Best Web Hosting Sites in 2020 [+3 to avoid]

So you want to start a website or you already have a website and you’re looking for web hosting that is reliable, fast and has good customer support.

In this post you’ll discover the best web hosting for your websites and I’ve mixed things up a little bit by including hosting for all budgets.

We’ll cover some high-end hosting companies and we’ll also cover some low-cost shared hosting companies. I’ll also tell you the differences to look out for.

There are so many options to choose from, so which will be best for you?

I will also mention a couple of hosting companies that I recommend staying away from because of the bad experiences I had with them. Not all hosting services have good support.

Some hosts will have hidden costs they don’t tell you about until they’ve taken your money already.

What you need is hosting that’s reliable, affordable, and perhaps most importantly, fast. Good support is also a must.

Before we tuck in, let’s first discuss the 3 main types of hosting you can get for your websites.

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Shared Hosting vs VPS Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting Comparison

There is shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting to choose from.

At the bottom of the ladder, and perhaps best for newbies, is shared hosting. Shared hosting is like having a single apartment in a high rise building.

In the middle of the ladder, is VPS hosting. VPS hosting is like having a whole floor of apartments to yourself in a high rise building.

And if you’re using dedicated hosting, that’s like having the whole high rise building to yourself.

This best web hosting list will cover the basic hosting packages available with the companies mentioned.

Now that’s sorted out, let’s take a look at the best hosting companies for your websites.

WPX Hosting – The Best Web Hosting I Recommend

My top pick has to be, of course, WPX Hosting. I’ve been with WPX for 3 years already and they’ve made it a breeze for someone like me who’s not the technical type of person.

Obviously, WPX Hosting is the one I’m happiest to put my name behind.

That is because the hosting I’m with has extremely fast loading speeds, the price is right, and the support is a 24 hours a day live chat where you can get problems fixed within minutes should they occur.

WPX will even migrate your websites in to their platform for you. They make it breeze.

If I ever have a problem with any of my 5 websites I just hop on to a live chat with one of their efficient, polite and helpful support staff.

Maybe I’ve installed a plugin that’s broken my site and I can’t fix it myself?

Or maybe my site has slowed down due to me doing something wrong? Whatever the glitch, WPX Hosting support always know what to do.

They have never taken more than a few minutes to look at my site and see what’s gone wrong. They really are incredible and so friendly, too.

You can just tell by the way they speak to you that they actually “care” about your business.

UPDATE: I’ve been in touch with WPX today to negotiate a special deal for anyone who signs up for a monthly plan with their hosting. You can now get 50% off your first month.

How to get 50% off your first month at WPX Hosting?

Simply click the affiliate link on this page and enter the coupon code “JIM50”.

CLAIM YOUR DISCOUNT: As the owner of this website I’ve negotiated special deals for some of the products and services mentioned herein. When you use the links on this page to make a purchase I may get a small commission and you may get a great bargain. It’s a win-win all around. Full disclosure.

Click here to secure 50% off any monthly hosting plan with WPX. coupon code = JIM50

This will give you 50% off of any monthly plan at WPX Hosting.

The 5 sites plan with 50% off will cost you $12.50 for your first month then the regular price will be $24.99 per month.

The 15 sites plan with 50% off will cost you only $25 for the first month then will rise to the regular $49.99 per month.

And…

The 35 sites plan with 50% off will cost you only $50 for the first month then rise to the regular $99 per month.

Note: Discount coupon code will not work on annual pricing plans.

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WPX Hosting Features

Good support has to be the most important thing when you’re a customer for anything online these days. If the support isn’t there, you’re left stuck in the mud.

Speed is important, too. You want websites that load quickly. Typically under 2 seconds is great. But I’ve had speeds of about a second on my websites.

If your site loads in slowly, you’re going to lose visitors. It’s essential that your site load speed is always up there with the best.

SSD Drive Storage

WPX is using SSD (Solid State Drives) and as you may know already, SSD is way faster than the old-fashioned hard disk way of storage. This helps a huge amount in terms of speed.

Once you’ve signed up with WPX Hosting, you just give them the details of your current sites if you have them, and they will migrate (move) the site on to their hosting from wherever you’re hosted. It’s a breeze.

I wouldn’t have much idea about moving websites to different hosting companies but with WPX I don’t need to. It’s a “done-for-you” system that’s super helpful if you’re like me.

WPX Hosting even configure certain plugins such as W3 Total Cache so that it is tweaked to work best on their servers.

Another thing I love about WPX is how easy it is to use the dashboard in your back office when you log in.

WPX Hosting Pros

There are so many features I couldn’t mention them all here. Put it this way…I’ve been confused a lot by other hosting companies’ dashboards.

Like I said already, I’m not a very techy type of person and I feel afraid of breaking something beyond repair when it comes to stuff like website hosting settings.

I just ask support to do if for me and they never tell me I have to do it myself.

• Awesome support
• Fast Loading speeds (SSD storage)
• WPX Cloud (Helps with speed)
• Free SSL Certificates
• Unlimited Email Included as standard (e.g. “yourname@yourdomain.com”)
• Pay via PayPal
• Unlimited Site Migrations
• No Increase on Plan Renewals
• Full Backups Manager
• Staging Area
• Free Malware Removal
• USA or UK Based Hosting

The best deals at WPX Hosting are for the yearly plan. You’ll get 1 year of managed WordPress hosting for a very reasonable $249 and the great thing is, it’s fixed at that price when you renew.

So it will be $249 every year, not just the first year. 

Many hosting companies will charge more the next time you renew. Make sure you’re aware of the pricing when you renew your hosting with any company you choose.

WPX Hosting Cons

In 3 years of using WPX (at the time of writing this) I still haven’t found anything I don’t like. Honestly. I’m scratching my head here trying to think of a time where WPX pi**ed me off. There isn’t one. Not a single one time I’ve been left wanting.

WPX Hosting Pricing

The image below shows the pricing if you pay month to month.

WPX Hosting Business Plan (5 Websites)

The pricing for the monthly plan will set you back $24.99 for the business plan which has you covered for 5 sites. You’ll get 10gb of storage space and 100gb bandwidth. WPX Cloud CDN is included with all packages.

WPX Hosting Professional Plan (15 Websites)

If you go for the professional plan, you get 15 websites, 20gb of storage, and 200gb bandwidth. This plan will set you back $49.99 per month.

WPX Hosting Elite Plan (35 Websites)

And the Elite plan will set you back $99 per month and you’ll be able to have 35 websites hosted, with 40gb of storage, and unlimited bandwidth.

All the plans include free features and tools such as:

• High-speed custom CDN (WPX Cloud CDN)
• Unlimited Site Migrations*
• Unlimited SSL certificates
• 24/7 Fast support (Live Chat)
• Staging area
• Email
• Manual Backups
• DDoS Protection
• Malware Scanning & Removal.
• PHP 7.XX
• HTTPS/2
• 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
• 28 Day Automatic Backups
• 99.95% Uptime Guarantee
• 1-Click WordPress Installations
• USA or UK Hosting Locations

If you select the annual payment plan (see the screenshot below), then you’ll save a good few dollars.

The same Business plan will set you back $20.83 per month. The total cost for 1 year will be $249 which is just over $50 saved (basically 2 months free).

The yearly payment for the professional plan will cost you $499.00 which works out at $41.58 per month and is a saving of just over $100. So that’s like getting 2 months for free as well.

The yearly cost for the Elite plan is $999 which works out at 83.25 per month and is a saving of just over $188 (or like the other packages, 2 months for free).

If you are anything like me, once you’ve tried out WPX Hosting and had some time with them, you’ll just know that you’ll want to be on the yearly pricing plan.

WPX Yearly Hosting Plan Makes More Sense, Economically.

I was worried when I upgraded from monthly to yearly that WPX wouldn’t take care of me as well as they did on the monthly plan. My thinking was if they had my money upfront, they’d neglect me.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Their excellent support didn’t change once they had my $249 up front.

It’s for this reason, and many others, that I’m still with WPX after 3 years and I’m not going anywhere.

Needless to say, I’m very happy to be hosted with them, and I’m just as happy to recommend them 100%.

I’ve just visited the Live chat support at WPX to ask them if there is a 3 year plan for their hosting, and it seems that they don’t yet offer that as standard, but they did ask me if I’d like to put in a support ticket for further enquiries.

This gives me the impression that if you ask them nicely, they could indeed do you a deal.

WPX will set you back $24.99 per month and that’s for the hosting of 5 websites. There is a single site option which works out at about $17 per month.

WPX Hosting Summary – In My Opinion it’s the Best Web Hosting Company Bar None

If you wanted just one site hosting, it might not be the best deal for you (despite their awesome service).

However, if you want top-notch hosting with amazing support and fast loading speeds, then you won’t mind paying a little extra for WPX web hosting even if you only have one site.

If you’re serious about your online business, you’ll already understand that an excellent hosting company is essential.

If you’re on a shoe-string budget and a single site is all you have, you might want to look at some of the following hosting companies to save a few pennies.

You can always upgrade later on.

All in all, WPX is at number 1 in my top rated web hosting sites list for a good reason.

For best speeds, reliability, amazing support, a fair price, and ease of use, you should go for WPX Hosting.

Don’t forget to click on the special link highlighted in red below to get 50% off your first month of hosting.

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DreamHost – My 2nd Best Web Hosting Recommendation

DreamHost Web Hosting is another popular place for online business owners who want their site hosting taken care of.

You can check out the available DreamHost Hosting options here. 

DreamHost Features

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Dreamhost offers you several different hosting packages that you can choose from.

They offer SSD, SSL and all the other stuff we come to expect from a hosting company today.

DreamHost Pros

System wide SSD servers (Solid State Drives). SSD is way faster than the old hard disks typically used for storage of information. Shared hosting on a regular old-fashioned hard drive would be a nightmare.

However, SSD, being faster, more reliable and more efficient will speed up your websites even if you’re using the shared hosting option at DreamHost.

All packages at DreamHost come with FREE SSL included. (Secure Socket Layer) which basically means your websites are more secure and will have the little padlock next to the https:// in your browser’s address bar.

DreamHost Cons

Hidden costs: You might have to pay an extra $1.67 per website to add email if you choose the cheapest shared hosting package

The entry level discount is not available when you renew your hosting the next time around. Expect to pay up to an extra 47%

DreamHost Pricing

If you want just one website hosted at DreamHost here are the costs for their shared hosting package.

DreamHost offers website hosting starting at $2.59/mo (when you choose a 3 year package).

If you pay by the month, it will set you back $4.95/mo.

Note: DreamHost will discount you only for the first time you sign up for their hosting.

When you renew for the next payment period, you could pay up to 47% more, depending on which package you bought in the first place.

Choose your hosting package wisely if you want to save in the long run.

Below is a screenshot showing the pricing of DreamHost if you decide to pay as you go with monthly installments.

DreamHost Pricing Tiers (Monthly Plan)

You can save a bunch of moolah if you’re clever, by opting to signup with DreamHost for a period of one year, or you can get even better savings on a 3 year hosting plan.

Below is a screenshot of the shared web hosting pricing if you go for the 3 year plan.

As you can see, it’ll cost you only $2,59 per month if you pay $93.24 up front to cover those first 3 years. A bargain if you ask me.

DreamHost Starter Plan Pricing (3 Year Plan)

If you want more than just one website, then the unlimited shared hosting package is the way to go.

Note: The Unlimited shared hosting option includes unlimited email addresses @ your domains

It’s worth noting that shared hosting might not be the best option depending on what you want or at which level you’re at with your online business.

DreamHost Summary

A good all round hosting company, decent pricing, good loading speeds and knowledgeable support.

One downside I found with DreamHost is that email is an extra fee if you go for the shared hosting.

Another downside is you won’t get the same pricing when you renew the hosting the next year.

Always check with hosting companies if the pricing goes up next time. It’s a sneaky way to get you in at a low price to make you think it will always be low. It’s a practice I see quite a lot these days.

Read the small print guys.

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Wealthy Affiliate – Best Web Hosting for WordPress Beginners & Bloggers

Wealthy Affiliate is not primarily a hosting company. It does, however, offer shared web hosting (shared hosting is something I don’t usually recommend).

Shared web hosting is not as expensive because you’re sharing a server with other websites.

Wealthy Affiliate Web Hosting Features

This has its positives in terms of pricing and drawbacks in terms of overcrowding which can occur.

But…

All premium Wealthy Affiliate members get 25 domains hosted plus 25 free SiteRubix sub-domains. There is no way you’ll ever need all of these. 1 is enough for most people.

Some of the other features are-

• Instant DNS Setup
• Fast Amazon c3.large servers
• 30GB website space
• 500k visitors per month bandwidth
• Unlimited Data transfer
• Site Builder Included (SiteRubix)
• Staging Environment
• Full Redundancy
• Enterprise Security
• Daily Website Database Backups
• 24/7 Access to Server Admins
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• BotNet Security
• SiteHealth
• SiteComments (very useful)
• Website Feedback (very useful)
• Community Access
• 1 on 1 marketing help from Jim (That’s me!)

The reason I’m recommending Wealthy Affiliate hosting is not because it’s the best hosting company in the world…

It’s not.

Why I Recommend Wealthy Affiliate for Web Hosting

I’m recommending the hosting at Wealthy Affiliate because they also include a lot of other cool things that no other hosting company (that I know of) can offer.

Wealthy Affiliate gives you training on how to create a profitable online business.

They have a WordPress website builder named SiteRubix and this makes it super simple to start your own website.

In the screenshot below, which is from my own Wealthy Affiliate account, you can see many features that come integrated with your hosting and websites when you’re at WA.

SitePlus+ has 3 main elements to keep your sites running smoothly.

• SiteSpeed boosts your website’s loading speed which will result in better rankings and better engagement
• SiteSSL (HTTPS) is Secure Socket Layer which basically gives your site a free SSL certificate. This is essential on any site. If you don’t have this in 2020 and beyond, Google and other search engines will warn visitors that your site is not a secure site.
• SiteProtect (Spam Blocker) does exactly what it says on the tin. It prevents spammers from attacking your site via the comments section below posts.

Site Manager

At the top of the screenshot above is the site manager, and as you can see, you manage your sites and your site health there.

Site Builder

The next one down in the image is the Site Builder. It takes about 30 seconds from choosing a domain to installing WordPress and logging in for the first time to your WP Dashboard.

It’s super simple, too. My 7 year old can do it.

Site Domains

The next feature is Site Domains, where you can find, register and manage your domains.

Site Content

Site Content is Wealthy Affiliate’s own little platform that helps you to create content. It has lots of helpful little features that make content creation a lot easier.

Site Comments

Site Comments is where you can get comments on your website pages and posts. As you may know, the more engagement you get on your site, the better your rankings will be.

Comments are very powerful signals for Google and other search engines that give your sites “ranking juice”.

Site Feedback

Site Feedback is not to be confused with Site Comments. Site Feedback is where you can get other Wealthy Affiliate members’ advice on the design and look of your site.

They’ll offer critiques on what you can improve such as layout, writing style, images, website speed, etc etc. Helpful. You don’t get that with any other hosting company.

Site Support

And of course, the one at the bottom of the image is Site Support. If ever you have a problem with your site, such as you can’t log in, or a plugin has “broken” your site, etc, then you can contact support and they’ll usually be back to you within 10-15 minutes.

Support at Wealthy Affiliate for your sites is not a Live chat type of support, rather a ticket based email support system. 10-15 minutes is good enough in my opinion.

If you already have a website you can migrate it on to Wealthy Affiliate’s own hosting platform.

Another benefit of Wealthy Affiliate is they have a keyword research tool named Jaaxy which you get to use as a member of their platform.

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Wealthy Affiliate Web Hosting Pros

Consider all of the extra benefits that you get with Wealthy Affiliate if you decide you want to host your websites there.

Training, support, community, keyword tool, live chat…the list goes on. This is all included with your Wealthy Affiliate membership.

The hosting at Wealthy Affiliate is perfect for complete beginners to get a feel of building websites using WordPress.

Wealthy Affiliate Web Hosting Cons

Shared hosting isn’t the best hosting no matter which company you choose. Wealthy Affiliate hosting isn’t as fast as they’d like us to believe.

If the training, tools, support and the live chat at Wealthy Affiliate are not something you need, then it would make the hosting alone quite expensive at $49 per month (or even $359 per year if paid annually).

Wealthy Affiliate Pricing

Wealthy Affiliate will cost you $19 for the first month, then $49 per month thereafter. And if you’re smarter than the average bear, you’ll take advantage of their yearly pricing plan, which will only set you back $359 per year.

Wealthy Affiliate will give you a 7 day free trial, so you can check them out without paying a single cent.

The Benefits of Wealthy Affiliate Premium Membership

When you go premium, you are allowed to have 25 websites hosted with them. So in terms of value for money, initially you might think $49 a month is expensive. But consider all the other cool things included such as the following benefits…

• Live Chat 24/7
• Weekly Live Webinars (plus access to hundreds of recordings from the past)
• Thousands of training videos on everything related to online business
• Website builder (takes 30 seconds to create a site)
• Up to 25 hosted sites (You only need 1)
• Jaaxy keyword research tool
• Community of entrepreneurs to help you with your business (365 days a year)
• You’ll be learning how to do affiliate marketing, SEO, blogging, keyword research
• 1 on 1 help from me personally
• and much more…

Wealthy Affiliate Web Hosting Summary

When you consider the cost of Wealthy Affiliate which allows you to host 25 websites and throws in all that training, tools, help, webinars, and the entrepreneurs’ community, you start to see why it’s probably a good option for you.

Wealthy Affiliate is ideal for beginners as it is for any level of online business owner.

Whenever I start off a new website, I always do it at Wealthy Affiliate because they have an amazingly easy and fast website builder.

It takes about 30 seconds from choosing a domain name to logging in to a site for the first ever time.

Read my full review of Wealthy Affiliate and all of the features they offer.

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3 Web Hosting Sites that are Not Recommended

I’ve had a few experiences I’d rather not repeat, to be perfectly honest. And I’d hate to see other people being given the same bad treatment I got when I tried out some other companies with my precious websites.

The reckless behaviour of some hosting companies out there on the internet is absolutely shocking. Listed below are a couple of hosting services I’d recommend you to stay away from. The first two I mention were bad experiences personally.

The last one, WPEngine is just something I can’t recommend because of the high prices. I haven’t actually tried out their hosting, but I’ve heard it is decent. I just can’t justify recommending them despite the praise I see online.

SiteGround Web Hosting Ripped Me Off

SiteGround still owe me almost $100 that they refused to refund me. I had a very unpleasant experience at SiteGround that I will never forget.

If I log in to my SiteGround account now, I can see that there is still almost $100 sitting there in their “e-wallet” that I’m allowed to spend on their products.

They absolutely refused point blank to give me the actual money back that I had paid them. I had issues with them after paying upfront. I can’t even remember which pricing plan I went with, as it was 3 or so years ago (at the time of writing this).

This company left a very bad taste in my mouth. I remember arguing with them for 2 hours in live chat to try and get my money back and they just kept on telling me “no” but I could spend the money in my e-wallet on THEIR products.

Not impressed with SiteGround Hosting at all. Stay away or risk being ripped off.

HostGator Web Hosting Sucks

I remember HostGator from when I was hosted with them and I had my very first website (just for fun not for money)

It was way back in 2014. I had problems with my site that should have been easy to fix for a so-called hosting company.

Long story short? They kept me on live chat support for several hours on multiple occasions.

It was like they didn’t have a clue. Of course, it’s 6 years ago now and I can’t remember the specific issues, just that it should have been simple for them as I was a complete beginner.

I had a sneaky suspicion they were “laughing” at me while I was being held on live chat for several hours.

Not a good experience, despite being so cheap.

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WPEngine Web Hosting is Too Expensive for Most

Although WPEngine Hosting is a good quality hosting company, I can’t recommend them because their pricing is out of most people’s league.

I would recommend them if you were some kind of hard-core Website fanatic, but definitely not for the newbies.

Best Web Hosting Sites Summary

If you’re a complete beginner and you’ve never built a website before, and you’d like to learn how to monetize your websites, then Wealthy Affiliate will be best for you.

If you already have a website and you don’t need any type of training on how to make money with them, then WPX Hosting is what I would go for.

And my second choice if not WPX, would be to go for DreamHost’s services.

So there you have it. My top rated web hosting companies in 2020 and beyond. Are there any web hosting services you’d like to see on this list? Are there any you’d like to warn people to stay away from? Comment below and I’ll consider adding them to this list.

Regards,

Jim