The Best Web Hosting Providers for 2021

In 2021, there are over 2.2 billion websites with about 400 million being active. For 400 million sites, you can imagine that there are several web hosting providers and this post will give you an insight on how to pick a host and we highlight our overall recommendations.

Most of our top picks on this list allow you to built a website or blog with no coding at all. Most basic hosting plans come with several web builders that you can install with just one click.

Do you need a website in 2021?

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), many business owners that have traditionally operated offline rushed to create an online presence by building websites.

NY Times Business estimated that a 6% increase in websites built between April and June 2021 could be explained by the unprecedented need to avoid physical meetings and the need to communicate with customers online. Many businesses specifically created websites to tap on the growing online customers. The chart below shows the growing e-commerce market:

While your may be looking to create an online retail website, this guide comprehensively covers all you need to know to pick the best-perfoming website host.

Shared Hosting vs Other Plans

If you are creating a website for an organization, small business, personal blog, church website, news site or any other website similar to these, I highly recommend going for Shared Hosting plans being offered by any of the below recommended hosts.

Why Shared Hosting?

For most websites, you do not need dedicated hosting, VPS or cloud hosting plans unless you have 1 million + in traffic per month. If you do not expect to have 1 million + page views per month within the next 12 months, I recommend using a Shared Hosting plan. Shared hosting allows multiple websites to utilize a single server and if you expect 30,000 visits per month (like most websites), you can share the server resources with other websites. By opting to use a shared hosting plan, you save at least $100 per year.

If you are planning to lauch a website that meet specific needs, check out these other guides:

• Best web hosting provides for photographers
• Best web hosting for video streaming
• Best web hosting for large traffic sites
• Best web hosting for a dropshipping business
• Best web hosting for WordPress
• Best web hosting for Google Ads.

6 Web Hosting Ranking Factors We Used

Over 6 experts have shared their insight and overall, we’ve narrowed down the ranking factors to make it easy for us to give our readers an objective ranking. Here are the factors:

1. Hosting servers: We prefer SSD servers than older HHD servers
2. SSL (Free vs paid SSL hosting): We prefer hosting providers that offer free SSL
3. Bandwidth and Storage: We prefer hosting providers that offer unlimited bandwidth without throttling
4. Add-on services such as emails
5. Customer support: We prefer hosting providers that offer 24/7 chat and phone support
6. Pricing: Be keen on the first-year discounted pricing vs the renewal fees after the first year.

Best Web Hosting: Bluehost

After comparing more than 20 datasets for each of the hosting providers in this list, we settled on Bluehost as the overall best web hosting provider in 2021.

It scored very well in each of the 6 ranking factors above. Bluehost uses the modern SSD hosting, free SSL, free domain in the first year, unlimited bandwidth, free email, award-winning customer support, and very inexpensive pricing. We have reviewed Bluehost separately here and we also have more details below.

9 Best Web Hosting Providers in 2021

Aside from Bluehost that emerged top, below is our list of all the top hosting providers:

1. Bluehost
2. HostGator
3. SiteGround
4. DreamHost
5. InMotion Hosting
6. GoDaddy
7. A2Hosting
8. GreenGeeks
9. iPage

Reviews of the best Web Hosting:

#1. Bluehost: Overall best in terms of Cost and Convenience

As briefly mentioned above, Bluehost is our overall best web hosting provider suitable for almost everyone looking to create a site easily in 2021. Bluehost provides several free features such as unlimited emails, free domain for the first year, free SSL, and superior customer support that’s available 24/7. In terms of performance, Bluehost has some of the highest uptime guarantee stats and you can rely on their support to assist within minutes if you experience an outage.

This company was launched in 1996 and is owned by Endurance International Group (EIG). They are an all-encompassing platform tailor-made for WordPress, powering over 2 million websites. They have a rock-solid reputation, reasonable pricing plans, and impressive features to suit your business needs. The fact that they have a wide market base is proof of their reliability and dependability in the web hosting market. They offer; shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated hosting, Cloud hosting, and eCommerce hosting.

Features

• Unlimited disk storage
• Unlimited domain hosting
• Free drag and drop site builder (new)
• A free domain name for one year
• Support international domain names
• POP3/ POP3 secure email support
• IMAP/ Secure IMAP email support
• 3 different webmail solutions
• Add-ons domains
• 50 GB of disk space for a WordPress website
• cPanel account control panel
• Forwarding email accounts and unlimited emails
• Subdomains
• MySQL database
• Spam assassin protection

Pricing

Pros

• Uptime of 99.9% -for Cloud hosting plans, dedicated servers, even shared hosting plans
• Powerful security measures; such as SiteLock, daily scans to protect against viruses and malware, free SSL certificate and daily backups. They also outsource their security protection to Cloudflare
• High-Speed servers in comparison to other web hosting providers
• Free SSL certificates
• Variety of tutorials and walkthroughs which are beginner-friendly to help you set up your web hosting process easily
• 24/7/365 customer support via phone, emails, ticketing, and live chats
• 30-Day money-back guarantee with no hidden terms.
• Excellent track record going by customer reviews for WordPress
• Offer a wide range of plans to meet your business needs

Cons

• Hike in renewal prices after offering cheap introductory prices
• Expensive upgrades and add-on features
• Site transfer is not free unlike in other hosting companies

#2. SiteGround: Best for speed and growth

SiteGround is our second best web hosting provider in 2021, coming behind Bluehost. Siteground is not owned by a big corporation but has been known for its superior-performance SSD servers that are fast and reliable. If you want a fast loading site, Siteground is our top recommendation. This company was founded in 2004 and currently supports more than 1.8 million websites globally.

It offers a wide range of hosting plans such as; Shared hosting, Cloud hosting, Email hosting, Domain registration, and WooCommerce hosting. It prides itself on its dedicated servers and has In addition, advanced features for developers, like free SSH and SFTP access, FTP accounts, and a pre-installed Git.

Features

• Easy installation and use
• Cache system (in-house)
• Automatic plugin update
• Use of staging area with their GrowBig or GoGeek plan (for high customization without editing the source code)
• Free SSL certificate and firewall
• Free CDN
• Automated daily backups
• 1-Click WordPress setup
• Unlimited number of email accounts
• Site building tools available e.g. Joomla, Magneto and WordPress

Pricing

Pros

• Expert customer support available 24/7 on phone, chat rooms and tickets
• Free SSL certification
• Full protection from DDoS attacks
• Free sitebuilders tools for all their plans
• Free CDN available which helps your website load faster
• Free custom-built WordPress starter and migrator plugins for all their plans

Cons

• They do not offer free site transfers for their lowest plan
• Do not offer any free domain name unlike other hosting companies
• Their features and plans are more suitable for larger and more established developers and businesses.
• Their prices are higher in comparison.

#3. DreamHost

Dreahmost is our third best web hosting provider available in the market in 2021. Similar to Siteground, Dreamhost uses super-fast SSD for its storage, provides free SSL, and uses a custom cPanel.

DreamHost is a hosting company that manages over 1.5 million sites worldwide and is one of the hosting providers recommended by WordPress.org. Similar to Bluehost and Siteground, Dreamhost has a 1-click WordPress install. Their upgraded hardware in VPS Basic provides increased speed, scalability, and performance. In addition, they have multiple caching layers, auto-scaled memory and isolated servers thereby increasing speed even further. DreamHost gives every customer on their DreamPress platform, a built-in server caching and static IP; these servers are ultra-quick to respond to web requests as a proxy with the Apache and PHP WordPress stack.

Features

• Pre-installed sites with Free SSL certificates and firewall for WordPress
• 1-Click App Installer
• Easy to use Custom Control Panel
• Expert customer support available 24/7
• 100% guaranteed uptime
• Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates
• Automated Backups

Pricing

DreamHost’s pricing is as low as $2.95 per month and competes with A2 Hosting and Bluehost with super cheap shared hosting plans.

Pros

Free SSL certificates

24/7 customer support

Free domain

Cons

#4. InMotion Hosting

InMotion is our fourt-best web hosting provider you can pick in 2021. I started using InMotion to host 2 recent client websites and I like it most because of its automatic back-ups that are free and reliable fast SSD servers that enables fast website loading.

InMotion is a web hosting provider that is trustworthy, it has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and is 15-year CNET-certified. They offer a wide range of hosting services such as; Shared, Dedicated, Reseller, and Virtual private server (VPS) hosting. They are fast and reliable with secure servers, hacking protections, custom firewalls, and DDoS protection. They are best known for their managed security, managed updates, malware protection, and automatic backups.

Features

• Free SSL certificates
• Free website migration
• Unlimited email accounts
• Strong security features e.g. firewalls and DDoS protection
• Automatic updates
• Fast servers
• Free SSD storage on the Cloud Linux platform with NGINX, and PHP 7
• Great customer support 24/7
• 90-day money-back guarantee

Pricing

Pros

• Relatively affordable prices for WordPress hosting services
• Fast server speed (especially for shared hosting in comparison to other shared hosting providers)
• An unmatched 90-day money-back guarantee

#5. GoDaddy

GoDaddy came fifth on this list of 2021 best web hosting providers.

GoDaddy is a host that provides web hosting solutions for Windows and Linux users, and then assigns sites a unique DNS which allows users to find you online. They have very impressive customer service; they take care of software updates, setups and security patches, leaving your website running optimally.

They offer a wide range of hosting services such as; web hosting, business hosting, reseller hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated server hosting.

Features

• 24/7 security monitoring and DDoS protection
• 1-Click install of 125+ free applications (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.)
• Tutorial videos and interactive walkthroughs to help beginners through Webhosting
• 99.9% guaranteed uptime
• SSD storage
• Award-winning customer support available 24/7 via phone, email, or chat
• Free domain with an annual plan
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Odin Plesk
• Blazing fast dedicated servers
• A window control panel that allows you to manage servers, applications, and users

Pricing

Pros

• Great customer support
• 24/7 security monitoring and DDoS protection
• Flexible, easy-to-use control panel
• Free 1 GB of database storage (My SQL Linux) for all plans

Cons

• Its features might not be sufficient for large companies with significant security requirements

#6. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting made it to this list, coming 6th behind Bluehost, Siteground and InMotion Hosting among others. Similar to Bluehost, A2 Hosting has some of the most inexpensive hosting plans and a host of free features such as free SSL, free site migration, free back-ups and free email addresses.

A2 was launched in 2001. They are rated among the fastest web hosts. They use turbo servers that give users a free 20X page load time. They work for both Linux and windows and offer a wide range of SSL certificates including Wildcard, Premium SSL, Single-Site, Let’s Encrypt, and Advanced SSL.

Features

• 1-Click App Installation e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and other content management systems (CMS)
• Free and easy site migration services
• Free SSD storage
• Free SSH, PHP 7 and global servers to distribute your files quickly around the world
• 99.9% uptime commitment
• Free automatic backups
• Free SSL certificate
• 24/7 Guru Crew support to assist you

Pricing

Pros

• Free account migration
• Up to 20X faster servers
• 99.9% uptime commitment
• Guru crew support available 24/7
• Anytime money-back guarantee

Cons

• Their prices are higher in comparison

#7. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks came 7th on this list and we ranked it top in our list of best green web hosting (they use renewable energy to power their servers).

GreenGeeks is an environmentally friendly web host with over ten years of experience. They have data centers in the U.S, Canada, and the Netherlands thus being internationally visible. They have partnered with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They give you unlimited file storage, bandwidth and email accounts. They also give you a free domain. GreenGeeks have a cool feature called ‘hosting account isolation setup’. Using a VPS, container-based approach they provision accounts with dedicated computing resources and secured virtual file system (Secure vFS) which ensures accounts are unable to access other accounts, protecting your site against malware.

Features

• 1-click WordPress installation
• Automatic updates keeping your website secure
• Automatic backup for your website every 24 hours
• Latest technology like PHP7, SSD, CDN for added speed
• 24/7 Expert customer support

Pricing

Pros

• Environmental friendly web hosting experience
• Free domain name
• Unlimited web space
• Free Wildcard SSL
• Friendly expert customer support

Cons

#8. iPage

iPage is an excellent choice to build, market and grow your small business or website because of low-cost offerings and easy website tools. It is a good choice for a local business on a tight budget because it includes a website builder and access to WordPress or Weebly which allows anyone to build an e-commerce site. It is like a one-stop-shop giving you a basic set of tools and stable performance you need to get set up online quickly. You get an online store, PayPal integration and six different options for shopping cart software.

Their website builder is just six pages but they have hundreds of templates and themes and integrate with content management systems (CMS) like Joomla and WordPress.

Features

• Unlimited domain names allowed
• Scalable bandwidth
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• Unlimited disk space
• WordPress 1-click installer
• iPage Website Builder
• 24/7 Customer support
• Enhanced security suite ($100 Value)
• vDeck Control Panel

Pros

• Free website builder with easy drag-drop website editor
• Free email address
• Free ads credit for search engines such as Google and Bing
• Free domain transfer
• Free SSL certificate
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Step-by-step tutorials

Cons

• Their uptime is relatively low

#9. Hostgator

HostGator is a well-known hosting provider based in Houston, and hosts over 9 million domain names. They are one of the cheapest options available. They offer an easy website building process with simple drag and drop function and also the ability to add unlimited domains. They offer free migrations within the first 30 days of your sign-up and their uptime is relatively good. They are also timely responsive.

Features

• 1-click WordPress installs
• Unmetered disk space and bandwidth
• $100 Google Adwords/Bing Ads offer
• 24/7 technical support
• Drag-and-drop website builder

Pricing

Pros

• Very affordable prices
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free website builder
• Great customer support
• 45-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• Relatively high renewal prices in comparison to their introductory prices  

#10. Kinsta

Kinsta was launched in2013 with the aim of creating the best WordPress platform in the world. They focus on working with WordPress experts to create hosting with speed, security, and stability that sets the industry standard. They have an all-inclusive, easy-to-use dashboard where you view multiple sites at once, analytics reports, manage users, and see your resource usage.

Kinsta is a great choice if you are an agency developer that wants to host multiple client sites or a business person looking into scaling your hosting as you grow, they have a tier of 10 diferent plans. These increase your number of websites, SSD storage, and monthly visitors as well as giving you WordPress hosting experience with speed and security.

Features

• Automatic daily backups
• Free unlimited migrations
• White-labeled cache plugin
• Free SSD and SSL
• DDoS detection and hardware firewalls
• Nginx and PHP7.4 state-of-the-art technology

   Pricing

Pros

• Free site migrations
• Free SSL and CDN
• Automatic backups daily
• Solid security guaranteed
• Enhanced speed for WordPress

Web Hosting Buyer Guide

Blog hosting provides a hosting service specific to a blogger’s needs while also offering all the other features typical of a “regular” hosting company.  A good blog host should be able to make it easy for you to set up and start writing your blog with a minimum of technical know-how. On the other hand, if you’re a tech-savvy blogger who wants to customize your site, you should also look for a host that offers a variety of add-ons and support for more advanced Weblogs. 

Choosing the right blog host is especially important if you’re hoping to earn money through your blogging efforts. To choose the blog host that’s right for you, decide first what your blogging goals are. Are you blogging for personal reasons or professional ones? What type of blog do you want: a written blog, photo blog or video blog? Do you need your own URL? Who’s your target audience and how will you reach it? How do you want to interact with your blog’s visitors and will you be part of a blog community? How can a host help you promote your blog?

Do you want your blog to support ads or eCommerce? If so, what additional features and support will you need? What kind of widgets or other applications do you want to include on your blog? Be sure to also look for a host that provides the blog software you want. Many popular Weblogging applications are free and open-source, including b2evolution, Drupal, Livejournal, SimplePHPBlog, Textpattern, TypePad (Movable Type) and WordPress. Remember too that different blog applications offer different themes, so some might be more appropriate than others for your particular needs. There are several hosts that support multiple platforms, you just shouldn’t make assumptions that what you want is supported. Now if you are looking for a WordPress host, everyone of the blog hosting companies that we have listed support that platform.

You’ll find a large number of companies that offer cheap website hosting, even free, blog hosting services. Many of them also come with user-friendly administration tools, automatic software updates and quick indexing in all the major search engines. Other common features include a Web-based control panel, Fantastico script support and support for multiple domains and sub-domains.   For more advanced blogs, look for a host that also provides good customer support, tutorials, FAQs or user forums. And make certain your host can continue to accommodate your blog if it grows quickly and attracts heavy traffic.

Blog hosting provides a hosting service specific to a blogger’s needs while also offering all the other features typical of a “regular” hosting company.  A good blog host should be able to make it easy for you to set up and start writing your blog with a minimum of technical know-how. On the other hand, if you’re a tech-savvy blogger who wants to customize your site, you should also look for a host that offers a variety of add-ons and support for more advanced Weblogs. Choosing the right blog host is especially important if you’re hoping to earn money through your blogging efforts.

 To choose the blog host that’s right for you, decide first what your blogging goals are. Are you blogging for personal reasons or professional ones? What type of blog do you want: a written blog, photo blog or video blog? Do you need your own URL? Who’s your target audience and how will you reach it? How do you want to interact with your blog’s visitors and will you be part of a blog community? How can a host help you promote your blog? Do you want your blog to support ads or ecommerce?

If so, what additional features and support will you need? What kind of widgets or other applications do you want to include on your blog? Be sure to also look for a host that provides the blog software you want. Many popular Weblogging applications are free and open-source, including b2evolution, Drupal, Livejournal, SimplePHPBlog, Textpattern, TypePad (Movable Type) and WordPress. Remember too that different blog applications offer different themes, so some might be more appropriate than others for your particular needs. 

There are several hosts that support multiple platforms, you just shouldn’t make assumptions that what you want is supported. Now if you are looking for a WordPress host, every one of the blog hosting companies that we have listed support that platform. You’ll find a large number of companies that offer cheap website hosting, even free, blog hosting services. Many of them also come with user-friendly administration tools, automatic software updates and quick indexing in all the major search engines.

Other common features include a Web-based control panel, Fantastico script support, and support for multiple domains and sub-domains.   For more advanced blogs, look for a host that also provides good customer support, tutorials, FAQs or user forums. And make certain your host can continue to accommodate your blog if it grows quickly and attracts heavy traffic.

Editor