Hosting means a server where the data of your website is stored and is served to the people on the internet which searches for specific information on the internet.
My best Hosting Suggestions
People who want to start a blog or affiliate marketing face the problem to choose the best hosting. I have worked on more than 30 websites and 15 hosting companies. Today, I will share the hosting that I use and other best hosting companies based on my experience.
My Experience With A -very very- cheap Hosting Company
Much people focus on just one factor and that is PRICE. But I must tell you that sometimes saving a small amount of money can be harmful to you. In 2014, I created a website with a cheap hosting plan. This website after some time started giving me back something and I was happy with that. Very cheap hosting and I am earning more. But that proved to be wrong very soon. This website taught me 2 important lessons.
Downtime
I tried to check the uptime of my website as many hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime. I used a website called uptime robot. It is free and also paid.
Uptime Of Hosting And Uptime reboot Stats
After monitoring my website, I came to know that my website goes offline for more than 15 hours a month (30 minutes a day). This means that the hosting company that promises to provide 99.9% uptime was just a marketing tactic. Actually, the company provides 98% of uptime. And as mentioned above, this 2% caused a 15 hours per month loss.
My site was an affiliate website and my site was ranking on the first page of google. I made $100 a day, this 2% downtime lost me $60 per month and $800 yearly loss. It affected my income along with that some other major issues. This was my first lesson that this website taught me.
Malware Attack
The uptime is a small issue as compared to a Malware attack. Years ago in 2014, WordPress was not that secured as much as it is today. I used free WordPress security plugins but they didn’t work. I faced security regularly but tackled that by restoring my website from the restore option in hosting Cpanel. But after 8 months of purchasing this hosting, I was attacked by the biggest malware. The free plugins didn’t work, the restore feature didn’t work.
Google red-flagged my website as a harmful website. I lost traffic by 60% of total and my site was continuously declining. I searched on the web, read articles, watched videos but nothing worked. Then I searched for services on fiver. But I was afraid that I have to give them the hosting panel details. But I finally reached a seller on fiver and he removed the malware from my website.
But after a month again a malware attack. I reached the seller again on fiver and he told me to reorder the service. This time I didn’t order the service but used sucuri.
Also Read: Best 10 WordPress Plugins for Websites
What is Sucuri?
Sucuri is the website that resolves security related issues of your website. Sucuri can be used to check problems on your website for free. But to resolve them you have to buy a plan. So, I used sugar and they removed the malware. And sucuri suggested me to change my hosting. I didn’t take it seriously, but after several days my site again was attacked by malware. But I have already purchased the security pro plan for 1 year and they removed the Malware again.
Sucuri suggested me to change my hosting because this hosting has major security-related issues. I changed my hosting company and I didn’t face any security-related issues. This caused huge damage to my website.
- My traffic was 70% lost.
- More than $6000 lost( website revenue and hiring services).
- Stress in those 3 months.
Now, come to what factors you should look for before buying a hosting company.
6 Important Factors You Should Look At
1. Performance: Your site must be fast, stable and 99.9% uptime.
For VPS or cloud hosting: If you are getting traffic in millions then you should go for VPS or cloyd Hosting. You must consider these in cloud hosting.
- CPU (more core cpu for processing)
- RAM (higher memory for faster speed)
- Bandwidth (unlimited bandwidth)
- Storage (unlimited storage, SSD would be perfect)
2. CDN: Most of the hostings nowadays provide Cloudflare CDN. It protects your site from fake traffic. And also your site’s speeds will increase.
3. Security: As mentioned above the huge loss was due to security issues. You must buy a hosting with the best security solutions.
4. Price: Price may be considered as a big factor. Buy hosting according to your requirement. If there’s a difference of $10- $20 between a well-known hosting and poor hosting then go for the best one. Spending $10-$20 extra would be worth it for you.
5. Support: Many hosting companies promises to offer 24/7 support. But they actually don’t. So choose the hosting which provides the best support.
6. User-Interface(UI): Buy the hosting which has a clean and user-friendly interface. It is important because you have to use a hosting control panel to integrate CDN, servers, and domains.
Freebies: Hosting provider companies also provide free bonuses such as free domain., free professional emails, free Pro plan CDN, free website migration, and other free packages.
Best Hosting Companies
There are too many companies out in the market which provides all the factors mentioned above but I will tell you the 5 best hostings that are pocket friendly and best in performance.
Hostinger
It is the best hosting company. Within n small time, it gained huge popularity due to better services and fulfilling promises. I’ve been using some of my micro niche blogs with hostinger for the last 3 years and I can say that it is the best hosting company. The most important thing is that it has websites for different countries (most of the countries).
The hosting plan starts from $0.99 per month is good for a beginner. Also, there is affordable cloud hosting plans are available. Hostingers managed WordPress hosting starts from $2.15. It has awesome features such as free domain and free SSL certificate for your domain, 100 email accounts for your domain, and you can create up to 300 hundred websites. The freebies are awesome.
Hostingers provides you 24/7/365 support. It is very important to have because a beginner needs support on every step. The uptime of hosting is 99.99% which is a good thing. You can monitor the uptime of your website using an uptime robot. Hostinger also uses an uptime robot to check their server uptime. Hostinger has its own h-panel, which has a clean UI and easy to understand functions. -I am using hosting for more than 3 years.
Blue Host
Blue host is one of the largest hosting companies. Most of the top bloggers, digital marketing experts, and WordPress officially recommends blue host.
Why WordPress recommends Blue Host?
- It is the fastest and stable web hosting company.
- It has the best security solutions.
- It provides 24/7 support.
- It has an easy interface.
The blue host plan starts from $2.95. And it has a WordPress pro plan for serious bloggers and marketers. It gives you a free domain and SSL certificate. If you buy Blue host’s premium hosting plan then you will get free $200 Ad credit, $100 for google ads, and $100 for bing ads. If you purchase the blue host’s business plan you will get an additional $100 Ad credit, $200 for google ads and $100 for bing ads.
The terms to get this offer is that you have to first run some ad campaigns on either platform from your own. The offer above changes by time. As time goes on this offer might provide you better value or they completely discontinue it.
Green geeks
As by name it refers to environmentally friendly hosting. This means that the server which releases carbon footprints, on which your website is hosted, cleans the carbon by using the latest technologies. It is recommended by top WordPress official experts including Syed Balkhi the founder of WPbeginner. Green geeks use the latest technologies such as:
- SSD hard drives
- Ultra-optimized light speed web server and MariaDB database servers
- PHP 7 (above 7)
- HTTP/2
- Their own custom in-house LSCache technology
- Cloudflare CDN and more…(Cloudflare is one of the best CDN, it increases speed and protects your website.
It has top-notch support services. It has WordPress experts in its support system. It provides free domain and free website migration (all other hostings given above also have this free website migration option).
Site Ground
Site ground is basically known for its security. It is the most secured hosting of all. It not all provides managed hosting for WordPress but also for other CMS such as Joomla, Drupal, and wooCommerce. It is also recommended by many famous people in the field of internet and digital marketing. The founder of Yoast also recommends it.
You can start with a standard plan as a beginner but in the future, if your site gets more traffic then you can easily upgrade you hosting to cloud hosting very easily.
Dream host
It is recommended by WordPress. And it basically a WordPress hosting. It is pocket friendly, fast, and secure hosting. I haven’t used it yet but WordPress recommends it.
Which Hosting Do I Prefer?
I use two hosting companies, Hostinger and Blue host, and happy with their performance, security, and support. My main website uses blue host’s hosting and the other micro niche blogs use hosting’s hosting. I personally recommend going with the blue host if you want to spend $20-$30 extra over Hostinger otherwise Hostinger is best.
