A web hosting service provider is a core part of your website since it contains all of your files, data and displays them to users. It is never easy to choose a web hosting service especially if it is your first time. Several factors need to be considered such as price, reliability, speed, specs, and so on.
Choosing a wrong host does not only waste money, it also increases tons of complicated stuff you need to deal with when moving to a new host.
The cost of web hosting service provider varies significantly from less than $10 a month to easily over $100 USD based on types of hosting package and specs. Some web hosting service providers also offer an extra like a free domain registration, coupons for a various marketing campaign, and free cloud storage. If you are planning to use a web hosting service, check the full list below to find out which company offers the cheapest price while providing good speed, security, and support at the same time.
Web hosting service providers listed here are evaluated based on price, both starting price and annual price, reliability, speed, usability, and value.
GoDaddy
In the almost-twenty years since their inception, GoDaddy has become one of the best known - if not highest-regarded - domain name registras and web hosting providers in the world. GoDaddy’s sheer size and familiarity (thanks to a series of provocative Superbowl ads) frequently brings them first to mind when making hosting decisions.
Although GoDaddy is a very popular choice for web hosting, it remains a sideline for the Scottsdale, Arizona based company. Their primary and most lucrative business is domain registration. Thus, it’s worth looking closely at the pros and cons of hosting through GoDaddy before deciding on a web hosting provider.
The One-Stop Shopping
GoDaddy strives to be a mega-mart for all services needed to establish a web presence. Once you’ve selected and reserved your domain name, GoDaddy’s online ordering process quickly suggests web design and promotion services, but not before they offer up hosting options for a website behind your new URL. And you can even make money from their Auction House.
Their basic packages can seem almost laughably inexpensive. GoDaddy can afford to be generous. Most websites consume negligible resources on the virtual hosts GoDaddy uses, and access to internet backbones ensures the company is never bandwidth-challenged. Selling hosting at very minimal prices attracts clients who can later be pelted with an almost-endless array of upsells.
Thus, cheap hosting service counts as not much more than cheap advertising for GoDaddy in the early stages of the game.
How Cheap Can You Get?
How cheap is cheap? Very cheap. During GoDaddy’s frequent sales - or by using one of their widely-available coupons - the basic plan starts at $1.00 per month when paid a year in advance. This includes one website/URL, 100GB of storage, 100 email addresses, “unlimited bandwidth,” and — often enough — free registration of a single domain.
Many an aspiring webmaster finds that one-dollar-a-month deal very hard to pass up, especially considering how GoDaddy sweetens the deal. Included in the basic package is instant install of popular content management servers like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, as well as 1 GB of space on a shared MySQL database server.
It seems almost too good to be true. And likely, it is.
GoDaddy is under no obligation to keep the price at $1.00 per month after the first year. It’s a competitive market, and competition from other ISP’s should restrain any astronomical increases, but your chances of paying $12 for your second year of hosting are slim to none. Moving a site to a different ISP is a pain, and GoDaddy knows you’re probably just going to accept the charge to your credit card at the full price of the plan once you’re part of the family.
And being part of that family seems to satisfy the needs of GoDaddy’s over five million ISP customers. The catch is, very few of those five million need much of anything at all.
User Satisfaction
With a staggering ten million websites hosted, it would seem unlikely GoDaddy could seriously offer “unlimited bandwidth.” What if all those sites started taking major traffic at once? Cables would surely melt, no?
The thing is, most websites see very few visits, if any at all. Even a blog heavily promoted through social media might see 100 hits per day, with a percentage of those coming from web-crawler robots. GoDaddy’s infrastructure can easily withstand this minimal level of traffic, even multiplied times ten million. In actual use, most websites won’t get more than two or three hits per day.
This means the minimal package can satisfy the minimal expectations of most basic users. Users get to say they have a website. They see their URL up - most of the time. They’re happy with the negligible monthly expense for a web presence and an “official” email address. Even at the full price of $3.99 a month customers are still getting a decent value.
And they’re happy with it.
Unlimited Bandwidth
Though it might be true in some way that bandwidth is “unlimited,” purchasers of the basic hosting plans sometimes report unexplained slowdowns. This is of little concern to the entry-level user who’s just happy to be online at all.
But what happens when the stars align, the heavens open above, and your website actually starts getting real traffic? In a few cases reported in online forums - and among real-life contacts - only higher GoDaddy’s shared plans can accommodate a serious flow of constant users. This isn’t such a bad situation as long as a quick solution is available.
But at that point, you’re dealing with GoDaddy’s support teams. Mostly, GoDaddy's team can address your issues within a few minutes. For a more complicated case, it can take a while until the problem is solved. In a rare case, a scheduled move to a dedicated server was delayed for different reasons.
And then, you’re no longer in the realm of GoDaddy’s promotional, get-them-in-the-door pricing strategy. GoDaddy’s prices for dedicated hosting - where your site runs on a separate server - are competitive with prices available almost anywhere else.
Should You or Shouldn’t You?
Let’s summarize the pros and cons of GoDaddy hosting:
Pros:
- Very cheap at the bottom end: If you want a cheap, simple way to establish an online presence, it’s hard to turn down GoDaddy’s offer to handle it all for you, especially if you can get one of their promotional deals.
- Full features and one-stop shopping: Even the basic plan includes everything you’re likely to need in a basic website. Domain registration, content management, storage, email, and even DB access is all there in one place, and it all works well enough for most users.
- Phone support: Many other more highly-rated ISP’s don’t offer phone support: They conduct support through chat interfaces and email. Many less-savvy users value the ability to talk to a human being on the telephone to walk them through unfamiliar steps.
Cons:
- Not their core business: GoDaddy is primarily a web domain registrar with hosting as a profitable sideline.
- GoDaddy offers no money-back guarantee for their services. They explicitly state no refunds are available. At $12 a year for a promotional url and hosting package, this might not matter much. As business grows, it might matter more.
RoseHosting
Web hosting companies are increasingly diversifying their hosting plans and technologies, branching out from shared hosting plans to virtual private servers and completely dedicated servers for their most demanding customers. For RoseHosting, this is old news. In business since 2001, RoseHosting has long been one of the Internet's most reliable and affordable VPS hosting choices.
RoseHosting.com's 15 years in the industry have taught it how to offer affordable and reliable products that offer real value and a path for growth to new customers who may need more advanced features in the future. With that in mind, prospective customers will want to take a look at the three tiers of service, the value-added features, and the guarantees that make for a reliable website upon signing up for the service.
Available Hosting Options: More Than Just Shared Hosting
When it comes to web hosting, the most basic option is also the most affordable. Shared hosting, as it's known, involves placing many websites side-by-side on a single server, with control over the website's features but not the server's features. This combination of affordability and minimal control is an appealing option for entry-level customers who have never purchased hosting before. With that in mind, let's take a look at what RoseHosting has to offer its shared hosting customers.
Shared Hosting: A Great Choice for Entry-Level Customers
The company's shared hosting plans are offered in three tiers, from a basic plan capable of hosting a single domain to the "SSD Ultimate" plan, capable of hosting as many as 20 domain names. First and foremost, it's important to look at the features that all three tiers have in common:
- 24x7 online and phone support services
- SSD-based storage for lightning fast data access speeds
- 100 percent uptime guarantee
- DNS management
- Free weekly site backups
- Advanced control panel for granular site control
Pricing tiers are decided based primarily on the number of domains a customer is hosting, the disk space they require, and the monthly bandwidth their site needs. Other features also vary based on price. The three tiers include:
1.SSD Basic ($4.95 per month)
- 1 domain
- 2GB disk space
- 200GB data transfer
- 50 email accounts, aliases, and auto-responders
- 2 mailing lists, sub-domains, and MySQL databases
- 50 FTP accounts
2. SSID Business ($9.95 per month)
- 5 domains
- 8GB disk space
- 1000GB data transfer
- Unlimited email accounts, aliases, and auto-responders
- 20 mailing lists, sub-domains, and MySQL databases
- Unlimited FTP accounts
3. SSD Ultimate ($19.95 per month)
- 20 domains
- 20GB disk space
- 2000GB data transfer
- Unlimited email accounts, aliases, and auto-responders
- Unlimited mailing lists, sub-domains, and MySQL databases
- Unlimited FTP accounts
All shared hosting plans are paid on an annual basis. Importantly, there is no setup fee charged for initiating a new shared hosting account with the company.
VPS Hosting: The Main Attraction at RoseHosting
While shared hosting is a low-price, high-value option for entry-level customers, RoseHosting has made its name since 2001 in offering affordable, advanced VPS hosting options to power users. The company's VPS hosting is based entirely on high-speed solid state drives, making for much faster servers and response times.
In addition to SSD storage across all RoseHosting VPS plans, the company includes fully managed, 24x7 tech support, free website migration assistance, and free weekly backup service. A single IP address is dedicated to each VPS account, and each account is billed the monthly fee on an annual basis.
While RoseHosting offers high-end tiers that range in price from $119.95 monthly to $319.95 monthly, its four most popular tiers range from $19.95 per month to $79.95 per month. Pricing tiers are differentiated based on the number of processor cores, ranging from two to 6, as well as the amount of disk storage and monthly data transfer. For $19.95 per month, customers get 30GB of storage, 2TB of data transfer, 1GB of RAM and two CPU cores to handle the load. That's an impressive value, and it only gets better as prices and features increase across four entry-level tiers.
If none of the company's four low-end tiers or four high-end tiers meet the needs of a VPS customer, there's another option worth considering. RoseHosting offers a custom VPS configuration service that allows prospective customers to create a custom setup based on their RAM, processing, storage, and monthly bandwidth needs. Prices are competitive with the industry; customers pay for their custom VPS configuration on an annual basis.
Dedicated Servers for the Biggest Customers
With XEON E3 dual-core and quad-core processors, 500GB of RAID5 storage, and between 2GB and 4GB of RAM, RoseHosting's dedicated servers are advanced, lightning fast, and built for the enterprise. The company's dedicated options begin at $299 per month, with four tiers that escalate in price, up to $449 per month. Dedicated server customers receive the same 24x7 support commitment and 100 percent uptime guarantee. Unlike VPS and shared hosting options, however, billing is performed monthly instead of annually.
The Bottom Line: Price, Value, Reliability, and Reputation
RoseHosting is one of many options available to customers who need a wide range of Linux-based hosting services, from small shared hosting accounts to powerful dedicated servers that can handle the most popular websites on the Internet. Though the field is crowded, RoseHosting.com stands out for a few important reasons:
1. Affordability and Value
With hosting plans starting at less than $5 per month for shared hosting, and less than $20 per month for a VPS alternative, RoseHosting has one of the most affordable fees in the industry. When combined with round-the-clock support and a 100 percent uptime guarantee, neither of which should be taken for granted among today's web hosting companies, customers get peace of mind as well as excellent value and an affordable price.
2. Customizability
While many hosting companies only offer rigid tiers of service, RoseHosting goes out of its way to encourage customization of its VPS hosting product. That's likely to resonate with the small, but vocal, power user market. Between the ability to pick specific server features, operating systems, and tiers of monthly bandwidth, there really is an affordable option for each VPS customer considering RoseHosting.com
3. Support, Support, Support
Though mentioned earlier, it bears repeating: RoseHosting offers 24-hour support for all of its hosting options. Between phone, live chat, support ticket, and email support options, customers will find a method that matches the urgency and severity of their support request at all hours of the day. That's something that many competing hosting companies just don't provide. It adds peace of mind and real value to the company's products and makes the service a great fit for inexperienced, entry-level customers as well as server customers who have unique support needs at all hours of the day and night.
The bottom line is simple: RoseHosting.com is a highly competitive hosting service that smartly offers the right blend of affordable pricing and high-end features, standard pricing tiers and customization, entry-level products and advanced dedicated servers. For this reason, it's worth seriously considering the pricing tiers and 100 percent uptime guarantee offered at RoseHosting.com
Arvixe
Arvixe Web Hosting, recognized by industry authorities as one of the fastest growing web hosting companies worldwide. Founded in San Luis Obispo California, Arvixe’s core values are based on growth and solid ground work. Thousands of websites have been hosted worldwide by Arvixe wide variety of hosting plans. They have been recognized and awarded by industry authorities such as Host Review and Inc. Magazine.
With a wide array of services such as web hosting for a variety of platforms, Arvixe also offers dedicated servers, Domain names, developer compatibility and more. They also
- Offer 24-hour customer support
- Have a 99.9% uptime ratio
- Have been noted as having the recognized SSD server speed
Overall Service Offerings
With respect to the overall service offering that should be provided through a web hosting service provider, Arvixe Web Hosting has covered it all. They have hosting services for all types of web platforms that are broken down by class and consist of web hosting services for personal class, business class, reseller class, VPS class and the dedicated class.
Arvixe has clearly had all customer types in mind when they put time into developing various web hosting service areas. Not only do they have reasonable prices, but their features, platform performance and support systems are compatible with the best in the business.
Below is a breakdown of some of the hosting services offered by Arvixe Web Hosting.
Linux Shared Hosting
The PersonalClass is offered in two different packages, including the regular PersonalClass and the PersonalClass Pro. Both offer a Linux shared hosting plan, which is a more common form of hosting that is being sought after by multiple hosting clients. With prices being as low as $4 a month for the PersonalClass and $7 per month for the PersonalClass Pro, Arvixe Web Hosting offers very competitive rates in this area compared to other hosting companies.
Both plans come with unlimited disk space, unlimited monthly data transfer, six website domains through the PersonalClass and unlimited website domains that are offered through PersonalClass Pro. This area also offers several other benefits as well, such as a Softaculous Script Installer, $100 worth of Google Ad words vouchers and $100 worth of Yahoo! and Bing vouchers (within the US only.)
They have gotten rave reviews from their current customers who seem to be happy and satisfied with services and the performance of Linux Hosting platform.
Window Shared Hosting
Also offered in this category is a PersonalClass ASP and the PersonalClass ASP Pro hosting plans for windows. Both of these areas offers unlimited disk space, unlimited monthly data transfer, six website domains from the PersonalClass ASP and unlimited website domains under the PersonalClass ASP Pro.
With prices beginning as low as $5 and $8, respectively, the PersonalClass for windows is equally as reliable and offers several other useful benefits to their customers as well. From scheduled task and custom error pages to Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive compatibility and a host of other features, Arvixe Web Hosting remains highly competitive and receives four and five-star ratings from their very satisfied customers.
BusinessClass
Arvixe’s Business Hosting plan offers the same great service and reliability as the PersonalClass plans, but they offer more with respect to an increase in uptime and overall reliability. The BusinessClass plan also offers Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive compatibility, unlimited disc and monthly transfer data, free domains and SSL certificates for life, cPanel Control panel, FTP account, HTML editor's, file management systems, password protection directories, a host of email plans and support services, statistical support areas as well as the ability to support web development.
You'll find that the business hosting plan is compatible with any web hosting plan for businesses on the market. Their plans began as low as $22 a month for the business class and $35 for the BusinessClass Pro. Arvixe also offers web hosting in the BusinessClass ASP for Windows where they offer similar hosting services to support the Windows platform to customers all around the world.
ResellerClass
Arvixe Web Hosting also offers reseller hosting plans for those who are interested in starting their own web hosting accounts. They have ResellerClass plans for Linux and Windows platforms and makes the same web products and services offered to their clients to their resellers. Their prices start at $20 per month for the ResellerClass and $50 per month ResellerClass Pro plan.
VPSClass
When it comes to Virtual Private Servers, Arvixe Web Hosting has covered every area possible to support each of their hosting functions. From dedicated disk space of 50 GB for the VPSClass and 100 GB of dedicated to space with the VPSClass Pro, to four and eight CPU Cores respectively, 1.5 GB of memory for the VPSClass and 3 GB of memory for the VPS Class Pro. They also offer a wide array of other areas that support the Virtual Private Server hosting plans as well. These prices began at $40 a month and $70 a month for each plan respectively and have received multiple five-star ratings from a variety of satisfied customers.
DedicatedClass
Dedicated web hosting is a fully managed dedicated server design for those in need of a web hosting platform. They offer high-performance, security and reliability. The plans are offered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and dedicated customer support. The DedicatedClass also offers customers a choice of Linux or Windows software, nightly security updates and a host of other services. The services are compatible with other companies that offer similar web hosting products and services in the same class.
Having access to a cloud-based hosting plan provides you with state-of-the-art technology and a world-class platform that keeps you in control and in the driver’s seat. Avixie Web Hosting has gone over and above the call of duty with respect to its hosting product and service offerings. They have developed a platform to ensure that they remain both competitive and on the cutting edge with their cloud-based service offers.
Other Hosting Plans
Additional hosting plans include those that address some of the more common ways that people interact when doing business. These include discussion forums, blog hosting platforms, e-commerce hosting platforms, Video sharing platforms and much, more.
The Bottom Line: Speed and Value
There are numerous reasons why customers use Arvixe. Some of the pros consist of:
- High-speed and reliability
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited data transfer
- Unlimited email accounts
- Free domain names
- A 60-day moneyback guarantee
- 24 hour technical support
Although Arvixe strives to be the leading hosting company in the industry, there are still a few areas that could stand some improvement. Below are some of the cons of working with Arvixe:
- Does not offer a complete full-service hosting plan compared to other hosting companies such as RoseHosting.
- Not the most recognized brand in the industry. Especially with industry giant such as GoDaddy who continues to dominate the marketplace and is known for their catchy advertisements and up sales.
- Although known for great customer support, Arvixe still trails behind in both customer support and overall performance compare to companies such as RoseHosting.
Overall Arvixe Web Hosting services can stand next to any hosting and domain service in the industry and remain competitive in all hosting services offered.
iPage
iPage tries to be a one-stop service for all hosting and domain needs at the competitive price. With their package starting price at only $2/month, included free extra features, it is a good budget choice that hardly takes eyes off.
As with any seemingly great deal, there are drawbacks and hidden costs. Any potential iPage user needs to understand them before signing up.
Full Price Details
iPage’s biggest selling point is the standard hosting package at$1.99 a month. This price goes up dramatically to somewhere between $9 and $20 a month after the first term, depending on which level of service needed. Despite this, an average price is still lower than an average market. Signing up for three years at the initial rate ($71.64 up front) still makes a great deal to getting a website rolling.
Not only that, hosting packages in iPage.com comes with a free domain name (.com) for 1 year. The domain fee is not waived for other luxurious TLDs such as .blog costing over $40 USD a year
Ipage.com also offers a domain registration service starting $8.99 USD per year for .com with choices for optional features such as a domain privacy, to hide personal informations such as contact details, costs at addition $9.99 per year, or SiteLock, a service scanning for malware and protecting against bot hacking
Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth
Each site gets unlimited disk space in all hosting plans with 1Gb on a cloud storage. However, the unlimited disk space does not mean that clients can stores any files and data without any limitation. iPage admits that in a few cases, they’ve had to work with them to reduce file storage. A hosting package with an unlimited disk space never truly exists anyway.
Although unlimited bandwidth is offered, it works similarly to unlimited disk space. Once a site grows beyond the hidden limitation they have, iPage will request their clients to upgrade to a better package such as VPS which is generally costed at $20 more per month. The support for an upgrade will be provided free of charge.
Problems with Speed and Control Panel
Although iPage servers do not crash often with a next to little downtime, it has a problem with speed. All sites under shared web hosting packages traffic goes through a shared pipeline. It means that if there are tons of traffics on a single site hosted at iPage, it significantly slows down speeds for all other sites.
Another drawback of iPage comes from a control panel for domain and file management. Several customers find it counter-intuitive and confusing. Although there's an explanation on each menu at other part of the site, it is still not good enough.
iPage does offer 24/7 phone and email support with 3 out of 5 stars from user ratings, although some users claimed that support stuff here is very helpful. There are support and help buttons in the control panel directly taking customers to FAQ page, with an option for live chat if the provided answers are not helpful.
Those that prefer email or phone help can find the necessary information under "Contact Us" at the bottom of the page.
Additional Features
One factor making iPage a great choice for a beginner is the inclusion of several website builders such as wordpress. It's pretty helpful when creating website for the first time with ready-made solution within a few clicks. The website builders is value at $500 as claimed by iPage.
iPage includes the option to redirect multiple domains covering range of related site names at a single place. Files can also be easily transferred in through FTP. Most importantly, iPage also provide a back-up service free of charge. One thing that an advanced user do not like iPage is the lack of SSH access due to their security reasons.
iPage also offers free marketing credit from various reputable search engines. Any customer gets a direct $100 worth of advertising in Bing for free, while Google requires $25 spent before receiving a free $100. These deals actually pay back the initial cost of hosting.
The Bottom Line: Good Price, Beginner's Friendly but Having Problems with Speed and Intuitiveness
The Good:
- Competitive price
- Beginner’s friendly
- Unlimited Storage and bandwidth
- Good uptime
The Bad:
- Speed with high traffic
- Price spikes after first term
- Tries to sell endless expensive extras
- Site intuitiveness.
Who Should Sign Up?
iPage isn't really the best deal for experienced webmasters. The biggest benefits are from their price and easiness. It is definitely a good choice for beginners who would like to make a small blog or portfolio for their works, or even making a website for a company profile or small business showcase. For more robust sites, it is better to look elsewhere.











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