2012's Best Web Hosting Services
We've performed in depth research on the leading web hosting
service providers. We compared their pricing, features, bandwidth
and storage space, ease of use, customer support and more to help
you determine which hosting provider is right for your personal or
small business website. According to our 2011 logs and stats, 58%
of our visitors preferred iPage.
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POPULAR HOSTING SERVICES
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Visit iPage >>
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Best for: Small business owners and bloggers looking
for a low-priced, feature-rich service to get their sites up quickly and affordably.
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Visit FatCow >>
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Best for: Novice webmasters looking for an inexpensive
plan with unlimited storage and bandwidth as well as courteous customer support.
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Visit Just Host >>
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Best for: Inexperienced webmasters looking for a hosting
provider with a well organized, easy-to-use user interface at an affordable price.
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Visit BlueHost >>
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Best for: Webmasters looking for instant website setup,
an intuitive control panel design and the option to purchase additional professional-grade
site builders.
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Visit Host Monster >>
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Best for: Professional or novice webmasters who require
speedy customer phone support and are looking for a plan offering unlimited email
accounts.
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Visit InMotion Hosting >>
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Best for: Business owners looking for a reliable hosting
service that will be able to meet their needs as their business grows.
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Visit HostGator >>
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Best for: Small and medium sized businesses that have
more complex needs and require a dedicated hosting plan.
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Visit GoDaddy >>
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Best for: Webmasters that are willing to pay a premium
for the comfort of working with the largest hosting brand.
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Visit StartLogic >>
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Best for: Webmasters who need a Windows- based hosting
provider.
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Visit Register.com >>
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Best for: Those looking to set up an easy to manage
e-commerce shopping site.
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Disclaimer: We provide product information
based on the objective and thorough analysis of our professional
team of product experts. In order to provide our visitors with this
free service, we accept compensation from the companies whose
products we review. We are independently owned and the opinions
expressed here are our own.
Prices
Many web hosting services let you choose from several types of
packages, each with a different price and slightly different range
of offerings. The prices can range from $4.25/month to over
$40/month. These price differentials can be attributed to the
different features included within
each plan and to the eagerness of some newer hosting companies,
such as iPage, to grow their
brand by offering extremely low rates. In order to help you stay
within your budget, we've compared the prices of best web hosting
services across all the plans they offer.
web hosting services
Bandwidth and Disk Space
Even if you're planning a small site, you should look for a
minimum of 5 GB of disk space and 250 GB of bandwidth from your web
hosting plan. While this may be enough for most websites, it's
important to note that many web hosts such as FatCow are offering an
unlimited amount of both at a price that's comparable to more
limited plans. Our side-by-side comparison shows what each host
offers to help you decide which plan will best suit your needs.
offered by top web hosts
Ease of Use
Choosing an easy-to-use web host is particularly important if
you are new to web hosting. We set up accounts with several web
hosting services and used each control panel for a variety of tasks
in order to evaluate the ease of use. Since only StartLogic lets you test
out their control panel with a free demo, we've recorded our
findings to help you determine which control panel will be easiest
for you to use.
Click here to see our findings
Customer Support
Both web professionals and novice webmasters will likely need
assistance from their web host's customer support staff
at some point. Since nearly every hosting company promises
impeccable support, we put them to the test to show you how helpful
and friendly each support team truly was. We tested the hold times,
relevance of the response and politeness of both phone and chat
representatives. We also tested the email responses of each web
host. Finally, we surveyed the self-help services offered by each
web host, in case you prefer to find answers independently.
Click to see our complete test results
Standard Features
One thing that tends to complicate the decision of choosing a
web host is the large (and often unnecessary) features list that
each service provides. Although price, bandwidth and disk space
are often the biggest determining factors, it's also important to
evaluate what other features and add-ons each host offers. Our
comprehensive features comparison will help you determine which
host offers the features you want. Or, if you're not sure exactly
which features your website will need, take a look at our
comparison to determine which ones sound helpful and which ones may
not be worth the added expense.
by the most popular web hosts
Uptime and Page Load Time
Of primary importance to the success of your website is whether
or not your visitors will be able to load your site's pages quickly
and to see at a glance what your site is all about. While we found
Register.com to live up
to it's 100% uptime guarantee, we were surprised to see that HostGator fell short of
it's 99% guarantee. We tested the uptime and page load time of the
best hosting services to help you determine which ones are more
reliable.
Times of the leading web hosting services
