The Best Web Hosting for Beginners Explained

As someone who has been there before, I know that choosing the best web hosting for beginners could be a very tough task.

One that if not properly guided, or followed by recommendations, beginners’ bloggers could end up choosing the wrong hosting type or web host.

I’ve been online for nearly a decade now. During this period, I have hosted several WordPress blogs with different web hosts.

In my first attempt in online marketing, I’d purchase hosting from a local web hosting company – WhoGoHost. But it wasn’t long that I had to switch to NameCheap Shared Hosting Server.

I wanted to try new hosting services, that was why I migrated this very blog to NameCheap back in 2015. But soon afterward, I began to experience the difference in hosting qualities.

That was when I realized that the quality of your web host can either make or break your online business. If you fall victim to a low-level web host, your business will definitely suffer.

So base on personal experience with web hosting services, I decided to share some vital knowledge with you about the best web hosting for beginners bloggers.

This article aimed at helping you make informed decisions. So you don’t waste your hard-earned money on mediocre web hosting services.

Without further intro…let’s get down to business.

But first, let’s see why you need to pay attention to your web hosting qualities and what really is web hosting?

What is Web Hosting?

Web Hosting is the business of making individual or organization websites/webpages visible on the internet.

A web hosting company provides the space and technology required for the website to live on the internet.

Without hosting, your website has no place to live on the internet. Therefore, it won’t be visible to people who dial your domain URL.

Imagine what a parcel of land does to a building?

That’s what hosting does to a website.

Without the land to build your house on, you practically have no place to set bricks upon.

So in a simple layman’s term, web hosting companies provide the parcel of land you need to build your website on the internet so it became visible for people to see.

This parcel of land is what they called server in web hosting terminology. Your website’s files are stored on your web host server ready to be accessed 24/7/365 days.

I hope this is clear?

If you require more information on what is web hosting, check out this Wikipedia definition.

Why Web Host Matters?

When starting a new blog, the choice of hosting could be the last thing on your list. But the attention you give to this area could also determine the success or failure of your business.

Today, there are so many choices to make when it comes to web hosting. It is so easy to opt for a cheap low-cost web hosting services provider.

But think about it…web hosting should be seen as part of your business investment. In fact, it is one of the most important aspects of your online business you shouldn’t settle for less.

This is because the availability and performance of your website will go a long way in determining how people use your website. If people can’t get through your web pages quickly or it takes ages to load, you might be losing money and audience in the process.

So choose your web host wisely.

What to Look for in a Web Host?

For beginners, even pro internet marketers, there are certain criteria one should look for in any web host before making the choice.

Let’s take a look at some of the important features you should watch out for in a potential web host.

#1. Responsive Customer Supports

Customer support channels are something you should look out for in any potential web hosting company.

Take it or leave it, no matter how good a web host is, something will surely break someday. You need your web host support team to be there at the point of need.

If your web host only provides one support channel, that’s a sign of an unreliable support team.

Imagine you’re in the middle of a BIG launch, and suddenly, your website is offline. You tried everything you could from your end, but nothing seems to be working. It appears you need your web host to get it back online.

You quickly open a support ticket, and behold, it was the weekend and no one to respond to your email.

What’s going to happened?

All your investment, preparations, potential sales, etc…everything will count for nothing.

A good web host will provide several support channels to reach out in a time of need. At least, there should be email, live chat, Twitter, and Phone call supports system on the ground 24/7/365 days.

#2. Clear Hosting Pricing on the website.

Hosting prices should be clearly laid out on the website. This is because hosting price increases is a common practice in the industry.

Changes in prices usually come as a result of growth in your website traffic and files. As your website traffic increase and the need for more hosting space, hosting prices changes.

Make sure to opt for a web host that clearly has web hosting prices, terms, and conditions on the website.

#3. Server Uptime and Reliability Guarantee

Server downtime is one of the reasons I left my first web host.

There are a few things in online marketing more frustrating than seeing your website offline.

Most web hosts stick to the 99.9% uptime guarantee. But from experience, some web host doesn’t deliver even up to 90% uptime.

Be sure to check with your web host to verify their uptime policy and guarantee. Better, if you could get an honest review from a user. Someone who has actually used the web hosting services.

This will guide you to more reliable and useful information.

#4. Bandwidth and Storage Capacity

If you’re on a Shared Web Hosting plan, this is something of concern to you. As unlimited bandwidth is not always unlimited.

Though if you’re just starting out with a simple blog with low traffic, bandwidth and storage capacity might not be an issue.

But as your blog grows in popularity and traffic increases, there are chances you might exceed your hosting bandwidth limits.

A good thing is to choose a web host that clearly disclose each hosting plan bandwidth limit and storage capacity on the website.

As per the storage limit, unless you’re self-hosting video files, collecting and storing user’s data, uploading a tone of media files, you’re not going to ever hit the maximum storage limit.

#5. Scalability

Although, you can always switch host or migrate the existing blog to another web host. But it is always a good idea to choose a web hosting service provider that offers scalable hosting packages.

When you’re starting out, you probably on a shared hosting plan. But as your blog grow and traffic goes up, you may require a better hosting server like cloud hosting or managed WordPress Hosting.

A good web host will have all hosting types available to customers if the need arises.

Now that we’ve talked about the importance of web hosting and why it really matters to your online business, let see the different types of hosting.

Different Types of Web Hosting

Businesses differ in many aspects, so the need for a web hosting package will vary from business to business.

This calls for a brief explanation of the different types of web hosting.

The type of hosting you choose will depend on some factors about your business, needs, traffic level, website management skills, pricing, etc.

With that being said, here are the 4 basic web hosting types today.

#1. Shared Hosting – Best for Beginners

As the name suggested, Shared Hosting is a type of hosting where your website shared server resources (such as CPU, RAM, Storage, etc.) with hundreds of other websites on the same server.

Shared Hosting is the ideal hosting type when starting a new blog with a low traffic level. If you’re looking for a cheap web hosting plan, this is the perfect hosting type for beginners.

It is believed that shared hosting is less fast than other hosting types.

This is true when you compared the average speed of a website on a Shared Hosting server with a website on either VPS, dedicated, or cloud hosting servers.

One of the biggest advantages of Shared Hosting is that it’s cheap, and very affordable hosting plan.

Being on a Shared Hosting server also means every website on the same server shares the operational cost.

The web host shared operational costs among all websites that reside on the same server. This makes it very affordable for people on a tight marketing budget to start their blog without the heavy cost.

Here is a typical example of what a Shared Hosting type look like in the real world.

As you can see, there are lots of apartments in the building above. Each tenant occupies his/her apartment in the building.

If the tenant opposite you get too loud on his music or her children make a hell of a noise, you get disturbed in your own apartment.

That’s how Shared Hosting Server works in online marketing.

Typically, Shared Hosting starts at around $2/month and might go up to $10/month. This depends on some other factors like hosting features, addons, etc.

Most web hosts Shared Hosting plan comes with a cPanel user interface. So you have complete control over your website files.

There’s very little to configure in most Shared Hosting plans. This allows you to concentrate mostly on your website management such as content and promotion.

Domain.com is one of the leading domain name registrar and web hosting company.

For as low as $3.75/month, you can host your website with a stable and secure platform. Enjoy unlimited storage, scalable bandwidth that grows with you.

You also get a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt when hosting your website with Domain.com.

Plus a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a free domain name registration for a year. Unlimited subdomains, up to 25 MySQL Databases, unlimited disk spaces, etc.

#2. VPS Hosting – Virtual Private Server

A VPS Hosting is considered as the middle ground between a Shared Hosting and Dedicated web hosting server.

Unlike Shared Hosting, VPS hosting is more reliable and less server crowded. Though it’s still a Shared Hosting environment, its setup is quite different from a typical Shared Hosting Server.

Websites on a VPS hosting plan share one physical server but it houses multiple separate virtual machines. And unlike Shared Hosting, the number of websites on a VPS server is limited to provide better performance and reliability.

The building in the image below can be compared to how VPS Hosting works in online marketing.

A building with many tenants but not as many as what is in the first image above. But still a shared apartment by several tenants.

One of the significant advantages of a VPS over Shared hosting is that server resources are shared evenly among all websites that reside on the same server

So if one website experiences a sudden traffic surge, it doesn’t affect other website’s performance. This is possible via a virtual machine that creates separations for each website within the VPS server.

Another advantage is that VPS hosting is easy to scale as your site grows. Since you’re allocated a portion of the server resources, increasing what is allocated to you is no BIG deal.

You can easily make changes without affecting other websites on the same VPS server. Since you’re only running virtual machines that create separations, making changes without affecting others is possible.

As expected, VPS is more expensive than a Shared Hosting plan. But if you have the money, go for it.

However, while the VPS hosting is more advanced than Shared Hosting, it require a bit of tech knowledge.

You need to know what you’re doing when configuring your VPS.

NameCheap offers one of the best VPS hosting plans and features in the industry. And it fairly priced too. At $9.88/month, you can purchase the Pulsar plan at 34% off the regular price today.

Choose your operating system (CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian) and decide if you want to install cPanel or not.

Check out the NameCheap VPS Hosting details on this page.

#3. Dedicated Web Hosting

With Dedicated Hosting, you have all the server resources for yourself. You share nothing with other websites.

You’re provided with a dedicated server equipment, the security system, software, etc.

This type of hosting gives you total control over the hosting resources. It is a more flexible hosting option that gives you access to negotiate with the web host the terms and conditions and service level agreements as needed.

In the real world example, here is what a Dedicated Hosting types could be compared to.

As you can see from the image above, you shared no room with no other tenants. All the rooms in the building are occupied by one family.

No noisy neighbor. No interference from outsiders. If anyone intrudes into your privacy here, you could shut them down as you wish.

This is similar to how dedicated hosting types works in online marketing.

One of the advantages of dedicated web hosting is that you get a custom firewall which helps increase your website security. You also get a unique dedicated IP address since you’re not on a shared server.

As expected, the server performance is of high-quality than the two hosting types mentioned above.

Though investment can be the major concern for dedicated hosting. But if you’re certain your business needs a dedicated hosting environment, then you must be doing good enough to pay for its services.

Dedicated hosting could start anywhere from $40 to $200 monthly fee. It’s a bit more expensive than Shared or VPS hosting.

HostGator and NameCheap offer some of the best affordable and high-quality dedicated hosting plans in the industry today.

Save up to 22% off NameCheap dedicated hosting plans today and enjoy same-day set-up, 99.99% uptime guarantee, free migration services, etc.

HostGator Dedicated Hosting plans start at $89.98/month for the Value server plan. This plan gives you 1 TB HDD, 8 Gig RAM, 4 core/8 thread, unmetered bandwidth, Linux or Windows OS, and Intel Xeon-D CPU.

You can find more about the HostGator Dedicated Hosting plan features on this page.

But come to think of it, does anyone really needs a dedicated hosting services today?

Let’s find out below with the next types of web hosting solutions…

#4. Cloud Hosting – The Future of Web Hosting is Here

Cloud Hosting is no more the future of web hosting. It’s what web hosting is today and the type of hosting you should consider (my opinion).

Like VPS Hosting, Cloud Hosting is essentially on a visual machine. But this time, your website is part of a large network of computers powering your website dynamically.

It is a type of web hosting which uses multiple servers to balance the load, increase server performance, and provide top-notch hosting services.

So in the case where a server that your website resides in fails, another server automatically comes in to keep it running.

In traditional hosting where your website gets a certain amount of space from a single server, cloud hosting gives you part of the whole network of computers.

Cloud Hosting is the most scalable hosting type. As your business grows and requires more hosting space and features, you can move up the hosting plan ladder with ease.

For mission-critical and high-traffic sites, eCommerce stores, lead generation sites, etc…Cloud hosting is the perfect hosting solution.

One of the major benefits of Cloud hosting is in the uptime.

It is not uncommon for web hosts not to offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee. And speed is one of the significant features of any Cloud Hosting plans.

Security is another advantage of cloud hosting, especially against DDoS attack.

In the event of a DDoS attack on a shared hosting server, the server becomes overwhelmed by a myriad of parallel request.

But in cloud hosting, it’s possible to spread the request across many computers which helps mitigate the request better than when on a single server.

As at the time of writing this line, this very blog you’re reading is hosted on the NameCheap EasyWP Cloud hosting server.

You can check with your favorites website speed testing tool to see how fast the web pages load.

EasyWP comes with an in-built 3 layers caching system. This makes the installation of another WordPress caching plugin unnecessary.

And for as low as $1, you can test-drive EasyWP for a whole 30-days.

Another big player in the Cloud hosting service is Cloudways.

Clodways is a web host that specialize in Cloud hosting services. And you can install virtually your favorite application of choice.

Either you’re building with WordPress, Joomla, Magneto, Laravel, and PHP, you can do it with Cloudways.

They offer top of the range cloud hosting services. Working with five cloud services providers:

Cloudways is one of the best in the industry when it comes to cloud hosting. There’s a special 20% discount code for the readers of this blog purchasing Cloudways hosting plan.

Use the Cloudways coupon code “CYBERNAI20″ on the checkout page to save 20% on your invoice.

Use this link to see a list of the Cloudways hosting plans, features, and price details.

Which Hosting Type is Right For You?

Well, it all depends on some factors.

Your level of entry, blog size, needs, budget, tech skills, business type, etc…all play important roles in choosing the perfect web hosting plan.

It takes a lot of consideration and a checklist to determine the best web hosting for beginners. However, the most crucial part of the puzzle is understanding the different types of hosting.

Once you have a good understanding of this, you can make a better decision to pick the right web host and hosting type for your blog business.

Hopefully, this article has provided you with useful information you need to make the right hosting decision.

If you’re a beginner, starting your first blog online, it makes sense to go for a Shared Hosting plan.

Compare different web hosting features from many web hosting companies. See what sets them apart.

Look out for things like CDN usage, SSL certificate usage, (most web hosts offer free SSL certificate), RAM, SSD size, speed, backup features, etc.

If you’re in doubt of anything, the best is to contact the support team of your potential web host. At least, you’ll have a sneak view into how the support team works.

Our Best Web Hosting Pick

This article is incomplete without giving you our best web hosting companies’ recommendations.

Though I will advise you to take this as a recommendation, I have practical experience with the web hosting companies listed here.

Individual experience might defer.

There are lots of contributing factors that determine the best web hosting type for your blog or business website.

Base on popular votes and my own hosting experience, here is a list of the best web hosting for beginners: