Hosting your website at the right place is extremely important. After all, you don’t want to experience the troubles that come with down times, high page load times, migrations, and in the worst case scenario – loss of data. So, in order to help you avoid all of these headaches, today I will list my top 5 picks for the best web hosting companies of 2016 – InMotion Hosting, Bluehost, SiteGround, iPage, and Arvixe.

What You’ll Learn

• The top 5 web hosting providers – a comparison between their unique features and hosting plans so that you can choose the best hosting service possible that is affordable enough for you and at the same time, meets your site hosting needs.
• Summary – wrapping this web hosting comparison up…

Comparing The Top 5 Best Web Hosting Companies

I’ve read a lot of horror stories and negative reviews about different website hosting services and let me tell you this – they don’t paint a pretty picture. The last thing you want to have to deal with when creating and developing your website is problems with your web hosting solution. You want to focus on content, monetization, and marketing.

So, in order to help you guys choose a cheap reliable web hosting right from the start and focus on what’s important, I have put together this top 5 list of the best web hosting providers. How have I come up with this list? Well, some of these top web hosting providers I have tested myself, and for the rest, I have looked around the Internet for recent web hosting reviews and rankings by websites such as Top Ten Reviews.

A lot of you guys requested such a comparison article of the best website hosting services after I published the how I started a successful blog article, so here we are. Now, in that blog post I basically recommended my two favorite reliable web hosting solutions, but in this article I won’t be recommending anything – I will simply list the features and web hosting plans of these 5 top web hosts. And based on this data, you will be able to select the one that meets your requirements. Let’s begin already.

Best Web Hosting Service #1: InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is the first web hosting company that I personally recommend. They offer all 3 main types of hosting – shared, VPS, and dedicated, including WordPress-specific hosting and managed hosting. They are the only web hosting service that I know which has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, is a top-rated CNET hosting company for more than 13 years, and well over 20,000 positive reviews from satisfied customers.

Specifically, speaking from personal experience, their business plans are phenomenal and a perfect web hosting solution for small businesses of all types. Now let’s see what features InMotion Hosting offers that makes this top web hosting company so good.

InMotion Hosting Features

• Free SSD drives – included with all web hosting plans.
• Free domain – you can either get a new domain for free or transfer an old one, again, for free.
• 90-days full money back guarantee – higher than any other hosting service that I know. Most I’ve seen is 60 days.
• Free data backups – a really important feature of any top hosting company, which on many occasions costs additionally.
• Free 1-click installer – you can install well over 310 applications with a single click, including WordPress, Joomla, etc.
• Free website builder – you can use this drag-and-drop feature to quickly and easily build beautiful websites.
• Max Speed Zone – an InMotion Hosting specific feature which allows their customers to choose a specific data center where their website will be hosted, which will significantly increase its speed.
• Free website transfer – if you are having problems with your current host, you can easily move to InMotion Hosting – all for free and without you doing absolutely anything.
• Unlimited disk space and bandwidth – another very important feature of a top web hosting company. Even the most basic plan of InMotion Hosting comes with unlimited disk space and bandwidth.
• Easy and intuitive control panel – if you’ve worked with cPanel previously, you’d know what I’m talking about.
• Extremely good and fast support – in my opinion, by far the most important feature of any hosting provider. InMotion Hosting offers 24x7x365 support hotlines which include phone (quickest), Skype, email, and a huge database of frequently asked questions so that customers can get answers as quickly as possible. Support is the biggest factor, right next to hardware and software of course, that can make or break a hosting company.

As you can see, basically all the features you’d expect from a top hosting provider. And what price do you have to pay for all of this? Well, InMotion Hosting is not only high quality, but also is an extremely affordable hosting solution. Even more so if you use our exclusive discount link.

If you’d like to see more details, just visit some InMotion hosting reviews like the one linked here.

InMotion Hosting Prices

• Shared business hosting – starting at just $4.89/month (38% discount) – same prices apply to the WordPress-optimized web hosting plans.
• VPS hosting – starting at just $29.99/month (33% discount).
• Dedicated hosting – starting at just $119.99/month (36% discount).

And that’s basically it for InMotion Hosting and their features and hosting plans. Again, it is one of two low cost web hosting companies that I personally recommend and I assure you that you can’t go wrong with them in any way.

Best Web Hosting Service #2: Bluehost

Bluehost is the second web hosting company that I will personally recommend in this web hosting comparison. They are probably the most popular out of the top web hosting companies featured in this article, with their phenomenally high customer satisfaction rate and with their extremely affordable yet high quality web hosting plans.

In addition to the more popular shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting, Bluehost also offers the ever-so growing in popularity cloud hosting as well as WooCommerce-specialized and WordPress-specialized hosting. Here’s why Bluehost is and has been one of the top hosting companies in the world for so many years.

Bluehost Features

• Free domain – each of the hosting plans of Bluehost comes with a free domain name.
• Unlimited bandwidth – never worry about website traffic.
• Automatic backups – Bluehost automatically creates daily, weekly, and monthly backups of their customers’ entire accounts so that no data would be lost.
• Resource protection – a special technology that identifies websites which require more resources and temporarily re-assigns them to isolated systems thus solving one of the more fundamental problems of shared hosting – that it is shared.
• Enhanced control panel – Bluehost have designed their own, more enhanced version of cPanel, which contains additional tools and makes it easier for people to manage their websites, domains, emails, and pretty much everything – all from a single user interface.
• Free site builders – you can easily create a website from ground zero using these tools.
• Amazing support – Bluehost’s in-house support team is online 24/7 ready to not only solve technical issues, but to also offer any help or guidance that is required by their customers. On top of that, they have a huge database of support resources as well as multiple other support hotlines – phone, live chat, and email.
• 30-days full money back guarantee – so you can feel financially secure.

More than 2 million websites are currently hosted on Bluehost and it’s not a coincidence. Their web hosting services are simply amazing with the one thing that I don’t like being the fact that they don’t offer free migrations, but I understand that completely – after all, they have more than 2 freakin’ million websites hosted with them. Now, aside from that, Bluehost offers one of the most affordable hosting out there, especially if you take advantage of our exclusive discount link.

Bluehost Prices

• Shared hosting – starting at just $3.95/month (40% discount).
• Cloud hosting – starting at just $5.95/month (40% discount).
• WordPress-optimized hosting – starting at just $12.49/month (50% discount).
• VPS hosting – starting at just $14.99/month (50% discount).
• Dedicated hosting – starting at just $74.99/month (50% discount).

By all metrics portrayed here, Bluehost certainly lives up to its name as one of the best website hosting services in the world. In my own opinion, it is probably the best web hosting provider for starting out a new website – right alongside InMotion Hosting.

Best Web Hosting Service #3: SiteGround

SiteGround is third on our list of the top 5 web hosting providers simply because their services are outstanding. They won the “People’s Choice 2016” award from whoishostingthis.com with the highest average user and editor ratings and the most amount of positive reviews.

And it’s not only their amazing customer satisfaction that’s ranking SiteGround among the top website hosting companies – it is the source of that i.e. their long list of features and cheap hosting plans that can be tailored specifically to fit the needs of every customer.

SiteGround Features

• SSD drives – all of SiteGround’s hosting plans include SSD drives for maximum speed.
• Speed enhancement – NGINX, PHP7 and a free CDN (CloudFlare) are among the best features of SiteGround which make their hosting so fast.
• Free SSL certificate – HTTPS is very important nowadays, even for the rankings of your website on the search engines, so this feature will give your website a little extra edge.
• Strong security – 800+ WAF rules protect your from many different vulnerabilities.
• Daily backups – no loss of information with SiteGround.
• Free domain – you get a free domain name with the purchase of any hosting plan.
• Free website builder – build beautiful websites quickly and easily from ground zero.
• Free website transfer – if you are unhappy with your current web hosting provider, you can easily switch to SiteGround for free.
• 30-days money back guarantee – you can test out SiteGround and if you don’t like them, you can simply get your money back. There’s no risk at all.
• Unlimited bandwidth – never worry about the amount of traffic generated by your website.
• Phenomenal support – SiteGround’s support is well known for their amazing response times which is online 24/7. Support hotlines include phone (instant), live chat (also instant), and a ticketing system which takes, on average, 10 minutes to respond.
• Extremely easy setup – it takes just 3 clicks to create a new website with SiteGround and they will even call to guide you through it if you need the assistance.
• Three continents – SiteGround manages thousands of servers across North America, Europe, and Asia.
• 99.999% uptime – SiteGround actually have a policy which states that if you experience more than 0.1% downtime per year, you will be compensated for your troubles.

So as you can see, SiteGround’s list of features is really long and believe it or not, there’s more, but those were the more important ones. Now, the one thing that I dislike a bit about SiteGround is that their shared hosting plans come with a limited disk space, but it is still big enough to handle a typical website’s files.

Now, when it comes to cheap web hosting plans, considering the amount of free features you get with each of them, I think that SiteGround is right there at the top despite the few limits that they have. Let me show you.

SiteGround Prices

• Shared hosting – starting at just $3.95/month (50% discount).
• WordPress & Joomla optimized hosting – starting at just $3.95/month (60% discount).
• Cloud hosting – starting at $60/month.
• Dedicated hosting – starting at $229/month.

And that’s pretty much it for SiteGround. Just a really well-rounded web hosting provider with a ton of features and extremely affordable hosting plans. Moving on to number 4 on our list.

Best Web Hosting Service #4: iPage

Number 4 on our list of the top 5 web hosting companies is none other than the very popular iPage. With more than 10 years experience as a web hosting provider, iPage has helped hundreds of thousands of people get into the online world. With one of the cheapest web hosting plans and with a never-ending list of features, iPage certainly offers one of the most cost-effective and easy-to-use web page hosting services on the market.

iPage Features

• Unlimited disk space – don’t be afraid to upload files to your website.
• Free domain – when you purchase a hosting plan with iPage, you will also get a free domain name.
• 30-days money back guarantee – you can first test out iPage’s hosting services and if you are not happy for whatever reason, you can get your money back – no risk at all.
• Website builders – using these tools, you can setup a brand new website, from ground zero, in a matter of minutes.
• Unlimited databases – some web hosts limit the number of databases that you can create, but not iPage.
• Strong security – iPage comes with a few features that will help secure the safety of your account – enhanced security suite, 24/7 network monitoring and a few others.
• Free website transfer – if you do not like your current hosting provider, you can easily switch to iPage for no additional cost at all.
• Very good support – iPage has a lot of resources which users can browse and easily find answers. This includes step-by-step tutorials and audio and video guidelines. Aside from that, they also offer 24/7 phone hotline (answered in about 60 seconds on average), live chat, and email support.

The one thing that I dislike about iPage is that their bandwidth is scalable. This means that if your website grows a lot in traffic (it isn’t specified how much), you might be forced to upgrade your hosting plan in order to keep your website live. In most cases (99.5% according to iPage), this is not a problem, however, there’s a lot of people online and if you create an awesome website that becomes very popular, you might have some problems. The good news is that all of iPage’s hosting plans are extremely cheap so you shouldn’t have any problem upgrading.

iPage Prices

• Shared hosting – starting at just $1.99/month (83% discount).
• WordPress-optimized hosting – starting at just $3.75/month.
• VPS hosting – starting at just $19.99/month (20% discount).
• Dedicated hosting – starting at just $119.99/month (20% discount).

And that’s it pretty much for iPage. To be honest, I’ve never tested out their hosting services personally, but from the research I did, they do rank high on almost all of the web hosting comparisons that I have checked out and their customer satisfaction rating is extremely good.

Best Web Hosting Service #5: Arvixe

Arvixe is a relatively new website hosting provider (in terms of popularity) compared to the above 4 web hosting services that we already analyzed. However, it is one of the fastest growing hosting companies as of now. Arvixe provide great hosting plans to help start your online journey. The one thing that’s really good about them is that you can host multiple websites on a relatively low budget.

Arvixe Features

• Unlimited disk space and bandwidth – don’t ever worry about information transfer with Arvixe.
• Free domain for life – at this point, that’s a given with any web hosting provider, however, Arvixe will pay for your domain for life or until you stop using their hosting services.
• Website builder – you can use a bunch of free tools to create your website from ground zero and in no time.
• 60-days money back guarantee – after InMotion Hosting (90 days), Arvixe offers the longest money back guarantee.
• Free website transfer – that’s a feature almost any top web hosting company offers.
• Good support – Arvixe offer 24/7 live chat, knowledgebase, and a ticketing system in order to help their customers as fast as possible.

The one thing that I don’t really like is the fact that they don’t have a support phone hotline. Usually, with hosting providers, that is the fastest way to get a response. Arvixe do offer priority customer support, however, it comes at an additional cost. Now let’s look at their very inexpensive hosting plans.

Arvixe Prices

• Personal hosting – starting at just $4/month.
• Business hosting – starting at just $22/month.
• VPS hosting – starting at just $40/month.
• Cloud hosting – starting at just $108/month.
• Dedicated hosting – starting at just $128.70/month.

And that’s it for Arvixe’s web hosting features and prices. As I already mentioned, this hosting provider is growing extremely fast, but according to customer reviews and other web hosting comparisons I’ve examined, they need to push a little bit further in order to get to the first few positions – and that’s why I placed them at number 5 in this list.

Summary

So there you have it. A quick comparison between the top web hosting providers and their features and hosting plans. I want to note again that I have ranked these based on my personal experience and online research, so you can be pretty certain that you won’t go wrong with any of them.

For those wondering, no, this website is not hosted on any of these website hosting providers, but on WPX Hosting. Why? Because I think that it is the best web host when it comes to WordPress websites. I host other smaller sites of mine on some of the web hosting companies from the list – the ones I recommended – and as I already said, I haven’t had any problems so far (fingers crossed).

So if you are thinking about starting a new website, to whatever purpose, I would strongly recommend you going with one of these 5 web hosting providers. In the best case scenario, you’d go for the one that most suits your needs. As you saw, they all have their own unique features and prices, so take all that into account when you are making your choice. Good luck!