Best Web Hosting 2024

Whether you’re a business owner or planning to build a new website, a good web host is an absolute must-have – without a host, your site won’t exist.

However, finding a good web hosting service for your website can take a lot of time and money. There are many different types of web hosting, that can cost anywhere between $0.50/mo to $999/mo.

So how do you know which one is the right hosting solution for your business?

There are many factors to consider when choosing a web hosting provider, but the most important is performance – speed and uptime.

In addition to performance, it’s also important to look for reliable customer support (preferably with 24/7 live chat), features like domain name, backups, site migration, and of course affordable pricing.

We reviewed and tested the best hosting services out there to help you quickly and comfortably choose the provider perfect for you.

How We Rank Web Hosts

Our assessment criteria are based on real data, not only that is advertised by a web hosting provider. We evaluate every hosting company for over a year to gather real-world insights to help you make a decision.

Here’s an overview of our reviewing process:

The 10 Best Web Hosting Service Providers of 2024

Below is a list of the 10 best website hosting providers that have good page load time, high uptime, and professional customer support.

1. Bluehost – The Best Web Hosting

Bluehost Pros

+ Good uptime (99.95%)
+ Decent speed (6638 ms)
+ One-Click-Install for WordPress
+ Easy to use, beginner-friendly
+ Free domain and site builder
+ 24/7 support (chat and phone)

Bluehost Cons

– Discounts for longer plans only

Visit Bluehost.com

Notable Features

Their cheapest plan comes with features like free domain name, website builder, and one-click install for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal through their control panel. So for starters (someone without a website), this is probably the best option. Unmetered bandwidth and 50 GB storage is also included in the basic plan.

Bluehost also offers free email accounts and SSL on all plans. It’s very easy to use and probably one of the best entry-level web hosting providers that are both reliable and secure. In addition to traditional shared hosting, the company also offers dedicated, VPS, and managed WordPress hosting plans for higher traffic websites.

Performance

We’ve been keeping a close eye on Bluehost’s performance since 2017 and thus far we haven’t been disappointed. Over the past 6-months, they’ve delivered an uptime of 99.95% and an average loading time of 638 ms.

Customer Support

Bluehost provides 24/7 customer support over live chat, phone, and an email ticketing system. On top of that, they have a vast knowledge base packed with answers to frequent questions and useful information.

We tested out Bluehost’s live chat by asking some general questions about their shared hosting plans and the customer rep was quick and knowledgeable.

Pricing

All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

We signed up with Bluehost’s shared hosting plan already in 2015 and we’ve been monitoring their performance since 2017. When we first signed up with them we paid a total of $42.48/year and after the renewal $107.86/year.

Visit Bluehost.com
…or read our detailed Bluehost review

2. A2 Hosting – The Fastest Web Host

A2 Hosting Pros

+ Fast load time (288 ms)
+ Reliable uptime (99.99%)
+ WordPress optimized servers
+ Unlimited bandwidth and storage
+ 24/7 “Guru” chat support
+ 20+ email accounts

A2 Hosting Cons

– Higher renewal cost

Visit A2Hosting.com

Notable Features

The cheapest plan “Lite” comes with 1 website, unlimited email accounts, a domain name for 1 year, free Cloudflare CDN, and unlimited bandwidth.

The A2 hosting company is also well-known for working seamlessly with all major content management systems including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and Magento making it a great fit for web developers. The company offers a variety of hosting plans and they all include a free LetsEncrypt SSL certificate, unlimited SSD storage, and free site migration.

Performance

A2 Hosting servers that we’ve monitored since 2015 are optimized for WordPress websites and they use LiteSpeed cache. Thanks to that they are the fastest host we’ve seen with an average speed of 288 ms. Moreover, A2 Hosting is also reliable. Their average uptime over the past six months has been hovering around 99.99% with half an hour of downtime.

Customer Support

A2 Hosting has a reliable customer support team called “Guru Crew Support.” Customers can connect with them 24/7/365 via live chat, phone, email, and tickets.

Our personal experience with A2 Hosting live chat was positive, their customer rep connected within a few minutes and was very knowledgeable.

Pricing

All plans come with an anytime money-back guarantee.

We signed up with A2 Hosting in 2015 and have been monitoring them ever since. During the initial sign up we paid in total lb51.32 and after a year it renewed to lb74.20.

Visit A2Hosting.com
…or read our detailed A2 Hosting review

3. Hostinger – The Most Affordable Host

Hostinger Pros

+ Fast load time (312 ms)
+ Good uptime (99.94%)
+ Cheap pricing ($1.99/mo)
+ Datacenters in US, Europe & Asia
+ Free SSL certificate
+ Multilingual support

Hostinger Cons

– No free domain
– Limited bandwidth on the cheapest plan

Visit Hostinger.com

Notable Features

The company offers a variety of hosting plans with different features and all plans come with an easy website builder, free SSL certificate, and 99.9% uptime guarantee

Hostinger’s cheapest plan comes with 30 GB of disk space, 100 GB of bandwidth, two MySQL databases, and one email account. Most notably, the cheapest plan doesn’t include a free domain and has limited processing power and memory. Starting from the Premium plan, bandwidth, and disk space are unlimited.

Other services provided by Hostinger include Cloud, Email, WordPress, and Windows VPS hosting plans.

Performance

We’ve been monitoring Hostinger since 2017 and during previous years, their performance was rather mediocre. However, they managed to step up their game and now delivered an average uptime of 99.94% and an average speed of 312 ms (third-fastest host on our list) – proving themself to be both a fast and reliable provider.

Customer Support

Hostinger has a multilingual customer support team, live chat, and they integrated Intercom as their main support system.

They also have a knowledge base where you can find guides, information, and answers to questions by yourself.

Our personal experience with their live chat was satisfactory – we asked some technical questions and got knowledgeable replies backed up by links from the customer support rep. However, the response time was rather slow, since there was a 30-minute waiting line.

One thing to note is that Hostinger’s live chat is available only for registered users.

Pricing

All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

We started monitoring Hostinger’s performance in 2017 and in 2019 and 2021 we paid $139.39 for a two years plan, making them very affordable.

Visit Hostinger.com
…or read our detailed Hostinger review

4. DreamHost – Best “Monthly” Payment Option

DreamHost Pros

+ Uptime guarantee
+ Monthly plans available
+ 97-day money back guarantee
+ Unlimited bandwidth and storage

DreamHost Cons

– Poor uptime (99.76%)
– Slow loading time (1700 ms)
– No cPanel

Visit Dreamhost.com

Notable Features

The basic plan includes a free domain, 1 website, unlimited bandwidth, and storage. Customers also get to use DreamHost’s drag-and-drop builder and can add an email for a monthly fee of $1.99/mo.

The company offers strong security features (LetsEncrypt SSL), a variety of domain management tools, and unlimited data transfer per month. WordPress comes pre-installed and the company also has its own easy-to-use and beginner-friendly website builder. They don’t have cPanel which is well known in the web developers industry, but DreamHost offers their own admin panel which pretty much does the same as cPanel or Plesk.

Performance

We started tracking DreamHost’s performance in 2017 and they started out strong with stable uptime and fast speeds.

However, during the past six months, DreamHost’s performance has not been exactly stellar – delivering an average speed of 1700 ms and uptime of 99.76%.

Customer Support

DreamHost provides a knowledge base and discussion forums to help customers solve their own issues.

They also claim to offer a 24/7 live chat option, but in reality, it’s limited to being available from 3.00 AM to 9.30 PM PT every day. In order to get an answer to our technical questions, we had to try many times before we were connected to anyone in the sales team. However, during the times when we actually could contact the customer rep, they were helpful and quick to reply.

Pricing

All plans come with a 97-day money-back guarantee.

We’ve been monitoring DreamHost since 2017 and in 2019, for example, we paid a total of $119.40/year.

Visit DreamHost.com
…or read our detailed DreamHost review

5. SiteGround – The Best Uptime

SiteGround Pros

+ Fast load time (391 ms)
+ Exceptional uptime (99.99%)
+ Knowledgable customer support
+ Unlimited email accounts

SiteGround Cons

– Limited cheap plan

Visit Siteground.com

Notable Features

All SiteGround hosting plans include website builder, email accounts, SSL, Cloudflare CDN, daily backups, and SSH access, for free.

With the cheapest StartUp plan, you can host one website well-suited for ~10,000 monthly visits. The plan comes with 10 GB of web space, unmetered traffic, and 24/7 support.

SiteGround has a wide line of services including managed WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, cloud hosting, enterprise hosting, and dedicated server hosting. Instead of having in-house servers, they are renting servers from the Google Cloud.

Performance

SiteGround excels in uptime – being almost perfect at 99.99%. They also perform well in speed, coming at an average of 391 ms.

We’ve been testing SiteGround since 2017 and during those years their lowest uptime has been 99.91% (January 2021). So it is safe to say that with SiteGround your website will be up and running at all times.

Customer Support

SiteGround offers a 24/7 live chat option together with phone support. They also provide a vast knowledge base for customers who like to find answers on their own.

Their live chat is professional and fast. The customer rep connected with up in less than a minute and it took us less than four minutes to get answers to our questions.

Moreover, many user reviews emphasize that SiteGround’s customer service is very professional and quick to help.

Pricing

All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

We signed up with SiteGround in 2017 and have also been monitoring their performance ever since. During the initial signup, we paid a total of EUR114.48/year and the maximum amount that we’ve been invoiced is EUR503.86 (for a one-year plan).

Visit SiteGround.com
…or read our detailed SiteGround review

6. GoDaddy – One of the Largest Hosting Provider

GoDaddy Pros

+ Good load time (295 ms)
+ Average uptime (99.97%)
+ Uptime guarantee for 99.90%
+ cPanel and website builder access

GoDaddy Cons

– SSL & email costs extra
– No free site transfers

Visit GoDaddy.com

Notable Features

GoDaddy is an excellent solution for building custom websites as it comes with a simple drag-and-drop website builder (GoCentral) designed for beginners. It also features developer-friendly tools like MySQL, cPanel, CloudLinux, Python, and multiple versions of PHP.

Their cheapest web hosting plan comes with a free domain and unmetered bandwidth. Security monitoring and DDoS protection are included too.

However, GoDaddy has many “upsells” that will likely make you pay a bit more. For example, SSL certificates, and email accounts are not included in their cheapest plan.

Performance

During the past six months, GoDaddy has shown fast loading times, coming at an average of 295 ms (second-fastest host in this list) and strong uptime (99.97%).

Customer Support

GoDaddy comes with 24/7/365 customer support. They have a live chat, phone support in a number of languages, and a vast knowledge base.

Our experience with GoDaddy’s support (live chat) has been quite inconsistent. There were times when the customer rep connected within a few minutes and replied to our questions very swiftly, but other times, their live chat was nearly impossible to get access to as the waiting time was nearly an hour.

Pricing

All GoDaddy’s yearly and multi-year plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

We’ve been monitoring GoDaddy’s performance since 2017 while also paying for their shared hosting services. In 2021 we paid EUR107.86/year for their Economy plan.

Visit GoDaddy.com
…or read our detailed GoDaddy review

7. GreenGeeks – Best Eco-Friendly Hosting Provider

GreenGeeks Pros

+ Good load time (478 ms)
+ Reliable uptime (99.99%)
+ US, Canada & Netherlands servers
+ Free site transfer
+ Unlimited bandwidth and email accounts

GreenGeek Cons

– Questionable money back policy
– High renewal cost

Visit GreenGeeks.com

Notable Features

Their cheapest plan comes with a free domain for 1 year, website control panel (cPanel), free SSL, PowerCacher, 50 GB SSD storage, and unlimited data transfer. Customers also get one website, 50 email accounts, and nightly backups.

If your website grows bigger, you can always upgrade to their more flexible VPS hosting. Also, GreenGeeks will migrate your site from your existing web host for free. Unfortunately, the $10.95/month renewal rate may dissuade some webmasters from choosing GreenGeeks over other hosting providers.

Performance

GreenGeeks offers a fast loading time (478 ms) and reliable uptime of 99.99%. Overall, GreenGeeks has been performing very well since we started monitoring them in 2017.

Customer Support

GreenGeeks offer 24/7 live chat and phone support. Besides the two aforementioned, they also come with an extensive knowledge base.

Their live chat is very responsive. Customer support representative connected with us within a few minutes and was overall very knowledgeable.

Pricing

All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

We signed up with GreenGeeks in 2015 and have been monitoring their uptime and speed since 2017. During the initial sign up we paid $76.32 per year and the highest amount that we’ve paid is $131.40 per year (in 2021).

Visit GreenGeeks.com
…or read our detailed GreenGeeks review

8. InMotion Hosting – One of the Most Well-Known Providers

InMotion Pros

+ Good uptime (99.98%)
+ Fast Speed (321 ms)
+ Good Customer Support
+ 90-Days Money-Back Guarantee
+ Free Website Transfer

InMotion Cons

– No Free Domain with the Cheapest Plan
– Some Plan Limitations

Visit InMotion.com

Notable Features

InMotion’s cheapest plan comes with great features such as unlimited bandwidth, free SSL certificates, and 400+ app integrations (including a 1-click WordPress install). Sadly, a domain name is not included in their cheapest plan.

Still, InMotion is worth trying out as they provide some great features when starting with your first website. Beginners can benefit from their free website builder. When your site starts to grow, you can switch to a more scalable VPS or dedicated server hosting plan.

Performance

We’ve been testing InMotion’s performance for over five years now and our last six months’ measured data shows a great average uptime of 99.98% and a fast page speed average of 321 ms. Considering the size of InMotion’s client base, these are very solid results.

Customer Support

All customers can benefit from InMotion’s 24/7 live chat, phone, email, and phone support. Moreover, they also offer Skype support, and of course knowledge base.

Our experience with their live chat was okay. This means, we got all the answers to our questions, but they came with a short delay, and the customer rep was overall a bit too concise.

Pricing

All plans come with a 90-day money-back guarantee.

We signed up with InMotion in 2015 and we’ve been also monitoring their performance ever since. During the initial signup, we paid in a total of $47.94/year which was later renewed to $107.88/year.

Visit InMotionHosting.com
…or read our detailed InMotion review

9. IONOS (1&1) Hosting – The Largest Hosting Company in Europe

IONOS Pros

+ Strong Uptime (99.97%)
+ Improved Speed (731 ms)
+ Free SSL Security
+ Free Domain and Email
+ Improved User Interface

IONOS Cons

– No Free Website Transfers
– Can’t Sign Up in Many Countries

Visit Ionos.com

Notable Features

With IONOS’s cheapest plan, you’ll get access to several great features: a website builder, free SSL, a free domain and email, as well as popular CMSs including WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.

Unfortunately, free site migrations are not offered and on top of that, IONOS isn’t even available in many countries, including numerous European countries, China, and Egypt.

Performance

We’ve been monitoring IONOS since 2020, so we haven’t gathered that detailed insight into their performance yet, especially compared to other hosts on this list.

However, our test site data from the previous 6 months reveals that IONOS is very reliable when it comes to uptime (99.97%). However, their average page speed isn’t exactly top-tier coming at 731 ms – but it’s still improved and is more than 100 ms faster than last year.

Customer Support

IONOS offers 24/7 customer support for non-registered and registered users only via phone, email, or knowledge base. Recently they also started offering a live chat option. Overall the live chat was fast but still has room for improvement.

Pricing

IONOS offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

IONOS is the newest host on this list. We signed up with them in 2020 and also have been monitoring their performance ever since. IONOS sends an invoice for $4.00 every month.

Visit Ionos.com
…or read our detailed Ionos review

10. HostPapa – Good Value for Price

HostPapa Pros

+ Great uptime (99.96%)
+ Fast average speed (566 ms)
+ Extensive Support Options
+ Proactive Security Features
+ 30-Days Money-Back Guarantee

HostPapa Cons

– High Renewal Prices

Visit Hostpapa.com

Notable Features

HostPapa’s cheapest plan includes a free migration, SSL, and CDN, as well as a website builder and 400+ 1-click-install apps. On top of that, you’ll get a free domain, 100 GB of storage, and unmetered bandwidth.

Next to shared hosting, HostPapa also offers VPS and WordPress hosting plans.

Performance

When we started monitoring HostPapa in 2015 they didn’t exactly excel in speed – our test site took over a second to load. However, they have remarkably improved their server speed and during the past six months, their average loading time was 566 ms.

Moreover, HostPapa has proven to be reliable with an uptime of 99.96%.

Customer Support

HostPapa offers more support options than perhaps any other host. They have 24/7 live chat, email, fax (!), and mail support as well as phone support in over 18 countries and four languages. Also, their knowledge base has many helpful videos.

Our experience with HostPapa’s live chat was smooth – they were responsive and knowledgeable in regards to our technical questions.

Pricing

HostPapa comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

We signed up with HostPapa in 2015 and throughout these years their invoices have been between $95.88 to $172.66 per year.

Visit HostPapa.com
…or read our detailed HostPapa review

All Hosting Reviews & Statistics (Spreadsheet)

Each year we will slowly add more hosting providers to the list as soon as we have enough data on their performance (uptime and load time). Here’s a link to the spreadsheet – web hosting comparison chart (2024).

Tips for Choosing a Web Host

If you’re stuck on how to choose the best web host for you, knowing how to evaluate key factors helps a lot.

Uptime and Speed

Uptime and speed are the two most crucial components of a good web host. Make sure when you choose a host they have a good record history with both of these factors. Regarding uptime, it’s also good to make sure the hosting company offers some kind of an uptime guarantee (usually 99.9%).

Beware of Renewal Rates

According to our findings, most web hosting providers double or triple their price once it’s time to renew your deal. The renewal fees can jump to $7-10/mo for a basic plan that initially costs $2.99/mo. The features and performance you get from the plan stay the same, but you’ll have to pay more.

Trustworthy Customer Support

Customer service is something that makes or breaks the business. When choosing a host, make sure that the support is reliable and available. Read user reviews about other people’s experiences and try out the live chat yourself during sign-up. You should get at least some hint already then what kind of a company you’re committing to.

Site Migration Might Come with a Price Tag

What if you pick a web host only to discover that you don’t like it? Site transfer, also known as site migration, allows you to move your website to another host.

Moving to another website consists of transferring the website’s files and databases, configuring your site with the new host, and directing your domain’s DNS to the new host. Once you pick a new site host, they can usually help you out with this process. The cost will depend on the host you’re switching to, but it can range anywhere from $150-$400.

But some web hosts offer free site migrations.

Scalability Options

If you are just starting out or have a low-traffic website, you should opt-in for shared web hosting. It’s more than enough to maintain and run your website(s). However, once your site(s) grows, it’s easy to migrate from one hosting to another or upgrade to more expensive web hosting.

• Shared web hosting – Best for new websites and blogs. All websites are stored on one physical hosting server where they share server resources like storage, bandwidth, RAM, and computing power. If your website doesn’t get much traffic, this is the best place to start.
• VPS hosting – VPS stands for a virtual private server. Although VPS is similar to shared hosting (speed and uptime wise) and it stores multiple websites on the same server, it provides more customization options and you’ll have more control. With VPS you can scale your resources based on your needs.
• Cloud hosting – Type of hosting service which allows many computers to work together, run applications, and use combined computing resources. Cloud-hosted websites can use the resources of multiple web servers, which means they’re not limited to a single server location.
• Managed WordPress – Best for high traffic WordPress sites. WordPress managed hosting covers the same hosting needs as general web hosting services, however, its main focus is to optimize the performance of a WordPress site.
• Dedicated hosting – Best for big, enterprise websites. Type of hosting server that gives website owners the resources of one entire server for their website. This type of hosting provides websites with the ability to handle large amounts of traffic and the ability to customize it to their needs in terms of CPU, RAM, disk space, and software.

TL;DR

In case you didn’t read the whole article, here’s a quick recap.

The best host currently on the market is Bluehost. If you’re looking for stellar speed, stable uptime, and professional customer support, then they should tick all the boxes.

If you’re looking for a super-fast hosting provider then the next best choice is A2 Hosting.

In case you’re low on budget but still want a reliable service, you might want to go with Hostinger.

You don’t want to sign up with a long-term contract? Choose DreamHost’s monthly plan.

And if you want a 99.99% guarantee that your website will always be up and running, then SiteGround is for you.

Detailed reviews of all the hosting companies we’ve monitored so far can be found here.

If you want us to review, compare and track more of a web hosting company that is not listed, contact us.

If you wish to leave your own review, you can submit it here. Since we get a lot of submissions, we only accept genuine and unique reviews.