8 Best web hosting for beginners
Are you thinking of starting a website to earn a passive income, and you are looking for the best web hosting for beginners?
When you are just starting you need something simple and a web hosting package that comes with all the essential web hosting features out-of-the-box at a reasonable cost.
You do not want to go for web hosting with a lot of resources that you may not need at the time. You have to balance between cost and performance.
As a beginner, you are just trying out a project to see how far it might go and whether it is viable or not. It takes time and a lot of effort to establish a brand online. There is a learning curve and you have to treat your site like a business for it to succeed.
That said and done, let’s look into the best web hosting for beginners. Below are the top 4 best cheap web hosting for beginners to consider.
Each of these comes well packaged to be cost-efficient and beginner-friendly out-of-the-box at no extra cost. I chose these web hosting providers based on their performance.
Cheap shared hosting options:
If it’s your first time, I recommend you go for a cheaper hosting package. Consider any of these;
Managed WordPress options:
On the other hand, if you want to upgrade to resource-intense high-performance servers, I recommend choosing any of these hosting companies, as they will aid in achieving your goals.
You should decide whether you want to go for managed hosting or shared web hosting. In managed web hosting, everything is taken care of on your behalf giving you the time you need to concentrate on creating content for your site and it is always very fast.
On the other hand, shared hosting means that your site will be sharing the same resources with other sites. This has the effect of making a site slower. With managed hosting such as Nexcess, WP Engine, and Flywheel your website can load in less than 0.5 seconds if well-optimized.
You also need a domain to attach to your website’s hosting. I recommend NameSilo and Dynadot as the best domain registers.
What to consider when choosing the best web hosting for beginners
- Server performance– The server infrastructure of a web hosting company determines the performance of any website hosted on its platform. Go for well-optimized Nginx or Litespeed servers as they give you quality performance out of the box.
- Uptime– This is the duration your website is visible online. Choose a web hosting that provides a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
- Storage and bandwidth– This determines how many files ad traffic your site can handle. The traffic to new sites is always low, so do not worry so much about this. However, for the sake of the future, choose a web hosting with reasonable storage and bandwidth.
- Security and backup– The advantage of managed WordPress hosting is security and automated backups of your website’s files.
- Refund policy– Sometime you may not be satisfied with a hosting package and you may want your money back. Therefore, choose a web hosting company that offers a 30 or 90-day refund policy.
- Price– Choose a hosting provider that meets your website’s needs regardless of the price. There is no need to go for cheap web hosting and be forced to pay for extra add-ons to get essential features.
Best shared web hosting for beginners
Shared hosting is the cheapest option for starting a website and building an online presence.
It is suitable if it’s your first time running a small online business, that is not established yet. It is also good for portfolio websites. You can use shared hosting to test various ideas and learn some website-building skills.
The catch is that you will have to sacrifice your website’s performance as you will be sharing allocated server resources with other people.
Bluehost
Bluehost is designed to be beginner friendly and their web hosting packages come with the necessary hosting features such as a free domain name, SSL certificate, CDN, free email address, and much more. It has excellent customer support to assist you whenever you face a challenge with your site.
Again, they are the #1 officially recommended WordPress provider by wordpress.org. Their hosting plans are cheaper and optimized compared to other industries. They offer different packages based on your need which makes it easy to scale up.
Bluehost hosting features
Bluehost prices
Basic plan– Starts at $2.95/mo and renews at $9.99/mo. Includes all the above features, Hosting for one website, and 10GB SSD storage.
Plus plan– Starts at $5.45/mo and renews at $14.99/mo. This includes hosting for unlimited websites and 20GB of SDD storage,
Choice plan– Starts at 5.45/mo and renews at $18.99. It includes hosting for unlimited sites and 40GB of SDD storage.
Pro plan– Begins at $13.95/mo and renews at $28.99/mo. This plan comes with unlimited websites, 100GB SSD storage, a free dedicated IP address, and optimized CPU resources.
IONOS
IONOS is one of the cheapest managed WordPress hosting companies that comes with all professional hosting features, making it one of the best web hosting for beginners.
Their servers are well-optimized and run on Linux hosting, fast NVMe SDD storage, and PHP 8.1. With 25 years of experience, they guarantee 99.97% uptime and website security.
They also deal with domain registration. Their domains start at $1 for the first year, making them one of the cheapest domain registrars.
IONOS Hosting Features
IONOS Hosting Price
Essential plan– Starts at $4/mo and renews at $6/mo. Includes hosting for one website and 10GB of storage.
Business plan– starts at $0.5 /mo and renews at $10/m. Includes hosting for an unlimited website, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage.
Expert– Starts at $8/mo and renews at $16/mo. Includes hosting for an unlimited website, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage.
Hostinger
Hostinger packages are made to meet your web hosting needs out-of-the-box. It is a beginner-friendly hosting provider with a 99.9 % uptime guarantee and a 30-day refund policy.
Hostinger Hosting Features
Hostinger hosting prices
WordPress Starter plan– Starts at $3.99/mo and renews at $5.99/mo annually. This hosting package includes hosting for 100 websites, and 100GB SSD storage. It is suitable for 25,000 monthly visits.
Business WordPress– Starts at $6.99/mo and renews at $11.99/mo annually. This hosting package includes hosting for 100 websites, and 200GB SSD storage, and is suitable for 100,000 monthly visits.
WordPress Pro– Starts at $11.59/mo and renews at $19.99/mo annually. This hosting package includes hosting for 300 websites, and 200GB SSD storage, and is suitable for over 200,000 monthly visits.
Elementor Cloud Hosting
Elementor is the world’s known WordPress page builder. The company started its own cloud hosting which is backed by the Google Cloud Platform. You will get the benefits of the Google Cloud infrastructure such as security, speed, scalability, and reliability.
This comes with free access to the Elementor premium plugin and all the premium templates to help you easily set up a professional website.
Their hosting plan costs $99 per year and comes with a free SSL certificate, free CDN from Cloudflare, 100GB bandwidth, Elementor pro, WordPress pre-installed, and my Elementor admin for managing your website.
Elementor is among the best web hosting for small businesses.
Features of Elementor Cloud
Cons of Elementor Cloud
Best managed web hosting for beginners
This is the best option for those who want to migrate and upscale their websites for better performance.
Managed WordPress hosting offers better server resources, and customer service and all the heavy lifting is handled on your behalf by an expert team.
They are somehow expensive, but they give you peace of mind.
Nexcess
Nexcess is a lightning-fast fully managed cloud and web hosting provider. It is a liquid web branch that runs on Nginx, and PHP, and delivers 99.999% uptime.
They have quality 24/7 customer support. They offer a variety of hosting packages including managed WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, VPS, and dedicated hosting.
I recommend beginners to use managed WordPress hosting as it is easy to set up. They have custom image compression, offer free website migration, and have 10 global data centers to choose from.
They are among the best WordPress hosting for beginners and also suitable for resource intense websites as they are obsessed with performance.
Nexcess Features
The Spark plan comes with the following key hosting features.
Nexcess Price
Spark plan– starts at $9.50/m for the first 6 months and renews at $19/m. On the annual plan, you will pay $15.83/m which is $190 billed upfront for the entire year. Come with the above hosting feature.
Maker plan– Starts at $39.50/m and comes with up to 5 websites, 40GB SDD storage, and 3TB bandwidth.
Designer– Starts at $54.50/m and comes with hosting for 10 websites, 60GB SDD storage, and 4TB bandwidth.
Builder– Starts at $74.50/m and comes with hosting for 25 websites, 100GB SDD storage, and 5TB bandwidth.
Producer– Starts at $149.50/m and comes with hosting for 50 websites, 300GB SDD storage, and 5TB bandwidth.
Executive– Starts at $274.50/m and comes with hosting for 100 websites, 500GB SDD storage, and 10TB bandwidth.
Enterprise– Starts at $499.30/m and comes with hosting for 250 websites, 800GB SDD storage, and 10TB bandwidth.
Cons of Nexcess
WP Engine
WP Engine manages over 1.5 million sites and is the world’s #1 managed WordPress hosting company. All their clients receive the advantage of premium themes, daily backup, automatic updates, and a one-click staging.
Their optimized infrastructure can accelerate your website’s speed by more than 40%. This can make your website load at 0.5 seconds if well-optimized. This makes the one of the best web hosting for beginners.
WP Engine offers a 60-day money-back guarantee policy in case you are unsatisfied with the service. They have excellent 24/7 customer support to handle any issue you might encounter.
As a client, you have the advantage of managed web application firewall, enterprise-grade security, default protections, and DDoS protection.
WP Engine Features
WP Engine Prices
Managed WordPress– Starts at $20/mo. This web hosting package includes hosting for 1 website, 10GB SSD storage, and 25GB bandwidth. Suitable for 25,000 monthly visits.
eCommerce Solution– Starts at $3.99/mo and renews at $5.99/mo annually. This web hosting package includes hosting for 3 websites, 15GB SSD storage, and 125GB bandwidth. Suitable for 75,000 monthly visits. You can also choose a custom plan.
Cons
Flywheel
Flywheel hosting infrastructure is powered by the Google Cloud Platform and is optimized to offer your website lightning speed and uptime.
They also have a custom caching technology to improve page load speed. Its hosting features make it one of the best web hosting for beginners to consider.
Flywheel Hosting Feature
The package comes with the following beginner-friendly hosting features.
Flywheel Hosting Price
Starter plan– begins at $25/m on the annual plan. This package includes all the above features, 10GB SSD storage, hosting for one WordPress site, and 50GB bandwidth. It is suitable for 25,000 monthly visits.
Freelance plan– Starts at $96/m. This package includes hosting for 10 websites, 20GB SSD storage, and 200GB bandwidth. It is suitable for 100,000 monthly visits.
Agency– Starts at $242/m. This package includes hosting for 30 websites, 50GB SSD storage, and 500GB bandwidth. It is suitable for 400,000 monthly visits.
Cons
WPX Hosting
WPX is an optimized beginner-friendly WordPress hosting company. Their hosting packages come with all essential features for smoothly running your websites.
They have multiple data centers located in the UK, Australia, and the USA. All hosting plans come with a free premium CDN and a custom XDN (CDN) to accelerate your website’s loading speed.
They have a 5-star rating on g2 and have been in the industry since 2013.
WPX Hosting Features
WPX Hosting Prices
Business plan– Starts at $20.83/mo. This hosting package includes hosting for 5 websites, 10GB SSD storage, and 100GB bandwidth.
Professional plan– Starts at $41.58/mo. This package includes hosting for 15 websites, 20GB SSD storage, and 200GB bandwidth.
Elite plan– Starts at $83.25/mo. This web hosting package includes hosting for 35 websites, 40GB SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
