web hosting is a type of hosting where the entire server is dedicated to your website. This setup offers the highest level of scalability and speed for those websites that have significant traffic and other resource demands. This is the most powerful tye of hosting and is also the most expensive.

How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Service

Luckily for you I’ve done the work for you! I’ve been running websites for over 10 years and have used several of the hosting companies during that time. In addition to my own experience there is a set of criteria we look at when recommending hosting:

Uptime Guarantee

This refers to the amount of time that the hosting is running properly and is usually represented as a percentage. Common reasons why a host might be down is due to maintenance, upgrades or technical issues. Uptime is important as even a few minutes down can hurt your websites perceived trustworthiness and can result in lost sales if you run an ecommerce store.

Load Time

Loads time is another crucial factor to consider as it refers to the length of time it takes a we page to load. It’s been reported that a load time over 2 seconds can cause abandonment rates of 87% and can also be a negative Google ranking factor. 

Customer Support

This factor shouldn’t be overlooked as there can be a bit of a learning curve when you first learn how to host your own website. There’s a decent chance that you’ll call your host at some point so choosing a host with friendly, knowledgeable staff is important.

Conclusion

Now that you have a better understanding of how hosting works and the criteria we used in determining the best hosting companies of 2020, it’s time to select the host that will work best for your needs. Click the “View Pricing” to view the various hosting plans but make sure not to base your decision entirely on price. There are many factors to consider when selecting a hosting plan and we hope that our ranking list helps you in your decision making process!