Welcome to Hosting Reviews

A quick and easy, no-nonsense guide to finding the best web hosting solution for you. In today's online world, a reliable hosting provider is essential for ensuring your website's performance and scalability. With fast and scalable options like WordPress hosting and cloud hosting, you can enjoy lightning-fast loading times and effortless scaling as your audience grows. So if it's well priced, fast hosting you're looking for, we've got you covered.

With our simple and quick reviews, you'll discover hosting providers that offer reliability and peace of mind. Don't settle for mediocre hosting when you can optimize your online presence with the right provider. Explore our reviews below and find the perfect web hosting that works best for you. If you'd like to learn more about web hosting and how to go about choosing the right hosting, then take a look at our guide below.

Finding the Right Web Hosting for You?

Web Hosting is the term we use to describe the set of services that are necessary to facilitate the serving of your website to your online visitors. Basically, for your website to function, it must be hosted somewhere on a computer server that is accessible to the wider internet. 

Technically you could serve your website to the internet from your home PC. But that would mean having to leave your PC on all of the time and ensure that it’s always connected to the internet. Some websites are served this way, however the problems start to arise when the website traffic grows and the home based PC can no longer keep up with all the requests coming from the internet. Add to that the problems of online security, and just like reasons we use in choosing a good VPN service, the reasons to use a professional hosting company soon stack up.

This is why most businesses choose to use a hosting company that specializes in this area. There are many varying factors that you’ll need to look at when it comes to choosing the right hosting company for your website. Below we’ll explore some of these.

Choosing the Best Web Hosting Company for Your Needs

There are an almost endless number of hosting companies that you can choose from. However there are some that stand head and shoulders over the rest, due to the expertise and service that they provide. Some key points you should consider when comparing hosting companies are the following.

1. Reliability

There’s no benefit to having a website if it's offline when your visitor comes to view it. This is why the reliability of a web hosting provider is so important. In the industry it’s known as uptime. And it's rated as a percentage. Most providers boast a 99.9% uptime rate. With some going as high as 99.999% or in other words almost perfect uptime due to the redundancies they build into their hosting platforms.

2. Security

It's incredibly important to choose a hosting company with strong security features. Things like 2FA authentication on the login, SSH and SFTP access, DDos attack protection and anti-malware protection is a bonus.

3. Bandwidth

When shopping around for the right web hosting provider. You’ll need to first consider your needs when it comes to bandwidth (which is the amount of traffic to and from your website) and the server space required. If you're planning on running a graphics heavy website or perhaps one with a large database, then you’ll need to choose a hosting provider who can offer you a large amount of server space. Likewise, if you expect a large number of website visitors, you’ll need to ensure that you get enough bandwidth to serve your needs.

4. Compatibility

Before selecting your hosting plan. Make sure you’re aware of any operating system requirements of any of the software or services you’re planning on running on your website. This one is easy if you get it right and can be a total pain down the track if you get it wrong. That being said, most servers run on a combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. And this is usually the best choice. However if you’re planning on serving Microsoft Windows compatible software from your website then an IIS, ASP.Net compatible server might be more appropriate.

5. Price

This one’s obvious, but you often do get what you pay for. There are baseline costs when it comes to the hosting company’s ability to provide you with quality hosting. For this reason it's not always prudent to go with the cheapest offering. That being said, there is also a large variance in prices offered across the industry. So once you’re sure you’re comparing the same features between rival companies, then look at the price.

Hosting Packages - Which One is Right for You?

There are a myriad of different hosting packages available. Generally the cheaper ones are less capable of handling serious website traffic, but can be ok for getting started. From there as your site traffic scales, you’ll need to work your way up to a more capable hosting plan.

1. Shared Hosting

Shared web hosting is the basic starter package, usually on a L.A.M.P (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) setup. In a shared environment, you’ll be allocated a portion of the hard drive space on the server and you’ll be sharing the bandwidth, memory and CPU available to the server with the other websites who are also on the same server. This can work well for basic websites that host images or files or forms etc. But might be problematic for e-commerce sites due to the slower speed of the server. Remember, it's a known fact that most website visitors will leave if the site hasn’t loaded within 4 seconds.

2. Wordpress Hosting

This is usually shared hosting that has been specifically optimized for serving Wordpress based websites. Generally this will include pre-installed Wordpress installations, automatic updates, backups, and optimized database integration. All of this results in faster Wordpress website.

3. VPS

A VPS or Virtual Private Server is a much better option for those who need more customizability. With a VPS you can set the server up exactly how you want it. Whether that’s a L.A.M.P server or IIS or Nginx etc, you get the ability to install whatever you want on it. Also all the resources, whilst still potentially being shared with other VPS’ running on the same machine, will be segregated into a specified allocation that you are guaranteed to have available to your VPS at all times. There are obvious differences between managed and unmanaged VPS’s, with the latter having more flexibility, yet being your responsibility should something go wrong.

4. Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated Hosting provides all the features of a VPS with a more robust level of resources, as you’ll be the only customer running on that machine. All of the resources are dedicated to your use. This is a better option for busy websites that require a greater volume of resources to serve a larger number of visitors.

5. Cloud Based Hosting

Although Cloud based hosting can be the most expensive option, it does give you the most effective route to scalability. With Cloud hosting you can easily scale your computing requirements as your site traffic increases. Cloud computing can also mitigate large spikes in traffic that could potentially take down a site based on lesser forms of hosting.

What Features to Look for in Top Hosting Quality

What are the main things to look for when it comes to choosing the best hosting? That depends on your needs, but some of the main things to consider are:

1. Uptime

As already mentioned above, most web hosting providers these days offer a 99.9% Uptime guarantee. Don’t settle for anything less than this.

2. Load Time

As also mentioned above, if your site takes more than 4 seconds to load, your precious visitors will leave in their droves before they even get a chance to see your content. So load time is a hugely important factor to consider.

3. Support Quality

When it comes to websites, you can’t afford to have any downtime. That means when you hit a snag, you’ll want to resolve it as quickly as possible. Having the expertise on hand when it's needed is worth its weight in gold. Make sure that the hosting provider you choose has decent quality support, preferably available 24/7.

In Summary

Selecting the right web hosting provider is a crucial decision for your success online. You'll want to ensure reliability and security while also considering your website's traffic and technical requirements. By carefully evaluating these factors and selecting a hosting provider that aligns with your needs and goals, you can lay a solid foundation for your growth and success online. Choose wisely, with the aim to build a long-term relationship with a hosting provider that will help your website thrive in the competitive online space.