iWebHostReview

Website Hosting Reviews, Blog Hosting and Website Building Tools

Reviews, comparisons, coupons and analysis by the best web hosting experts online. We offer unbiased opinions on whether or not to buy a website building tool/web hosting package after using them. We are powered by over 11 years of experience.

All Reviews

Recommended Hosting Services

Best Web Hosting Providers

Web hosting basically refers to an online service which allows you to publish your web application or site on the internet.

Signing up for a web hosting service essentially means that you rent some space on a physical server, where you will have to store data and files needed for your site to function properly. If you want to create a new website, you will have to first look for a web hosting provider who will give you access to this server space.

The web host is also responsible for keeping this server running continuously, protecting it from threats, and transferring content from it to visitors’ browsers. This is very much like renting a house; in order to keep the server up and running, you will have to pay the rent regularly. For the best results, you should select a hosting plan which suits your needs best.

You will find web hosting services of all kinds out there, such as dedicated hosting, managed hosting, shared hosting, server cores, VPS, SSL certificates, CDNs, different RAM, and much more. These services can cost you anywhere between $0.99 to $999 per month. There are literally so many options that it can be quite difficult to ascertain which of these hosting solutions is the right one for your business.

In this article, I have considered a large number of hosting options and narrowed them down to a list of the 10 best web hosting services in 2021. All of them have been reviewed and tested for efficiency and authenticity, and they are quite affordable and suitable for new, small and medium-sized websites. If you have a well-established website with traffic of over 50,000 visitors per month, you should go for VPS or dedicated hosting providers.

What should you consider when choosing a web hosting service?

Before you select a web hosting service, even from the list given below, there are certain factors you need to keep in mind. They have been discussed below in detail:

1. Site transfers and migrations

Site transfer or migration refers to the process of moving your website to another web host. The price for this usually ranges from $150 to $400, depending on the host you choose. For example, it will cost you $149.99 to migrate 20 email accounts and five websites to BlueHost. However, certain services like GreenGeeks and HostGator offer free site transfers. The time taken for this process depends on the host as well. For example, HostPapa usually takes five to seven days to carry out a site transfer, whereas A2 Hosting takes two to four days for the same.

2. Renewal rates

It has been observed that a lot of web hosting services charge up to three times their original price for renewing your deal, for the same features and performance. However, some services like DreamHost (which allows you to renew your plan at the same cost) do not follow this policy.

3. Bandwidth, email account, and storage limits

You should know what the limitations on bandwidth, email accounts, and storage offered by the web host are. If you are interested in services that provide free SSL certificates, you should consider going for SiteGround, HostGator, DreamHost, or BlueHost.

4. Scalability

There are different hosting types offered by various web hosting providers. If you have a relatively new website with low traffic, you should try going for shared web hosting. Once your website grows larger and gets more traffic, you can upgrade to a more expensive hosting plan like VPS, Cloud, managed WordPress, or dedicated hosting.

Let us now take a look at the 10 best web hosting services you can avail in 2021.

The 10 Best Web Hosting Services of 2021

When choosing a web hosting provider, the most crucial factor you need to consider is its performance – namely, its uptime and speed. A fast hosting provider will greatly help you in maintaining the quality of your website. In 2021 and beyond, the performance of a website plays a very important role in determining its success. This makes the selection of a good web hosting provider all the more important for you.

Given below are my personal picks for the 10 best web hosting services in 2021. All of them feature high uptime, decent page load time or speed, and professional and efficient customer support.

1. BlueHost

Originally created in 2007, BlueHost presently hosts over three million websites. It is one of the most well-known and economically priced options for new websites in particular. In the past twelve months, their track record has been impressive – 99.96% uptime and a speed of 641 ms. BlueHost’s plans start at an introductory price of $2.75 per month ($8.99 for renewal) and offer various useful features like website builder, free domain name, and one-click install for Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress via their control panel.

The basic plan also comes with 50 GB of storage space and unlimited bandwidth. Thus, it is an ideal platform for beginners who are seeking to start a new website. Being officially recommended by WordPress.org, it is an excellent choice for WordPress websites in particular. BlueHost also includes SSL (security layer), free email accounts, and 24/7 live customer support.

Apart from traditional shared hosting, BlueHost also offers managed, dedicated, and VPS WordPress hosting plans for websites with more traffic. It is user-friendly and, by far, the most ideal entry-level web hosting provider offering both security and reliability. It also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all of its hosting plans. These plans get activated at once, and so you can use them immediately after purchase.

2. Hostinger

In the last twelve months, Hostinger had a modest average uptime of 99.74%. However, it makes up for the same with an impressive average loading time of 345 ms, which makes it the most economically priced web hosting service presently available in the market. Its hosting plans are cheap and affordable while maintaining the standard of performance and quality. It is an especially good service for newcomers.

Hostinger offers a wide range of hosting plans with various features. All these plans come with a free SSL certificate, 24/7/365 customer support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a convenient website builder. They start at a remarkably low price of $0.99 per month (for 48 months), with renewals starting at $2.15 per month. Unless you select the “single web hosting” plan, you will have access to unlimited databases and bandwidth.

If you do choose the single web hosting plan, you will be limited to 100 GB of bandwidth, 10 GB of storage space, one email account, and one MySQL database. Also, it should be pointed out that the cheapest available plan has limited memory and processing power, and does not come with a free domain. All these plans feature a 30-day money-back guarantee as well. Hostinger also provides other services like WordPress, Windows VPS hosting plan, Email, and Cloud.

3. A2 Hosting – Fastest Shared Hosting

A2 Hosting is an American hosting service which hosts over 500,000 websites today. Founded in 2002, it is arguably the fastest shared web hosting service in the market today. In the last twelve months, it has featured an incredible average load time of 279 ms. Its servers utilize LiteSpeed cache and are optimized for WordPress websites, and are thus extremely fast. In fact, it beats out almost all of the other web hosting services out there in terms of speed.

Apart from this, A2 Hosting is one of the most reliable services you can ever come across. It has an average uptime of about 99.97% and just slightly over two hours of downtime. It works smoothly with all prominent management systems like OpenCart, Drupal, Magento, Joomla and, of course, WordPress. Thus, it is an excellent option for web developers. It offers a wide range of hosting plans, all of which come with unlimited SSD storage, free site migration, and a free LetsEncrypt SSL certificate.

Its cheapest plan (Lite) begins at $2.96 per month with renewals starting at $7.99 per month. This plan also includes 25 email accounts, free Cloudflare CDN, unlimited bandwidth and storage space, one website, and a domain name for one year. Apart from this, A2 Hosting also has an efficient customer support team known as Guru Crew Support. You can contact them 24/7/365 through phone, tickets, email, and live chat.

Apart from the usual shared hosting, A2 Hosting also offers reseller, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. All of them feature a 30-day money0back guarantee as well.

4. DreamHost

DreamHost is one of the most well-known vintage web hosting providers, founded in 1996. It hosts more than 1.5 million blogs, applications, and websites in over a hundred countries. Unfortunately, it has a rather poor performance record in the last 12 months – an uptime of 99.62% and speed of 1180 ms. However, it is notable for providing an option to make monthly payments instead of the usual yearly system.

Thus, you will be able to sign up for $4.95 and get to use your hosting account immediately. You could also go for its three-year plan which begins at $2.59 per month and can be renewed at $4.95 per month. DreamHost’s basic plan comes with a website, free domain, and unlimited storage and bandwidth. You can also utilize its drag-and-drop builder and add an email by paying $1.67 per month. All these plans feature a 97-day refund policy and 24/7 US live chat support.

DreamHost is notable for its robust security features, powered by LetsEncrypt SSL. It also offers unlimited data transfer per month and a wide range of domain management tools. It comes with pre-installed WordPress and a user-friendly website builder. Although DreamHost does not have the well-known cPanel, it does feature an equally efficient admin panel of its own.

5. SiteGround

Founded in 2004 in Sofia, Bulgaria, SiteGround hosts more than two million domains today. It has the distinction of being one of the three web hosting services officially recommended by WordPress.org. In the last twelve months, SiteGround had an impressive uptime of 99.99% and a decent speed of 756 ms. Thus, it is a worthy inclusion in every list of the best web hosting services.

SiteGround has an exceptionally good customer service and a swiftly expanding user base. Its cheapest StartUp plan, aimed at newcomers, begins at $3.95 per month for twelve months with renewals starting at $11.95 per month. It also gives you 10 GB of storage space, 24/7 support, and unlimited traffic. You will be able to host a website which can receive over 10,000 monthly visits.

All of its plans come with a number of free features like daily backups, SSH access, Cloudflare CDN, SSL, email account, and website builder. It also offers the usual 30-day money-back guarantee. Apart from this, SiteGround also features a large variety of services like WordPress hosting, dedicated server hosting, enterprise hosting, cloud hosting, and WooCommerce hosting. As of now, it rents servers from Google Cloud rather than having servers of its own.

6. GoDaddy Hosting

With fourteen facilities across the world, GoDaddy is known to be one of the biggest domain

registrars out there. Today, it is one of the topmost web hosting services in the world, hosting more than 44 million websites and is suitable for websites of all sizes. Like SiteGround, it does not have in-house servers but has partnered with Amazon to rent servers from AWS.

In the past twelve months, GoDaddy has had a good track record with an uptime of 99.95% and a speed of 518 ms. By virtue of GoCentral (its user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder aimed at newcomers), it is an ideal platform for building custom websites. GoDaddy also has developer-friendly tools, such as CloudLinux, cPanel, Python, MySQL, and a number of versions of PHP.

As of now, its cheapest web hosting plan begins at $4.33 per month with renewals starting at $8.99 per month. It also offers unlimited bandwidth and a generous 100 GB of storage space, along with DDoS protection and security monitoring. That said, you may end up paying a little more because of the many upsells that this service has. For example, the aforementioned plan doesn’t come with email accounts, SSL certificates, and site backups.

That said, all of GoDaddy’s multi-year and yearly plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 customer support.

7. GreenGeeks

Founded back in 2008, GreenGeeks hosts more than 500,000 websites today. It features reliable and efficient hosting services with 99.95% uptime and a speed of 451 ms, for an economic price of $2.95 per month. Like its name suggests, it promotes eco-friendly practices and also features excellent bonuses and a dedicated 24/7 customer support. Thus, it is emerging to be a truly popular web hosting service among customers.

All GreenGeeks plans include a free domain for one year, free Wildcard SSL, website control panel (cPanel), PowerCacher, unlimited data transfer, and unlimited SSD storage. You will also get access to a 30-day money-back guarantee, nightly backups, unlimited email accounts, and an unlimited number of domain names. As your website grows in size, you have the option of upgrading to the more versatile VPS hosting plan. Apart from this, GreenGeeks can transfer your site from an existing webhost free of cost.

Admittedly, GreenGeeks does feature a relatively high price for renewal, starting at $10.95 per month. That said, it has enough positives to give it a significant edge over its competitors.

8. InMotion Hosting

Founded in 2001, InMotion is one of the biggest and most popular hosting companies in the market, hosting more than 300,000 domains today. In the last twelve months, it has had a decent uptime of 99.93% and a good speed of 463 ms. Although the latter does seem to be on the lower side, we need to consider InMotion’s massive user base as well. Its cheapest plan (Lite) is available for $2.49 per month and has excellent features like free SSL certificates, unlimited bandwidth, and integrations with more than 400 apps, along with a one-click WordPress install.

Unfortunately, this plan can only be availed with a 24-month subscription and costs $7.49 per month

to renew. You will also have to undergo a verification process before you can begin to work on your website. However, InMotion also offers some excellent features for newcomers like a massive knowledge base, free website builder, and 24/7/365 live chat support. You can go for a dedicated VPS or server hosting plan after your website grows larger.

InMotion also makes up for its relatively steep renewal pricing with a welcome 90-day money-back guarantee, thus minimizing risks.

9. IONOS (1&1) Hosting

Ionos by 1&1 has been rapidly gaining popularity among customers in recent times. It offers WordPress, dedicated, cloud, VPS, and shared hosting. In the past twelve months, it has truly proven itself to be one of the best web hosting services out there, with an excellent uptime of 99.98% and an acceptably good speed of 727 ms. Its plans start at a surprisingly low price of $1.00 per month, with a number of quality features like free SSL, a free email address and domain, a website builder, and various well-known CMSs like Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress.

Unfortunately, Ionos has a rather high renewal rate that starts at $10.00 per month. Also, it charges money for migrating your website and lacks live chat support. It is also available in a number of countries like Egypt, China, and various European states. However, it does somewhat compensate for this with its efficient performance and a standard 30-day money-back guarantee.

10. HostPapa

Founded in 2006, HostPapa has grown tremendously and hosts more than 500,000 websites today. It offers powerful features, efficient performance, and great value for your money. In the last twelve months, it has demonstrated an incredible uptime of 99.99% and a decent speed of 565 ms. Apart from this impressive performance, it also features many more support features compared to other hosting services in the market.

For example, it offers 24/7 live chat, email, mail support, phone support, and even fax in more than eighteen countries and a total of four languages. Their knowledge base is equipped with various informative videos for both newcomers and experienced users. Its cheapest plan starts at $2.95 per month and features a subscription of three years. It comes with free migration, CDN, SSL, a website builder, great Panda Cloud security features, and over 400 one-click install apps.

You will also be given access to 100 GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and a free domain.HospPapa also features WordPress, VPS, and shared hosting plans, all of which come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Although the Starter plan costs a rather steep $9.99 per month for renewal, HostPapa offers enough features for the fees it charges.It isa great choice for beginners in particular.

The list of web hosting services is extensive and ever-expanding. It can be confusing to go through the multitude of features that every hosting platform has to offer, and try to select one of them. I hope this list helps you get a clear idea of the pros and cons of each of the services featured in it, and helps you choose one that is best suited to your needs.