The continual expansion of the internet has created a huge market for website hosting services. With nearly every business running a website today, and millions of bloggers creating their own websites, hosting companies are constantly jockeying to capture your business in this multi-billion dollar a year market.
If you are just starting a website, chances are you were flooded with special offers from large hosting companies like GoDaddy and HostGator. These guys have a huge budget to bombard you with ads until you give in and signup. Before you know it, you are in a multi-year contract and have been upsold on so many unnecessary features that you are paying $30+ a month for services you don’t need… so much for that $1/year hosting offer you clicked on.
Fortunately, there are new hosting providers that have entered the market to save you from forking out piles of cash every month for simple hosting. These lesser known hosting providers have started to gain market share and out maneuver the big hosting companies.
I want to focus on two new hosting providers that you may not have heard of before, SiteGround and A2 Hosting. Both these hosting providers give you features that you would otherwise be upsold on by GoDaddy.
For example, an SSL certificate through GoDaddy will run you an additional $5.99/month, a major amount when you consider the standard hosting plan is less than $4/month. You are paying more for a certificate than your hosting costs you. Compare this to SiteGround who provides free SSL certificate with every hosting plan.
SiteGround Website Hosting
Build around the latest technology for speed and specializing in unique security options, Siteground has built a new hosting company from their passion about web hosting. The super clean website is easy to navigate and doesn’t try to upsell you at every turn. With just a couple clicks you can be signed up for WordPress hosting and on your way to building a website. Their instant chat is a huge help when you need a question answered quickly.
By using the latest SSD hardware for their hosting platform, SiteGround is able to provide lighting fast speeds and a 99.9999% uptime. These guys love everything about web hosting and it shows in the quality of product they put out to customers. Click here for more information on Siteground Hosting for WordPress
A2 Hosting Review
These guys are one of the fastest growing and top ranked website hosting providers. Some users have seen an increase of up to 20x faster website hosting over their previous hosting provider. Their hosting plans come with all the ‘bells & whistles’ built in.
Things like free SSL certificates and SSDs are just some of the great features built into your hosting plan. A2 Hosting is so confident that you will be happy with your new hosting plan that they offer a money back guarantee.
A final bonus with A2 Hosting is the blog on their website. This is a great source for things like maintenance on WordPress and tips on creating a beautiful restaurant website. To make building your website even easier, you will get access of hundreds of free themes when you sign up for WordPress hosting through A2 hosting.
Click here for more information on A2 Optimized WordPress Hosting
Must Have Features for Web Hosting
It is easy to get lost in the blur of what each hosting plan can do for you. The amount of technical terms getting tossed around can make your head spin. Most of the features that you will read are irrelevant until your website gets hundreds of thousands unique visitors a month.
For most of us out there looking to just get started, the main issue is price and easy set up. If you are planning to build a WordPress website, be sure to select the WordPress hosting option. This makes it dramatically easier to set up and provides you with better service.
If you are one of the hard-working online elites with 100k+ traffic a month, consider cloud hosting which is faster, more scalable, and fully managed. These plans will run you around $80/month and provide complete IT management. There are even features like auto-scale that automatically scale up when traffic spikes occur without having to reboot.
Lastly, when switching or starting web hosting service, be sure to use a spreadsheet to keep track of your login credentials. As your website grows the number of apps and services will continue to increase
and it is very easy to lose track of what website goes with that hosting account or what email/pw combo goes where.