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Are you an artist trying to get the best web hosting for you?
There are a variety of top-rated web hosting providers in 2020. While most of them are good for hosting specified services, you will need a lot more as an artist. You may be thinking of your target market, the expected traffic of your site, the amount of media content that you want to run on your website, not to mention the cost at which you will have to incur for these services.
So which is the best web hosting provider?
The best web hosting for you as an artist should be able to accomplish all your needs and still give you room to grow your business. I have used several web hosting services myself and as an artist myself, I would recommend SiteGround as the best web hosting provider. Many other users have recommended SiteGround most importantly due to its scalability.
Scalability is the most valued feature for you as artist when looking for the best web hosting provider for you. SiteGround hits the fan by offering amazing packages that accommodate novice users and start-ups as well as professional users and artists. For SiteGround, your growth as a brand is very important such that they offer their dedicated server hosting services at very affordable pricing for an artist with large audiences.
“Katherine Xavier,” a professional artist and a SiteGround user comments that, “SiteGround is simply the best. It has optimal bandwidth provision for even instant high website traffic such that it does not limit your audience experience on the website. This is the kind of services that any artist ought to expect when working with SiteGround”
What are the SiteGround Hosting Features for Artists?
In addition, SiteGround even has unlimited bandwidth and disk space provision for its shared hosting packages. This way, you will not be limited to the amount of media content that you can share with your audience on your website.
Better yet, SiteGround boasts of 99.9% uptime records. Of course it is impossible to have 100% uptime as the servers will need routine maintenance just to keep your site running at optimal performance. Even so, SiteGround makes sure that there is next to zero downtime, enabling your site to run seamlessly.
With SiteGround, you also have the latest updates of the Free SSL certificates attached to each of its hosting plans. This means that your site data will always be secure from hackers as well as users with malicious intent. Furthermore, SiteGround offers regular updates and backups just to make sure that your site data is secure and is not lost.
Best Customer Support with SiteGround for Artists…
Finally, SiteGround has also been highly rated for its excellent customer support. SiteGround has a dedicated customer support team that is easily reachable via phone, mail or even live chats. SiteGround customer support has been highly commended for fast response to all its customers.
This ensures you as an artist of great site performance. In case you do not have the technical expertise in site building and hosting, SiteGround customer support will be able to help you with that, enabling you to focus on your artistry and business.
Which Criteria should I use to choose the best hosting?
In order for you to consider what constitutes the best web hosting for you as an artist, you have to consider what factors you want. I have listed the criteria that I used to select the best web hosting providers for artists out there:
- Cost
- Scalability
- Uptime/Downtime
- Site Data Security
- Customer Support
- Site Speed
Foremost, whether you are a startup artist or a professional artist, cost is one the things that you have to think about. You would want to consider a web hosting service that has diverse hosting plans and friendly prices. This makes it easy to choose the best hosting plan for you and at the most ideal pricing.
Further, you should also consider the scalability of your website. As an artist, you will be dealing with a highly volatile audience. Your audience could easily plummet to unprecedented levels thanks to social networking.
Either way, you would want a web hosting service that enables you to accommodate increased site traffic without affecting normal site functioning. As such, you will want to use a web hosting service that is flexible with its service provision, to match your audience needs.
In addition, your platform should always be accessible to your audience whenever they want to access your content. This means a reliable uptime for your website. As an artist, viewers should be able to access your art media content on your website on demand. The best web hosting service for you should have reliable uptime records.
To sweeten the pot, you do not have to worry about the integrity of your data if you are to focus on your content as an artist. This means that the best web hosting platform for you should have the best security protocols to ensure data safety. It should also have a reliable backup service that makes sure that you do not lose your data or any progress made on your site.
As far as the customer support service is concerned, you will obviously need a web hosting provider that has a reliable customer support (Just in case you run into any hosting problems).
Finally, there is one important measure that plays a significant factor if you are looking to connect with your audience as an artist. You need a web hosting provider with fast loading speeds and times. For instance; you might find yourself in need of a live streaming service for your audience. You will need a web hosting provider with fast and stable loading speeds such that your audience will not experience any service delays for the relay of your art content.
And so…
Here is my list of the best web hosting providers for artists
- SiteGround
- BlueHost
- A2hosting
- Cloudways
After reviewing various top rated web hosting providers using the criteria I explained in an earlier section of this article, I found SiteGround, BlueHost, A2hosting and Cloudways to be the best web hosting providers for artists like myself.
I will review the hosting features provided by each of the platforms as well the pros and cons of using each and every one of them to help you decide the right choice for you.
SiteGround Hosting for Artists
SiteGround Hosting Features
| Category | Hosting Features |
| Pricing Tiers: | Has 3 hosting plans: The Startup plan, The GrowBig Plan and the GoGeek Plan at relative pricing of $3.95/mo, $5.95/mo and $11.95/mo respectively |
| Speed: | 555ms |
| Uptime Record: | 99.98% |
| Free Domain: | No free domainsDomains cost $15.95/year |
| Unique Hosting Feature: | Has excellent customer support systems and skilled customer support personnel |
While reviewing SiteGround hosting features, it is the reliable and easily accessible customer support that caught my attention. I reckon that this is the most important part of the web hosting service and especially if you are new to web hosting.
SiteGround is definitely the best web hosting provider for artists as it combines a professional outlook of your platform while allowing you to customize it to your preferences. Further, you will have a reliable, stable, fast and secure hosting service, enabling the seamless running of your website.
SiteGround Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| + Outstanding 24/7 Customer support+ Automatic daily backups+ Free SSL and Cloudflare CDN+ Free web migration+ HTTP/2 enabled servers+ Managed WordPress hosting | Limited storage for shared hostingLimited traffic on shared plansExpensive for advanced features |
When considering the Pros and Cons, SiteGround remains to be the best available web hosting for you as the limitations and expenses are concurrent with the level of traffic on your website.
BlueHost Hosting for Artists
BlueHost Hosting Features
| Category | Hosting Features |
| Pricing Tiers: | Has three major hosting plans: The Basic Plan, The Plus Plan, and The Choice Plus PlanHas a relative pricing of $3.95/mo, $5.95/mo and $5.95+/mo respectively |
| Speed: | 668ms |
| Uptime Record: | 99.99% |
| Free Domain: | Free domains for each of the plans for one year |
| Unique Hosting Feature: | BlueHost boasts of the best WordPress and WooCommerce platforms in the industry |
In addition to the WordPress integration, BlueHost generally offers faster loading speeds to all its users, not to mention reliable uptime records. This makes them reliable to artists for hosting their websites as they incorporate CDN networks that source information much closer to the website client for free.
BlueHost Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| + Officially endorsed by WordPress+ BlueHost is compatible with many platforms+ Has relatively cheap pricing+ Has well setup automatic backups to protect the client data+ Includes a skilled 24/7 customer support service+ BlueHost offers free weebly site builder for you+ BlueHost offers a free SSL certificate to protect your data | BlueHost does not have an SSD optionIt has extremely high renewal fees for their packagesToo many up-selling offers |
While looking at the relative comparisons between the Pros and cons of using BlueHost hosting for your site, BlueHost is a relatively good platform for your hosting needs as an artist. Even so, you will have to engage in high rates for your renewal services. BlueHost however does not allow you to engage effectively with your customer care thus causing restriction of services for your website.
A2hosting for Artists
A2hosting Features
| Category | Hosting Features |
| Pricing Tiers: | A2hosting has relatively three major hosting plans: Lite Plan, Swift Plan and Turbo PlanThese plans have a relative pricing of $3.92/mo, $4.90/mo and $9.31/mo respectively |
| Speed: | 780ms |
| Uptime Record: | 99.99% |
| Free Domain: | A2hosting does not offer free domains |
| Unique Hosting Feature: | A2hosting is the best platform for customized web features for clients with targeted site applications |
To be frank, A2hosting is suited for web designers. Needless to say, it has very potent customization options that enable you to set up your website to suite your interests as an artist. Furthermore, A2hosting is the ideal provider for you if you want to setup a complex art website.
Given its high reputation in high speeds and reliable uptime records, you are almost 100% guaranteed that you will never experience slow performance on your site. To add on, you can scale up your website needs to accommodate higher traffic on your site by upgrading to the Turbo Plan (Has up to 20X faster performance speeds and site functioning).
A2hosting Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| + Advanced customization options+ Reliable uptime records+ Shared SSD storage+ Free SSL certificates+ Free Cloudflare CDN+ Free website migration+ Has both windows and Linux hosting options | There is no free domainIt has a complicated control panelIt is relatively expensive as compared to other top-rated providersHTTP/2 is only available in the Turbo Plan |
It is obvious from the contrast of the pros and cons that A2hosting certainly has the necessary features required for your website hosting as an artist. However, the relative protocol used to facilitate the hosting of your website might not be ideal for a novice user. Established artists with Professional web experience can however benefit a lot from using A2hosting web hosting.
Cloudways Hosting for Artists
Cloudways Hosting Features
I choose to include Cloudways in my list of the best web hosting for artists knowing full well that it is technically not a web hosting platform. Nevertheless, Cloudways is able to manage all your site functions on your behalf.
With Cloudways, you will probably have to host your website on a different web hosting platform offering VPS plans. Once this is done, Cloudways effectively takes control of web hosting management services that are needed to keep your site running seamlessly and at optimal functioning.
Cloudways Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| + Payment is completed in one go+ Responsible for your site security+ Responsible the upkeep of your site+ latest software updates as well as bug fixes+ Faster speeds as well as the use of powerful server tools | Cloudways does not support email so you have to setup emails using a third party email service such as MX RouteYou have to buy the domain from a different registrar and point you’re a records towards your serverStressful when setting up WordPress |
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]