April 24th, 2021
How Can We Help?
The Challenging World of Website Hosting
Over the years we’ve experienced the “good, the bad and the ugly” of website hosting. Of the half-dozen companies (or more), a few have convinced us to steer clear in the future, however, others have given us hope for the hosting industry and customer support in general. We’d like to provide our recommendations based on past and recent experience as well as industry-related data.
To back-track a bit, a few years ago we heard that several of the larger hosting companies had been acquired by a corporation in India. That was partially true. Endurance International Group (EIG) is an IT services company, founded in 1997, who specializes in website hosting. This corporation moved their IT infrastructure to India, where they are located today. Although the acquisitions (eg: Arvixe, BlueHost, Constant Contact, HostGator, etc.) maintained their original name, having an infrastructure based in India means much of the customer support is supplied by India-based employees. For those customers who are interested in supporting U.S. businesses, we list only those companies headquartered in the United States with U.S.-based support.
InMotion Hosting
We’ve been a customer of InMotion for 5 years, and although we are NOT in the hosting business, we offer our website development clients InMotion Hosting through our Small Details’ account at an extremely affordable rate. Since we have full access to the distribution of resources, we’re able to quickly and efficiently perform updates and make adjustments for your website account, which assures maximum uptime and performance.
With headquarters in Virginia Beach, VA, InMotion provides Free CDN, PHP 7, PHP 8; Hack and malware protection, automatic backups, and automatic WordPress security patches with optional automatic updates. They promise 99.9% uptime with 24/7/365 U.S.-based, WP Hosting Support by email and phone. They also offer a 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee, although we’ve never had to use it.
InMotion’s #1 asset, by far, is their customer support. If you’ve ever had to reach a hosting company by phone for an emergency (or any tech company for that matter — and who hasn’t?), you know the frustration. Our experience with InMotion has been second to none. Of course, peak times can be a little tricky, and COVID has forced some changes within their organization, but we continue to appreciate the professionalism and expertise with which they handle our calls.
Of course you also have the option of creating an account and managing the subscription directly through InMotion. Either way, we’ll provide some of the benefits and other details:
Shared Hosting $5.99/mo. (Minimum, 2 years; Renews at reg. rate of $10.99/mo.) – 2 Websites, 50GB SSD Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth, 10 Email Addresses, Security Suite, and more…
WordPress Hosting $6.99/mo. (Minimum, 2 years; Renews at reg. rate of $9.99/mo.) – 1 Website, 50GB SSD Storage, Free Domain & SSL, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Email, Security Suite, and more…
Visit their website for additional detail.
DreamHost
DreamHost is a company we’ve had minimal experience with, however, it’s been positive. They come highly recommended by most accounts (including WordPress.org), and their pricing is comparable ($2.59/mo. – $16.95/mo. for WordPress and shared plans).
They are a privately owned (“employee owned”) company (not EIG) founded in 1996, offering U.S.-based support with additional services including cloud computing and cloud storage. Data centers are located in Ashburn, VA and Irvine, CA.
Read more about DreamHost.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is an A+ rated (BBB) hosting service who commits to purchasing three times the energy they use in wind energy credits, which is a complex but wonderful idea! We have no direct experience with GreenGeeks but their shared and WordPress pricing is comparable at $2.49/mo. with an SSL certificate, free domain for first year, nightly backup, CDN and 30-day money back guarantee. Support, however is via chat and email with phone support during business hours.
GreenGeeks is headquartered in Wilmington, DE (who knew?!). Data centers are located in Chicago, Montreal and in Amsterdam.
Click for more about GreenGeeks.
Siteground
We spent some time with Siteground hosting and found their servers to be very reliable as far as uptime. Security was also among the best and we had no complaints regarding their customer support. We DID, however, find ourselves with unexpected, unannounced AUTO-renewal fees that were completely out of line with the original fee. We’re absolutely not rejecting them but should you consider Siteground for your hosted WordPress website, please be sure to read the fine print and plan ahead.
Siteground is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria with 6 data centers in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Click for in-depth information about Siteground hosting.