Shared hosting is cheap, easy to set up, and can work for just about any personal or modestly-sized website.
Some of the most popular hosting providers that offer shared hosting are Bluehost, HostGator, Hostinger, DreamHost, SiteGround, GoDaddy, InMotion, A2 Hosting, GreenGeeks and iPage.
Which ones have you tried and which one did you like the most?
Top comments (32)
I've lost count and track of the providers I have used over the years. At the moment my blog is hosted with Ghost, but I pay monthly so the cost higher than I could get hosting it myself.
I've previously used DigitalOcean, and am looking to move back to them again. Simply so I can have a playground to try new things quickly and easily. Spin up a quick droplet for an hour or so to check and test something and then destroy it, only being billed for usage to keep costs low. Ideal!
When I had a few projects in the past I used EasySpace and had a dedicated server. Their pre-built ones can be incredibly cheap because they are on slightly older hardware. My main issue with them is the endless amount of emails for renewals when you've opted out of auto-renewal, and told them you don't want the domain anymore. That and an inability to support special characters in email address passwords!
I tried moving to 1&1 a few years ago, but they had issues transferring in domains (for a hosting company, that's quite a major issue). Tried Fasthosts, but that was when I wanted to build a private cloud before they were common - they didn't support it (they do now for some products).
When I was first starting my career, I had several sites hosted with Unlimited Web Hosting because it was cheap and came with a domain name.
I've long since come to realise that if I want hosting, I want (demand) SSH access and full control over the server. I hate Plesk and cPanel - they just cause problems. I'll always pick something I have full control over, even for quick tests.
What service do you use to handle emails do you use g suite?
I've yet to find a good email host which doesn't charge the earth. Email hosting is often one of the reasons I look to change hosts.
I just use whatever email hosting is available with whoever manages my domain renewals
I've used Zoho for small projects where I don't want to shell out for G Suite.
Too many. They all suck. If you're doing something frontend-only, just use Netlify, GitHub or GitLab pages, Firebase hosting, or any number of other free options. If you're doing something with a backend, look into Vercel, Heroku, AWS/Firebase/etc. FaaS and DBaaS, or just a simple DigitalOcean droplet ($5/mo and 1GB RAM gets you further than a lot of people think). Any of these options are better than shared hosting, and often free. If you go the DigitalOcean route and absolutely must have a control panel (I wouldn't recommend it, but it's less of a security risk than screwing with SSH/FTP/etc. if you don't know what you're doing), there are options like Webmin and others whose names I can't recall ATM.
For what it's worth, Vercel is also great at front end only deployments (a la Netlify) as well.
How do they use gsuite with the mail service?
DNS records are all you need. MX for the mail servers, plus hopefully you're setting up SPF/DKIM records to verify authenticity of mails sent from your domain. You can even set up CNAME records to point subdomains to the GMail, Calendar, etc. web GUIs.
Again, I'm recommending tinykvm.com. I host my static site generaror mkws.sh on openbsd.amsterdam. If you don't mind not having a custom domain name, go with tilde.institute. adi.tilde.institute is my personal website I host there.
I have used Liquid Web since about 2010, and they have been a fantastic and reliable host for me. Their customer service has always been phenomenal and most downtime related issues have really been out of my own inexperience rather than their service. Still using them today and happy to continue to use them long into the future at this point.
I use Dreamhoster at the moment and I like it. I've also used siteground and I like that as well. I've worked on a friend's website and they use ionos and there have been no issues, however their particular package has less features and costs more than some alternatives.
I agree with the comments about using providers like Netlify, Heroku and the others if possible, but they are more work to set up and manage. It depends on what exactly you want, but for example, if you want something like a simple WordPress site, I would put it on Dreamhoster / Siteground and be done with it.
If your site is one that can run on Netlify, and it takes more effort to setup and manage than a VPS, then something is wrong.
They are not on your list, yet I used 1and1 aka Ionos, which was great when I hosted a WordPress Multisite installation, the server was very performant and their customer service was excellent.
Their pricing model was okay for my use case at the time. I would recommend them if you are looking to host a low demand web consultancy with minimal hosting costs. I managed 5 websites and they run well.
They have a tier structure, which allowed my service to scale up if my WordPress instance received addition demand with in my budget. Before making use of the WordPress multisite feature I was running all 5 client websites on their own app instance, and the server could handle it all.
I believe I was using the Level 3 tier package that supported up to 9GB of RAM and the Storage was unlimited yet their was a 200k file limit, so in the end the WordPress multisite feature helped to reduce my use from 180k to 90k.
I've been with them for nearly 15 years. I've only ever had a few hiccups. That said, I'm probably going to move to Digital Ocean soon because I need more control. The only downside is moving the email hosting, too.
Handling emails is one massive undertaking, I tried many methods and finally gave up. The issue is mainly to do with security and setting up multiple domains and users on one server.
I tried doing it on my own before watching a video from Luke Smith.
youtube.com/watch?v=9zP7qooM4pY
I used to self-host my email on a Fedora server in my basement. I loved the control I had, but I realized I spent a lot of time worrying about it instead of my business. I was always communicating with other hosts to whitelist my server or always worrying about the server crashing when I was on vacation.
Perhaps that would be a good use of a Digital Ocean droplet. ๐ค
Shared hosting? Which year is this? Are we back in 2003?
It's actually still a very valuable use case to consider, given that WordPress has features that can take advantage of this type of environment. Still very cheap way for most business to get started with managed hosting and great support. Shared Hosting still has a Great Time to Production factor.
๐But I get you, Server Less is King now
WordPress? What year is this? :p
While I can agree that it has good value, I can't see how it could be superior to a 5$/month VPS, where you are root and other users don't impede on your resources.
I guess the 28plus percent of the internet is running behind. The superiority of root is for those that understand it's usage and meaning - so what am trying to say is that a large number of small business customers may not have the knowhow of using root nor do they require it for their business to run a simple shopping cart or magazine. All they need is click, drag & drop then done - money.
I do enjoy using Heroku, Vultr and Firebase on personal projects.
I think we can agree on that, yes :)
How do they use gsuite with the mail service?
I have used Bluehost, HostGator, and a short stint with FastComet before landing on A2hosting. Don't use FastComet. A WordPress plugin that I installed from their marketplace included a cryptocurrency mining hijacking script and FastComet locked my account. When I asked for help to remove it, they said I had to pay for premium support and kept locking me out of my account.
I'm using a reseller account on A2hosting because I build a lot of small personal and business/organization websites. Lots of people are flocking to containers or serverless, but it's hard to beat $3 a month for shared hosting. Granted, the sites I build don't need to handle a ton of traffic.
A2hosting supports NodeJS, Python, and Ruby and gives you access to a full shell. I've had no complaints with them so far. (Actually, there is one issue: seems like they store your master password in plaintext because they display it to you on the dashboard)
I think also that A2 Hosting is a great option, as you say support more than LAMP stack and their cost, speed and service is good. It's the most friendly for developers shared hosting.
Webfaction. It's affordable, fast, with good support, and offers a lot of freedom to a developer, similar (though not equal) to that of a VPS. It has been purchased by GoDaddy, though, which was a bit worrying. Despite that, so far I had no negative experience.
In general, though, my main sites are hosted on DigitalOcean droplets.
I had used 3 past providers before migrated to Asphostportal. I'm .Net developer and I always use Windows hosting. Based on my experience, Godaddy is the worst Internet company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with! Their control panel is painfully awkward to navigate, their support will leave you running around in circles for hours and if you want to renew a domain name, they try and force you to use "domain protection" which should be free anyway but costs $30-40 per year on top of the renewal.
I also had a windows server with A2, I hosted multiple sites when they got hacked and it ended up being down for over a month with no updates at all besides 'we are working on the issues', no estimated times offered or anything. When the servers returned they were months out of date so the 'daily backups' that you pay for don't exist either.
So far, Asphostportal is the most reliable .net hosting providers. My clients also happy with them. I will stay longer with them.
I was with AddAction for some 13 years. Then I wanted to redesign my site using ASP.NET Core and other stuff and switched to SmarterASP.NET. They were OK for a while, they got caught by ransomware last November (I was back online in 4-5 days) and it was OK but shaky. A few months ago I switched to InterServer (Linux service; I haven't finished my redesign yet so it's still LAMP) and so far, so good.
Edit: I was with various hosts for nearly 5 years before AddAction, but can't remember what they were. AddAction was really good and the only reason I left was that redesign thing.
I use Jelastic if I need server-side code. You can find some really good deals, and I find the pricing really easy to understand.
I used to use HostGator many years ago before I went serverless. I doubt I could ever go back to those dark days of using cPanel with FTP uploads.