Web Hosting Comparison

If you’re a small business owner who’s looking to get a website or you think there may be greener pastures elsewhere it’s time for a web hosting comparison. By comparing the top web hosts we can look at price, reliability, and features to see who really gives the best deals for you to take advantage of. Not all hosts are created equal! While one web host may look like a great deal they may skimp on important features like back ups! Let’s check some out to find the best web hosting companies available on the net!

Web hosting Comparison – Host Gator

I really like Host Gator and I’m seriously thinking of switching to them now. My current host offers “unlimited” storage, but they don’t really. There is a cap, and what’s worse is there’s a very small cap for databases! Why is this important? Most of my sites are wordpress blogs. Everything in a wordpress blog is stored in a database. My larger site has several hundred posts and is quickly filling that database. This information is not readily available, and it took some searching. From my research Host Gator does not have this cap. You should definitely include them when you compare web hosting.

Some of their other features they include are unlimited e-mails, bandwidth, storage, and FTP accounts. They also have support for Ruby On Rails which is rare for an unlimited hosting plan account. Many places make you pay for a dedicated server or simply don’t offer this capability at all! They have script installers as well which lets you install things like WordPress, PHPbb, and many other popular scripts with a couple clicks. This also includes Magento! Many hosts don’t even run this awesome and advanced ecommerce software. Host Gator lets you install it with one click!

*Fun Fact – Host Gator is powered by Texas Wind Energy so they are a green web host as well!

They have 99.9% up time, and great customer support. They also include support for a lot of programming languages like Perl, PHP 5, Python, cron jobs in there unlimited plans. (Another thing a lot of discount shared plans skimp on!) This means if you plan to upgrade in the future you can most likely do so without leaving hosts! They have automated backups with a 4GB limit, but this is more than enough for all my sites. If you have a site big enough for more than this you probably have dedicated hosting anyway. In short I think they are one of the best web hosts in the market.

They have a very good pricing plan starting at $3.96/month if you want to host a single domain or $7.95 for unlimited domains. They almost always have a coupon code going on. You can use this link to get your first month’s hosting for only a penny!

Web Hosting Comparison – Fat Cow

Fat Cow is another web hosting company I like, but they just aren’t as full featured as Host Gator is. They do have really great prices though if you only need simple hosting. Not everybody needs the robust features of Ror, Python, or Perl scripts. If you’re a business owner that just needs a place to host a simple page for your business then Fat Cow could be your new home. They offer inexpensive web hosting for small businesses.

They also offer Unlimited hosting plans, advertising credits, and one click installers. A lot of things a small business owner that doesn’t have a lot of website knowledge could find useful. They also have a web site builder and shopping cart tool. So, if you don’t know HTML but you still want a full featured site you can get the most with their set up. This includes free templates you can just click to use. They let you easily get going with a shopping cart and you can accept Paypal plans. So far my only con for Fat Cow is they charge you for automatic backups. It’s only $12 a year, but you should know it is not included in their plan unless you pay extra.

Fat Cow also has integration for Google Webmaster tools right in their dashboard. This means you can get your site statistics and learn about your visitors without going anywhere. A great feature. They’ll also give you $150 in advertising credits to start your new site upfront! Click here to get 50% off your plan right now and pay just $3.67/month!

Web Hosting Comparison – Blue Host

Blue Host is another fairly popular budget web hosting provider who yet again offers unlimited everything. Pretty must everyone offers this in their plans now to compete. They also offer a lot of one click script installers for things like Joomla, ZenCart, and PrestaShop. I don’t really find anything that special about them though. They offer three web mail options which I find redundant? I just forward all my e-mails to my gmail account since my current web host’s e-mail software is rather atrocious.

They do offer free security certificates which you’ll need for your online shopping cart if you plan to use one, and a lot of multimedia features out of the box. If you have a site that needs lots of streaming video and music options you might choose them. Could be useful if you’re a musician or you own a film company. They also offer complimentary backups at no charge to their customers which is always a good thing. They do boast very fast support time and fast servers. I haven’t verified either of these facts though.

BlueHost also offers resource protection which is interesting. If you’re on a shared server you’re sharing those resources with everyone else on your server. Hence why your pricing can be so cheap. They keep tabs on users and make sure that other people’s misuse isn’t wrecking your user experience. If you happen to get set up with ‘bad neighbors’ this could be a very good feature. Get Blue Host for $6.95/month.