What is the best web hosting in 2021 for bloggers? Most bloggers would probably agree with me that at a bare minimum, to get a blog up and running you need web hosting, a domain name, and an email. When it comes to choosing the best web hosting company for you, there are a lot of great ones to choose from. In this list of web hosting companies I’m going to compare and review 8 of the best web hosting companies for 2021. I was very excited when doing this list since I have worked in data center as a data center analyst.
Most of the companies I’m going to review offer a wide range of web hosting solutions. Solutions include shared hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, etc… If you’re a newbie you may not have any idea what any of those terms are.
Which Web Hosting Should You Pick?
That said, if you’re looking for a quick answer to the question, “which type of web hosting should I pick?”, then here is my answer.
The short answer is, go with managed WordPress hosting. As a blogger, WordPress is the easiest option to get started. When you go with a managed WordPress hosting plan, you’re site is going to run faster than it would compared to being on a shared hosting plan. This can make a big difference in your search engine rankings. Also, the staff supporting this service is specialized in WordPress. So all the geeky behind-the-scenes things they do are optimized for WordPress.
One of the biggest criteria I look for in a web hosting company is customer service. You want a company that is going to be there to answer all the questions you’re going to have. If you’re a new (which I assume you are), trust me, you’re going to have a lot of them.
For the most part I’m going to try to stay vendor-neutral. In other words, I’m going to give you the facts about each web hosting company. I also plan on letting you know what makes each one stand out from the rest. Lastly, although the companies are in a numbered order that does not indicate that the first company listed is the best or that the last one listed is the worst. I do not have an “editor’s choice.” I believe all these companies are great companies for anyone just getting into blogging.
Alright then! Let’s jump into our top web hosting companies.
Hostgator – Low Cost and Reliable 99.9% Guaranteed Uptime
| Price | $7.95/month |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Gurantee | 45 Days |
| Year Company Founded | 2002 |
| Company Location | Austin, TX |
Personally, Hostgator is the company I’ve been using ever since I have been creating websites. So I can speak, at a personal level, about my experience with Hostgator. I’ve been using them for many years. I’ll start by saying that their customer service has always been great. If I ever have a question or an issue they are always able to help me. Most importantly, they answer the question or resolve my issue right away. Sometimes I’m on hold a little longer than I’d like to be. The longest I’ve ever waited is 10 minutes. But at the end of the day, they help me out in a timely fashion. To me, this is very important. It’s very important for the novice just getting into web design/development. I also like that I can call and speak to an actual person on the phone.
As far as website speed, my sites run very quickly.
Why Choose Managed WordPress Hosting with Hostgator?
- WordPress is pre-installed. No worries about installing it yourself.
- Advanced Security – They handle malware protection, site backups, and more.
- Very user friendly control panel that puts you in control. Scale your resources, manage accounts, and more.
- Free site migration. On another hosting platform? They will help you migrate over.
- Free domain. You must sign up for a plan. But this saves you some money. I usually pay around $18 for a domain name. You’ll get this for free.
- Free email – You’ll be able to set up your email account with your domain name that you choose. This adds a nice professional touch.
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
Hostgator Hosting Options
| Shared Hosting | Yes |
| Cloud Hosting | Yes |
| WordPress Hosting | Yes |
| Reseller Hosting | Yes |
| VPS Hosting | Yes |
| Dedicated Server Hosting | Yes |
2. GreenGeeks Web Hosting – Powered by 300% Clean Renewable Energy
| Price | $3.96/month |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Gurantee | 30 Days |
| Year Company Founded | 10 years in business |
| Company Location | Agoura Hills, CA |
- Unlimited SSD Web Space and Data Transfer
- 99.9% Service Uptime
- Free SSL encryption for your website.
- Free CloudFlare CDN Integration
Features that make Bluehost Web Hosting stand out from the rest
- Eco-friendly web hosting
- 24/7/365 Excellent In-house Technical Support via phone, chat, ticket.
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- Website backed up, automatically, every 24 hours.
- SSD Disk Space and Bandwidth (Plus plan and above)
4. A2Hosting – Very Fast and Reliable Shared Hosting
| Price | $3.92/month |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Gurantee | Anytime |
| Year Company Founded | 2003 |
| Company Location | Ann Arbor, MI |
From what I have read this company offers great uptime and the sites they host run very fast. Those are two major deciding factors anyone looking for quality web hosting should seek. Again, their shared hosting is fast! They claim up to 20X faster. One thing to remember about shared hosting is that it can be slow depending on who you are sharing the servers with. HostingFacts did a study proving that A2Hosting is probably the fastest in the industry when it comes to shared hosting. Check out the facts. This wasn’t a one-off test either. They proved that A2Hosting’s shared hosting consistently performed the fastest over a 12 month period.
The faster your page loads the more-likely somebody is to stay on your website. Every second and even every half second counts when it comes to page load time. This makes A2Webhosting a great decision for anyone looking for top quality hosting.
As I mentioned, they do claim to be up to 20x faster. From my understanding their servers use solid state drives (SSDs). This could be a major reason why they are faster. A SSD compared to a hard disk drive (HDD) is up to 30x faster. So this improves the server’s speed by up to 30x. I’m actually thinking of moving my websites over to this hosting provider and going with the Turbo package.
Here’s a study that shows just how important it truly is that your site load as quickly as possible. Every second counts!
From Visually.
They also have great uptime. They guarantee 99.9% uptime.
I also love that you can call or chat with customer support which is available 24/7/365.
Features that make A2Hosting Web Hosting stand out from the rest
- Screaming fast page load times
- Amazing uptime
- 24/7 support – Chat, call, or email.
- Solid reputation. Lots of great reviews
- Excellent selection of developer tools
A2Hosting Hosting Options
| Shared Hosting | Yes |
| Cloud Hosting | Yes |
| WordPress Hosting | Yes |
| Reseller Hosting | Yes |
| VPS Hosting | Yes |
| Dedicated Server Hosting | Yes |
3. 1&1 IONOS – Fast and Reliable Web Hosting for $1/Month
| Price | $1.00/month for the first year. |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Guarantee | 30 Days |
| Year Company Founded | 1988 |
| Company Location | Germany |
1&1 IONOS is the largest hosting company in Europe. They host more than 12 million domains in their own regional data centers. They have been around for a long time (since 1988). So they have a great track record. They are an excellent choice for small to medium sized businesses. This includes bloggers. They also offer 24/7/365 customer care.
They offer a wide range or products. The one that you will probably be most interested in will be the Managed WordPress Hosting plan that is, as I’m writing this, $1/month for the first year. Unlike common shared hosting plans where you can host WordPress, this platform is made, specifically, to ensure your WordPress site runs as smoothly as possible. They account for security, speed, and reliability.
Features that make eHost Web Hosting stand out from the rest
- 2GB guaranteed RAM and 360 Gbits/s fiber connectivity (this is fast)
- Webspace and databases stored on SSD technology (helps pages load faster)
6. Siteground Hosting – Excellent Customer Support and Fast Load Times
| Price | $3.95/month |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Gurantee | 30-day |
| Year Company Founded | 2004 |
| Company Location | Alexandria, VA |
Siteground is one of the few hosting providers to offer SSDs as part of their shared hosting plan. This helps to make your site run much quicker.
They also offer Cloudflare CDN (Content Delivery Network) as part of their basic hosting package. This helps, tremendously, with website speed by caching website content. With a CDN your website content is duplicated to other data centers around the world. The CDN will then deliver your content to your viewers from the data center that is closest to them. Ultimately, this is accomplished to make website load times even faster (especially if you’re streaming data).
They offer a reseller program. Now, from what I have read, Their reseller program operates differently from any other companies I’ve seen.
Another huge plus about Siteground is that they offer daily backups.
Finally, from what I have read on their website they treat their employees very well. They won best employer of the year twice in a row in their country of Bulgaria. I know that has nothing to do with web hosting. But a happy staff contributes greatly to a happy end-product.
Features that make Siteground Web Hosting stand out from the rest
- SSD Storage (20x faster)
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Outstanding speed
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 24/7 Support via Ticket, Chat, or Phone.
Siteground Hosting Options
| Shared Hosting | Yes |
| Cloud Hosting | Yes |
| WordPress Hosting | Yes |
| Reseller Hosting | Yes |
| VPS Hosting | Yes (Cloud VPS) |
| Dedicated Server Hosting | Yes |
5. InMotion Hosting – Excellent Customer Support and Fast Load Times
| Price | $2.95/month |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Gurantee | 90-day |
| Year Company Founded | 2001 |
| Company Location | Los Angeles, CA |
This is the other company that I’m thinking of moving my websites over to. I’m highly impressed with the features they offer and the reputation they have. Of the many reviews I’ve read, excellence in customer service stands out to me. Looking further into this, I noticed on their website that their support associates are not allowed to support their clients until they have at least 160 hours of training. I can appreciate that.
On their shared hosting plans, the servers that run the shared hosting utilize SSDs. As I’ve mentioned before, this makes the servers run much quicker which helps, immensely, with speeding up your website. Put differently, quicker load times.
Another great feature that helps set them apart from the rest is that they offer free automated tape backups. This is great because, from a disaster recovery point-of-view, the question isn’t if you lose your data. It’s when you lose your data. When you lose your data, are you going to be able to recover it? So resting assured that they are backing it up and can restore it for you in time of need is a huge plus.
Also, they will grow with you as they offer more than just shared hosting. They also offer VPS, dedicated, and reseller hosting. On top of that, they even offer managed hosting for sites with a lot of traffic.
Last thing I’ll say about InMotion is that they are optimized for WordPress. This means your WordPress site should run very smoothly.
Features that make InMotion Web Hosting stand out from the rest
- Excellence in customer support
- 24/7 phone, chat, email support.
- Tape backups and SSDs for quicker load times.
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Easy Google Apps Integration
InMotion Hosting Options
| Shared Hosting | Yes |
| Cloud Hosting | Yes |
| WordPress Hosting | Yes |
| Reseller Hosting | Yes |
| VPS Hosting | Yes |
| Dedicated Server Hosting | Yes |
7. Dreamhost – Powering Over 1,500,000 Web Sites
| Price | $7.95/month |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Gurantee | 97-day |
| Year Company Founded | 1997 |
| Company Location | Brea, CA |
Dreamhost has been around for a long time (since 1997). They power over 1,500,000 web sites. Compared to their competition they appear to be on the pricier side. That said, they just offer one shared hosting plan and a great plan it is. The servers run SSDs (which means your site runs faster). On top of that, you have the ability to utilize Cloudfire CDN to really speed things up.
The only potential con that I can see with them is that they don’t use cpanel. Most other web hosting companies tend to use cpanel. Instead, they have their own admin panel. Now I don’t know, for sure, if that’s a con. Personally, I’m use to cpanel and cpanel seems to be the standard that most web hosting companies use.
Features that make Dreamhost Web Hosting stand out from the rest
- SSD Storage (20x faster)
- Cloudflare CDN
- Powering over 1,500,000 web sites
- Unmetered disk space and bandwidth
- 24/7 Support
Dreamhost Hosting Options
| Shared Hosting | Yes |
| Cloud Hosting | Yes |
| WordPress Hosting | Yes |
| Reseller Hosting | Yes |
| VPS Hosting | Yes |
| Dedicated Server Hosting | Yes |
8. StartLogic – Everything You Need to Grow Your Business Online
Easy WordPress Installation with StartLogic
| Price | $2.75/month |
| Domain Name | Included |
| Money Back Gurantee | 30-day |
For the price, this web hosting company can’t be beat. Unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, and free, beautifully designed drag-and-drop editor are just some of the great features SiteLogic offers. The editor also offers many very nice, professional-looking templates that can easily compete with companies such as Wix.
Features that make Dreamhost Web Hosting stand out from the rest
- Easy-to-use drag-and-drop site editor
- Visitor statistics
- Unmetered disk space and bandwidth
- 24/7 Support
