Best Web Hosting For Bloggers Last Updated: February 5, 2017 Before you can create your blog online, you need to make sure you have an effective and reputable hosting company for your blog. While plenty of options exist, it’s difficult to find the BEST one for you that’s fast, allows you to publish articles on your blog, and affordable. We’ve tested more than 50 hosting companies to come up with our best web hosting for bloggers 2017 list. To make it easy for you, we’ve eliminated most of them and included just our top 10 favorites. Top Blogging Web Hosts 2017 In my case, I wanted WordPress for my blogging. Here are some of the best hosting companies to use for bloggers in 2017. One of our favorites is.
Ideal for first-time users. They offer a variety of easy to use services for a reasonable price. You really can’t beat it. Backend admin offers you plenty of options for navigation and easy access to all of your blogging tools.
You’ll also have access to other apps and use of your site. Bluehost is one of the more inexpensive web hosting services that is available in today’s market. This is a major reason why it is so popular. There are other hosts that are cheap, but among the more popular options it is a great price.
At only $3.95 per month, for any blogger this is a very popular option. Bluehost Hosting Details Security has good security options. The company offers tools to help combat some of the more common risks that websites face. For instance, you can help to prevent spam by using tools such as Spam Hammer, Spam Experts, and SpamAssassin. CloudFlare is supported, which help to prevent harmful DDoS attacks which have the potential to bring down a website by sending overwhelming amounts of traffic from various sources. Hotlink protection is also offered, which helps to prevent individuals from stealing your content or images, along with SSH access for secure online sessions and IP address blacklists for blocking anyone who is problematic.
Integration A dashboard is also provided by that is loaded with applications that allow you to integrate with different services, such as CloudFlare and Google Apps to increase possibilities for your website. Support There are some users who have claimed that support response times are very slow – up to 45 minutes at times. Although having affordable hosting is quite nice, it can be very frustrating to have slow support. Domain Transfers A majority of hosting companies that we have review are happy to help get your existing website moved over from its current location over to their service. It is, after all, a fast procedure that gets you to switch to their company and for a few years at least become a loyal customer of theirs. However, Bluehost charges a $149.99 migration fee for something that most hosting companies do for free. They also won’t transfer more than 20 email accounts and 5 websites.
Summary Bluehost may be a solid option for you if you are just needing to host a personal site or hobby blog. They are cheap. And it is quite easy to get started with them. That is why many people recommend that newbies get their blogs started using Bluehost. However, their average uptime, nickle-and-diming and slow customer service and page speed put them below a lot of other alternatives that are available. 1&1 Web Hosting Details Hosting Plans offers 4 separate shared web hosting Linux based plans.
Each plan offers unlimited bandwidth. Customers can choose Windows hosting as well. There are three plans that are available for Windows hosting that are quite similar to the Business, Unlimited and Start plans that the company’s Linux-based hosting products offer. Support 1&1 offers a range of various support facilities. Before covering these in more detail, it is worth nothing that each of the organization’s arms have its own separate technical support contacts. In the U.K., a U.K. Email address and phone number is available, and in the U.S., there is a U.S.-based phone line and email address. The support phone line is a toll free number and technical support is available on a 24/7 basis.
Customers can also choose to let technical support use the Netviewer application to see and guide them through the best solution. For self help purposes the company also has a comprehensive FAQs list that it maintains. Cancellation Policy and Money Back Guarantee offers a 60-day money-back guarantee. Although it isn’t the longest guarantee that we have seen, it is still longer than most. That guarantee just applies to its shared hosting plans. Handling fees, software shipping fees, software license fees, and domain name registration fees are not included. Summary 1&1 belongs to a huge hosting organization, and this definitely shows.
It has a sprawling website and offers a broad range of options for its customers in different countries all over the world. The services that it provides are comparable to the ones that a number of other hosting providers offer, however the massive amount of positive articles from the technical press indicates that this is a very well-respected company. This is enough to raise one’s confidence in this hosting provider. Many hosting companies focus on only a few hosting services. However, the entire spectrum is covered by, with a majority of plan features aimed to appeal to mid-sized and large business. The following is a brief introduction of the core hosting services provided by InMotion Hosting. There are separate WordPress hosting packages featuring free themes, backups, SSDs, and caching technology.
Or your can choose the BoldGrip plan, where the flexibility of WordPress’s backend is combined with a convenient drag-and-drop site builder. InMotion Hosting Details Customer Support The support service offered by InMotion Hosting has been branded as Premier Support. It is included with all of the company’s plans, so that customers don’t have to pay anything extra for it. Support is provided via email, chat and phone, and the company’s support department is available on a 24/7 basis.
There is some degree of on-boarding that is included. For instance, on some of the larger business plans, a free session to consult with a system administrator is offered. Launch Assist is a free service that is offered to give dedicated customers and resellers off to a good start. Launch Assist includes custom hardware for dedicated customers, server security installations, cron setup and email configuration. Summary Many desirable hosting features are offered by, even on the company’s shared hosting plans.
The fact that the company has re-branded its shared plans to “business” is a strong indication that they take their entry plans very seriously. Some of the best features that are offered include providing the most recent PHP version, SSD storage as the standard and free daily backups. The Launch Assist service provides reassuring assistance for rapidly growing businesses. Before signing up there are two major points to consider: no non-US datacenter locations if that is something that is important to you, along with no clearly defined uptime guarantee for some of their shared hosting plans.
However, for many small business customers, the company’s focus on good technical grounding and solid support will be very attractive. IX Web Hosting Details Customer Support makes the bold claim that it provides the web hosting industry’s best support. Each cusotmer has a Personal Support Representative assigned to them, to help with billing issues, technical problems and much more. The support rep’s name is provided in the control panel, and whatever new support tickets get logged in get flagged to the individual rep as they are coming in. Control Panel Cloud and VPS customers can select Plesk or cPanel. However, shared hosting customers don’t have either of those options available to them.
Instead they are given Psoft H-Sphere, which is a lot more basic and less attractive than cPanel. Despite the fact that H-Sphere is just offered on shared accounts, I did find it fairly difficult to understand and navigate compared to industry standard tools that are available. The site offers a live demo if you would like to check it out. Summary When the plans are compared with those from other shared hosting providers, you need to consider whether or not you need to have a dedicated IP.
You may save quite a bit of money if you do because you won’t have to pay extra for IP addresses. For those with specialized needs, the SEO advantages associated with having your own dedicated IPs could be quite appealing.
Otherwise the plans are not all that remarkable. However, for the price they are more than capable enough. And their support department has an impressive commitment to providing first-rate personal service. The ‘anytime’ money-back guarantee that is offered is a step above what many other hosts within the same price range offer.
FatCow Web Hosting Details Hosting Plan The shared hosting plan offered by is a Linux package. You are provided with very generous amounts of bandwidth and space. FatCow states that for a majority of its customers that it will provide them with unlimited resources. If you exceed the normal acceptable usage you might be asked to upgrade. However, if you aren’t doing any heavy file sharing or processing with your account, then you shouldn’t have any problems.
The plan provides you with unlimited email account and unlimited domains. They offer two WordPress plans, WP Starter and WP Essential, which are aimed at small businesses and bloggers that don’t have a lot of experience with using WordPress. Dedicated and VPS plans are offered as well, with each having three tiers. These are basically the same thing as the WordPress that other Endurance brands, like iPage, offer.
Support There are a number of different support options available on the website, including tutorials, a user guide and knowledge basis. FatCow also offers free 24/7 live chat, email and telephone support. Summary FatCow aims its plans at the blogger and small business market. Newbies will have lots of resources for them to get started with. The scripts and site builder will appeal to beginners, while being able to install WordPress as well as many other application provides plenty of versatility for those wanting to further develop their websites. The FatCow shared hosting plan is a simple plan offered at a competitive price, that doesn’t restrict your bandwidth or disk space. Now that FatCow is offering dedicated and VPS hosting, you will have even more room to expand your business with your website.
IPage Hosting Details Security A SiteLock Security suite comes with all of the iPage hosting plans. This is like having frontline security for your website. A user study was done by SiteLock and iPage which found that in 2014, that around 12% of subscriber websites at some point contained malware. SiteLock helps to prevent security breaches from occurring through scanning for malware problems on a regular basis. Depending on which plan you select, that includes them going into your site and removing malicious things for you. Support Getting support with a low cost provider isn’t something you always get. However, iPage is bucking this trend by providing its customers with decent support via live chat, email and phone.
Bonuses and Integration works well with other applications, by simply connecting with, Google Apps, and much more. That is particularly useful for eCommerce sites needing to be able to make secure payment transactions. Bonus credits for new accounts are also offered by iPage in the form of Bing, Yahoo, and Google AdWords advertising credits. Pricing Model There are numerous web hosting that initially appear to be inexpensive. Everything looks really real rosy until you get to the Checkout page and realize that in order to lock-in the fantastic deal you have heard so much about, you will need to pay for three years upfront.
Fortunately, iPage does things differently – they charge you the same amount each month no matter what duration you choose (assuming a 12 month minimum). As far as we are concerned, transparency and honesty go a very long way. Control Panel Almost all web hosting provide you with cPanel to use. However, iPage doesn’t. Instead they offer vDeck, with is a lesser known alternative to cPanel. It definitely isn’t ideal, since cPanel has a tendency to be more up-to-date and user-friendly compared to vDeck. However, vDeck is still user friendly, especially for more advanced users.
HostMonster Web Hosting Details Hosting Plans The servers use the Apache web server and run Linux. Keep in mind that many of the company’s prices that are advertised are introductory rates, so you might have a more expensive renewal rate. The basic hosting plan offered by HostMonster is advertised to be competitively priced over three resource tiers.
The company’s most expensive shared hosting plan comes with unlimited email accounts, unlimited domains, and unlimited space. A site backup facility is provided by the Pro Package. Support HostMonster’s technical support is available on a 24/7 basis via live chat and phone.
Plesk Migration Manager
The help desk team is US-based. Other support departments, like billing inquiries and team handling, are not available on a 24/7 basis. Control Panel cPanel is provided with all of the plans.
WHM is not mentioned, although if you have a dedicated or VPS package, you have the options of installing it yourself. If you are going to be migrating your site, it’s good news that cPanel is offered instead of a proprietary control panel, since transferring from one cPanel to another is fairly straightforward. No migration support is offered by HostMonster. On the website is a live cPanel demo. Therefore, before buying anything you can check out what their shared hosting plan includes.
On the Hosting Features page, click on the Demon Login button. Summary HostMonster appears to offer shared web hosting plans that are fairly standard, while adding in a couple of features to help make it stand out. The company’s competitive pricing can help to attract numerous prospective customers who are wanting to take their initial steps in blogging and website management. Is pretty evenly split when it comes to its target market. The company offers services that are aimed at both personal and business users.
However, its lack of a large capacity hosting plan, focus on site building tools and low cost, does suggest that its customer base is mainly made up of small businesses and personal sites. A gigantic hosting provider backs IPOWER, so the chances of having any really serious issues is fairly slim.
In addition, the company’s 24/7 live support is a great option to have just in case anything goes wrong. IPOWER Web Hosting Details Hosting Plans offers three shared hosting plans: Pro Plus, Pro, and Starter. All three of these plans appear to be Linux-based. However, that is not specifically mentioned on the website. The Starter plan doesn’t come with a free domain name and is limited. The Pro Plus and Pro plans include three and one free domains respectively, with various ShopSite capabilities, depending on which plan you choose, 25 databases and unlimited domain hosting.
The Pro plan is more restricted compared to the Pro Plus, which is reflected in the pricing of the two plans. There is a slight decrease in the monthly cost when you opt for a longer contract term of either 36 months or 24 months. Support Their website provides users with support channels, tutorials, user guide and knowledgebase.
A majority of the documentation is aimed at helping beginners and individuals who are new to hosting and site building. Customer support is provided via email forms, live chat and an online ticketing system, in addition to U.S.-only phone numbers. The number is toll free, however there isn’t any international option provided.
The support department is available on a 24/7 basis. However, it isn’t clear on the website where their support staff is based. Summary For many people, the customer control panel most likely will be a drawback for them. And for customers who don’t live in the United States, not having international phone numbers might be a concern. Pricing in competitive, especially over the longer terms. However the early termination cancellation fee might make any savings fairly negligible.
Netfirms Web Hosting Details Hosting Plans gives small businesses three tiers of plans from Business to Plus to Advantage. The Plus plan is actually the cheapest plan even though Netfirm’s website shows it as being between the two others. If you are comparing things make sure to be aware of this.
Features on each different plan scale up and all of them offer limitless bandwidth and disk space. The cheapest plan gives a customer one free domain, and the medium plan gives them two. The most expensive plan comes with five domains at no extra charge.
This plan also gives small businesses an SSL certificate. Support can give customers support any time of day or night. Subscribers to the premium plan get priority, however. Control Panel There is a reference to Plesk on the support portal.
But, there is no evidence that it is still used. All signs seem to point to vDesk. They do not boast about the control panel they implement, but no references are currently made to Plesk on the plans. It looks like Netfirms has trimmed its services down a bit in the past few years. This explains why the help center is apparently inaccurate if not just out of date.
Pricing pages are confusing, too. The Plus plan is the least expensive but is shown between the two others.
Seeing it between the two other plans makes it seem it is moderately priced or an extension of the plan below it but it is not. Omnis Network Web Hosting Details Hosting Plans The shared hosting offered by is offered on both Windows and Linux.
Both of them are cloud hosting services, with un-metered bandwidth, disk space, domains, sub-domains and aliases. Users may add on a private SSL certificate or dedicated IP if they want to for an additional fee.
Both plans include a site builder, which enables users to create 3-page sites for free. Obviously that is quite limited. In order to build a larger website, you will have to pay for either the Ecommerce or Pro site builder. VPS hosting and dedicated servers are advertised on the website as “coming soon.” It appears that these services aren’t offered yet. Support All of the support staff for are based inside the United States. They specifically state that their technical support is not outsourced.
The hosting company can be contacted by customers via phone, email, or live chat on a 24/7 basis. A knowledgebase is also offered by the host. It is very good and covers a majority of the basics that its customers need to know. Within the support area there are also several basic video tutorials and FAQs.
Their YouTube channel videos are short, but I fond them to be quite useful. Control Panel A custom control panel must be used by Omnis Network customers. It is called Account Manager, and Plesk and cPanel are not offered. Summary The hosting plans from Omnis Network are succinctly and clearly described. Customers who are searching for shared hosting can find everything that they are searching for – with the exception of a familiar control panel. Popular Blogging Platforms Let’s take an honest look here. WordPress has long reigned supreme in blogging.
With easily customizable content management you’ll have an easy time using this program. They have over 500 new word-press sites designed and created on a daily basis. Of course, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t explore the other options out there. Some people just prefer the roads less traveled. You may wish to check out or other blogging tools that use site builders.
There are many reasons that people want to create a blog. I wasn’t very good at sticking to doing things and wanted a way to share things.
I’ve always found writing to be very therapeutic so I felt that having a blog was the ideal solution. No editors, no deadlines and no strict rules. Some bloggers tend to blog to share things and get more exposure, I wanted to create a network. I didn’t really have a hobby other than writing and simply wanted to share what I had to say. Since blogging is so easy and you can do it whenever and wherever you can be online, it’s an ideal solution. All you have to have is a domain and a web hosting program as well as some software. A lot of the hosts will even help you to set the entire thing up so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do it.
Here are a few of my favorites for special services in blogs. WordPress Blog Hosting When using WordPress, there are two different ways you can do it.
You can sign up via their site at and get a free account that is easy and basic. If you’re seeking specific features or more ownership of your site, go through and use their open-source software that requires web hosting and unlocks a variety of themes, plugins as well as functionality. It’s easy to install WordPress on any hosting plan. Many providers optimize their sites and infrastructure and support WordPress so it’s easy. Both and are both very compatible with WordPress.
They offer a variety of options that are ideal. Read our full article about the you can use. Drupal Blog Hosting Content management systems are sometimes very complex. However, in spite of this, gives you a wide array of functions for what you’re doing.
You’ll appreciate that from start to finish you can be walked through the various steps. Free Blog Hosting Sites Of course, you don’t want to pay for things that you can find for free. Of course, you can find free web hosting sites out there. Remember, you get what you pay for. You may find that a minimal investment really does pay off. You’ll have better quality and a more reliable site if you pay just a little bit. Plus, you often times do not get your own domain name without paying for hosting.
Instead, you get a subdomain on a website – which isn’t great for building a brand of your own. Generally, paying customers are offered a higher-quality of support as well. Best Blog Hosting Reviews The crux of the matter is that most shared hosting plans are eerily similar. You click and install, advertise with your new advertising credits and use their 24/7 support services.
The hosting providers can tell how frequently you utilize these services and according to price their goods. Best Platforms For Pros Or Hobbyists The beauty of it all is that there are a variety of ways to share your text and images as well as your videos.
This can help you to move your business along and grow your audience. It can show you as a branded authority on this topic and those who have a passion can let it shine through.
Disclosure: We strive to provide complete and reliable data and information about any products or services we outline or review on our website. We encourage all visitors to verify offers and specials with the company providing the offer, product, and/or service. We receive compensation from companies when visitors click on offers and links from our website. The order in which our recommendations are listed may be influenced by vendor relationships and compensation from specific vendors or companies.
Any opinions and reviews on our site are strictly our own.
. specify the source host.
You can use either the IP address or the domain name of the server you wish to migrate. enter the login name and password used for logging in to the remote host you are migrating. You can either use the 'root' login, or use an account with sudo enabled, provided that this account is allowed to run any commands through sudo.
make sure that the remote hosting platform is up and running, and the 'iconv' utility is installed in the remote host's operating system. Plesk migration manager will try to detect the remote hosting platform automatically and use the proper migration agent. click Next.
The agent will upload to the specified remote host and acquire its status. You will proceed to the progress page where you can view the migration progress and stop it if desired. If the PMM detected the hosting platform incorrectly, select it in the respective drop-down box. If you want to apply a domain template to migrated domains, specify the hard drive partitions or data compression options to be used during migration, proceed to the Advanced tab.
Note that if Migration manager runs out of disk space on the remote host during migration, the data on the remote host can be permanently corrupted. To avoid this, you are recommended to use a partition with the reasonable amount of free disk space. To migrate specific objects from the remote host to Plesk, leave the Select objects that you wish to migrate from host option selected and click Next.
To migrate all data from the remote host to Plesk, select the Dump all option and click Next. Migration with use of chrooted environment.
Plesk cannot be installed on the machine running other control panel software. To circumvent this limitation, you need to create a kind of virtual environment, such as chroot. Plesk can be installed into chrooted environment in a special mode. Once Plesk is installed into the chrooted environment, you can migrate data from your hosting platform into the chrooted environment. After successful completion, you will be able to shut your previously used hosting platform down and use Plesk as your main control panel. Use of data import feature of Migration Manager.
You should have a hard disk with operating system and Plesk software installed. This feature allows importing to Plesk the data gathered by migration agent.
Once the data are obtained, you will have to move them to the disk with Plesk installation and reboot to the operating system where Plesk is installed. After successful completion, you will be able to remove your previously used hosting platform. Migrating data using chrooted environment You are advised to create a chrooted environment on a separate partition. This is required for you to be able to use this partition as a root file system upon completion of installing Plesk and migrating data to it. You must have super user permissions in order to configure the chrooted environment.
In order to create a chrooted environment, you will need at least 2 gigabytes of disk space for the operating system and Plesk installation, plus some amount of disk space for user data. You can set up your system into a chrooted environment using the utility from the chroottool.zip package, which is available at ftp://download1.sw-soft.com/Plesk/Plesk7.5/Extensions, or use other third-party utilities such as, for instance, mach (http://mach.sourceforge.net).
Prior to installing Plesk, make sure that port 8443 is not used. If some program uses this port, you should reconfigure it so as to free the port. Copy the Plesk installer file to the chrooted directory. Enter the chrooted environment using the command chroot. Define the value for variable CHROOTISH=yes export CHROOTISH=yes. Configure mysql as follows: mysqlinstalldb chown -R mysql /var/lib/mysql/.
Run mysql without networking. This can be done differently for different versions of MySQL.
For instance, for MySQL version 3 this is done with the command “safemysqld -skip-network &”, and for version 4 - “mysqldsafe -skip-networking &”. Run Plesk installer and follow the instructions presented on the screen. Once Plesk installation is completed, log in to control panel, click the Server shortcut, and then click the Migration Manager button. Specify your host as the data source, and proceed with migration as usual. Once the migration is completed, you need to reboot server to start it from chroot partition.
Remove the 'NORESTARTDAEMON' parameter from /etc/psa/psa.conf file. Make sure that everything works correctly. In case of errors you can reboot to your previously used partition with other control panel. Add to the boot manager an item for booting up from the partition with chrooted environment. Example: Let’s suppose you have Fedora Core 2 operating system and GRUB boot manager installed. Change to the./boot/grub/ directory.