A website hosting company is as good as the services it provides to its customer. To compare from the best of the best, you need to know if they provide good speed, bandwidth, 1 click install, enough disk space and good customer service to get value for money.
I have a hosting account with most of the webhosts featured over here at some stage and listed them comparing all these essential web hosting features. While not all of them listed here in below table are Australian based hosting, most of the companies are US based servicing clients on a global basis. I prefer US based hosts as they are cheaper have multiple upgrade hosting options available compared to aussie hosts and have a better custom or standard cpanel dashboard for administering and building your website.
The software and quality of the web-hosting company you choose can have a substantial impact on your success online and so it is important to start with the right choice.
Below is a Quick top 3, I recommend if you are on a budget and just starting!
WebHosting Co.
Price
Domain Free
Servers
Bandwidth
Offer
Before I started my blog I pussyfooted around a lot as to where to get my blog hosting from and finally decided to get it from a US web Hosting company, even though my blog is based in Australia and Australian focussed, it was because of the huge price difference.
The other factor that eventually supported my decision was that you will get a lot of US traffic to your blog even if your blog or website is Australian focused and Australian based, so it does benefit speed wise for your website loading faster to viewers in both countries.
Some features that are desirable in a hosting provider:
Unlimited domain hosting – you can host multiple domains names (www) in 1 hosting account (which means you can have more than one website in one account). The cheaper plans normally don’t provide this, but if your lucky you still can get a shared plan within $5 and under that provides you with the ability to host multiple blogs under one shared package.
Free Site builder Or wordpress support– All providers support wordpress, but not all have an inbuilt site builder. If you’re building a website with wordpress ( which is what I recommend) then you don’t need a site builder included as its easy and quick to build a website with wordpress.
Email Account: Not all providers give you an email account with your domain name, but most of them listed here do so. So if you got a website blahblah.com then you would be able to get an email such as yourname@blahblah.com for yourself for free. It is important to get a domain email to look more professional
Uptime Guarantee – You don’t want your hosting-company having downtime, which means you are paying them for hosting your website and their servers are overloaded and crashing all the time and so your website is not showing to your viewers or its just taking ages to load because of bad slow servers – not good. Most of the providers listed here have 99.9 % uptime. Page speed and load time are important.
Comparison of website hosting /Blog hosting
Below are some of the top hosting providers in the website and blogging industry, which also include a few which I am currently using with my affiliate referral and discount links. These are well known to established and pro bloggers, with most of these providers already in this industry for more than 10+ years.
The below list focuses more on starter plans featuring shared hosting packages $1 to 5.95 a month ( cheap web hosting ) compared to providers with VPS hosts and premium hosting packages that can range from $29 to $65 a month.
Below I am comparing hosting packages from many hosting providers to find the best features for your website at the best price for your budget
I have written a Recommended against the providers, for the ones I think I would readily sign up for a second account right now.
- Speed 90%
- Price 87%
- 1 Click Install 100%
- Service 85%
“Bluehost shared hosting prices are reasonably priced, and they are one of the earlier adopters of 1 click install so that you can setup a wordpress blog in minutes. They provide good customer support and have upgrade options to make your journey future proof when you grow with your website.”
Bluehost Hosting (Recommended)
Website: www.bluehost.com
Price:$ 7.99 Now $3.95 a month (54%off Link)
[ 2018 deal ]: Cloud Sites $9.99 $6.95 a month
- unlimited domain hosting
- unlimited hosting space
- unlimited file transfer
- unlimited email accounts
- free domain name
- free site builder w/ templates
- free instant set-up
Plus Point:
One click Easy Word press installation
Updated NEW Fast Servers
Special Bonus:
60% 54% Percent off Bluehost Hosting Special deal for 2018
Deal just updated – It’s not often that you get such a good hosting offer from Bluehost at 54 % off. The price – It’s an amazing $3.95 a month for 12/24/36 months just for Digitalgrog Blog Readers. Bluehost supports multiple website software and have auto 1 click install for 25 + website software including CMS, WordPress, Joomla, Picture galleries and more which allows you to get your website up and working quickly and easily. Get the latest deal below.
- Speed 95%
- Price 60%
- 1 Click Install 70%
- Service 90%
WP-Engine Hosting (Recommended fast hosting)
Website: www.wpengine.com
WP Engine (recommended)Starter Plan $35 a Month
[Wp engine has fast wordPress with baked in CDN]
- 1 website
- 25k Visits a month
- 50 GB bandwidth
- CDN & SSL(https) included
- Migration is done free
- Page performance free
- Powerful tools available
Plus Point:
Get two months free with annual prepay
Managed wordpress platform for performance
- Speed 85%
- Price 80%
- 1 Click Install 87%
- Service 67%
Hostgator (Recommended)
Website: www.hostgator.com
25% off Now @ $3.95 a month(25% off discount link)
Hostgator 1 Penny offer – click here
(Create A Website For Just One Cent For Your First Month! Use Coupon: 1CENT.)
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Easy Control Panel
- 1-CLICK Script Installs
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- 24/7/365 Technical Support
Plus Point:
Reliable and stress free hosting
Good support
- Speed 65%
- Price 99%
- 1 Click Install 99%
- Service 77%
Godaddy (Recommended)
Website Builder Deals:
Website: www.godaddy.com
Price: AUS$ – A$.99*.Com Domain – Get it here with Godaddy
$1.00 Deal (normally$10.99) – Click Here
- Easily create your own website
- Free Hosting and Unlimited pages
- Beautiful, customizable designs
- Free Domain with the annual plan
- Award-winning 24/7 technical support
- *99.9% uptime guarantee
- .com.au domain $7.49 a year (limited time)
Plus Point:
They stand out with special deals often at 99 cents for domain and $1 month for hosting with a free domain name thrown in for the initial year. They also offer free USD $100 Bing Ad Credits and Free USD $50 Facebook business promotion Ad Credit with some restrictions applied.
Has Good 24/7 US-based phone support and many other blogger related services, like cheap domains, domain name privacy, SSL security certificates, Cheap domain names and ability to sell your domain name via their auctions.
- Speed 87%
- Price 90%
- 1 Click Install 90%
- Service 77%
Hostmonster
Website: www.hostmonster.com
Price: $4.95 a Month
[ Get Hostmonster Deal Here Coupon: Gimmemore ]
- Unlimited Space & Bandwidth
- Free Domain
- Unlimited Domain Hosting
- Free Site Builders
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Free Online Store
- WordPress, Gallery and More
- cPanel Interface
I’m a bit in favour to Hostmonster with their service speed and other ratings, as I had a blog for 7 years on their platform and never really had a problem. If you really want good speed and your blog to flourish, I would recommend their pro plan at approximate $14 .95 a month to whihc I had upgraded – rather than their budget shared plan starting at $4.95
Hostmonster’s this $14.95 package compares well to some of the premium hosts pricing of $29 to $39 that is offered elsewhere as premium fast hosting.
- Speed 91%
- Price 85%
- 1 Click Install 80%
- Service 74%
Dreamhost
Website: www.dreamhost.com
Price: Normally$9.95 a month ($119.40 yearly)
Our Current promo offer:$7.95 a month($95.40 yearly
+ Free lifetime domain registration (use this promo code: startwebsite )
*promo code also applies to two-year plans purchased
*This promo code adds 1 extra FREE lifetime domain registration to any plan signed up for with it!
- Unlimited storage.
- Unlimited bandwidth.
- Free Domain Name!
- cPanel cloud platform
- SSD based storage
- 24/7 x 365-day support
They also provide VPS Servers
Our Digitalgrog Dreamsaver Deal >> $50 off hosting offer
- Speed 72%
- Price 74%
- 1 Click Install 70%
- Service 76%
- Speed 78%
- Price 60%
- 1 Click Install 65%
- Service 78%
Netregistry
Website: http://www.netregistry.com.au
Price: $9.95 month
- Free website builder
- Limited 5 GB Storage
- Supports WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento and more
- Local data centreUnlimited 24×7 support
Smartyhost was taken over by Netregistry
- Speed 81%
- Price 60%
- 1 Click Install 65%
- Service 78%
Melbourne IT
Website: https://www.melbourneit.com.au/
Price: $27.95 a month to $99.95 a month for cloud hosting and CPanel Hosting @ $12.95 a month.
Melbourne IT is one of Australia’s oldest domain provider and also provides hosting for websites. They have now got cloud hosting which is a bit pricier than shared hosting and supports wordpress, Joomla and Drupal.
- Speed 65%
- Price 60%
- 1 Click Install 55%
- Service 78%
Bomerang Hosting
Website: www.bomeranghosting.com
Price: Sale $6.99 Month (normally$9.99 month
- 1 Website
- 100 GB Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 100 Email Accounts
- 10 MySQL Databases (1 GB ea.)
Deluxe Plan($8.99 Month)
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 500 Email Addresses
- Award-winning 24/7 technical support
Use coupon code: Boom2018 for discounts in 2018
Loading speed of your website among other ranking factors is a big factor, for your website or blog and so choosing a hosting company that meets all the essential criteria for your website is important. SSD storage is a new feature that can improve site speed but not as much important compared to other factors.
It is necessary for your hosting solution provider to have a variety of shared hosting plans as well as dedicated server packages for when you want to upgrade.
FREE Domain Name with Webhosting?
Our list above compares local hosting or buying a hosting service for your website, but if you have not purchased a domain name yet – I recommend two providers.
The one I use is Godaddy.com (one of the best) for mainly domain names purchasing and if you are getting hosting from one of the providers above, sometimes you also get a free domain with the webhosting package.
The other one is Bluehost who also offer a free domain name with their shared $3.95 webhosting plan. They fall into the category of “cheap hosting” and “shared web hosting” for their competitive prices offered and are recommended by wordpress.org as well.
If you intend to get multiple domain names over a period of time, I would suggest Go Daddy as they also provide transfer of domains from other registrars, plus many blogging/website related services all in one place. They have good host & domains promo offers on a regular basis and has 24/7 US phone support.
Today there are a growing trend of new types of website-hosting including cloud hosting and green hosting, however for beginner blogs the shared plans to be the most popular mainly based on price factor.
The information and listing given above is generally what you will need to get started with a hosting company and choose a suitable hosting provider, but if you want to research a bit further, do read on and I will provide more general information on wordpress hosting
How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting?
There are various different types of WordPress hosting options available such as Free, Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Managed WordPress hosting. Generally, the shared hosting is one of the cheapest hosting-options ($3 to $5 a month) available and this should be suitable for most beginners in blogging or people starting a website.
If you are looking to start an online shop you can still use wordpress + woocommerce option, but a fully automated online shop solution is better supported with a Shopify solution. SSL certificates are also a important feature to have with eCommerce sites. Godaddy has a wide range of types of SSL certificates with different security levels that they sell. Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Cloudflare would also be a good addon to consider if your hosting an online store.
The above listings are all shared hosting plan prices, with most of them also offering VPS or Dedicated hosting. Most Shared hosting plans easily handles traffic anywhere from 1000 to 4000 visits a day to your website without any problems or slowness.
Once you are getting over 2000 visits a day you can easily generate some money from the traffic either from AdSense or other methods, and it’s time for you to consider moving to a more optimised hosting provider anyway to get the most from your blog traffic.
If you Are getting more than 2,000 to 4,000 Unique visits a day to your blog, it is worth checking out a CDN or then even VPS or Dedicated server hosting. When traffic gets this big on your blog it is wise to do regular speed testing, check uptime and have DDos protection enabled for further security.
The technical Bits – So what is Linux hosting Vs windows hosting
To most people, this won’t matter, unless your more technical minded and worry if your hosting uses Linux hosting or windows hosting. But irrespective of type, both of them do the job efficiently for your website.
Linux and windows are just two different server systems or software which hold your website files and make it all work. Both Windows and Linux support the popular wordpress blogging platform and other website software, however wordpress is more popularly supported by Linux.
The only difference between the hosting type is, if it is virtual private server or dedicated hosting server or shared web hosting with virtual and dedicated normally being a bit faster in speed and pricier.
Most providers give you a custom control admin panel or cpanel which makes managing the backend of your website easy anyway, so it doesn’t matter if its windows or Linux based solution.
Know Your Server and Software
Control panel – A cpanel control panel is very easy to navigate and do admin things on the backend of your hosting panel, so if they have this its a plus for you. Most packages have a control panel/cpanel
Google AdWords – Google/Facebook or Bing Adwords Free bonus provided with a plan is a good bonus to start some free advertising on the search engines for your website. This can be used to get some free advertising traffic to your website when you start.
1 click install – I click install makes it easy to install wordpress quickly and easily. This is the preferred blogging software among bloggers.
Unlimited Bandwidth – Bandwidth is an important deciding factor for speed and loading of your website, so an unlimited plan is good for your website, but not necessary if you would be hosting just a few websites on your plan and not like 20 to 50 websites on one plan.
Unlimited Disk space – This feature varies from provider to provider and if you get unlimited disk space then its a bonus, however most plans are sufficient to run many blogs in one plan. The disk space if the storage for your files that make up your website.
Loading Speed – Speed of your blog or business website can impact if more people end up visiting your website or not. This can get more important as your website grows. Shared servers are good for a start, but when you grow it would be good to have optimised servers with nginx customised infrastructure with caching and CDN if possible to maximise loading speed of your website.
VPS Hosting – This though similar to dedicated hosting is different and is a virtual server. If your hosting solution company have this product when your traffic reaches thousands of viewers a day, this is a good upgrade option to grow from your cheap starter plans. Most hosting companies offer dedicated hosting as well as virtual private server hosting as an upgrade plan.
Phone support vs Live chat – This is good to have instant online support from your hosting company. Rather than pick up that phone and call, you can just have an online chat with a support officer to get support and help.
Renewal rates – Make sure their renewal rates after the first year is not a rip-off. Most providers if they give a cheap inaugural price discount offer, it will usually default to standard pricing after the contract ends/renewal or 1st year – so be aware of this.
Hosting options : Managed WordPress Vs Cloud hosts – Cloud hosting is a new concept and is convenient for new websites with high bandwidth needs as resources can be more easily allocated and upgraded as per needs. Managed WP hosting is good as its speedier than normal plans due to customs server infrastructure that is optimised for better speeds. They normally use nginx, custom caching and advanced server configurations with PHP and CDN.
Linux or windows hosting – Most hosts use Linux hosting for blogging, but it really does not matter, if you just want to run a normal website or blog or online shop.
Support for Blogging software – Make sure it supports at least at the minimum wordpress and also Joomla and Drupal. As these other two are good website alternatives if you think wordpress is not your thing.
Reseller Hosting – This is not really needed when you start your website, but if the provider you sign up offers reseller hosting and you are happy with their service, you can set up your own hosting shop with your own brand name and sell their services. Godaddy offers white label reselling of their hosting and domain name services.
Money back guarantee – Most good hosting companies offer a a moneyback guarantee for their plans from the range of 30 days to 90 days. If they include a free domain name in their plan you might need to process a refund for that as well, but I personally have never had to take a refund so far with the above hosts.
[ Disclosure: Digitalgrog.com.au is a Bluehost/ Hostgator/Hostmonster/ Godaddy / Dreamhost/ Ipage affiliate partner and we also have hosting accounts with these services, which means that in addition to using their service, we also receive a commission for referring new customers. To be fair, though, we would still use any of these Hosting services, but do have a preference for some and so we have done a full review of all the hosting partners we use. Ergo, we don’t recommend Bluehost or any featured host just because we’re an affiliate (every hosting company offers a similar affiliate program and you could pick any of them ), but we recommend Bluehost because they are the best, most reliable option. Plus, because we’re a partner, Bluehost offers a special price for digitalgrog.com.au readers: only $3.95 a month and you already have our GoDaddy $1 special above. That’s a phenomenal price. Links provided above will take you to the latest updated promo deals. Feel free to pick which host suits your budget or preference and good luck 🙂 ]
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Hi Jeff,
I think we should use a local-based web hosting service for faster loading times for local visitors, better search result rankings as it is a local business. Can you let me give a list of the top local-based web hosting company?
Dude i was not too sure if i should use a cheap host or then pay more for a local aussie host to host my new website. Considering I am on a budget, I am going to take the dive with a cheap wordpress host and try out bluehost, I suppose i could always upgrade if things got busy.
Will keep you updated on how i go . cheers
mags
Well blue-host is not a bad choice for their prices and good support too, I have an account with them.
Let us know how you go
jeff
I think Blue Host doing some good packages. Most of the hosting companies provide one click wordpress install these days.
Bluehost has good deals compared to others, but when their $2.95 deal is out _ that is a steal
will update when its on again
Jeff