Table of Contents
What is Joomla
Similar to WordPress, Joomla is content management system used to publish content to the web. You can use it create a website without much coding knowledge.
If you are thinking of building a website, you should know that using a web builder such as WordPress or Joomla will save you a lot of time and money. In this article, I will explain how Joomla works and to get started, here are someJoomla usage stats:
Joomla is one of the leading web builders and currently supports 4% of all websites – according to Builtwith.
What is Joomla hosting/Joomla CMS hosting
Joomla is a brainchild of Open Source Matters, Inc. and was developed for web content publishing as a free and open source CMS. Its initial release was in August of 2005 and it has been up and running since then. To show just how effective Joomla has been over the years, they now command such impressive numbers as 2 million+ websites, 110 million+ downloads and over 10,000 extensions and templates. They also provide their services in 76 languages with over half a million lines of code.
Joomla is reputedly the only CMS that has garnered so much success in spite of it being entirely built by volunteers from all corners of the globe. At the moment, Joomia claims a whopping 1500+ volunteers.
You can consider Joomla to be a perfect solution for a variety of website needs. The screenshot below shows just how wide a net Joomla has cast for websites:
If you are an agency that delves in website development for different clients, Joomla might also be suitable for achieving this end. It doesn’t matter whether you are a pro user or a beginner, Joomla caters for all sorts. If you are a beginner, this platform offers a short learning curve that makes sure you don’t stumble or get stuck. And if you are an experienced developer with a need to create add-ons that are more sophisticated, Joomla’s framework makes it super easy to do this. The screenshot below shows what you as a developer can build with the Joomla Framework.
If you are ready to install Joomla all you have to do now is download their latest version. You can find their latest version from the Joomla Downloads Portal and you are ready to go. It’s that simple.
And, if you don’t want to download it and would instead prefer instant results, you can also launch an absolutely free website with complete functionality by clicking on https://launch.joomla.org.
Hosting Joomla on AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has an ever better deal for you. You can get Joomla 3 on the AWS marketplace. The version you get here is a ready-to-run web application that is already preconfigured.
You can get your pricing information, i.e. is the cost for software and infrastructure, by using the tool provided on the AWS marketplace. All you’ll have to do to see your pricing details is select your region and enter details for “Fulfilment Option”.
The current fulfilment option is 64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI). You should note that this AMI is based on Amazon Linux. And, the AWS services required for this are EC2 and EBS. For Joomla on AWS, the default username you can use is “admin” and, “ec2-user” is the default username. You can get the configuration for the full system and a guide to help you get started quickly by using this link https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/Jetware-Joomla/B072R6Q7N3.
You can also click here to view their license agreement for you as an end user.
Joomla cloud hosting
If you are looking for a solution for high traffic and/ high profile website then this platform, Joomla cloud hosting to be precise, has been designed just for you. This platform is the offspring from years of hard work put in by the team that is Joomlatools in perfecting enterprise Joomla hosting. In a nutshell, all Joomla cloud hosting does for you is it helps you pay attention to the production of your unique content while they cover everything else. And with a global infrastructure, this provider ensures your site has better speeds, optimum security and is always on.
Joomla cloud hosting has set itself apart from just being Joomla hosting or being similar to any other basic hosting provider by doing the following:
- Being a provider of service that is fully managed. This means that they cover everything and, as a matter of fact, you don’t get to even see a control panel! Pretty sweet if you ask me.
- Providing you with backups that they configure and monitor. So you don’t have to worry about permanently losing the codebase and databases of your site.
- Making sure that all your code is constantly checked for any threats, performance issues and future-proofing by doing code review for you.
- Providing maintenance by ensuring that your site is up to date, running smoothly and is well patched.
- Implementing mechanisms for caching that are advanced on your site’s very top. This is vital for excellent performance.
- Doing their best to Mitigate DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks for you.
- Providing free automated SSL certificates.
- Optimizing local speed and ensuring your geographical accessibility is better by the usage CloudFlare CDN.
The pricing for hosting on Joomla enterprise cloud hosting starts from a monthly fee of $500 per site.
Joomla Managed Hosting
You may not be in a position to afford a dedicated server and may still have the opinion that shared hosting is for people that are basically asking for hackers since shared hosting mostly tends to be a prime attack vector. Well, here is the good news; Joomla offers managed hosting for the inbetweeners. With dedicated servers sometimes being exorbitantly priced and shared hosting mostly having poorly maintained and outdated sites, the Joomla managed hosting solution might just be the right one for you.
Below, you will find the 6 best Joomla hosting providers that are just perfect for this kind of hosting.
Methodology – How We Evaluated the Best Joomla Hosts
We evaluated a whole truckload of hosting providers, over 1000 to be exact, and selected the 6 below from a criteria based on the following:
- Plans and Pricing
- Uptime
- Customer Support
- Speed
6 Best Joomla Hosting Providers
#1. Siteground: Best for Customer Support
Siteground is our first platform and the overall best in our listing. The best aspects of Siteground are their excellent customer support services and awe-inspiring uptime percentages.
Siteground has a massive influence globally, powering more than 2 million domains. It also has the official recommendation of WordPress and a customer satisfaction rate of 98%. You can see our comprehensive review of SiteGround by using this link.
For Joomla hosting, Siteground has the following tools crafted just for hosting your site:
Plans and Pricing
Siteground has a variety of plans with different prices and an inclusion of special Joomla features starting at $6.99 per month. All the plans on SiteGround have a 30-day money back guarantee.
These pricing plans include:
- Startup
Starts from $6.99 per month. This plan is superb for you as a beginner. It has a special 1-Click Installation tool crafted for Joomla hosting which enables their latest version to launch fast. This plan also includes 1 website, a storage space of 10GB and a monthly visit allowance of 10,000.
- GrowBig
Starts from $9.99 per month. This plan is great for your growing business. Apart from a 1-click installation feature, this plan also includes Joomla SuperCacher that is for dynamic caching (NginX based) and boosting speed. GrowBig also gives you no cap on websites, a storage capacity of 20GB web space, backup on demand and an allowance for 20,000 monthly visits.
- GoGeek
Starts from $14.99 per month. GoGeek is, as Siteground defines it, ‘Crafted for real web geeks’. For Joomla, this plan is equipped with both 1-Click Installation, Joomla SuperCacher and on top of these, an addition of a tool known as Git Pre-Installed. Git-Preinstalled is for the Git Interface.
Uptime
- SiteGround has an impressive uptime of 99.99%.
Customer Support
- 24/7 customer support service from experts that are knowledgeable, extremely quick and super-friendly.
Speed
- 673ms
#2. Bluehost: Best Pricing and Uptime
Bluehost is our second best hosting provider for Joomla and a well-known Joomla supporter. Bluehost is prominent for its pricing and uptime.
This platform currently powers more than 2 million websites worldwide. It has managed this much success by being pocket-friendly and being one of the top platforms that have an official WordPress recommendation.
You can check out our review of Bluehost and decide whether this platform is good for your business using this link.
One of the main features we liked about Bluehost hosting is it has plans that are all optimized for Joomla and, if your Joomla project is somewhat large, they have more than enough resources to ensure you are running smoothly. This platform also contains great affiliate marketing deals. All this is well covered on our website’s review of Bluehost.
Plans and Pricing
Bluehost offers you with the following plans:
- Basic
Starts from $2.95 per month. This is a standard performance plan that includes 1 website, a storage of 50GB SSD and unmetered bandwidth.
- Plus
Starts from $5.45 per month. Plus plan has no cap on websites, storage and bandwidth; they are all unlimited. You also get a free SSL certificate.
- Choice Plus
This is the plan that is highly recommended by Bluehost. It starts from $5.45 per month, a similar price with the lower tier- Plus plan. It has every feature in Plus and an additional CodeGuard Basic for backup of site data and domain privacy & protection.
- Pro
Pro starts from $13.95 per month. It is the only high performance plan. It comes with every feature in Choice Plus and an additional Dedicated IP feature.
Uptime
Bluehost has an uptime guarantee of 99.98%.
Customer Support
You will get a good customer support experience with the support team of Bluehost which is available 24/7. They may, however, be a bit slow when it comes to support over chat but this is something you should expect from a company with such a humongous customer base.
Speed
Bluehost has an average speed of 405ms.
#3. InMotion Hosting: Feature-rich Joomla Host
Would you like a Joomla hosting provider with free SSD and ultra-fast speeds? Well, say hello to our third best choice for Joomla hosting- InMotion Hosting. InMotion has a lot to offer your business. If you wish to see just how great InMotion Hosting is, please do so on our InMotion Hosting review by using this link This platform powers over 300,000 domains and in 2019 alone, they received more than 25,000 compliments from customers who were entirely satisfied with their services.
Other than the Joomla hosting essentials and free SSD, InMotion Hosting also offers you free domain, a 90-day money back guarantee (on Power and Pro plans), free backups for data & tutorials, free domain and seamless Google Apps integration.
Plans and Pricing
InMotion Hosting has the following plans (NB: These plans are billed biennially):
- Launch
Starts from $5.99 per month and is considered great for starters. This plan comes with a storage of 50GB and a 500MB storage for your email. It supports 2 websites and site backup and restore option.
- Power
Starts from $8.99 per month. This is InMotion Hosting top seller and is recommended for clients with high traffic since it comes armed with high power and flexibility. Power comes with a storage of 100GB and a 10GB email storage. You also get site backup and restore.
- Pro
Starts from $14.99 per month. This is the plan that InMotion touts as being the “best value” tier. It comes with a storage capacity of 200GB and 20GB for email storage. It also includes Pro Level Support, a feature not present in the other two tiers.
Uptime
InMotion Hosting has an uptime of 99.9%.
Customer Support
InMotion Hosting avails 24/7 live support. This support is excellent and you can also get free support via Skype. This may easily substantiate their claim of having the best support team in the hosting business; other than SiteGround of course.
Speed
InMotion has an average speed of 172ms. Quite impressive if you ask me.
#4. Cloudways
Cloudways has earned a spot on this listing simply for taking a unique approach towards the provision of Joomla hosting. This service offers managed hosting that is unique since it is built on renowned public cloud platforms such as Google Cloud and StackPath. Below is a screenshot of the platforms that have partnered with Cloudways to provide a solution suitable just for you.
You can view a detailed review of Cloudways on our article.
Cloudways has over 60 data centers worldwide to ensure that you get the best managed cloud hosting possible. These data centers are scattered over 15 countries and 33 cities. So, you can expect an online experience that they believe can’t be rivaled since their service is hell-bent on optimizing freedom, performance and security.
Your Joomla hosting freedom is catered for by:
- Short-term contracts
- Block Storage
- Inclusion of well-known IaaS provider
- A 1-Click launch for apps
- Availability of various PHP versions
Your Joomla site’s performance is catered for by:
- Joomla hosting that is SSD based
- Caches that are built in
- Optimized stack for boosting the speed of your Joomla site
- Enabled HHTP/2 support
- Cloudways CDN
Your Joomla site’s security is guaranteed by:
- Availability of Let’s Encrypt SSL
- Protection via a Dedicated Firewall
- Auto-healing feature
- On-demand and automated backups
- IP Whitelisting for access that is unrestricted over networks and regions
Cloudways also offers you a free migration offer for your Joomla app.
Plans and Pricing
Cloudways plans and pricing are different from the rest since they rely on the charges from each unique Cloudways partner that is available. You should note that all the plans outlined below have fixed features; the only aspect that changes is the pricing as you move from one cloud hosting platform to the next.
For Cloudways on DigitalOcean, you get 4 plans. The first and most popular goes for $42 per month and it comes with such special features as a 4GB RAM and 80GB storage capacity. Second plan goes for $10 per month and includes a 1GB RAM and storage capacity of 25GB. The next plan costs $22 per month and includes a RAM of 2GB and 50GB for storage. The last plan is $80 per month and it comes with a RAM of 8GB and a storage of 160GB.
For Cloudways on Linode, the first and most popular plan will cost you $50 per month. The other plans cost $12/month, $24/month and $90/month respectively.
For Cloudways on Vultr, the most popular plan will cost you $44 per month. The rest will cost you $11/month, $23/month and $84/month respectively.
For Cloudways on AWS, the most popular plan will cost you $86.77 per month. The rest will cost you $36.51/month, $176.26/month and $274.33/month respectively.
For Cloudways on Google Cloud, the most popular plan will cost you $73.62. The other plans will cost you $33.30/month, $138.64/month and $226.05/month respectively.
You can get more detailed info on Cloudways pricing plans by clicking on this link
Uptime
Cloudways has an average uptime of 99.99%.
Customer Support
Cloudways gives you free support online 24/7/365. You also get the option for enhancing your own service with add-ons.
Speed
Cloudways has loading speeds that fall between 400 and 600ms.
#5. HostPapa: Best Joomla Hosting for Small Businesses
HostPapa is one of the greatest hosting solutions available for small businesses out there. This and the fact that HostPapa is also geared towards providing a seamless Joomla hosting experience has earned this platform the fifth position on our listing.
And, to show just how effective this platform has been in Joomla hosting, it has over 100,000 loyal customers. In general however, HostPapa has hosted more than half a million websites worldwide.
We have an in-depth review of HostPapa on our website.
Plans and Pricing
HostPapa offers you the following plans for Joomla hosting:
- Starter
Starts at an estimated regular price starting from $9.21 per month billed triennially. They also have a special offer price of $3.40 per month with a countdown for getting this special price once you access their site. It includes 2 websites and an SSD storage of 100GB.
- Business
Starts at an estimated regular price of $14.97 per month billed triennially with a special one-time discounted price of $3.40 per month. It includes no cap on websites and SSD storage.
- Business Pro
Starts at an estimated regular price of $23.04 per month billed triennially. This plan has a special discounted price of $11.47 per month. It includes everything in Business plus additional features for security and performance enhancement.
Uptime
HostPapa has an uptime guarantee of 99.9%.
Customer Support
HostPapa offers you 24/7/365 tech support via email, live chat and phone.
Speed
From tests conducted by various HostPapa users, the platform has an average speed of 600ms.
#6. A2Hosting: Fast and Feature-rich Joomla Host
A2 Hosting takes the last position on our listing due to a number of reasons that are about to become clear to you. This platform promises you the best Joomla solution but compared to the other platforms listen above, this is far from the truth. Their services aren’t bad though; you will have the opportunity to utilize their fast speeds and finely-tuned services to get quite a satisfactory Joomla hosting experience.
This link will take you our comprehensive review of A2 Hosting
Plans and Pricing
A2 Hosting has the following plans for Joomla hosting:
- Startup
Starts from $2.99 per month and includes 1 website and a storage capacity of 100GB SSD.
- Drive
Starts from $4.99 per month. It includes unlimited websites and SSD storage and 2X more resources.
- Turbo Boost
Starts from $9.99 per month. This is A2 Hosting most popular plan. It comes with more power and is equipped with turbo servers plus all the features in Drive.
- Turbo Max
This is the last plan that has the fastest services yet. It starts at $14.99 per month.
Uptime
- A2 Hosting has a 99.9% uptime commitment.
Customer Support
A2 Hosting offers you their support team called the Guru Crew 24/7/365.
Speed
A2 Hosting speed average is 173 ms.
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]