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How to Speed Up Your Website with Tips from 42 Pros

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated May 26, 2021

how to make your website faster

It’s no secret that a slow, clunky website is not a good look for your business or brand. In fact, there are tons of studies that suggest you’d be lucky if people stick around long enough to even see your website if it’s slow to load.

There goes your chance to make a good first impression. And you’ll be fortunate if they ever come back again. So just like that you…a) potentially lost a sale, b) increased your “bounce rate” (bad for seo!) and c) provided a very poor brand experience. Not gonna cut it…

So in this case you want your website to be the hare and not the tortoise, but just how do you make it so? Well that’s what this article is for! We recently spoke to more than 40 web design & development pros and quizzed them on “how to speed up a website?” They each talked us through one tip to make a website load faster, and we ended up with a bucketload of actionable advice ranging from the super simple (install a plugin or choose better hosting) to the slightly more complicated (coding knowledge required).

If you need to get your website out of first gear, spend some time looking through the tips below. Significant gains in website speed can be made with a very minimal time and monetary investment in many cases. There’s really no excuse!

How to Optimize Website Speed: 42 Tips to Seriously Cut Loading Times

Website Speed Optimization

Here’s a quickfire overview of all of the ways to make your website load faster that were mentioned by the experts we got in touch with. These folks have built and managed thousands of websites between them, with speed always a priority. You could say they have some experience in this area. Anyway, here are the tips…

  1. Defer image loading
  2. Optimize your images
  3. Install the SmushIt plugin
  4. Use a caching plugin
  5. Reduce clutter – convey the most using the least
  6. Install WP Rocket
  7. Choose your theme wisely
  8. Optimize SQL queries
  9. Clean-up your database
  10. Use WordPress management tools
  11. Keep WordPress core, themes and plugins updated
  12. Steer clear of bloated themes
  13. Minify HTML, CSS and JS
  14. Use the SG Optimizer plugin
  15. Don’t serve scaled images
  16. Prevent image hotlinking
  17. Optimize videos if you’re self-hosting them
  18. Clean up revisions after WordPress Updates
  19. Use sprite maps
  20. Build your own theme with Elementor Pro
  21. Reduce redirects
  22. Review your hosting plan
  23. Take advantage of speed testing tools
  24. Install the Async Javascript plugin
  25. Be consistent (& accurate) with your url
  26. Use Cloudflare
  27. Deactivate/remove unused plugins in WordPress
  28. Invest in a custom designed template
  29. Minimise all HTTP requests
  30. Lazy loading technique
  31. Write smarter CSS/SCSS/SASS
  32. Avoid using an image where possible (use CSS instead)
  33. Optimize DNS options
  34. Configure your expire headers
  35. Remove redundant code (particularly in the backend)
  36. Conditionally enqueue styles and scripts
  37. Serve your media from Amazon S3
  38. Reduce the impact of Javascript on the critical rendering path
  39. Host videos externally
  40. Use SPA to improve user experience
  41. Strip the cruft from your theme
  42. Choose your web host wisely

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • Best Web Hosting for Small Business? 90 Web Design Pros Vote
  • All Web Design + Development Resources

What the Experts Said: Faster Website Tips Explained

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat” as they say. That’s definitely true when it comes to figuring out how to make a website load faster. The more in-depth explanations of the tips that were shared with us are in the section below. Read through a few of them, take action and implement them on your website, and I’d be amazed if you don’t see some speed gains. In fact, I’d eat my socks (as I don’t have a hat).

We’ve ordered the tips into some rough categories, which you can filter using the tags below. Good luck, and we’d love to hear about any improvements you manage to achieve in the comments section!

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • Code/Technical Stuff
  • Hosting
  • Images
  • Other Tools
  • Plugins
  • Themes
  • Video
  • WordPress

Matt Brubaker

I'm a web designer/developer working with small to medium businesses building custom websites for over 5 years. My focus is WordPress custom theme development. I provide web design and development services for multiple marketing and design agencies and individual small businesses in Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Reading and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
http://mattbru.me

  • Defer Image Loading

    – “A technique I’ve been using for a lot of custom site builds, which gives a good performance boost is simple for site developers to implement: defer image loading. This method allows visible page elements to load faster. Basically you load a tiny image source, such as a base64 image, then after page load you use javascript to swap the base64 image for your larger image source we want to display. Doing this tricks the browser into thinking the larger images are not there, resulting in a page loading much faster.

    Image loading (large images or a lot of images) is often a culprit of a slow page load. All page images compete for bandwidth as all other page resources such as javascript and stylesheets. To get around this we can defer image loading to speed up page load. To do so we can find image sources loading off screen, or below the page “fold” and load them differently.

    Find the image source, add a base64 image and put your actual source into a data-src attribute like this:

    Then add this jacascript to your page and you’re all set.

    I will not take credit for this technique. All credit goes to Patrick Sexton at varvy.com. For a more in depth explanation, see this great article.

    I have also learned some other very helpful pagespeed techniques on his site.”

Wendy Alessi

Wendy Alessi is a Calgary, Canada based website designer & graphic designer. With over 10 years' experience in the design industry, she specializes in WordPress website development & E-commerce Website Development.
https://kakatucreative.com/

  • Image Optimization

    – “Image optimization is a huge deal when it comes to the speed of your website. Many people find it tempting to upload large HD images to their websites, with the hope that the image quality will look amazing, but the truth is that large image file sizes can slow your website down considerably.

    While it is extremely important for your images to look their best on your website, It’s equally important to ensure that your images have been re-sized prior to uploading. As a professional, I use Adobe Photoshop CC to re-size and compress my images prior to uploading to my client’s websites, but there are lots of cheap or free alternatives such as Pixlr.com for those who don’t have Photoshop.

    There is a balance between using the lowest file size and retaining great image quality. As a rule, I recommend that images should be in .jpg, .png or .gif format, and re-sized to no larger than the size (in px) that you wish to display on your website.

    If you are a WordPress user like me, you can further compress your image file sizes (without losing quality) by installing the WP Smush – Image Compression and Optimization plugin.

    When developing a website in WordPress, I find that it’s common to upload images and then decide against using them, either because they don’t look good aesthetically or because the format of the page changes during development. When this happens, it’s important to keep on top of your “housekeeping” and remove any unused images from your WordPress media library. Leaving unused images sitting in your media library takes up storage and in turn slows down your website.

    Finally, you can test your images by analyzing your website at: http://gtmetrix.com. GTmetrix provides a vast amount of information about your website optimization as a whole, but there is a section which reports specifically on your images.”

Zach Schwartz

Expirit was founded by Zach Schwartz with a vision to help small brands go big. Today, Expirit serves as the go-to branding agency for top-quality work at affordable prices. Expirit offers brand and web development, graphic design and digital marketing.
http://Expiritco.com

  • SmushIt Plugin

    – “High resolution Images are obviously vital for the design of your website. However, using images that are hi-res means taking up a lot of space on the server. This means it will take longer for your site visitors’ computers to load those images, thereby taking longer to load the website. SmushIt is a WordPress plug-in that allows you to cut off extra data in images that is not necessary. Websites also load entire pages at once, which means it loads images that are not in the viewport yet. For this, SmushIt has an option called “Lazy Loader”, which postpones the images from loading until the user scrolls to that point of the web page. See this link for more info.”

Dortha Hise

As the Chief Overwhelm Eliminator at Pretty Smart Virtual Services, I specialize in rescuing YOU from Overwhelm so you can get back to doing what you love in your business. Take back your business and your life—let me tackle your to-do list!
https://prettysmartvaservices.com/

  • Use a Caching Plugin

    – “WordPress is a great platform to easily create and maintain your website. In addition to using other plugins for security and other functionality, using a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache is a great way to enhance your website’s performance. The W3 Total Cache plugin encapsulates all the features you need to cache your site and help it run faster. It’s as simple as installing and activating it in your WordPress dashboard.

    Some of the other benefits of using the W3 Total Cache plugin on your WordPress site include improved search engine result page rankings, improved conversion rates, and performance of your site, which affect how you show up in Google rankings. Your pages render and can be interacted with more quickly. You’ll also see faster page load speed which will help with keeping people on your site longer and ideally, they’ll be clicking on to more pages of your site.

    W3 Total Cache is very compatible with many hosting companies, offers mobile support and so much more.”

Hughie Wilmshurst

12 year strong freelance website developer, specialising in CodeIgniter and Wordpress.
https://hughiew.co.uk

  • Reduce Clutter

    – “Consider what you and your users actually need/want on your website. Far too often I receive requests to “just add this” or “just add that” – know your limits. The more you add, the slower your website will be. Do you really need your homepage to feature your Instagram feed, feefo reviews, featured products, featured brands, Facebook feed, Twitter feed, news articles, featured promotions etc?

    Use tracking services such as Google Analytics, MouseFlow and HotJar to track which parts of your site your users actually pay attention to. If nobody uses a particularly resource-intensive feature, consider removing it, or moving it to somewhere else on your site.

    It’s all about efficiency – convey the most using the least.”

Craig Murphy

Craig Murphy is the director of ALT Agency and spends his spare time working out ways to improve the speed of websites.
https://www.altagency.co.uk

  • Install WP Rocket

    – “A friend told me mid-last year about a plugin called WP Rocket which is a plugin specifically for WordPress. As a user of W3 Total Cache I wasn’t too keen on looking at switching, but due to a few caching issues and seeing the metrics of my friend’s website I decided to give it a go.

    WP Rocket is now used on our own website and every client who uses WordPress – it is that good.

    What WP Rocket does is, besides offering incredible support, it allows you to set files such as CSS, JS and HTML etc to compress and cache – Without breaking your design & layout.

    On all the page speed metric sites, such as Google Page Insights and GTMetrix, just through installing the plugin and enabling the basics it improved the percentage on average by 15-20%.

    Once we dialled in the plugin and messed around with the settings we’ve found it on average to jump the Google Page insights metrics by 20-30%, Increase the GTMetrix score by around 30-35% and decrease page load time by around 1.5 seconds on average.

    We highly recommend the tool, love it so much and you can find more about it and download a copy from: https://wp-rocket.me/”

Faye Williams

Full stack developer and writer. I provide hosting and websites for small businesses at Five Pixels.
https://fivepixels.co.uk

  • Choose your Theme Wisely

    – “There are thousands of WordPress themes available. Choosing the perfect theme for your website is not just about picking something that you think looks pretty. Since speed is such an important part of the user experience, you will want to choose a theme that is regularly updated and optimised for speed. There is no point choosing a theme that looks wonderful if it adds seconds to your site’s load time.

    Reading the theme owners description is an easy place to start. If there is no mention of speed or optimisation then it is likely that this isn’t a priority for the development team or individual. Asking for recommendations for themes that are fast is a good way to find out what others have used and liked.

    You can also do a basic evaluation of your current theme by switching to a vanilla WordPress theme (like Twenty Twelve which is excellent for speed) and comparing the difference in load time. As a general rule, the more adds-ons and functionality you have in your theme, the slower you can expect it to respond.

    My personal theme recommendation for WordPress is to start with Generate Press and customise it as needed. This is a very lightweight, but truly flexible theme that you can use to create some stunning designs. However, if you are looking for a super fast theme out-of-the-box then do your research (there are plenty of articles that compare theme speeds) and make sure you pick one that is tried and tested.”

Matthew Carver

Matthew is the founder of Pilgrim Blue, a digital innovation consultancy in Austin, Texas.
http://pilgrim.blue

  • Optimize SQL Queries

    – “This is especially true if you have a custom built solution in place. The issue isn’t just a problem for my clients with custom content delivery sites. For instance, maybe you have your main site hosted on WordPress, but you need a connection to a custom API. If those API calls aren’t optimized, it could block the render of the page. Sometimes it’s not just the query that needs to be optimized, but the response. If your API responds with too much content or overly verbose responses, it can cause your site to lag while it parses the response.

    The easiest way to address this issue is with a query optimizer. A query optimizer can cost anywhere from $30 to $130+ a month (personally, for SQL I like SolarWinds or Red Gate is a good overall SQL Toolset) and you’ll still need to rely on somebody to implement the solution and it won’t guarantee perfect results out of the box. For my clients I like to suggest a system audit first to rule out simpler fixes first. These can take as little as a week and be done with a one time up-front investment before committing to an ongoing expense and ensure the right solution is enacted.”

David Marmon

An experienced and accomplished web designer and online branding strategist, David Marmon injects years of experience and creativity into every project he touches. He is the visionary behind the Marmon Designs brand. He is a strong believer in collaboration and building a community that shares a vision for the future.
https://marmondesigns.com

  • Clean-Up Your Database

    – “It’s important to keep your site’s database as clean as possible. This will keep the database size to a minimum, which will not only help speed up your site, but also help important website processes (such as backups) happen at a much faster speed.

    Often fresh theme installations will come with demo content hidden in places that your site might not utilize, such as a portfolio feature filled with demo content.

    Spam comments may collect over time. Unused image variations will start to pile up in your media library. Unpublished draft content, no longer active users, and unneeded plugins can all take up unnecessary space in your database.

    Clean it up every so often!”

Vee Ridgley

I started designing websites way back in 2000. We are now an agency that helps businesses and organisations get online. And then make a success of their business.
https://webdesignuk.agency/

  • Use WordPress Management Tools

    – “Having looked at the list of tip topics so far it was hard to think of a new one. We carry out as many of them as possible to help with site speed. Which led to me realise I do have a tip that is not yet listed. And that is to use WordPress management tools.

    For example, no matter how many times you explain to a client that their images called ‘IMG_1234.jpg’ etc. at 3500px X 4000px and 300dpi will slow down their site, they often ‘forget’. Short of checking everything they do on site you cannot police this, especially when they insist on managing the content themselves.

    WordPress Management tools can help. I’m talking about tools that give an overall picture of a site’s performance, with details that can guide you to where the issues are. Whether the problem is un-optimised images, poor hosting or poor code etc. There are premium tools such as ManageWP, which has recently been bought by GoDaddy and now included in their managed WordPress hosting packages I believe. Also MainWP, InfiniteWP, iControlWP and a few more.

    For managing one or two sites, there are free online tools such as GTMetrix, Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test and many more. These will often also give insights to help you find out what is causing any slow speeds.

    Even Google Analytics can help. If you have a niche market and know where your customers/site visitors are coming from, plus what devices they tend to use, you can perhaps optimise your site design to reflect that. For example, if lots of visitors are from somewhere with poor broadband speeds and view the site on a mobile, then don’t waste time making them download a lovely big hero image.”

Danny Stone

I was brought into developing websites when a friend created their new one. The experience got me hooked and I haven’t looked back. Building a portal for small to medium sized businesses so that they can develop their strategy online efficiently and effectively happens to be a great way to meet and learn about different industries and the people involved in them. There are always new things evolving in the tech space so we all need to keep learning!
https://www.webstudiolab.co.uk/

  • Keeping WordPress Core, Themes & Plugins Updated

    – “The WordPress core, your WordPress theme and any plugins you install are written in code that is meant to fuse together well – ultimately providing you with a functioning (and fast) website. As things move forward with new features, enhancements and upgrades, this means that the developers of the above will have been writing new code. These changes in the packages are the updates and upgrades that are released.

    Keeping on top of this will improve the security and performance of your site.

    One may argue that you should not update everything immediately when the new release is ready, rather instead – whilst WordPress does score the confidence of compatibility of the updates – it can be wise to set up a staging environment to test these out before launching the upgrades as a live site to the public.”

John Sheahan

We specialise in engaging WordPress powered websites, as well as ongoing website care and maintenance plans
https://eggdesign.ie/web-design-portfolio/

  • Avoid Bloated Themes

    – “One of the best ways to speed to up your site is to avoid using bloated themes that come packed with too many features, 80% of which you probably wont even use. Combine that with a load of plugins and add-ons and you are just begging for a slow site! On top of that, the majority of these themes use page builders, which also can add to the load and slow it down. At Egg we use a very lightweight framework and only ever use the very basics in functionality that the client will need, all the while making it as user-friendly and easy to use as possible.

    We advise using custom fields plugins (such as the fantastic Advanced Custom Fileds) to create hard coded layouts that your client can then easily update themselves without the need for page builders which can lead to disaster at times if a client doesn’t know how to use them properly.

    So at the end of the day, keep things as cut back and streamlined as possible with your theme.”

Dave Ashworth

Freelance Technical SEO Consultant with 10 years of SEO experience and a further 10 years in web development
https://organicdigital.co/

  • Minify HTML, CSS & JS

    – “Minify your HTML, CSS and JS files to remove white space and unnecessary or redundant code (such as comments) which in turn minimises code across your site’s pages and script files.

    This will reduce file size which in turn reduces bandwidth usage and page load time. There are manual tools to help with this such as:

    • https://cssminifier.com/
    • https://javascript-minifier.com/

    There are also resources available which will generate minified code dynamically. There are a number of plugins available for WordPress sites:

    • https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/minify/

    Whilst developers can find code to do this such as:

    • https://gist.github.com/tovic/d7b310dea3b33e4732c0
    • https://github.com/mrclay/minifyAlways

    Always make sure you test your minified code to ensure the CSS and JS files still work.”

Derek Rippe

Specializing in custom, affordable website design and development services for small and micro businesses, proudly built on WordPress and the Genesis Framework.
https://512designlab.com

  • Use the SG Optimizer Plugin

    – “I am someone who was late to the “Site Speed” game, largely because I always felt overwhelmed by the plugins available to WordPress users. The plugins I had tried undoubtedly worked well (based on ratings), but the user interfaces were so poor that I regularly felt overwhelmed and confused.

    Toward the end of 2018, after acquiring a SiteGround VPS account and the clients on it, I was looking for easy ways to reduce server load. It was then that I learned of the SG Optimizer plugin.

    While the SG Optimizer plugin is developed and maintained by the folks at SiteGround, the majority of features available will work on WordPress websites hosted anywhere (there are merely some extra perks for those who also host with SiteGround). What I love most about this optimization tool is not how well it works (and it does work well), but how incredibly easy it is to use!

    After installing the plugin as you would any other WordPress plugin (it’s available in the WordPress repository: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/), you will see the optimization options are broken into 4 categories:

    • SuperCacher Settings
    • Environment Optimization
    • Frontend Optimization
    • Image Optimization

    SuperCacher Settings

    This section has tools for enabling “Dynamic Caching”, which stores your content in the server’s memory for faster access. It includes tools for purging the cache, excluding specific URLs, and testing the cache status. SiteGround users can also take advantage of “Memcached” – powerful object caching for your site.

    SG Optimizer SuperCacher Settings

    Environment Optimization

    In this section you can enable GZIP Compression and Browser Caching. GZIP Compression compresses the content delivered to your visitors browsers and improves the network loading times of your site. Browser Caching adds rules to store in your visitors browser cache to keep static content longer for better site performance. There are also tools for enabling and forcing HTTPS, and settings your PHP version, although I have only had luck with these on WordPress websites hosted with SiteGround.

    SG Optimizer Environment Optimization

    Frontend Optimization

    This is a key section within the SG Optimizer plugin, and it offers a lot of options for reducing the load time your site visitors experience. You can minify your HTML Output and JavaScript files, and both combine and minify your CSS files. You can also load render-blocking JavaScript files “asynchronously” (preventing javascript from blocking your page from loading) and remove query strings from static resources (to improve caching).

    I have seen rare instances where certain options here can affect frontend elements on a website (background images, forms, etc). Should you notice a display issue after enabling the Frontend Optimization tools, I’d suggest disabling them individually to find the culprit (then just leave that particular option disabled).

    SG Optimizer Frontend Optimization

    Image Optimization

    Today’s websites are full of images, and images are full of data… data that your site visitor has to download. The primary purpose of this section is to optimize existing images (with minimal or no loss in quality) and automatically optimize any new images you upload. You can also select a variety of images to “lazy load,” meaning they won’t be loaded and displayed to the user until they come into view.

    SG Optimizer Image Optimization

    While the majority of client sites I maintain are on SiteGround, I now use the SG Optimizer plugin on every WordPress website I create or manage. For me, it’s a “set it and forget it” plugin with measurable performance gains.”

Erim Foster

Erim has been working on websites since the days of Netscape Navigator and embedded tables. He currently specializes in WordPress optimization and support for small businesses and non-profits.
https://erim.net

  • Don’t Serve Scaled Images

    – “I see this issue all the time with websites I test. Often it’s with thumbnails on an archive or index page. The individual images are displayed at 200X200 pixels for example, but the images themselves are much bigger, sometimes full resolution. I once tested a major news outlet homepage and found a tiny logo image being displayed about 100 pixels wide, but the source file was a full resolution PNG that clocked in at almost 6MB. All for an image that should have been about 800 bytes!

    Your images should be scaled down to the largest size they’ll be displayed. With responsive design, this often means a larger size on a mobile device than on desktop. This is because responsive design will break a two or three column desktop layout down to one column and stack images and text on top of each other, making the displayed images larger.

    Assuming you’re going to use the same images for different screen sizes, figure out the largest size you’ll need to display and use that for the image source file. If you’re building a WordPress theme with thumbnail images, create a custom image size and use that. Do not just pull the full resolution image or one of the stock sizes if they’re not appropriate. If you’re inserting images into posts or pages, use the image size that’s right for the column width, don’t just use the full size and let the CSS scale it down.

    And when you’re done, test it with GTMetrix and make sure you’re not missing anything. Scaled images are one of the biggest performance issues I see with the sites I test, and I test a lot of them. And you see this all the time with high profile sites and sites I know somebody spent a lot of money on. A web page that should be 1.5 MB total is 10 or 15. That’s frustrating to users, makes a bad impression and is costing the website traffic, dwell time and search rankings.”

Wes Marlan

Wes has been webmastering up and down the front range of Colorado since 1997. He enjoys developing fast, clean, and smart layouts in WordPress for his clients.
https://www.lighthousewd.com

  • Prevent Image Hotlinking

    – “Don’t let other sites steal your bandwidth and resources by allowing them to hotlink to your WordPress website’s images and files! Believe it or not, this can contribute to overall server load and slow things down a bit (depending on the number of sites that are stealing your content).

    The best way to find out if other sites are hotlinking to your images is to use Google Images. Enter in the following line to instruct Google to search for your website’s images in other URLs:

    inurl:yourdomain.com -site:yourdomain.com

    If you see some images show up, then you’ll have your answer!<.p>

    Thankfully, there’s an easy fix for this that involves adding the following code to your WordPress website’s .htaccess file:

    /* Prevent image hotlinking */
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourdomain.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?facebook.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?instagram.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?twitter.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?other-website-urls-go-here.com [NC]
    RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|pdf|png|gif)$ – [F]

    The snippet of code above prevents websites other than yours, Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter from having access to your website’s images and files. The second-to-last line is a placeholder/template for adding additional domains you might want to whitelist for hotlinking. The final line of code specifies what file formats you want to apply the hotlink prevention rule to (you can tweak the filetypes as needed).

    Once you have this snippet of code in your .htaccess file, you shouldn’t have to worry about other sites leeching off your content while adding more stress to your server.”

Mike Sayenko

Sayenko Design was founded in 2009 to provide businesses of all sizes with user-driven web design and development solutions. I have a long background in visual arts with 10 years of design experience. I’m also passionate about performance, which comes from my history as a professional runner. I personally oversee all projects the firm takes on.
https://www.sayenkodesign.com/
  • Video Optimization If Self-Hosting Them – “Video optimization is important, as it can affect the performance and speed of your website. Here are some tips:

    • Video Formats – Convert to HTML5 Supported Formats. All modern browsers allow you to use MP4, with Chrome and Friefox supporting the newer format WebM. You want to deliver videos on your website with HTML5, which allows you to use both formats. Chrome and firefox will use WebM while other browsers will fallback to use MP4.
    • Video Compression – The smaller the file size, the better the performance. You can use online tools such as Hand Brake or Online Convert to convert and optimize your videos.
    • Removing Audio – If your video is being used as a background, or doesn’t need sound, by removing the sound you can decrease the file size.
    • Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) – Just like images and other website assets, you can use a CDN to deliver video to your visitors.
    • Defer Loading of Videos – If the video autoplays when a visitor reaches your web page, defer the loading until the page load has completed. This will allow the page to load faster.
    • Mobile Experience – If you have a larger video, then many visitors with slower connections won’t benefit from video. They’ll be waiting for the video to load, and this can cause a poor user experience. Hide the video for mobile and replace it with an image.”

Gene Armstrong

Gene is a web developer and founder of a digital design agency, Big Apple Media, specializing in SEO and small business WordPress website design.
http://www.bigapplemedia.com

  • Clean Up Revisions After Updates (WP)

    – “One of the most common mistakes I see people make, especially novice WordPress users, is not cleaning up revisions after updates have been made.

    I’ve seen some sites having as much as 20 or more revisions for each page. Having too many revisions can greatly increase the size of the database and hinder the performance of the website.

    Unlike other more technical techniques for speeding up the site, this one is easy to implement. You can limit how many revisions you want to keep by adding one line of code to your wp-config.php file.

    define( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 5 );

    For example, this code will limit the number of revisions to 5 and automatically remove older revisions, which will reduce the size of your database and lead to better website performance.”

Eric Atallah

Web developer with just under 10 years of professional experience. I've built websites of all shapes and sizes.
https://onclickwebdesign.com

  • Sprite Maps

    – “In general, any way to reduce the number of round trips (http requests) to and from the server during page load is a good idea. Similar to JavaScript and CSS aggregation techniques, using a sprite map for collections of icons can help reduce server requests. Let’s say you need to render twenty small icons in various places on your web page. Instead of loading twenty small icons individually, use Illustrator, or your design tool of choice to lay all twenty icons next to one another on a single image file. Then you only have one image file to load. Now you have reduced twenty http requests down to only one. You can then use the CSS background rule to render each icon in the sprite map, individually, where you like on your page.

    Here is a pretty good blog post on creating sprite maps:

    https://fiorecommunications.com/2018/06/08/creating-and-using-css-sprites-to-improve-google-pagespeed-scores/”

Joe Gilbert

4 years running Milton Keynes' leading Web Design agency - Red Giraffe
https://red-giraffe.com

  • Build Your Own Theme with Elementor Pro

    – “When building a website in WordPress, themes and page builders often come jam-packed with features and awesomeness, each trying desperately to deliver better features than their rivals. However, do you need all these features, packed into both the page builder AND the theme?

    We build all of our websites using Elementor Pro, which not only comes packed with tonnes of amazing features, but also includes its own inbuilt theme builder. That lets us do away with needing a WordPress theme all-together, other than the “bare bones” Elementor theme which doesn’t contain any features at all, and so is unbelievably light-weight.

    The attached screenshot shows the GTMetrix comparison of a website we recently built. On the left the site is built using only Elementor Pro, and on the right is an identical clone of the site using Elementor Pro + Astra theme (in itself a very fast and lightweight theme!) You can see the differences in speed and performance are remarkable.”

Elementor Speed Comparison

Pawel Laczny

Entrepreneur, software engineer and business technology adviser. Full Stack Web Developer with over 14 years of commercial experience. Startups lover. Author and tech blogger.
https://www.beenet.london/

  • Reduce Redirects

    – “Redirects are instructions, which automatically take visitors of your website from one location to another. They are often necessary when you move or delete pages, and are the best way to eliminate issues with broken links.

    Having too many redirects creates additional requests, which can significantly decrease the speed of your website, especially on mobile devices. This means, it’s best to keep them to a minimum. Google says that site owners should try to eliminate them completely.

    There are two types of redirects: server- and client-side. Server-side use HTTP to direct the browser to the new location of the file. Client-side use HTML or JavaScript code in the user’s browser. If you can’t remove all redirects, make sure you use the server-side ones. Web browsers can handle them much quicker and can cache the correct location of the file.”

Simon Smith

Simon Smith is a Freelance Web Developer based in Bristol, UK. He operates Just Structure, which offers a full digital service for small and large businesses.
https://www.juststructure.co.uk

  • Hosting Plan Review

    – “Whenever I am asked to look at a slow performing website the first question I ask is “Who are you hosting with? “and “What hosting plan are you on?”

    Generally, I find that the website owner has signed up to an entry-level, low-cost plan and that plan is known as ‘Shared Hosting”. Just by upgrading the Shared Web Hosting plan, I normally see a real big difference in website performance. Though that does not say there isn’t other performance optimisation you can do as well.

    The reason hosting companies can offer such a cheap monthly hosting plan is they host many websites on one physical server. This server then has to share resources across 100’s and possibly 1000’s of other websites. So your site performance is affected by other websites’ usage, as they are pulling on the same resources, such as CPU and RAM from the server. Some hosting companies will even throttle usage on Shared Hosting, so if you get a spike in your traffic your website will run slow as it deals with the increase in resource usage. Unfortunately, it is a case of you get what you pay for with web hosting.

    It is worth speaking with your hosting company to see what upgrades you can get to your hosting plan, as some shared hosting companies can guarantee your website an amount of server resource for an additional monthly fee. If they are unhelpful, then it may be worth looking to move provider or look at other hosting options such as Cloud Hosting, VPS or Dedicated Hosting.

    In summary, it is really worth paying a bit extra to get your hosting optimised and performing as you expect. Your website is the first stop for your customers and a poor performing website is harmful to your business and negates all the other work you do to promote your business.”

Monica Pitts

Monica Pitts is the creative force and founder of MayeCreate Design. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with an emphasis in Economics, Education and Plant Science from the University of Missouri. With a rare combination of design savvy and technological know-how, her passion for making friends and helping businesses grow gives Monica the skills she needs to make sure that each client, or friend, gets the attention and service he or she deserves.
https://mayecreate.com/

  • Use Speed Testing Tools

    – “Knowing how to make your website perform better is useless unless you know how to test if your performance updates are actually working. There are tons of great speed test tools out there. Google has two that I use pretty frequently. Page Speed Insights is easy to use and effective at telling you what is working and what is slowing down your site. If you’re a chrome user, Google Lighthouse is already built in! All you have to do is right click on an item and click inspect, once the google developer toolbar pops up just click on “Audits”. Then if that doesn’t satisfy your curiosity, Pingdom Tools is a third party testing site I use constantly to rate websites. It doesn’t give as detailed a report as Lighthouse, but it is still super useful for making sure your website is running as fast as it should.”

Roberto Severino

I'm a digital marketer who's passionate about SEO, web development, PPC, social media, and content marketing. In the last several years, I've worked with small to mid-sized businesses and e-commerce websites to boost ROI across the board. I also love chocolate, art, documentaries, and a good audiobook.
https://robertoseverino.com/

  • Install Async JavaScript Plugin

    – “There are dozens of ways you can speed up your WordPress site, many of which are fairly straightforward. But there’s one tool that I would highly recommend any business owner or marketer look into, and that’s Async JavaScript. Among the WordPress plugins you can find, it can be a little bit intimidating to use at first if you’re not too familiar with web development itself.

    However, as long as you follow these simple troubleshooting steps, you’ll be able to get it to work just fine for your business website.

    The first thing you need to do is to install the plugin and enable it, and then on the front page of the admin panel, you will be able to see the plugin in action. It gives you a clear overview of what’s happening and what has been optimized. For example, you will see a status telling you whether it’s enabled or not.

    Async JavaScript Status

    There are also several other options available. I will go through the main ones that I always use and generate the most results. After all, the 80/20 rule applies to so much about digital marketing and web development. You only need a fraction of these tools to have the most impact on your site speed.

    After you’ve gone through the installation process, hover over “Settings” on the left-hand corner of the screen, and click on Async JavaScript. Now, you will be able to make the changes that are going to speed up your site dramatically. This is getting good, but bare with me now!

    Now on this screen, what you want to do is click on the checkboxes for the options you want to be enabled. When I work with this plugin, I always click on the very first setting to enable the plugin itself. If you run an e-commerce site, you should also enable the plugin for logged in users and cart and checkout pages. However, be sure to test those pages out to be sure nothing breaks. That’s going to be a common thing you need to do every time you decide to play around with these settings.

    Async JavaScript Checkboxes

    Scroll down to the Async JavaScript Method section and click on the radio button beside Async.

    Async JavaScript Method

    As for the JQuery part of the page, you have to be extra careful with this option. Most of the time, it’s best to enable the Defer option. I’ve tried Async here, and it usually has resulted in a lot of issues for me on the sites I’ve worked on. If you’re still having problems, you can also exclude JQuery entirely. I ran into a situation where deferring JQuery completely broke a custom menu I had to make for a client, so depending on the kind of work you need done on your website, I would double check to make sure everything’s working just fine.

    Async JavaScript jQuery

    Lastly, scroll down to the bottom. You’re going to also need to have the Autoptimize plugin installed, so go back and do that if you haven’t already. It’s also another incredible WordPress plugin I use all the time to make my clients’ sites incredibly fast, but I want to stick with how to get this plugin up and running specifically.

    Autoptimize Plugin

    Click on the checkbox next to “Enable Autoptimize Support” and then click on Async for the method. This is why a lot of the time, you want to make sure that you have JQuery deferred already for this plugin. The Autoptimize plugin usually already takes care of it for you.

    And there you have it! After you’ve gone through these steps, test out your site’s speed.

    Combined with other popular WordPress plugins, your site should load much faster. If you’re having any technical problems, be sure to sort those out. Now you can really speed up your WordPress site’s JavaScript code without having to touch a single line of code yourself. It took several steps, but as you can see, it’s not that hard at all!”

Travis Smith

Owner of Hop Studios, a Webby-winning boutique web design and development agency.
https://www.hopstudios.com/

  • Be Consistent (& Accurate) With Your URL

    – “If your site is at https://www.hopstudios.com, then make sure you ALWAYS use https, and you ALWAYS use www, in every place you link to your site, publish it, mention it, print it, etc. If someone tries to visit http://hopstudios.com/, that’s going to require at least one, possibly two redirects before they arrive at the final proper request to load your home page, and that can add a delay of several seconds to the initial page load. The current best practice is to have https as the default, and the non-www as the canonical URL, but regardless of what you choose, just make sure that you are consistent.”

Ty Fujimura

I’m the founder of Cantilever, a web design and development studio. We help marketing people who are frustrated because they are spending a lot of time and money on their websites and aren’t getting the results they need. Clients include IBM, Esquire Magazine, and NYU.
https://cantilever.co?utm_source=wste&utm_medium=social

  • Use Cloudflare

    – “No tool can save a website that isn’t built properly, so start there. Minimize the amount of code on the site to just what you need. Reduce the number of third-party libraries involved. Monitor any database queries.

    After that… use Cloudflare!

    Cloudflare acts as a middle layer between your visitors and your site. It’s like a waiter. Instead of your visitors going all the way to the kitchen to ask for what they need or to pick up their food, they ask Cloudflare.

    Cloudflare

    The problem this solves is that your website’s server is _busy_. Every time a user visits, it has to prepare all the right files and send it over the internet all the way to the user’s location. This process is time-intensive and repetitive. Cloudflare stores the results of prior requests so that the next time somebody requests a certain file, Cloudflare can serve it to the visitor without even asking your web server.

    What’s more, Cloudflare has servers in major population centers around the world, so your files are usually served from a location closer to the visitor than your web server is. This minimizes the time it takes to communicate between the visitor and your site.

    These are all the traditional roles of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) – but Cloudflare is broader and delivers more features. With a traditional CDN, you need to change your website so that it links to the CDN’s version of a file rather than the one on your web server. Cloudflare sits transparently in _front_ of your website, so visitors can request files directly from their physical location and Cloudflare will intercept the hit without anyone noticing. Cloudflare requires a more all-in setup process and commitment to using their infrastructure for most of your content, so it can be overkill for some cases where a more basic CDN would suffice. You should evaluate both options in the context of your site’s particular performance profile.

    Cloudflare operates by taking full control of your “DNS” – the primary settings that govern where visitors are sent when they request the site. It takes just a few minutes to set up, and your site will be instantly faster. DNS setup is particular and can take time to reverse, so it’s a commitment, but once set up properly, you’ll hardly notice that Cloudflare is involved in serving your site.

    What’s more, this level of control means that Cloudflare can add additional features like making files smaller, taking advantage of the latest content delivery methods, and making your site significantly more secure.

    And it does all of this for the grand total of $0. Their free product covers the basic features I just outlined, and you can pay for more advanced features as you need.

    At Cantilever, we implement Cloudflare for virtually every project we do – usually the free version, but sometimes with their premium features too. We have no affiliation with them, we’re just grateful for their product and love to spread the word.”

Vernette John-Joiles

Vernette John-Joiles is the owner of 7D Web Design, an experienced website designer/developer, workshop and seminar facilitator and online branding consultant. She is the winner of the 2018 BeMogul Award for Entrepreneurship and a Women on the Web (WOW) contributor partner.
http://www.7dwebdesign.co.uk

  • Deactivate/Remove Unused Plugins in WordPress

    – “If you have a WordPress website that is currently online, then I extend the secret ‘WordPress club’ handshake to you! That’s just my way of letting you know that, like me, you have become part of a global tribe of WordPress website owners who are regularly on the hunt for tips and tricks about WordPress developments, and how to keep WordPress websites functioning well. WordPress has become so popular as an open-source platform that it is used for approximately over a third of all live websites on the internet. Your tribe is huge!

    I have a WordPress website for my business, and have also built and manage many of them on behalf of my clients. So, I can say that I know WordPress quite well, and I also have to keep my eyes open about the different things that can be done to make the most of WordPress.

    So, as you read this, I am going to assume that you are aware that plugins are a must to expand WordPress website functionality, so that we can do some sophisticated tasks online, but without having to do the heavy-weight coding work. Plugins are vital for any WordPress website, and depending on how you see things, they can be the lifeblood of your website or the bane of your online existence.

    Let me explain that last statement.

    Yes, when it comes to the plugins that are on offer to extend the functionality of WordPress websites, there are a ‘gazillion’ free ones available to install. This is great news if you are trying to build an online presence and you either want to try a few things out before committing long term, or if you don’t want to invest any money initially. Alternatively, there are premium plugins that can be bought from developers from many online stores and sources if you are seeking to build a website with more elaborate requirements. Lifeblood.

    On the other hand, because there are so many plugin options to choose from, it can mean that you end up with ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ which can cause unnecessary headaches. Sometimes, there are plugins that don’t like each other and cause conflicts… Or can drain on other resources present that your website might need… Or can have bugs and you have to spend time working to get the issue fixed, which is very time consuming. Bane.

    If you are familiar with WordPress, I’m going to assume that you would have most likely visited the WordPress repository (or catalogue) from the admin dashboard and installed your ‘go-to’ plugins; the ones that are tried and tested, and are known to be useful and reliable. If you’re new to WordPress and unfamiliar with the ‘go-to’ plugins, it’s most likely that you’ll install a few of them, activate them and fiddle around to see how they work and if they help with your website build. I used to do this a lot when I first started out with WordPress.

    So, when it comes to looking at aspects that affect the loading speed of our websites, the issue that can arise is that installing multiple plugins can create a loading delay. A good analogy would be to think of loading up a car with lots of stuff, which would make the car heavier and cause the car engine to have to use more petrol and power to get up a hill. When a website loads, the server that it’s hosted on also has to deliver all the plugins that may be installed or present in the website folder. Even if there are plugins that are not activated or in use on the website, having it installed can be a bit draining for the website server, and can increase the loading time for our websites.

    Tips for Moving Forward

    So, here are some suggestions about how you can do some work with your website plugins as part of ongoing work to improve your website loading speed, which can all be done once logged in to your WordPress dashboard. Please be sure to make a back-up of your website before you start.

    • Check if your current active plugins need updating. If you are seeing a message under the plugin listing informing that an update is available, it’s normally a good idea to go ahead and update the plugin. The update will most likely include improvements which will be helpful for your website.
    • Review the plugins that are currently active on your website. Check the plugin settings to make sure that it does what you ‘need’ it to do. Sometimes there are functions within a plugin that will be ‘auto-activated’ but might be unnecessary for your website and also affect the loading speed. So, give your active plugins a once over to make sure that all is as it should be.
    • Review the plugins that are currently installed but inactive. If they are not serving a purpose for your website, delete them. It is better to have a ‘lean machine’ of a website. If some of the inactive plugins are premium ones, be sure to have a backup stored elsewhere before you delete from your website.
    • When it comes to selecting the plugins to use for your website, be sure to take some time to read the reviews. You can check the reviews within the WordPress dashboard itself, from https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or from other sources online. This will give you an idea about the reliability of the plugin you are considering and will also save you time by not having to upload multiple plugins.”

Robin Clapp

Robin Clapp, owner of Web Design by Robin is a Certified Joomla Website Designer! She designs custom responsive websites, along with content management instructions, maintenance & security.
https://www.webdesignbyrobin.com

  • Invest in a Custom Designed Template

    – “If you want to accelerate the performance of your website, you should use a custom-designed template not a purchased template that is customized. There is a big difference. Let me explain.

    A purchased template is a product. For this reason, it must appeal to many. This type of template has many variations: various colors, styles, layouts, tools, features, etc. The developers have built the code necessary to switch between these variations into the template.

    A custom-designed website already includes your website content, style, layout, tools, etc. For example, with a custom-designed template, there is no need for code rendering color variations, such as blue verses pink or green or red. You do not have to make these decisions with a custom-designed template because the design is already set in stone. As a result, the webpage will be faster.

    If you are hiring a website design company, ask the question “Are you creating a custom template for my website or are you purchasing a template and customizing it?” Don’t make assumptions: ask! The answer will help you choose wisely because there really will be a difference in website speed.”

Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson is an online marketing expert with 15 years of experience with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google Ads. As founder of Springhill Marketing, he helped various companies drive-up their website traffic via increased sales and enquiries. His company is a Google Partner, specialising in SEO and Google Ads.
https://springhillmarketing.co.uk/
  • Minimise all HTTP requests – “Around 80 per cent of a site’s load time is due to the loading of:

    • Images
    • Style sheets
    • Scripts
    • Other page components

    Each of these elements can require a separate HTTP request, prolonging the page’s loading time.

    You can reduce the number of such requests through your browser. Use Google Chrome’s developer tool to see how many HTTP requests your site is making:

    • Right click on the page
    • Click ‘Inspect’
    • Click ‘Network’ tab (If you can’t see the tab, consider expanding Developer Tools sidebar)
    • The ‘Name’, ‘Size’, and ‘Time’ shows the corresponding details of the files on the page
    • Pay particular attention to the ‘Time’ since this shows how long it takes to load a file
    • Down on the left corner is the number of total requests your site makes

    You can now check and remove the files not necessary for your site’s loading. Otherwise, you may combine some of the files instead.”

Felix Michael

I work as Technical Director at Web Choice UK. We have been helping clients in the UK and abroad over the past 10 years, building websites and web applications, as well as digital marketing. We have a proven track record of bringing great ideas to life in the most professional and friendly manner. Our mantra at Web Choice is
https://www.webdesignchoice.co.uk/

  • Lazy Loading Technique

    – “One of the techniques we use here at Web Choice for speeding up websites is called Lazy Loading Technique also called Asynchronous Loading which will help images to load only when pages are scrolled down.

    Jeremy Wagner who contributes to Webfundamentals says this:

    The portion of images and video in the typical payload of a website can be significant. Unfortunately, project stakeholders may be unwilling to cut any media resources from their existing applications. Such impasses are frustrating, especially when all parties involved want to improve site performance, but can’t agree on how to get there. Fortunately, lazy loading is a solution that lowers initial page payload and load time, but doesn’t skimp on content.

    Read his full article here

    If you are using WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal- most of the SEO plugins and extensions may already have Lazyloading integrated into it. If you are using a bespoke solution, your web developer can use scripts like this.”

Chris Williams

Award-winning website designer / developer in Wolverhampton, specialising in lead generation online.
https://williamsgraphics.co.uk

  • Write Smarter CSS/SCSS/SASS

    – “Lots of designers / developers talk about compressing CSS files into one document (and for good reason, that helps with page load), but very few people talk about being smarter with how those files are written BEFORE they are combined together

    Too often do we see hyper-specific CSS sheets that are 8 selectors deep before their property is rendered, or the shameful, but sometimes necessary evil “!important” tag contained within your stylesheets. As website professionals, we can’t just rely on compression algorithms and hope that processors and internet speeds keep increasing. We need a fundamental shift in how CSS is written.

    So what am I actually talking about?

    When developers are writing the CSS for a site, many will be using a framework which contains some ground-rules to get the site looking good right away. The problem with these is that they are often rammed full of very specific selectors which can make it difficult to change how some elements look. Or worse still, they use 1 variable which is used in hundreds of places when you might only want to change a colour/size in one location.

    This can lead to creating classes like: header > nav > .top-nav > ul > li > a > span.primary{ your classes }

    What we really want to do is think about how we can potentially reduce those very specific selectors down to something more manageable, as well as strip away the fluff we don’t need. It’s not too hard to see a world where, with a bit more planning and mindfulness of how we write code, that we see something like: nav > ul > span.primary{ your classes }

    CSS preprocessors are partly to blame for this as we often see neatly written code within a SCSS document, but rarely bother to check the final output to see if it makes any sense at all, often leaving hundreds of unused classes that have been generated by the final output.

    How would this help your page load speed?

    Being more careful about how CSS selectors are used within preprocessors (and just standard CSS code, too) will help in two ways:

    1. The File Size Will Be Smaller – the first and most obvious point is that we’re generating less classes, less code, and thus a smaller document. It may only save you a few KBs on a big project, maybe just a few bytes on a smaller one, but these add up over time in a web project to create a better, faster user experience.
    2. Faster Render Time – not only will your documents load faster (see above) but individual browsers will also be able to render your pages faster. Without having to go down hundreds of selectors and find the most !important !important!!! class, computers, phones and browsers will have an easier time painting your site.
    3. Manageability – ok so this isn’t load-speed related specifically, but a smaller code base makes it more manageable, easier to review and edit, and ultimately nicer to work with.

    Concluding, our final goal is to get our sites looking exactly as we want, loading as quickly as possible, and providing a good user experience. Just shaving off a few selectors within code can make all the difference in the world.”

Chris Scheler

Chris is a Senior Front-End Developer at Celerity and has been professionally working on websites and other design media since 1999.
http://www.csdigitaldesign.com

  • Avoid Using an Image When You Can

    – “Avoid using an image as a decorative element if you can. Before using an image, be sure to consider whether or not you can accomplish the same result with CSS. In most cases, with CSS, the file size will be smaller and visually, the element will appear to be more crisp on screen. One example would be styling buttons, backgrounds and shapes with CSS instead of using an image.

    Of course, there are many situations where using an image is appropriate, so use your best judgment to accomplish the desired result. Also, make sure you keep accessibility in mind when using images.”

Dustin Nay

Dustin is the founder of Genius Power & Magic, a boutique web agency based in Sandy, Utah.
https://withgpm.com

  • Optimize DNS Options

    – “An often overlooked aspect of site speed optimization is your Domain Name Settings (DNS). If you already own a domain (and maybe a website too), you may know where and how to do this. If not, I’ll try to give some instruction on how.

    First: what are you telling me to do? There are two main types of DNS records used to tell a site visitor’s browser where to go to find your website. 1) the A record. An A record identifies the IP address for the server which hosts your website, and 2) a CNAME identifies a domain to lookup, which will take the site visitor to a URL, which will then redirect their request to your website.

    Which one is faster? Well, the A record of course. There are legitimate reasons to use a CNAME, such as on shared hosting where the hosting company might move your site to a different server without telling you, and then your website would be down until you updated your A record. But for the most part, that is a rare occurrence: it has only happened to me once in 10 years, and my team corrected the problem within minutes.

    Generally, using an A record will be the best option as it speeds up your load time. Sometimes this only saves a few milliseconds, but as you’ll find while optimizing your website, every single millisecond adds up quickly.

    The most common way people do this is by using a CNAME for the “www” version of their website, and then they set the “www” version of the site to be the live version. They then redirect all other variations to that “www” version. The problem here is that even if a site visitor goes to their naked domain (e.g. mydomain.com, not www.mydomain.com), the site visitor is then redirected to “www” which goes through a CNAME and then finally redirects them back to the website. This all happens in milliseconds and you don’t see it happening generally, but understanding what is going on is important to speeding things up.

    All you need to do to change this is to delete your CNAME for “www” and replace it with an A record directing people straight to your server’s IP address, rather than to a redirect (e.g. myhostingplan.hostingcompany.com, etc.).

    I share this tip with this word of caution: if your hosting plan is shared hosting (which includes most managed WordPress hosting providers such as WP Engine), then you’ll want to keep a close eye on this, as they sometimes move servers around without telling you. The best way to do stay on top of this is to use a monitoring service such as Uptime Robot, which will send you a text message if your website goes down.

    If you are just building your website for the first time and have not already built a lot of backlinks to your website, I recommend starting with the naked domain, not “www” sub-domain. This is sometimes counter-intuitive, as a lot of customers are so used to that, they think they still need that prefix in order to access a website (just make sure it redirects properly!). Not having that extra sub-domain simplifies things for you.”

Joanne Somerville

As Founder and Managing Partner of Design Eclectic, a UK-based creative agency, Joanne has been responsible for the delivery of hundreds of successful websites over the last 18 years for a diverse range of clients ranging from sole traders to SMEs to multinational organisations. She has a particular interest in website user optimisation.
http://www.designeclectic.com

  • Configure your Expires Headers

    – “You’ve probably heard about browser cache, so in other words when a user visits your website, the website files are stored on their computer so that your website loads faster for them on their next visit. What is not so well known is that the file header contains an expiration date that controls how long those files are stored on their computer.

    Constantly downloading the same files when they are unchanged wastes precious load time, so Expires Headers not only reduce the load of downloads from the server, but also the number of HTTP requests for the server.

    Expires Headers obviously won’t improve page speed for first time visitors, who will have to download all the files for the first time, but using them will definitely help decrease load times for returning visitors.

    Expires headers can be set for specific files or even file types, so when the browser comes to the website, it can see the last time those were downloaded. If this was recent then it will display them from the cache. If the visitor hasn’t visited the site for a while, it will download the newest version from the web server.

    Usually set to 24 hours by default, you can set the expiration date so that it doesn’t impact your server and page load time. The idea is to set late expiry times for items that don’t change on your website (logo, colours etc) and set short expiry times for things that change regularly.”

Jessie Bacani

A full-stack developer with more than a decade of web development experience. 80% on maintenance, 20% on development.
http://jessie.bacani.xyz/

  • Remove Redundant Code (particularly in the back-end)

    – “This tip mostly applies to multi-language web applications that share back-end code. It could be done as one single package with each language or country as one module in the package. Each module could have the same code with the other modules like product listings and user session handling.

    Let’s look at the products. Each localisation, a country or language, might have a different set of product attributes. Say in the US, a product could be using UPC (Universal Product Code) code as unique code and in Japan, it could be using JAN (Japanese Article Numbering). But both countries use the same core set of attributes: product name, product description, dimensions, weight, and price. Instead of creating two separate back-end codes for both US and Japan localisations, we can create a common code for the two, say base products. The base products could have its own module. Each localisation will then inherit the base product module and add their own unique set of product attributes.

    Removing Redundant Code

    What happens now is there is the base products module, the US products module, the Japan products module. Modifying the base products module is done only once, no matter how many localisations are there. Redundant code is now lessened. If you’re using compiled languages like C#, you’ll appreciate this improvement more. Each module is a DLL file loaded in memory. As the site gets bigger, you’ll notice a hit in performance or page loading speed. Removing redundant code that way is very helpful.”

Ashley N Cameron

Ashley is a freelance designer & front-end developer specializing in Branding, Package Design, Website Design & Development. She has over 9 years of experience building websites using WordPress.
https://ashley-cameron.com

  • Conditionally Enqueue Styles and Scripts

    – “In addition to writing code that is clean and efficient, one way to optimize and speed up your WordPress website is by conditionally serving scripts and styles only when needed on a page. WordPress uses wp_enqueue_style and wp_enqueue_script to load your styles and scripts of your website for the best performance.

    Let’s look at an example of how to enqueue scripts and styles conditionally in your WordPress theme functions.php. Say you have a Fancybox pop-up that only needs to be on a specific template page.

    The following code shows how to write an enqueue function in your functions.php to load global scripts & styles (bootstrap & theme css) with a condition for enqueuing Fancybox only on the Gallery template page.

    https://github.com/ashleycam3ron/functions/blob/master/wp_enqueue_scripts2.php

    WordPress offers an extensive list of conditional tags to load styles and scripts anywhere – pages, posts, categories, archives, etc and as specific to the ID number. Here’s the full list of tags:

    https://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags”

Suzanne Bird-Harris

Suzanne builds, supports and maintains WordPress websites for small businesses like yours so you can increase your reach, grow your business, and as a result, your income and impact on those you serve. In short, she makes the web work for you and your business.
https://websitesinwp.com

  • Serve Your Media from Amazon S3

    – “With our appetite for video increasing all the time, and our smartphones taking higher and higher resolution pictures, the media we use on our websites is taking up more and more space. Worse, it uses much more bandwidth for display and streaming, and that can bring site speed to a screeching halt with even the most minimal traffic.

    The best way to avoid slowing down your site is to serve your media from servers built for media storage and streaming. I use and recommend an Amazon S3 account. You can’t beat the pricing, and serving images, video, PDFs and other media from your S3 account relieves your hosting account of this heavy load.

    Create your account and then upload your media files to it. Use the URL generated for each item in your posts and pages, video plugins — pretty much anywhere you’d use a media URL.

    If you want to get really efficient, and your site is a WordPress site, use a plugin like WP Media Offload to store your entire media library in your S3 account — automatically. The beauty of plugins like this is that your media library looks and functions the same as before, while the plugin actually moves and serves everything to and from your S3 account in the background.

    Another benefit to using Amazon S3 is the increased security options available there. So all those PDFs and videos your membership site offers? They can be secured such that only your members can access them — even if a member shares the URL with a non-member. Sweet!”

Mary Putnam

Wrangling programmers for 20 years and having fun evolving with Internet based technologies.
https://www.designyoursite.net

  • Reduce Impact of Javascript on the Critical Rendering Path

    – “With speed of web page delivery becoming more and more critical, you must pursue all options to minimize the impact of technologies used to display pages. Javascript is one of these technologies.

    Using Google Speed test you can parse your webpage to review issues with JavaScript. For now, let’s focus on critical request chain and render blocking issues. Once you identify Javascript issues, you first want to define your critical assets and load them as early as possible. Then decide to eliminate, defer or load async non critical assets.

    Critical Request Chains

    This has to do with how many directories the code must traverse to fetch and execute. This is an easy solution to implement. Bear in mind you have to update the directories and all pages that point to the code.

    EX:
    /scripts/videos/videoscript.js
    Vs
    /scripts/videoscript.js [Better]

    Render Blocking Scripts

    When Javascrpt is used, it actually blocks the parsing of the HTML document. The main thing you have to understand is that during script fetch and script execution; nothing else is being handled. Even when you have minified the code, it still has to be fetched and executed.

    Eliminate Scripts that are not Necessary

    Many developers load Javascript libraries which contain code not used for the current web page. The entire library will be parsed and compiled. Of course this wastes precious milliseconds of time to get your site to the First Contentful Paint.

    In order to enhance page speed loading you will want to groom your scripts to eliminate calls that are not used on the page. Easy Peasy…

    Run the Javascript using the Async Attribute

    Using the async attribute is super helpful if you are using externally located script files. The result will allow html code to continue parsing, while the script is being fetched. The parsing will stop again as the script executes. Simply add the async attribute in your code.

    Run the Javascript using the Defer Attribute

    Using the defer attribute gives you the ability to continue parsing during script fetch, just like async. Additionally, it allows you to defer script execution once the HTML is fully parsed. When you defer parsing you want to be sure that the asset is not critical to a function of the webpage. Keep in mind not all browsers utilize the defer attribute.

    When to use these attributes depends heavily on how they are used in the HTML code. One strategy is to place all Javascript at the end of your document. This will essentially defer parsing of the Javascript to the last step. This can be problematic when critical assets are needed for content display. Evaluate the wisdom of pulling critical assets and running them inline as needed.”

Linda Lovero-Waterhouse

Linda helps small businesses gain clarity, take action and increase revenue with her digital marketing solutions. Her current focus is teaching techniques on using LinkedIn to generate a stream of leads. Linda fits the pieces of digital marketing together like a puzzle to create an easy-to- understand, easy-to- implement plan.
http://lindawaterhouse.com

  • Host Videos Externally

    – “All the gurus are saying videos are really hot now and that everyone should be producing more videos. What they don’t tell you is, where should you be putting these videos so that users aren’t getting frustrated watching a frozen scene or a rotating circle?

    You might think that it’s easiest to have everything on your website. After all, that’s where you already store your ebooks, whitepapers, cheat sheets and images, right? But although your website is a great place to store these resources, for most of us, we should take the extra step of uploading our videos to an external hosting platform and then embed them on our site.

    There are a number of reasons why we should do this. First, most of us have our sites hosted on a shared server. Shared servers are cost effective, but they have limits on the size of our uploaded files, limits on the amount that we can store on the server, and a limited amount of bandwidth. If multiple people were watching your video at the same time, chances are they would be watching a lot of frozen video and would probably go to a different site.

    So what’s the alternative? Hosting the video on an external platform such as YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia and then embedding it on your site.

    YouTube:

    The biggest benefit to using YouTube is that it is the second largest search engine after Google (and owned by Google). This means that your video has a higher chance of being found so you can reach a larger audience. It might even go viral!

    Vimeo:

    Vimeo is generally considered to be an “upgraded” version of YouTube. Its video player has a nicer look than YouTube’s and the Pro version has some privacy settings to make it nearly impossible for someone to download your video and then re-distribute it as their own. It has a smaller audience than YouTube, so your video will not have as broad a reach.

    Wistia:

    Many people are discovering that Wistia is great to use if your main focus is marketing. People don’t usually go to Wistia to search for content, so it’s not as easy for people to stumble across your videos. However, it has excellent analytics so you know exactly how users are interacting with your videos. It also has a customizable player so it will look less generic and can match your branding. The free version allows only three videos, however.

    User experience is greatly enhanced by fast websites and one of the best ways to improve your site’s delivery of video is by hosting them externally. Define your priorities for your videos and pick the platform that can help you accomplish your goals.”

Praveen Kumar

Once upon a time, I was consistently ranked as top 0.01% developers in Stack Overflow. I am also a Pluralsight Mentor, Thinkful Mentor and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in the field of Visual Studio & Development Tools.
https://praveen.science/

  • Use SPA to Improve User Experience

    – “Single Page Applications are becoming more popular now-a-days. There are so many good reasons why a SPA will be better than MPA in terms of making the overall user experience much faster and seamless. SPA is an evolution of the MPA+AJAX design pattern, where the only core page is generated on the server and all UI is rendered by browser based JavaScript code.

    With the advent of AJAX, web apps started to refresh only the relevant portion of the page when a user submits new data or requests. For example, if a user selects county = Cornwall, then the web app can immediately use an AJAX request to validate whether the entered post code is valid for the county of Cornwall. However, once the user submits a form typically the web app takes the user to a new HTML page.

    – Some or most of the data validation activity can occur on the client.
    – The MVC implementation is on the server.

    SPA are quick, as the majority of the resources they use (HTML / CSS / JavaScript) are only loaded once throughout the user session. The only thing that is transferred and changed after user activities are just data in the form of JSON.

    So this improves user experience because the view is already loaded locally and the data will be asynchronously loaded in the background from the server. Even during development, you can reuse the same back-end API for web application as well as native mobile applications that rely on API based flow.

    Another advantage is leveraging the use of Offline & Caching. SPAs are more efficient in caching any local storage. It works as follows: a web application sends just a single reflex, collects the required data, and can function even offline at that point.”

Chris McMahon

WordPress Designer and Developer with over 20 years' experience helping small businesses and non-profits.
http://hellomynameischris.com/

  • Strip the Cruft from your Theme

    – “One of the strengths of WordPress is the robust open source support that provides so many free plugins and themes for anyone to use. It can also be one of it’s weaknesses.

    Most popular themes (free & commercial) become popular because they can do so much for so many. That comes with the cost of having a theme that can do way more than you need it to.

    When I start a new project I always begin with an extremely stripped down theme that is nothing but the very basic template files and a few lines of code to remove sections of WordPress my clients very rarely need. I can then begin to add only the functionality their site will need, usually limiting it to only the pages or sections that will need it.

    This greatly improves load time of the user facing pages, as well as keeping the admin section loading fast and without anything the client wouldn’t need.

    I also find that I can build a site to the client’s specifications faster from this blank slate than by modifying a theme they have chosen, but want to add functionality or design changes to, saving them time and money.”

Lawrence Harmer

I’ve over 20 years' experience in SEO, website design and web hosting. Building speedy websites that are optimised for users and search engines is what I do - day in, day out.
https://solve.co.uk/

  • Choose Your Web Host Wisely

    – “The web host you use greatly affects the load speed of your site. Each host houses your site on a server and the quality of that server dictates how fast your site loads. WordPress is the leading website development platform due to its high level of customisation and functionality. But all the bells and whistles require storage space, so basic hosting won’t cut it. You need a server that’s optimised and has enough space for the platform you’re using.

    Think of a server like a shop, the bigger your shop is, the more people you can get through the doors to make a purchase. If your shop (or server) is too small, it gets crowded, people queue up, and they have to wait to buy.

    And people don’t like to wait. In fact, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. A faster site means a better user experience, which in turn, boosts your ranking too. Keep your traffic moving and people buying with an efficient server.

    You also need a server that’s local to your users to ensure your site loads as quickly as possible. If your business is European based, you need an EU server so your site loads quickly and you’re GDPR-compliant. If you have international traffic, you may need to consider a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to put your information closer to your customers and therefore, optimise your site speed.

    So choosing the right web host is an important step in improving your site speed. What Say The Experts published an article recently outlining some possible hosts, their pros and cons. Also, if you’re a responsible business that’s trying to do your bit for sustainability, improving your site speed doesn’t have to be at the expense of the environment. Some web hosts offer eco-friendly web hosting, where servers are powered by 100% renewable energy.

    The choice is yours, but choose wisely!”

Filed Under: Web Design/Development

Best Web Hosting for Small Business? 90 Web Design Pros Vote

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated March 23, 2021

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning, at no added cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

In the world we live in, a business without a website is like a car without wheels…it’s not going anywhere! Your website provides you with a way to connect with potential clients and convince them that your products or services are just what they need.

If you’re at the point where you’re putting together a website for your company, you’ll no doubt be aware of the importance of choosing the right web hosting provider. The only trouble is, there are literally hundreds all vying for your business. So just how do you pick one over all the others and make sure your website is built upon solid foundations?

We wanted to try and make this decision a little easier for you, so you can spend less time trawling the web and more time running your business. And we did this by reaching out to nearly 100 people that deal with web hosting each and every day…professional web design and development experts. We quizzed each of them about their recommendations for the best web hosting for small business. Each expert was allowed to name up to 3 hosts they think are a good fit.

This article is the result of those conversations, and we’re going to show you which small business web hosting services came out on top, as well as what the experts had to say on the matter. So whether you’re creating your business’s first ever website or your current web host has been a let-down and you’re looking to change provider, the advice on this page should help you to figure out where to start looking.

***Who knew that definitions for “small business” vary so wildly?! For the purpose of this article we defined a small business as “any business that has an annual turnover of $0 – $1.5 million and 1-25 employees.”

Top Small Business Web Hosting Solutions: How Our Experts Voted

Hosting Provider# of Votes
#1. SiteGround31 Votes
#2. WP Engine24 Votes
#3. Flywheel14 Votes
#4. GoDaddy11 Votes
#=5. HostGator9 Votes
#=5. Bluehost9 Votes
#6. DigitalOcean7 Votes
#7. 20i6 Votes
#=8. Amazon Web Services5 Votes
#=8. Cloudways5 Votes
#=9. A2 Hosting4 Votes
#=9. Liquid Web4 Votes
#=9. Heart Internet4 Votes
#=10. tsoHost3 Votes
#=10. InMotion Hosting3 Votes
#=10. Pantheon3 Votes
#=10. Rackspace3 Votes
#=11. CloudAccess.net2 Votes
#=11. DreamHost2 Votes
#=11. UKFast2 Votes
#=11. WPX Hosting2 Votes
#=11. 1 & 1 IONOS2 Votes
#=11. WiserHosting2 Votes
#=11. 34SP.com2 Votes
#=11. KnownHost2 Votes
#=11. Vultr2 Votes
#=11. Fasthosts2 Votes
#=11. Kinsta2 Votes
#=12. Big Time Host1 Vote
#=12. VersionPress1 Vote
#=12. Google Sites 1 Vote
#=12. HostDime1 Vote
#=12. NameHero1 Vote
#=12. Hostek1 Vote
#=12. Raid Host1 Vote
#=12. NameCheap1 Vote
#=12. FastComet1 Vote
#=12. Nimbus Hosting1 Vote
#=12. catalyst21 Vote
#=12. Digital River1 Vote
#=12. UK21 Vote
#=12. zenbox1 Vote
#=12. Blacknight1 Vote
#=12. domainname1 Vote
#=12. GreenGeeks1 Vote
#=12. HostPapa1 Vote
#=12. Media Temple1 Vote
#=12. TMDHosting1 Vote
#=12. Datacentreplus1 Vote
#=12. Krystal1 Vote
#=12. Unlimited Web Hosting1 Vote
#=12. Microsoft Azure1 Vote
#=12. Anchor Hosting1 Vote
#=12. Infomaniak1 Vote
#=12. OVH1 Vote
#=12. Smart Hosting1 Vote
#=12. Atrema Technologies1 Vote
#=12. Wirehive1 Vote

What did we say about their being a ton of small business website hosting options to choose from?! There were 58 different hosts mentioned in total by the web design and development experts we surveyed, but if you check out the table above, you’ll notice that just a handful got a majority of the votes. And it’s this small group that we’re going to focus on in this quick summary.

SiteGround was the clear winner, and as an all-round package it would appear to offer everything most small businesses would want in a hosting provider, all for a very attractive price. Fast, reliable servers, coupled with solid security features (free backups, malware scans, updates, SSL certificates), and quality live support (24/7 – primarily via live chat) if you do run into any problems – SiteGround does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. And if like many small businesses, you’re on a budget, but want to make your money go as far as it can, then you won’t go far wrong with the packages offered by SiteGround, with many of our experts saying that they offer the best price-quality ratio they’ve come across.

Beyond SiteGround, two dedicated WordPress hosting services came very highly recommended, in WP Engine and Flywheel. As these hosting providers focus solely on hosting WordPress sites, this has allowed them to really optimize the performance (so expect very good page load speed) of websites built using this platform, which is great for your visitors and, in turn, for SEO. The overall consensus we got from conversations with our experts is that WP Engine is the slightly more heavy hitting of the two (particularly at entry level), and while the base plans are more expensive, you get a lot for your money, with dev/staging environments included, automatic backups, CDN, free restores if you get hacked and premium quality support (WordPress experts available 24/7 over the phone!).

Flywheel is still top drawer though, and entry level plans are quite a bit cheaper than WP Engine’s, so if you want that next-level performance, but need to keep your hosting bill as trim as possible, this is the option you should check out.

If price is your main criteria and you’re on the lookout for affordable web hosting for small business, then GoDaddy, HostGator and Bluehost are some solid options worth checking out. All were recommended by a good number of the experts we asked, and all offer extremely cheap starter plans (less than $3/month if you commit to a longer period). They aren’t likely to match the performance of the hosts we’ve already discussed (at least not on their shared hosting plans), but they offer a trouble free route to getting your business’s website online, without significant expense, which is the important thing.

Rounding out this summary of the results are a couple of powerful options for the more technically able small business owner- DigitalOcean & Amazon Web Services. These options will require you to “get your hands dirty” but they are extremely customizable. Probably overkill for a lot of small businesses, but if you need hosting with significant firepower and virtually endless possibilities, they are worth a closer look.

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • How to Speed Up Your Website with Tips from 42 Pros
  • All Web Design + Development Resources

TL;DR

1) If you have a small to mid-size website and don’t want to pay the big bucks, but still need a package that offers all round solid performance (speed, reliability, security), coupled with decent live support any time you need it, then this really is a great option:

2) If you’re running a more complex website and it’s built on WordPress and you need next-level performance in terms of page speed, security features and hosting support, then check out these options:

3) If you just want to put up a fairly basic website, aren’t bothered about having “best in class” features, and affordability is a priority, then try one of these:

4) If you’re a bit more tech savvy or have a developer on staff, are prepared to be more “hands on” with your web hosting, and need a more flexible, powerful hosting solution that is also affordable, these options may be worth a look:

 

Read What The Experts Said

Below we’ve posted exactly what each expert had to say when we asked them for their recommendations on the best website hosting for small business. You can check the hosts they nominated, plus why they like these hosting companies. There’s also a whole lot of hints and tips to keep in mind when choosing hosting for your website sprinkled in there too!

And if you’re interested in reading what was said about a specific provider, just use the filters below to quickly jump to them.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • 1 & 1 IONOS
  • 20i
  • 34SP.com
  • A2 Hosting
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Anchor Hosting
  • Atrema Technologies
  • Big Time Host
  • Blacknight
  • Bluehost
  • catalyst2
  • CloudAccess.net
  • Cloudways
  • Datacentreplus
  • Digital River
  • DigitalOcean
  • domainname
  • DreamHost
  • FastComet
  • Fasthosts
  • Flywheel
  • GoDaddy
  • Google Sites
  • GreenGeeks
  • Heart Internet
  • HostDime
  • Hostek
  • HostGator
  • HostPapa
  • Infomaniak
  • InMotion Hosting
  • Kinsta
  • KnownHost
  • Krystal
  • Liquid Web
  • Media Temple
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Namecheap
  • NameHero
  • Nimbus Hosting
  • OVH
  • Pantheon
  • Rackspace
  • Raid Host
  • SiteGround
  • Smart Hosting
  • TMDHosting
  • tsoHost
  • UK2
  • UKFast
  • Unlimited Web Hosting
  • VersionPress
  • Vultr
  • Wirehive
  • WiserHosting
  • WP Engine
  • WPX Hosting
  • zenbox

Doug Pitchers

I am a postgraduate web developer with over 16 years' experience providing web services to SMEs. I specialise in building websites and full social media support.
http://www.dpwebdevelopment.co.uk

“There are literally hundreds of web hosting providers nowadays. So much so that it can be daunting to figure out how to even begin to choose the “right” one.

It is often a good idea to ask yourself what kind of website you are hoping to have. Is it going to be on WordPress? Is it going to use a specific language (I use a lot of PHP for example); you need to make the sure that the host you are going to use can support your preferred method of building a website. Not all web hosts support all coding languages.”

  • WiserHosting – “The webhost I primarily use is called Wiserhosting (https://www.wiserhosting.com). They support PHP and offer a variety of pricing methods depending on how much traffic a website can handle. The most basic package costs £24 per year, and this gives you:

    500 MB Disk Space
    20 GB Monthly Bandwidth
    10 Mailboxes POP3/IMAP
    10 MySQL Databases
    10 Sub-domains
    5 FTP Users

    This would be more than enough for a first website and can be upgraded fairly easily if the need arises. Questions and support are answered promptly. Downtime is virtually non-existent; it has happened once in the last 7 years U+I have been using them, and this only lasted 4 hours.

    The downside to this web plodder is that you do need to be able to code. The file and folders you create need to be in a computing language (at the very least HTML); if you are not a coder and want to build your own website, this is not the web host for you.”

  • 1 & 1 IONOS – “If you are a non-coder and wish to build a website yourself then 1&1 IONOS is not a bad bet. There are a lot of different packages and you are bound to find one to suit your needs. There’s a website builder option, which is fairly straightforward to use. There are prepared templates for you to choose from. Put in the time and a decent first website can be achieved.

    The downside is that the website will not be bespoke to you. The templates are pre-made and are equally available to everyone. You will not get the bespoke site of a web developer. Also beware of costs. The introductory prices are just that, and after that the price can go up considerably. If you are using the website builder it would be £12 PER MONTH.

    Even if you just wanted to use the hosting, this goes up to £5 per MONTH. This excludes VAT at 20%. A lot higher than the prices of Wiserhosting”

“SO beware. Read carefully (especially the small print) on what a web host can provide before signing up. Make sure how long you are committing to (can you change providers easily?) How much support do you need / want and does the web hosting service support the language you want to use. Cheapest is not necessarily the best!”

Barrett Wilson

CTO at RVSnapPad. SEO Specialist with a hand in all-things digital.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrett-wilson-05471089/

“Small businesses need website hosting providers that are capable of running a CMS or e-commerce platform safely and securely for both themselves and their customers. Platforms which feature simple, intuitive layouts and HTTPS hosting are ideal for small business owners.”

  • InMotion Hosting – “InMotion Hosting gets my vote for best website host. Unlike some of their competitors, InMotion is all about hosting, and their packages are catered to just that. All of their small business hosting packages include an SSL certificate, which is essential for HTTPS. Finally, they have glowing reviews, and provide some of the best customer support available.”
  • 1 & 1 IONOS – “1and1 Ionos provides extremely reliable and cost-effective website hosting services to small businesses. Their prices start as low as $1 per month for website hosting, so you can keep your overhead as low as possible for your online store. However, packages don’t include SSL certificates, so domains won’t be secured initially. But for companies just starting out, 1and1 is a great option.”
  • GoDaddy – “GoDaddy is one of the world’s largest domain registrars and web hosting providers. Their website is simple and intuitive, and their small business packages include the SSL certificate required to be HTTPS. As the largest of the three, GoDaddy is less capable of providing customer support, which is why it’s #3 in my list.”

Simon Minter

I'm a freelance designer for print and digital, and both design and build websites. I need good hosting for both my own website and for hosting client work.
https://nineteenpoint.com
  • SiteGround – “I have a Siteground cloud hosting account. I’ve used Siteground for a few years and will happily recommend them as a hosting provider. As my work involves building websites I need hosting that provides some essentials – the ability to easily manage and host multiple websites, access with SSH, Git, etc – but server management is outside my skillset.

    The hosting package I have provides a strong, flexible chunk of fast, reliable, non-shared server power, but I don’t need to worry about server updates, security, management, and so on. This works very well for me!

    SiteGround also have excellent customer service and have helped several times with specific, technical questions – unlike other providers who simply send links to (unhelpful) articles, their support staff have investigated and worked on my actual issues and reported back their findings in a useful and informative way.

    While the Siteground package doesn’t provide everything – for example, I can’t run Python/Django, which I was exploring for a project recently – I feel that compared to other providers, a couple of small downsides are outweighed by largely problem-free hosting.”

Brant McNaughton

Brant established Ecce in 1999, the award winning UK digital agency based in Kent, UK. Ecce have been designing and delivering powerful content management sites, e-commerce websites, and custom solutions to a global client base. Our clients and long term partners include NHS and Sennheiser Global.
https://ecce.uk
  • Wirehive – “Our UK based hosting partner is Wirehive Limited, who operate to and hold the ISO27001 data security standard certification. Their core clients are other creative agencies, like ourselves, and clients hosting websites and applications. We recommend them to our clients and other agencies.

    The infrastructure is designed to be N+2 resilient on hardware, meaning should a server fail, another will automatically take over. They offer a realistic 100% uptime SLA on power and 99.999% on connectivity. If your hosting requirements are pretty straightforward, the sales team provides you the most cost effective and efficient set ups with the ability to scale.

    All aspects of the service we have found to be of the highest quality, be it the sales team, server and data centre support, account management or marketing department. They also throw great events from industry seminars to award ceremonies.

    Wirehive is for all levels and requirements via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, dedicated or virtual hosting.”

David Hoe

Former head chef and now running my own successful web agency in the burgeoning seaside town of Folkestone, Kent. We specialise in the popular CMS WordPress.
https://samphire.agency
  • 20i – “Being in the web design and development industry, you get to know who is a good hosting company and who is, well, not so good. Web Hosting is like cars; some hosts are 3 wheelers, some are like a high performance sports car. The trick is find one that offers a good, fast, reliable, feature-rich service that doesn’t cost the earth.

    I cannot recommend 20i enough. They offer a cutting-edge service using state of the art load-balancing servers and super-fast response time with SSD drives on all servers. The support cannot be beaten. The techs at 20i are patient, knowledgeable and extremely helpful, often replying within 10 minutes and always within the hour.

    They have an excellent website and email migration tool. That makes migrating from your current host to 20i seamless and painless. You migrate a copy and when you’re completely satisfied all is well, you then update the DNS and it’s done with virtually no downtime.”

Gene Armstrong

Gene is a founder of Big Apple Media, a digital design agency specializing in developing mobile-friendly WordPress sites for wellness professionals and small businesses.
https://www.bigapplemedia.com
  • HostGator – “If you’re a new business that’s just starting out, you might be ok with basic popular hosting providers like HostGator. I’ve been using HostGator and GoDaddy for many small business clients for years without any major problems. The sites might not be the fastest, but they reliable and offer easy installation and customer support. For many small businesses, this is all they need, especially if the cost is a factor.”
  • WPX Hosting – “If you’re looking for slightly more expensive hosting that’s faster, WPX hosting is a good way to go. They’re only slightly higher priced, but from my experience, the sites hosted on WPX tend to load much faster.”
  • WP Engine – “Finally, if your budget allows spending more on hosting, WP Engine is always a solid choice. WP Engine offers many benefits including faster loading sites, automatic backup and restore, and includes other great features specifically designed for hosting small business WordPress sites.”

Wendy Alessi

Wendy Alessi is a Calgary, Canada based website designer & graphic designer. With over 10 years’ experience in the design field, she specializes in small business & e-commerce website development.
https://kakatucreative.com/
  • HostPapa – “The web hosting provider that I constantly recommend to my clients is HostPapa. I have been using HostPapa for my own business for over 8 years and I have always been impressed at their competitive prices, great customer service and impressive hosting package options. A huge bonus for my Canadian clients, is that HostPapa are a proudly Canadian company who base their servers in Toronto, Canada, rather than in the U.S.A.”
  • SiteGround – “SiteGround is one of the larger Canadian web hosting providers. In my opinion, they are a great web hosting provider for small businesses looking for an ultra-fast and highly secure hosting plan. They provide some awesome packages at very reasonable prices including dedicated web hosting and cloud hosting options.”
  • GreenGeeks – “GreenGeeks was recommended to me recently and I have to say, they look like an impressive web hosting provider option. GreenGeeks servers are in Canada, the U.S and Europe and they claim a 99.9% uptime! Why “Green” Geeks? If you care for the environment, you’ll love the fact that they buy wind energy credits to make up for the energy they use to power your website. With pricing a little higher than other providers, I would still recommend GreenGeeks over some of the larger, highly advertised U.S. hosting companies.”

Paul Clapp

Paul has over 15 years of web design and project management experience working in IT and marketing. As Co-Founder and Creative Director of Priority Pixels, Paul manages the day to day running of all web design and SEO related projects.
https://prioritypixels.co.uk

“At Priority Pixels we have always used a range of hosting providers and there aren’t many we haven’t tried out over the years. You may think most hosting is the same, but each host has a slightly different setup, so it’s important you choose the right one for your business.

The core three hosting providers we use are Media Temple, SiteGround and WP Engine, and we use each for slightly different reasons based on the business needs of our clients.”

  • Media Temple – “Media Temple is a good solid hosting provider. They have some cheap hosting options available, but more importantly the support is solid. We use the grid hosting platform, which is perfectly adequate for small to medium size websites. The hosting admin area isn’t as user friendly as other hosting providers, but you do have access to everything you need without certain bits being locked down as some hosting companies do.”
  • SiteGround – “SiteGround is a step up from Media Temple. Their cloud servers are scalable, so you never need to worry about running out of bandwidth or storage space. We recommend SiteGround to small businesses that need a fast website with good uptime. Their support is top notch too.”
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine is the gold standard in our opinion. If SEO is important to your business, then making sure the server your website is on is super fast should be your top priority. A super-fast website will help lower your bounce rate and keep your visitors on your site longer. WP Engine isn’t cheap, but as with everything in life, you get what you pay for.”

Eric Atallah

I have built many websites throughout my career and have had to work with many smaller web hosting companies.
https://onclickwebdesign.com
  • Bluehost – “This is now my “go to” web hosting company for any smaller projects I’m working on. My business web site is hosted through bluehost.com and all of my more recent personal web site projects have been hosted through bluehost. They have great customer service, an easy to navigate cPanel, SMTP servers, email servers, domain names, PHPMyAdmin, and much more. They also offer WordPress as a pre-installed option, which really makes setting up your small business web site super easy. They even have dedicated hosting servers for more large scale web sites which garner lots of traffic. These dedicated servers do cost significantly more money, however. All in all, Bluehost is a great option for a small business web site.”
  • Amazon Web Services – “This is probably a bit over kill for a small business web site. However, AWS is the gold standard and they have just about every feature you could ask for in a hosting provider – CDN’s, SMTP, SSL, JavaScript SDK, Cloud Storage, Managed NoSQL and SQL DB, CI, etc. Though the learning curve can be a little steep for first time users, there are plenty of tutorials, examples, and “how to’s” all over Google for anyone motivated enough to learn the ropes. I recently built a client’s web application on AWS, and overall it was a great experience.”
  • VersionPress – “For any small business web site running on WordPress, Versionpress is a great hosting option. They offer unlimited test sites, and a one click deployment option to push code changes to the production instance of your web site. I was very impressed with how user friendly Versionpress is, and they offer git like diffing functionality which really helps when resolving code conflicts, and merging from a test instance and ultimately deploying to your production instance. The only drawback I found is that not all WordPress plugins have full support within Versionpress, so you will need to do some research before choosing them as your hosting provider.”

Vee Ridgley

I built my first website in 1999 and was hooked on the process. My first clients were small concerns and local to me. I also built three of my own eCommerce websites. The business has since evolved into a full web design agency with small, medium and very large clients.
https://webdesignuk.agency

“As our clients are largely UK based, we only use UK hosting.”

  • Unlimited Web Hosting – “I recommend unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk for very small businesses that are arranging their own hosting. Their shared hosting is very reasonably priced and their online support is excellent. They also offer more premium services and reseller accounts. This makes them great for web designers with small clients that do not need a lot of hosting power. Everything you require, including cPanel or Plesk, is available and they work well with WordPress, Joomla, Magneto, OpenCart, Drupal etc. We used to use Unlimited Web Hosting and were happy with their services when our clients were all very small businesses.”
  • Fasthosts – “I recommend fasthosts.co.uk for smaller businesses that need good hosting power for faster sites and busy eCommerce etc. With the expansion of my business, we wanted to provide faster hosting and move to dedicated servers. Fasthosts’ pricing is very competitive and their excellent support is a phone call away. They also offer a range of other hosting options if dedicated is not within your budget. They do not offer managed dedicated servers, but they will carry out work for you at a quoted price that is reasonable.”

Hughie Wilmshurst

I’m a freelance web developer with 12 years' experience in the trade. I’ve been responsible for setting up and maintaining the hosting environments for multiple design agencies, small-medium businesses, and for myself as a freelancer since day 1.
https://hughiew.co.uk
  • 20i – “20i.com offer great value, and a superb service ideally suited to smaller businesses (though they can cater for anyone). Their whole process is very simple and straightforward to get started, and their hosting control panel is easy to use if you’re familiar with cPanel, Plesk etc. I moved everything of mine to them last year, and haven’t looked back.”
  • Rackspace – “I used Rackspace to set up an entire hosting environment for a design agency I previously worked at. While perhaps a little more involved in getting setting up, their support is second to none, and the performance is outstanding. They’re quite expensive compared to most other hosting providers, but I’d say the cost is worth it if you’re looking for a very powerful hosting environment.”
  • tsoHost – “I used tsoHost for years, and was one of their earliest customers around 10 years ago. Their standard web hosting options are great, and they offer classic cPanel hosting, as well as their own proprietary platform.”

Danny Stone

I’m currently involved in website development. Building a portal for small to medium sized businesses so that they can develop their strategy online efficiently and effectively.
https://www.webstudiolab.co.uk
  • A2 Hosting – “Having used them for a couple of years I can say that the level of services they offer and the support provided will give peace of mind to any small business. Importantly they provide data centres in Europe, as well as dedicated systems to boost the speed of your website. They use cPanel for shared hosting accounts, which makes it pretty easy to implement various things including email accounts, SSL certificates and sub domains.”
  • FastComet – “This list was not placed in any order of preference. These guys are also on the ball when it comes to services they have and their level of customer care. Support staff are always online and attentive (which is really important!); and when they cannot fix the issue immediately the technical department (via the ticket system) are also quick to respond. Servers are located in London, which again is a huge bonus for speed of your website if you’re in the UK. And importantly their prices are competitive too.”
  • SiteGround – “Although I have not used them myself – I have heard many positive things about them from others in the industry. Whilst they do make the top lists on various recommendation sites – this company is definitely one to consider. Great speed and coverage, reliable servers, as well as competitive packages.”

Justin DiMucci

Creative director at Carlson Communications with a passion for online marketing and helping others grow their business.
https://carlcomm.com
  • SiteGround – “This would be my first recommendation just because I have so much experience using them and is always the first one I recommend to someone needing an affordable but quality host. Have been using them for years and have had nothing but a good experience with them.”
  • Bluehost – “Another very reputable company that has great uptimes and an affordable rate for small businesses. Have only worked on one site hosted here in the past, but was a smooth experience.”
  • DigitalOcean – “Wanted to include something a little different rather than just list another of the many hosting companies out there. This is a newer player in the game and might be a little more targeted towards developers. It is cloud based, so it is able to grow with you while being reliable and affordable.”

David Bowers

With over 16 years’ experience running web agencies, I have a range of expertise across UX, graphic design, user-interface design and the psychology of getting users to act affirmatively on websites. I now co-run Likely Story up in sunny Manchester.
www.likelystory.agency
  • Datacentreplus – “Naturally web-hosting is a technical subject, and as such is rather a daunting prospect for many small businesses. The reason we like to work with DataCentrePlus is that they clearly understand this position, with great straight-talking support; so-much-so in fact that we have total confidence in them handling client issues, therefore we don’t need to get involved in hosting issues at all, letting the experts do their jobs.”
  • Krystal – “If it’s affordable, simple hosting you’re after – which many start-ups and small businesses are – then Krystal do a great job. UK-based and perfectly reliable, and they’ll help with things like email setup, SSL certificate installation and WordPress optimisation.”

Craig Murphy

Founder of Birmingham web design agency, ALT Agency, specialising in ROI focused design, development & SEO.
https://www.altagency.co.uk
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine have incredible support, available 24/7. I’m yet to have an issue with them that hasn’t been solved in 15 minutes or less. Their staging server makes doing developments and deployment to your live web hosting a breeze with just 1 click and is often completed within 30 seconds. Being WordPress hosting specialists they are perfect for those smaller websites built on the WordPress platform.”
  • Heart Internet – “Heart internet are a solid UK provider. They have great support, are available on the phone and have great packages for smaller businesses that cost less than £120 a year. Their support and live chat are very helpful, they have next to zero downtime and are very flexible with what you can host on their servers. They also have great fully-managed dedicated solutions, so if your business requires a more powerful platform, then Heart have the solution across the board.”

Lawrence Harmer

Solve® is an SEO, digital marketing and web design agency based in Cornwall, UK. They have helped over 250+ businesses all over the world, of which they have proven to create online success and get businesses seen online.
https://solve.co.uk

“Hosting is a critical factor for any website that wants to perform well for its visitors and in search. It is often overlooked and budget hosting will cost you more than you think.

Page and site speed are very important factors for both user experience and a Google ranking factor. For example, the retail giant, Amazon, recently calculated that a one-second delay in page load speed could cost them $1.6 billion in sales each year. People will abandon carts and even never return to a site again if it’s slow. Especially for those users on mobile devices, speed matters. If a high-quality hosting provider is used, then we see a direct impact of increased rankings, traffic and lower bounce rate.

We have tried many companies and currently recommend these two hosting providers:”

  • WP Engine – “These super dudes make hosting a WordPress site a breeze, with unparalleled support. It seems any issue is never too much hassle. Hosting of this quality helps me sleep at night with their hack protection guarantee. They are a little more money than others, but you get what you pay for.”
  • SiteGround – “SiteGround is a great budget option. It is robust and much faster than your other typical shared hosting providers. Support is via chat, but they are quick to respond and often quick to find a solution, unlike many other providers. SiteGround seems to be proactive in adding features and improving its systems.”

Mike Sayenko

Mike founded Sayenko Design, a Seattle web design agency, in 2009. He is the chief web designer in charge of creating delightful experiences for B2B companies. The focus is to move the needle on behalf of the client’s website marketing needs by building solid WordPress websites.
https://www.sayenkodesign.com

“I highly recommend using a premium hosting solution that takes care of security and performance (site speed). A lot of businesses treat their hosting like an afterthought, going for the cheapest solution such as GoDaddy. Isn’t your business worth the $30-60/ mo investment? Most people spend more than that on their personal cell phone.”

  • WP Engine – “WpEngine.com , for WordPress are the absolute best solution for WordPress security, performance and specialize in WordPress websites only. Their support is 24/7 – you can call them up any time and a WordPress expert will pick up the call. I’ve called at 2am in the past to test this out. That is huge! Not only will they pick up the phone, but they will get your technical problem solved usually doing it for you. They will restore your site free of charge if it gets hacked. Site speed/ performance is top notch – best I’ve seen in my 10 years of WordPress work. Lastly their staging environment, a copy of the live site for testing, is a great asset for professional management of your website and testing software updates.”
  • Flywheel – “Flywheel is the next best solution for WordPress. Price is a little better than WP Engine, but it’s not as good imo ($28/mo personal plan vs. wp engine $35/mo). They offer a staging environment as well, great collaboration tool for all the stakeholders. Their support isn’t as great; still 24/7, but chat only and not as good technical staff. CDN is extra vs free with WP Engine, and they won’t restore your site free of charge if you get hacked. But outside of that, it’s similar to wpengine.com.”
  • SiteGround – “More of a general hosting solution, but they do WordPress hosting really well and are recommended by WordPress.org. They offer similar features like daily backups, staging, but also include email hosting. The downside is that the support is not nearly as good as the two above. Yes they offer 24/7, but you have to submit a ticket or chat online. You have to wait and wait and wait. The staff isn’t nearly as knowledgeable about WordPress, and less willing to help “just do it for you.”

    Their Cpanel dashboard is a bit out of date and not as intuitive as WP Engine or Flywheel, but the price is far less at $11.95/ mo. for the GoGeek solution.”

Scott Lawrence

Investor in startups by providing custom websites for $89 a year & up est 2004. Best choice for startup businesses seeking web presence. Adviser eCommerce, Business and Communities. Regarded as the Webmaster Choice generated millions of sales throughout online career. CEO Snerdey.com and a Top Selling Affiliate of Website Templates.
https://www.snerdey.com

“Don’t be fooled by the low prices, unlimited usage or any other sales tactics that competing hosting providers use to gain new clients. You really need to understand what you “need” for your website as most generic, small and inexpensive hosting plans will do for just about any startup website. Mostly because you have no real traffic, so the key here is to start small and have the ability to upgrade as needed.

I’ve personally have been a client of many, many hosting providers and some for a few months to over 15 years. I’m just going to provide you today with the top 3 that I would consider using for my own projects and clients.

When I started my online business offering web design and hosting to my clients, I did not like the idea of keeping all the clients in one datacenter so i decided to use 3 different ones. This way, if one of the services went offline I would not be bombarded with tons of support tickets. Another thing is to have a 4th hosting provider for my own website. Idea here was that if I was hosting my own website on one of the 3 and they crashed.. my own website and ticket system would not work either. Of course nowadays things are different and not an issue for the most part. Simply sharing how it started long ago to show I have lots of experience dealing with various hosting providers.”

  • HostDime – “They are absolutely my favorite hosting provider. One of the original 3 that I joined 15 years ago and still with them today. The service is key; they go beyond the typical support and actually take the time to offer solutions, educate as to what is wrong with a website and even at times provide detailed instructions as to what I need to do to resolve the issue quickly. Recently they built their own building with over 75,000 square feet. They are in this for the long haul.”
  • NameHero – “Recently joined their re-seller plan and the affiliate program. I’ve interacted with them before via one of my client’s projects as they continue to host with them. I do not mind as I can design a website and host for a client however they like. They do offer unlimited plans as the owner understands that not all the accounts will use up all the space, but if you go over they’ll contact you to upgrade and rightly so. Otherwise, the support is very good and reliable servers.”
  • HostGator – “Huge selection of pre-packaged hosting plans, actually so many you should contact the sales department to make sure you select the best fit for your project. They also offer very affordable shared hosting plans that are great for newbie webmasters and site owners that seek to build a website themselves. Good website building software for those who edit via browser without special software. Reliable support and maintain an excellent uptime for all clients big or small, so everyone’s online most of the time.”

Overall it’s important to read the fine print, terms of service and make sure you understand the rules of the road. There are some hosting providers that started charging cycling fee’s. This is mostly a hidden fee, and one that I have had personal experience with in the past with a “now closed provider” – I was paying $80 a month then a shocking invoice came in for 1 month for almost $900 – it was due to one of the websites being hacked. It was using the account for 3 weeks without me even noticing it. But, you know they noticed it and simply let it ride. I fought that bill and won, as they should have provided alert or even reports in my dashboard, but that was “still in development” so they could not even prove it. Thus I was credited the difference and I instantly moved to another provider.

If you’re not happy with your current host.. move to any of the above and you’ll be happy you did!

Kuba Luty

An entrepreneur with experience in graphic design, focusing mainly on web design and user experience. Passionate about building an organization where people like to work and develop themselves. Believes in a beautiful world where great design meets KPI.
http://adchitects.co/websites

“At adchitects, we carry out website and branding projects for companies from around the world. They are companies of all sizes, ranging from one-person startups to corporations working on several continents. Our website designs are based mostly on WordPress CMS.

Very often, the client suggests WordPress as a content management system for their new website in the offer inquiry. The reason they give is understandable – “I had contact with this system before and I do not want to learn a new one (eg Craft CMS)”

Personally, I think WordPress is a great CMS system, especially when we think about the availability of developers, but also about the flexibility in the field of marketing – probably for every tool there is a ready plug-in that you can connect to your WordPress website. Thus, merchants can do what they should and not contact the IT department.

Where “WordPress” appears, there usually appears the statement “And what about security? I heard that it is not a secure system.”

The fact is that WordPress is the most popular CMS on the global internet. Hence, most exploits are written just for this system (it’s logical, right?). But the problem of a non-functioning website does not come from the fact that it is based on CMS WordPress, and that the system owner (or the person responsible for it) simply did not care for it – did not update the main system, plugins did not perform backups, etc.

When it comes to WordPress security, hosting is the key decision. Currently, there are many websites on the market that offer WordPress dedicated hosting. As a result, the entire server configuration is set for this system, including all security features.

Dedicated hosting also gives you plenty of options for automating basic maintenance activities – automatic backups, staging (separate test and production environments), etc.

In most cases, we offer our global clients two solutions – WPengine (www.wpengine.com) and FlyWheel (getflywheel.com). These are dedicated hosting solutions for WordPress. For us – the web-design & development agency – support is very important, which very often helps to fit (of course if possible) to the installation of the client’s system, but also helps to solve problems sometimes occurring between the CMS system configuration and the server. Both support services work very well.”

  • WP Engine – “WPengine is probably the biggest hosting provider with WordPress-only solutions. The pricing plan is reasonable (you receive what you pay for). With the most basic plan (Startup – from 35 USD/mo), you receive the possibility to set up 1 website with 3 environments (dev/test/production), 25000 visits/month and 50GB of bandwidth. CDN & SSL is included.”
  • Flywheel – “FlyWheel gives you cheaper solutions, but with fewer possibilities. For 14 USD/mo, you get 5000 monthly visits and no staging. But it’s a good solution if you need more bandwidth – you get 250GB of bandwidth/month (5 times more than WPengine).”

Basically, each one is a good solution, but you need to take time and think, what do you (and your site) exactly needs. The best way is to ask the specialist (for example, the agency that develops the site for you).

  • zenbox – “To our Polish clients, we recommend a local provider of hosting services dedicated to WordPress – Zenbox (zenbox.pl). It offers interesting hosting plans that increase depending on the UU of your website. The account management panel is not as transparent as in the case of FlyWheel and does not offer staging, but support works quickly and efficiently.”

If I had to choose the best WordPress kit, I would choose:

Domain – GoDaddy.com
CDN – Cloudflare.com
Hosting – WPengine.com

With such a set, every WordPress owner can feel safe (of course remembering about maintenance from time to time 🙂

John Wilson

John Wilson is a web and graphic designer with over 10 years' experience working in various industries.
https://www.8bitjohn.com
  • Raid Host – “I used to host all my websites with a major player for website hosting, but discovered this company through Team Treehouse when they had a special offer on for members. Having tested the water with the company, I think their customer service is second to none. Always on hand, always helpful and always more than willing to go above and beyond. I also like the fact the company is based in the UK, so if I do have an issue, I can phone them quite easily.”
  • HostGator – “Before moving to raidhost, I used hostgator for all of my website and found their service to also be excellent, particularly as a global hosting provider. The advice on how to do certain aspects of server management and hosting was useful, particularly as I was new to the industry. The expertise can be very useful when you are a solo designer.”

Chuck Moran

Chuck Moran is the founder and Chief Bald Guy at Bald Guy Studio, a small-business-focused digital marketing agency in Charlottesville, Virginia. Chuck’s team creates branding, websites, social media strategies, SEO, digital ads, blog posts, online review management, and video storytelling promotions for its clients.
https://www.baldguystudio.com/
  • SiteGround – “My top – and only – recommendation for small business web hosting is SiteGround. They offer everything you need (and things you didn’t know you need), at affordable fees, and their support is unparalleled in my experience.

    I built my first website in 1997, and I have worked with many website hosting companies over the interceding 22 years. I’ve dealt with GoDaddy, Network Solutions, 1&1, WPEngine, and Media Temple on behalf of my clients and found they all have strengths and weaknesses.

    Whenever I’ve had opportunities to recommend hosting to my clients, I often suggested Directnic, based near New Orleans, LA, starting in about 2005. They have a solid platform, and are renowned for having gotten their service back up in 45 minutes following the devastating blow from Hurricane Katrina. I moved away from Directnic due to their limited call-in tech support hours (9am – 6pm CST, M-F). They have added chat since I left and operate it along with tickets now, 24×7.

    I recommended Bluehost to my clients and hosted my own websites there for years, but I feel the company has grown too fast. I have gotten erroneous and conflicting support information, and honestly, have found my new love, SiteGround, superior across the board.

    What’s so great about SiteGround? They are geared beautifully for small- and medium-sized businesses, and their support is simply fantastic. You rarely have to wait more than a few seconds for a chat or phone call to be picked up, and their friendly, courteous technicians will stick with you until your questions are answered or your issue is resolved. Want to try a suggested solution while they wait? No problem. Want a transcript of your chat? You got it. Want to file a ticket instead? Go ahead … and expect an answer in about 15 minutes. They honestly act like you’re one of just a few hundred clients; many of their techs, however, have served tens of thousands of clients.

    SiteGround delivers fast-loading websites from ultra-modern servers with solid state storage, positioned on three continents, utilizing a free content delivery network (CDN). They provide terrific security consisting of anti-hack systems, pushed auto-updates, free daily backups and an anti-spam application called SPAM Experts that works great protecting your email.

    They specialize in WordPress websites with one-click installs, a free migration tool (or they’ll migrate your website for you for free on the GrowBig plan and above). As if all of this wasn’t enough, they offer domain registration as well. Ask in any online website design community what hosting provider designers and developers prefer, and SiteGround will come up over and over.

    In my book, and looking back over 22 years of building websites and working with various web hosting companies, SiteGround is tops!”

Andy Macpherson

My agency, Macpherson Marketing, helps small businesses and real estate agents with online marketing. I like to be behind the scenes doing work. I am a competitor and love anything I can compete in, which is why I love SEO.
http://macphersonweb.com
  • SiteGround – “I like using SiteGround and use it for hosting on almost every website I build. Most of my sites are WordPress, and SiteGround has great servers and a cache system that works great with WordPress. They also give you a free SSL. I don’t have any affiliate deals with any hosting providers and I still always recommend SiteGround. They are a tad bit more expensive than Godaddy, but the fast servers they offer is worth it to me. With all the focus on site speed, SiteGround is my best option. If you aren’t using CDN’s and need a fast hosting service out of the box then SiteGround is for you.”
  • GoDaddy – “GoDaddy is ok, but not great. They are a good company for beginners and small business owners who are doing a lot of the website work themselves. GoDaddy can get annoying because they try and sell you on every little thing. They make you pay extra for an SSL and every little add on will cost you. The good thing that they offer is relatively reliable customer service. You can always get hold of them if there’s a problem. I have had some ongoing issues that took me a few calls to resolve. But for the average person they are a good option”

Naomi Spirit

Own a small digital agency comprising a collection of a few freelancers who run around 40 websites all built with WordPress.
www.fromthisday.digital
  • SiteGround – “GoGeek package is a good starting place for hosting a large amount of small traffic/requirement websites. The cost is good and yearly deals are often available. There is room to grow and standard optimisations which mean that you can have performance websites without too much work. I would NOT recommend using them for the mailing accounts, as there was no end of problems and inconveniences encountered with the configuration of the mail servers. Nor would I recommend their “upgrade” to the business cloud. If you need more space for small sites, simply purchase another GoGeek account. Support is quick, but very variable in terms of quality.”
  • Kinsta – “For our busiest e-commerce site we use Kinsta, which is a fully WordPress optimised and managed hosting service. It is more expensive on a monthly basis, but we have found the support to be very quick, personal and the information and advice is always spot on. Night and day in comparison to SiteGround! The extra money is well worth it for a higher value site.”
  • Cloudways – “For those who have the technical skills in house to manage a server without a cPanel, cloudways is an excellent option to explore. Performance and price are fantastic!”

Ben Millar

I am a web design & online marketing expert with over 12 years' knowledge and experience. Over the years I have worked with household brands such as eBay, Bench, Manchester City Council, Gumtree, Co-op Bank, Schuh and Carcraft.
https://www.unit36.co.uk

“As an experienced web designer, I’ve used many hosting companies over the years, some good, some not so good. They all do things a little differently and obviously the price reflects on this. When it comes down to your website, the main marketing tool that represents your company, brand or organisation online, it is crucial to have a host you can trust, rely on and even get support from, should you need it. This may sound pretty straight forward, but over the years I’ve experienced some of the best and worst, and trust me you do not want to experience the worst (no naming and shaming).”

  • UKFast – “By now, as a small business owner you will have most definitely heard of UKFast; if you haven’t you will do at some point. UKFast have been outstanding since the day we signed and therefore get my top recommendation as a hosting provider for small businesses. We’ve now had a dedicated server with UKFast for 2+ years, and here are the main pros and cons.

    Pros

    – Their level of support is like none other I’ve experienced. They claim to answer the support line within 3 rings. When I first heard this I thought, hmmm, that’s quite a bold claim. They answer every time, sometimes it might be 4 rings, but who’s counting. The point is they always answer.

    – They care. When you are in need of support this matters a lot. I’ve used the support line several times now, each time usually a different employee, but each and every one of them has dedicated the same level of care into getting any issues resolved ASAP.

    – Free events. I’ve been to many ‘free events’ over the years. A lot have a been a waste of time. UKFast host events, which to anyone who doesn’t host with them costs per ticket (I think the last one I attended should have been £75 if I remember rightly). You always learn a lot, they’re useful and feature some big name speakers. They cover hugely relevant topics for online businesses; Cyber Security and eCommerce Live being the last two I attended. Events include free refreshments, food, a free goodie bag and you get to ride the slide out of the event at the end if you wish too – obviously I did!

    Cons

    – I’ve struggled with any cons for UKFast. Some may put the cost down as one, however I wouldn’t – it’s worth every penny.”

  • Heart Internet – “Heart Internet would be my 2nd recommendation. They served a purpose for me and got us to a level in business where we outgrew them. I had 2 accounts with Heart; a shared hosting platform and a dedicated server.

    Pros

    – Pound for pound, what you get is very reasonable.

    – Servers are UK based. As a UK business it’s beneficial to have a UK based server for search rankings, otherwise Google will read your website as a business based in the country of the server’s origin. I’ve found quite a few other hosting companies that businesses think are UK based, however run a few tests and find out they are based overseas.

    – Support is good to a certain level (ticket based)

    – Searching for new domain names. When searching for a domain name, I’ve heard others experience a scenario whereby the domain name that was available 24 hours earlier, isn’t available any longer and has been registered by the domain registrar they used for the initial domain search. And you can now buy it from them at an inflated price. Heart Internet do not do this. I’ve never personally experienced it either, but it’s better to be safe that sorry. If you want to be double safe then use http://whois.domaintools.com for any new domain searches.

    Cons

    – Support, although I’ve put it as a pro, it is also a con. It depends what level of support you need. Heart Internet ran a ticket only support system when I was a customer, and as far as I am aware they still do. When something goes wrong, which sometimes it does, sitting waiting for a support ticket reply can be very frustrating. When a reply is received, it generally went along the lines of, ‘This is not something we cover within support, if you want one of our senior technicians to look at this it will cost £xx per hour….’ Not helpful when in the middle of a crisis.”

  • Digital River – “Digital River are a cloud based hosting provider that specialise in commerce.

    Pros

    – Scalability. If you have a business that is scaling fast and you need a hosting provider that can adapt to this promptly and efficiently without any disruption to service, Digital River offer a cloud service which can fully facilitate your growth plan.

    – Cost efficiency. This is based on your requirements, so as you grow you can easily upgrade your server, then the cost of the server increases based on your upgrades. The benefit of this is that you’re not paying for a server that that has lots of unused space; just pay for what you need, rather than paying for a server you plan on growing into.

    – eCommerce, they hold a wealth of knowledge and experience in the eCommerce hosting sector.

    Cons (these are more the cons of cloud based hosting in general not just of Digital River)

    – Search engines will typically give higher priority to servers hosted locally with a fixed location compared to cloud based hosting when calculating the page rank.

    – Cost. Cloud based hosting tends to be more expensive.

    – Vulnerable to attack. In cloud computing, each and every component is potentially accessible through the Internet from anywhere in the world. There isn’t anything connected to the Internet which is completely secure, and this makes it more vulnerable than a fixed location server.”

Rochelle Parry

Web designer/developer for small businesses since the late 1990's. Focused on building responsive websites offering full e-commerce or product catalogue, artists portfolios, author sites, brochure (static) sites. Primarily use WordPress.
https://megabite.com
  • Big Time Host – “An affiliate of ClickMonster. Shared hosting on solid state drives with solid uptime. They don’t jam a ton of accounts onto one server. They were not affected by the Heartbleed security bug. Clients have full CPanel access, and they can host email. An SSL certificate is included. You can take advantage of their licenses for premium WordPress plugins such as iThemes security and Backup Buddy, Gravity Forms, All In One SEO Pro. Your server space and email space are generous but not unlimited. Automatic updates are available for a monthly fee.

    Best if you’re a little bit tech-savvy or work with someone who is, as they don’t have the 24/7 chat/tech support that some larger companies offer. True story: I developed a site on a BigTimeHost server, then published it to the client’s old host to replace their live site. Their GTMetrix score showed a page load time of nearly 8 seconds when on their old host. On the development site – the exact same site – loaded in 2.3 seconds. They quickly moved to Big Time Host.”

  • Bluehost – “Yes, they’re part of Endurance International Group. Yes, their tech support rep might have a heavy East Indian accent. And if you register your domain with them, it will get bounced around to different companies. However they are very reliable, offer full CPanel access with unlimited storage and email accounts. You’ll save a few bucks. Your site won’t win any races for page load speed, but it WILL be faster than hosting with GoDaddy (aka SlowDaddy. They’re okay for domain registration if you can avoid the upsells, not so great for hosting).

    The only thing I am not that fond of (this was a recent change), is that a WordPress database is set up for you before you even have a chance to install one yourself. If you’re moving a site to their server, the pre-installation can cause headaches. Their setup comes with nasty junk pre-installed such as JetPack, best to be avoided if you want a clean, fast site without software bloat. If you have no technical skills at all and need a lot of assistance, they are there for you.”

Larry James

I am a self-taught web designer specializing in developing WordPress websites for small businesses. I have a keen interest in SEO and take pride in building search engine friendly websites and helping my clients grow their business.
https://www.durhamwebdesigner.com/
  • Cloudways – “The hosting provider that I recommend is Cloudways. I currently use Cloudways to host my own website and my client’s sites. Cloudways provides managed cloud hosting. Clients can set up and deploy a WordPress website on a virtual private server (VPS) in minutes. The page load speed is incredible. I am very happy with the performance. Their customer support is excellent. Their Facebook Group has also been very supportive.

    Cloudways is the perfect balance between affordable shared hosting and Virtual Server. I also like the fact that Cloudways does not provide email hosting. Email hosting is a very different platform than web hosting. Cloudways specializes in web hosting. Clients can set up their email with a business class provider such as Rack Space or Google Suite.”

Christopher Smith-Dunn

Experienced freelance web designer and web developer since 1996 (yes, I remember 14.4k dial-up modems). I create professional, functional websites for companies that range from new startups starting from scratch to established companies that may need help revamping and revitalising current websites.
www.imyge.net

“I have used a few hosting providers over the years, some I really haven’t liked and others have been good for a while, but then seem to stand still when a competitor comes along with a more advanced service at a better value.”

  • 20i – “I do not go for the cheapest and don’t swap providers on a whim. My current best recommendation is www.20i.com. I opened an account with 20I about 8 months ago now, whilst continuing to run with my existing hosting company to be sure which gave the best service. I have just finished migrating 300 websites and closed my account with my last supplier. It wasn’t that my last supplier was bad, just 20i are better in my opinion.

    The crux of the swap was 20i provide more advanced tools, which are really easy to use. Discounts for resellers on most services and excellent technical support. The added bonus was 20i were also 30% cheaper than my last supplier. I have recently also taken on a VPS with 20i too and had had no issues at all.”

  • Heart Internet – “If I had to give a second-place supplier it would be my last supplier, Heart Internet. If 20i hadn’t come along, I would have been happy to stay with Heart Internet and had been with them for about 8 years. It is just a shame they don’t seem to have kept up with advances in tools and competitors’ pricing.”

Ryan Olton

Ryan Olton is a Caribbean based website designer / developer who has delivered creative website and e-commerce solutions to clients across the globe for the past 15 years.
www.oltoninteractive.com
  • CloudAccess.net – “CloudAccess provide excellent services and support at a great price. Their WordPress hosting comes with a free SSL certificate, automated backups and they’re the only provider on my list that offers free email hosting as well.”
  • WP Engine – “For WordPress based sites, WP Engine is an industry recognised hosting platform for WordPress sites with various pricing options that can work well and grow with a small business. WP Engine offers a free SSL certificate with each package, along with free backups and their technical support is excellent.”

Steve Wehr

Steve Wehr is a website designer and programmer from upstate New York. He is retired from IBM, where he spent 35 years as an engineer and programmer for mainframe systems.
Tunedinweb.com
  • Rackspace – “I really recommend Rackspace. I’ve had servers with them for about 12 years — both dedicated and cloud. The servers are fairly priced and reliable, but this is not a do-it-yourself solution for the uninitiated. I would say you need someone with an IT background to configure and manage the servers, unless you opt for their full service option, which is expensive. Their service is outstanding, though expensive. If you can do some basic Linux administration then I think you can manage your own cloud server and forgo their full service option. Even so, whenever you call them you get a real person and quick resolution to any problems. Not the cheapest hosting solution, but they are a pleasure to do business with.”

Robert Haylor

I have been building websites for over 13 years and have used a variety of hosting providers. Most of the time I build websites for small businesses, so ensuring a hosting company can offer a strong and reliable uptime with sufficient technology is important for me and my clients.
http://www.boostdigitalmedia.com/
  • UKFast – “When it comes to website hosting I have to say I’m a huge fan of UKFast. I transferred to the company just over 12 months ago after a major outage with our, then current provider, Heart Internet.

    With UKFast, you’re not going to be paying £2.49 a month for your server, but then you’re not
    going to be getting that £2.49 service, i.e. you won’t just be a number on a spreadsheet. The servers that your websites will be on will not be crowded or slow, they will be quick, efficient and reliable. You will be able to choose between different operating systems and visual control panels, Plesk or cPanel/WHM. I have an eCloud Public Service with UKFast, giving me control and flexibility to scale the server up as my own business grows and to meet the needs and requirements of my clients.

    The account manager (you will be assigned one) will be your point of contact at UKFast for anything relating to your account, your business and even on hand to ensure you’re satisfied with their service. Their support team is on hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and believe me I know that as I have often rang them at 2am in the morning. Yes you did read that right, a support team you can actually ring – no need for a ticket just pick up the phone and call.

    What I love about these guys is the fact that they are never too busy to respond to questions, no matter what they are. So whether you’re just setting up a WordPress website or transferring 200 clients over to their eCloud services, they really are the company you need to speak with if you value your website and reputation. For me, ensuring my client websites are online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year is vital.

    Whether you’re a small start up business or a company that is large with offices in multiple
    locations, before you sign up to any provider give the team at UKFast a call and see what they can do for your business. Honestly you will be surprised.”

  • HostGator – “Hostgator, for me were my original hosting company that I started with when I first joined the online world. It was my first introduction to cPanel/WHM as well as understanding how to manage a server so it stays online – a baptism by fire one might say.

    I initially joined Hostgator as I, probably, like a lot of young and still wet behind the ears programmers, wanted somewhere cheap with a no frills service whilst I was completing my degree. I can remember paying $4.97 per month back in 2006, and with the £ to $ rate being so amazing I think I ended up paying around £60 for the year as a reseller, which enabled me to make a bit of money on the side for the Student Union Bar.

    If you’re a small business and you’re looking for somewhere to just basically put up your website and you’re not too worried about SEO, for me HostGator would be my recommendation. Their servers were reliable, I think there was only 2 or 3 outages that I had, and that was over a 4 year period. They have an online chat service, and their support team and sales team are fantastic. I cannot fault HostGator’s customer service team as they did deliver what they said they would. If my memory serves me correctly you could also manage your billing via a dedicated billing system and the support team was available via a ticket system.

    Servers weren’t too shabby, however, I learned over time that some of their servers were rammed with lots of websites, which for me meant the server was a little slower. But as I say, if you’re looking for somewhere to just host a website and you do want a basic, no frills service, then definitely give Hostgator a try.”

Kyle Deming

Web Strategist & Entrepreneur
https://wojodesign.com
  • DigitalOcean – “If you are a fairly technically-savvy business owner or you have people on your team with technical skills, Digital Ocean is a terrific hosting company to consider. The pricing is very hard to beat, and the performance you will get for the cost is truly impressive. You will get a hosting environment that you can completely customize and tailor to your specific needs.”
  • Liquid Web – “I like LiquidWeb because they have a variety of hosting types (dedicated servers and cloudsites are the most useful) and their service is excellent. Live chat is available 24/7 and they respond very quickly to concerns and questions you may have. LiquidWeb can support a wide variety of website types.”
  • Pantheon – “If you have a WordPress website to host, consider Pantheon. They are not the cheapest solution, but the performance you will get is truly awesome. They have a unique approach to hosting that provides you development and test environments already included, along with a process for pushing code updates from dev -> test and from test -> live. This methodology enforces good code editing practices. It’s very easy to migrate to Pantheon as well; you simply install a plugin on your WordPress website and they pretty much take care of the rest. Finally, the live chat support is extremely responsive and helpful.”

Paul Matthews

As director of a digital agency that supports other agencies, I’ve been working on the Web since the beginning and use many different hosting providers on a regular basis, including those that I wouldn’t choose personally.
https://steak-festival.com
  • DigitalOcean – “Digital Ocean would be my first choice for hosting and usually is! They offer a great choice of Cloud-based plans that are very flexible, enabling resizing as demand changes. Their fees are competitive and yes, you can certainly find cheaper options, but these are “virtual dedicated servers” i.e. not shared with other sites, whereas the cheaper alternatives will likely be slower, located abroad and more restrictive.

    The only possible downside with them is that you do need to have some technical skills to set up the servers, as there’s no control panel like you’ll find elsewhere, so once you’ve gone through the one-click process of setting up a “droplet”, the rest of the configuration is done using a terminal window with Linux commands. Having said that, their documentation is absolutely fantastic, so you’ll easily find the steps that you need online.”

  • SiteGround – “For those needing a more user-friendly dashboard, SiteGround is a good option. With simple WordPress installations and easy integration with Cloudflare’s SSL and firewall services, this provider makes it easier for less technical users to get up and running with a hosting plan.

    SiteGround would make a great lower-cost option, but may come at the expense of slower access speeds for site visitors and less control of server components.”

Richard A Marti Jr

Marketing Specialist at Marti.Agency
marti.agency

“When you look at the success of virtually any small business, it is the relationships of the key people that form the foundation that great businesses are built on. Websites, SEO, Social Media, are just the tools we use to help create and nurture those relationships. We take a comprehensive and integrated approach to traditional and digital marketing, so we can concentrate on those important relationships and build business as a natural result.

If I had to recommend a web hosting provider for small business, it would be Inmotion Hosting for the reasons ill outline next. For this post, I chose three web hosts: Inmotion Hosting, Hostgator and GoDaddy. I feel strongly that running a small business is hard enough. We shouldn’t have to worry about our website. A word salad full of acronyms and bunches of options does not make our choices clearer.

Across the three options that I have experience with, I wanted to concentrate on the 5 key elements for the most worry free solution. The key elements are uptime, speed, customer service, automatic backups and security (including ssl and recovery.) As a bonus, email accounts included are a nice addition.”

  • InMotion Hosting – “The reason that Inmotion Hosting was at the top of this list is that It hit every element. Their uptime is 99.6% (the number means less to me than the fact that they work hard to keep our sites up). Site speed- Inmotion Hosting offers the choice of data centers they call “Max Speed Zone” and claim that this significantly increases site speed. Every little bit of speed does help improve the customer experience, which in turn helps our Google ranking.

    For customer service they offer toll free call in number, user support groups, text support, email support and a support ticket system. Their support is from here in the US. If things do go wrong, Inmotion Hosting seems committed to making things work again quickly and easily. Along with easy access customer support, they provide free backups.Just one more thing we can rest easier about.

    Security. Protecting our data along with our customers with their included SSL helps our peace of mind. Google pretty much considers that all sites have an ssl certificate to protect visitors. With hack protection, we can rest easier. As a little bonus for those of us that need it, they include a generous email package.”

  • HostGator – “Hostgator offers similar specs to Inmotion Hosting with some differences. Uptime is comparable to Inmotion Hosting. Hostgator offers backup and restore as an additional option. There are mixed reviews on their customer support. They do include an SSL certificate. Hostgator offers security with Sitelock to protect against threats. Hostgator does have an email package included.”
  • GoDaddy – “Godaddy seems to have a good uptime record. Some people have different experiences depending on the applications they are using. Generally a sites are up within 10 mins. Google site speed is good compared to the other hosting companies, maybe even faster. Customer service is located here is the US, which is helpful. I have found them very helpful. Depending on timing, the wait can be a little long, but they do offer to call you back when a rep is free. Site backup and restore is an additional $2.99 per month. You can get an SSL for free with Godaddy’s Ultimate plan (which can have a significant price increase at renewal time.) Godaddy does include security with their plans but I have not needed to use it.”

Richard Kacerek

Richard started as a junior developer for some of the largest media companies in London 15 years ago. Today Empire Elements is a global, web and mobile development agency supporting clients in 7 countries across Europe and the Middle East.
https://empire-elements.co.uk

“Hosting is no longer simple as it once was. A growing business needs stability, security and the ability to grow with their business. From personal experience I would recommend Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean and Vultr in that order. Each one offers great selection of worldwide data centres, once click app installs and additional cloud services on which you can grow and expand your business.”

  • Amazon Web Services – “I’m picking Amazon Web Services as number one because nowadays it is not just about having a web presentation anymore. Growing business needs a reliable, secure and scalable platform of technologies and AWS offers just that. The sheer choice of services could be overwhelming at first with a steep learning curve, but once you establish your business goals, AWS can definitely help you achieve them. I mean just think about it, AWS now has 166 Points of Presence and support in 69 cities in 29 countries. That’s insane! You can even implement machine learning and AI into your business; everything is there and ready for you. Imagine that next year you introduce a new service or product to your customers, and you discover your business has new requirements and AWS is there with vast range of services to support it. Everything is integrated together and building your business therefore has virtually no limits – that’s why companies like Netflix and Airbnb use AWS. We often have clients that require such flexibility, to create new rich features for their business and if you want this level of flexibility then definitely pick Amazon Web Services.”
  • DigitalOcean – “Digital Ocean would be my personal choice for number two because it offers more transparent costing than AWS and offers a much smaller selection of services. You can still choose from a wide range of data centres, such as London for the UK or when your business expands you can get closer to the client and set up new operations in their regions. Digital Ocean focuses more on the “hosting” part of cloud services and storage and they do this really well. But you can forget server-less services for example. There is an object storage service available now too, but at the time of writing it still does not support bucket DNS endpoint – a feature readily available on AWS for almost a decade.”
  • Vultr – “Vultr would be third and the smallest of them all and offers a very similar service set as Digital Ocean, but is considerably cheaper, and arguably offers better performance than Digital Ocean on some servers. Vultr runs a transparent costing model just like Digital Ocean and focuses on servers only. So if you only want to configure and run your server without any other services, then Vultr could be the right fit.”

Jerry Legere

I am the founder of Website Designer 1 - a web design Company in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. I have over 10 years' experience in web design and hosting.
Https://websitedesigner1.com
  • Bluehost – “My first recommendation is for Bluehost Hosting. They have an enhanced c-panel that is easy to use. Their pricing is fair, and they give you a free domain name with your purchase for a year. Pcmag.com has also given them excellent uptime scores in testing.”
  • SiteGround – “My second recommendation is SiteGround. They offer shared hosting, and as you grow, you can migrate to their dedicated hosting plans. They have fast WordPress hosting with easy one-step WordPress installs. And I think they have one of the best records when it comes to customer service – it’s great! This can be very helpful if it is your first website.”
  • Flywheel – “My third recommendation is Flywheel Managed WordPress Hosting. I found their prices to be cheaper than WP-Engine; one of the most popular web host sites for professional web developers. I like the way they have laid out their website with an easy to use sign up and payment process. Flywheel offers tools for agencies, regular backups, built-in security features, and one-click staging sites.”

Cindy Bouchard

Flip Flop Freelance, a strategic and affordable web design company, specializes in professional and affordable WordPress web design. Based in Seattle, Flip Flop Freelance has worked with clients across the globe. Flip Flop Freelance is run by Cindy Bouchard and was created to reflect her varied passions and diverse skill set.
https://flipflopfreelance.com
  • SiteGround – “I highly recommend SiteGround as a hosting provider for small businesses. As a web designer, my reputation is on the line when I endorse hosting providers and I can say with full confidence that SiteGround is one of the only companies I recommend without hesitation. They aren’t the biggest game in town (which makes them more responsive to their customers, in my opinion) but they are highly respected and provide excellent customer service. Their packages are affordable, their servers are able to handle shared hosting challenges and they have enough options that soloprenuers and small companies can find something that works for them.”

Ian Bevis

Chameleon was formed in 2001 by the entrepreneur, Ian Bevis. The goal and ambition at the time was to provide cost effective internet solutions to small businesses in Birmingham and to become one of the most successful web companies in the West Midlands at a time when the internet was only just beginning. Today the company is a leading name in the industry, providing services globally to leading brand names.
https://www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk

“Hosting is not something that should be seen as a cost-saving exercise. You need a reliable hosting provider to ensure your website / shop front is open 24 hours a day. We would recommend Heart Internet, Rackspace and UK 2 NET.

As with most hosting, you will find negative reviews and this can be the result of people purchasing web space and not understanding how to use it. For example, someone will pay for £4.99 a month expecting 24-hour support and someone on the end of the phone to help them figure everything out. This would be £59.88 per year in total which doesn’t cover the average IT hourly rate for 1 hour of support, yet people judge hosting companies negatively for lack of support.”

  • Heart Internet – “Heart Internet provides cost-effective web hosting services that are as reliable as they come in the shared world, and then for a little more money you can purchase a VPS server which is going to give you more power and speed. However, with a VPS server you do not get support like you do on shared hosting so be aware.”
  • Rackspace – “Rackspace is a solid company to trust and have become a leading name in the hosting world. If you want a server then Rackspace is worth a look, but this comes at a cost.”
  • UK2 – “UK 2 NET is another solid choice for hosting and the servers they offer come with varied power options and costs, which are again relatively high, but they offer great support.”

“Chameleon Web Services has servers of all types at many leading hosting providers and also uses hosting provided to us by clients and we feel that often the hosting company reviews do not do the companies justice and most of the websites ranking the best hosting providers are built on a pay more system to be top.”

Alex Durston

Combining design and technology to help organisations achieve their goals. Alex has over 10 years of experience as a full stack web designer-developer and consults with companies around the world to solve real-world business problems.
https://searchstation.co.uk/

When investing in a new website it’s easy for designers, developers and clients to get caught up in the glitz and glamour of the design, features and functionality. However, one element that often gets overlooked, and possibly the most important element, is to find the right hosting solution for the needs of your website.

We’ve seen it time and time again; clients who have amazing websites but are let down by poor quality hosting, resulting in a bad user experience and in some cases, major security issues. There is nothing worse than being contacted by a potential client who informs you of an error with your website!

When looking at website hosting companies there are two main things to consider; fully managed services, where you pay a slight premium, but everything is done for you meaning you can sleep at night knowing your website is safe. Or, a self-managed service, which is often a much cheaper solution, however, you do need to be prepared to get your hands dirty should there be any problems with your website.

As a web studio, we always prefer to manage hosting for our clients rather than letting the client find a hosting provider. If you are going through the process of a new website build or have a company managing your current website, speak to them first about which companies they recommend, as they will often have a good relationship with a a preferred hosting provider.

The only thing you really need to know about hosting…

Web hosting comes in two main forms; shared hosting and dedicated hosting. As the name suggests shared hosting is when your website is shared on a server with lots of other websites. For shared hosting to be commercially viable the servers need to host the maximum number of websites as possible – a bit like how budget airlines cram as many people onto one plane as possible. However, the more people on that plane, the worse the experience will be. Shared hosting works in much the same way, but for your website.

On the other end of the scale is dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting is when your website is the only site on the server, meaning your website benefits from all the resources that server has to offer. Think of dedicated hosting as a private jet; super fast, amazing experience but it is more expensive than a commercial airline, or in our example – shared hosting.

Just like in the world of air travel, some people need private jets and can justify the cost, however, most of us are just fine on commercial airliners – your website hosting requirements are just the same. At this point if you are unsure whether you need dedicated or shared hosting, we would strongly advise getting the opinion of whoever is building or managing your website.

So on to the recommendations:

  • 20i – “20i is a relatively new company in the world of hosting founded in 2016, however, their founders are hosting veterans, having previously founded WebFusion, 123-reg.co.uk and Heart Internet.

    20i offer both shared and dedicated hosting, but we’ll focus on their shared platform as this is an amazingly low-cost hosting solution, which gives dedicated hosting provided by other companies a run for their money. What we love about 20i is they have taken the pricing model of mass-market shared hosting, but created a platform which auto scales as and when it needs. Should your website require more resources due to an increase in traffic, more resources will be allocated to ensure it runs as fast as possible. Likewise, when your website has fewer visitors and is idle, the resources are scaled back and made available for other websites on the same platform.

    Super Fast Technology

    Some other things we really love about 20i is their commitment to not cut corners. Their hosting environment is made up of superfast servers all fitted with solid state hard drives which can deliver data quicker. In addition, their load balancers are constantly working out how and where traffic should be routed to ensure every website runs at its best.

    Dashboard

    20i have a really nice dashboard which they have designed and built from scratch, which is always evolving with new features being added all the time. You can manage any aspect of your hosting from SSH access, SSL certificates, auto timeline backups, malware scans, and one-click installers for all the popular content management systems and e-commerce shops.

    Resellers

    As a reseller with 20i it’s very easy to manage multiple sites and allow clients access to their own website, while restricting some of the things they can and can’t do themselves.

    Support

    Finally, the support 20i offer is second to none, from basic setup and configuration to advanced requirements and very specific requests, they have always been able to resolve issues fast and keep us updated throughout the process.

    If you are looking for a self-managed hosting solution that won’t cost the earth with great support, 20i is the hosting company for you.”

  • Flywheel – “My second recommendation is for clients who know they need a private jet, but have no interest in flying it themselves. Flywheel was founded in 2012 and is located in Omaha, U.S. but with a network of remote workers across the globe. Flywheel specialised in hosting for WordPress sites, but as most of the internet runs on WordPress there is a high chance your website also runs on WordPress.

    Flywheel has built their hosting network on the top of Digital Ocean, which is one of the world’s leading dedicated server (technically virtual server but we’ll call them dedicated) providers and more recently have partnered with Google Cloud to offer the next level of premium hosting.

    Flywheel do all the difficult and technical server configuration, security and caching to ensure super fast, super secure sites. All of which would normally have to be done by the website owner or web agency hosting the site. As managing servers isn’t a skill most designers or developers possess, Flywheel is essentially your in-house server team, taking away the stress and pressure of running an enterprise level website.

    Dashboard

    Flywheel offers a dashboard with all the tools you need to get a site up and running quickly. However, due to the nature of their service being a ‘managed’ solution, you don’t have all the controls you do with standard shared hosting. This is partly because the platform is optimised and configured so you simply don’t need to make advanced changes, however, if you have specific requirements, they are more than happy to implement them for you. These requirements typically include; advanced server redirects, code that needs to be placed in the ‘htaccess’ file, configuring the wp-config.php file and scheduled tasks (CRON jobs) – all of which are pretty advanced things and not required by most websites.

    Pricing Packages

    Flywheel offers a range of packages based on the volume of traffic and space required along with some upgrade options including content delivery network and the ability for the end user to manage billing directly. Considering the speed and performance of websites hosted with Flywheel, the costs are very attractive and we would urge all clients to consider using Flywheel.

    Performance

    As previously mentioned, dedicated hosting provides a much better experience for your users as the page load time will be significantly faster compared to shared hosting. If load time and website speed is important for your website, we would definitely recommend a dedicated solution like Flywheel.”

To Summerise…

As you can see the two recommendations are very different, but in our experience and opinion, both offer the best level of service and quality for the solutions they provide.

As a last note, I would always recommend the best hosting you can possibly afford. You will always see a vast performance increase in dedicated hosting compared to shared hosting but for some sites, the additional cost isn’t always justified. When looking for the right hosting company do your research and seek an expert’s opinion on the requirements you need if in doubt.

Matt Brubaker

I currently work on a freelance basis providing web design and development services for multiple marketing and design agencies and individual small businesses in Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Reading and Philadelphia PA. I specialize in custom WordPress theme development. I also provide graphic design services.
http://mattbru.me
  • Anchor Hosting – “For a WordPress website, I always highly recommend Anchor Hosting to my clients and network partners. They are local and very knowledgeable and have always done a very good job at troubleshooting and helping me with server related issues when there is a problem. I would rather not work with servers, I’d rather focus my energy at what I do best and enjoy the most: design and development. Managed hosting is not your cheapest option, but using it would eliminate spam, need for backups, WP core and plugin updates, and is always very secure. Don’t waste your own valuable time, let the experts handle these issues.”
  • Kinsta – “Kinsta is my number one pick for WordPress hosting. Their infrastructure is built on the Google Cloud Platform and every WordPress site is contained in its own isolated area and is 100% private. Kinsta is blazing fast, developer friendly and known to have great customer support.”
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine is a great choice for WordPress hosting. The staging environments are easy to setup. They offer their own caching technology, easy SSL cert installation, automatic backup and restore points and good support.”

Peggy Murrah

Peggy's company, PMA Web Services, provides marketing direction and strategies for entrepreneurs through mentoring, website development, social media marketing, and lead generation since 1999. She is an Infusionsoft Certified Partner, a ReviewLead Certified Partner and holds a HubSpot Academy Social Media Certification.
https://pmawebservices.com
  • SiteGround – “We build all of our websites using WordPress and always steer our clients to SiteGround for hosting. They are easy to work with, they backup sites daily, they provide automatic security updates, they provide free SSL Certificates (simply a MUST HAVE for today’s websites!), powerful performance and unlimited free emails. What is not to love about SiteGround?!”

Jon Singer

jSinger is a lead-generating marketing and advertising company in the Chicago suburbs. Since 2011, our team has worked in design, development and lead generation marketing. jSinger specializes in getting online sales leads for our clients through the best online marketing methods for your business. You can rest easy, knowing you have a partner who keeps up on trends and takes your marketing success seriously.
http://www.jsingerdesign.com

“Hosting companies offer similar solutions. However, hosting companies are NOT the same. The difference lies simply in service.

When you have a problem, which is inevitable, do you want a helpful, courteous and knowledgable person on the phone? A person who can get your website issue resolved in a matter of minutes or hours? Or do you want to be routed across the ocean, talk to multiple reps who don’t understand your problem, and spend 2 days fixing that same problem?

I don’t have time for the games, so I have two go-to hosting recommendations.”

  • GoDaddy – “The first is GoDaddy.com. They have 24/7 service. They are extremely knowledgeable about their own services (not always a given with other host companies!) and they’ll even go above and beyond by helping you with your own website at times. Their prices are the lowest, or close, in all scenarios. They also offer both Windows and Linux hosting.”
  • Your Web Design Agency – “The second is to use a small, independent “web guy” such as services I offer. The reason is, we usually not only host the site, but update it, including the CMS (software), plug-ins, and other technology. Those updates help avoid spam and hacking, and we can always “roll back” the site to a back-up that we have happening on a daily basis. So you can never ruin your website with an update.”

Alan Tomkins

Founder and Director at Alpha Tango where we’re celebrating 21 years in business this year. WordPress and WooCommerce design and development specialists, and marketing Automation experts.
https://alpha-tango.co.uk
  • WP Engine – “For ecommerce sites I use WPEngine in the UK. WordPress specific hosting, really strong security, always looking out for their clients, amazing phone, chat and email support 24×7. Not the cheapest but a great package.”
  • catalyst2 – “For information sites I use Catalyst2 in London. The best customer service I have ever come across, phone and email. Always willing to help even when the issue is not hosting related, but a WordPress problem or a DNS problem. I have a VPS with them, but they offer Linux and Windows hosting from £11.99 a year including a free SSL certificate. What’s not to like, exceptional.”
  • 20i – “At No3 we have 20i. I use these guys when a client needs multiple email addresses, as their £5.99 a month option gives 100 email accounts. If a client only has 1 or 2 emails, I recommend Catalyst2 and Office 365 or Google Suite. There is no phone support, but good email support.”

Chris McMahon

WordPress Designer and Developer with over 20 years' experience helping small businesses and non-profits.
http://HelloMyNameIsChris.com

“The majority of my clients take advantage of the free hosting that comes with my WordPress Maintenance Plans. On the occasion that they do prefer to go out on their own, I recommend one of 2 places: SiteGround or WP Engine (these are the same hosting providers I use for my maintenance clients).”

  • SiteGround – “I tend to recommend SiteGround for small to medium websites that don’t include complex functionality or ecommerce. Their entry level hosting for 1 site is less than $150 for the year. They also include their SG Optimizer plugin for WordPRess with every install. I’ve found it to be one of the easier to use speed optimization plugins available. Customer service has always been top notch as well.”
  • WP Engine – “For more complex sites & ecommerce sites I recommend WP Engine. They only host WordPress sites, so all of their servers are fine-tuned to get the best performance possible from the platform. On top of that, the user interface is very simple to use, but does keep some of the more esoteric settings hidden from the user. However their customer support has always been quick in helping make any tweaks you might need for your site. This does come at a price, as it is 2-3 times more expensive than SiteGround.”

Patrick Losey

Patrick Losey is a web design veteran of 20+ years, and is the founder of Raining Fire Interactive, a design and marketing agency located in Southern California. Raining Fire's focus is on marketing and design to help businesses grow.
https://rainingfire.com
  • Hostek – “Although they may not be a household name, Hostek is a company I found 15 years ago. They have grown and offer very reliable hosting at a good price. I have never had any major outages and problems are fixed usually before I have to contact them. Their support team is knowledgeable, and they understand customer service.

    I have dealt with a number of hosting companies and I find some are just server mills, employing less informed support and unable to help when more technical issues arise. I have never experienced that with Hostek.

    They have standard shared plans for entry level, VPS and Dedicated Servers for more advanced needs. They also offer Optimized WordPress plans. They have multiple Data Center locations in the USA and UK, as well as providing CDN services for faster website performance. The control panel is standard fare and allows for easy management of your site.”

  • HostGator – “I have had a couple customers who hosted with HostGator. The experience dealing with the host was good. We have never had any major problems and support has been responsive. They have good prices and a nice control panel to manage the site. Although there have been issues here and there, the HostGator support team has been pretty good about resolving them quickly.”

Rebecca Woolston

Rebecca is a web enthusiast and your one stop shop for starting a new business. She provides branding, product photography, graphic design, and website development. With 7 years of experience making websites for ad agencies with huge clients, she’s ready to offer her corporate strategies to your small business.
Rebeccamade.com
  • Amazon Web Services – “AWS offers shared hosting plans for great prices. You’ll need to have your own back-end developer that can handle the setup and maintenance, but it’s what most ad agencies are using for large corporate projects. You get plenty of space and lots of control.”
  • GoDaddy – “For non-developers that want to use a WordPress theme, I recommend WordPress for business. It’s a fairly low monthly cost and you get access to Go Daddy support nearly 24/7. You can easily create staging environments and push those changes up to your live production site. They also have built-in backups. It’s as simple as choosing which date you want the site backed up to and it will do it through your hosting, not in the WordPress dashboard.”

Cheryl Russell

Over 25 years of marketing and communications experience with industry experience in technology, oil and gas, construction and real estate, law services, and a variety of small to mid-sized businesses.
https://dot2.studio

“I’ve used many hosting providers in my 20+ years and with all of the ups and downs of my experience, I have only 2 that I now recommend to my clients.”

  • WP Engine – “My top choice is WPEngine. Their hosting is exceptionally fast, they don’t spread their resources too thin, and their support is second to none. They offer development environments and SSL certificates. They are more expensive than other providers, especially if you have more than one website, but after the first year of discounts with other providers, the difference isn’t nearly as significant.”
  • SiteGround – “My close second is SiteGround. I could say all of the same things about SiteGround as I did for WPEngine, but they aren’t quite as fast, spread their resources a bit thinner and do not offer a development environment until you get to the higher packages. However, if your budget is super tight, they are the best choice out there.”

“I’ve used many hosting providers in my 20+ years and with all of the ups and downs of my experience, I have only 2 that I now recommend to my clients.”

Natalie MacLees

I'm the founder + principal of Purple Pen Productions and the author of jQuery for Designers, now in its second edition. I'm also a partner in N2, the software company that makes awesome WordPress plugins.
http://purplepen.com
  • SiteGround – “For small businesses just getting started, I recommend SiteGround. They offer outstanding service for an affordable price and their support is always helpful and quickly available. Sites load quickly and they scan for malware and hacks regularly. I personally use SiteGround and have many clients using them as well. SiteGround is also supportive of the web development community, and supports conferences and other efforts to bring developers together and help them learn new skills.”
  • Pantheon – “Pantheon offers top-notch hosting and support and is super developer-friendly – that means less time and frustration for the web developers you hire to work on your site, which in turn leads to less web development expenses for you. Pantheon has great support and has a track record of being really supportive of the web development community and helping developers learn new skills. Plus, anyone you meet who works at Pantheon is just a really awesome and amazing person. I encourage everyone to support companies that treat their employees well and support the community. This is definitely the host to go to for mission-critical websites.”
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine has a team of great people who are friendly and who support the community. They make an effort to send you to the same support person each time, so you get someone who builds up knowledge of you and your business over time, which is really helpful for getting issues resolved quickly. They focus on getting your site to run as fast as possible, which helps keep your customers happy and maximizes your SEO efforts. They also make improvements to their offerings all the time in an effort to make things faster and easier.”

Rik Kendell

Working mostly with WordPress, Rik is a developer / designer with over 10 years' commercial experience. Rik works on projects of all sizes, solving problems for all manner of clients in various industries. Rik currently leads development at BML Creative in Leeds.
https://rikkendell.co.uk
  • Nimbus Hosting – “The customer service I’ve experienced from Nimbus has eclipsed that of any other hosting provider that I’ve ever encountered. A number of services offer live chat or have ticket systems for raising issues, but none have been as effective as the UK-based team at Nimbus.

    If I’ve ever encountered a problem – whether user error or otherwise – Nimbus have always been quick to respond. Their staff regularly go above-and-beyond, and having since met some of the team personally I can say they’re as nice in real life too.

    Nimbus understand their customers so well, that they have gone on to create their own ‘STORM’ hosting platform. STORM is great for setting up websites quickly (complete with WordPress installation and database), with plenty of customisation options right at your fingertips.”

  • tsoHost – “I first encountered tsoHost at a previous employer, where we had a few dozen sites hosted with TSO across a number of servers. I was worried about dealing with such a large number of sites for the first time in my career, but any concerns I had were soon put to rest. Accessing websites and databases via TSO’s control panel was simple and intuitive, and once I’d set up a site once, it quickly became second nature.

    TSO’s service is also robust; for years I never experienced a single issue. There was no downtime, and no problems importing databases. Put simply, hosting with TSO just works.

    Shortly after moving on to a new role I signed up for my own TSO account. I moved all my personal and client websites across with no fuss whatsoever and have recommended them to several freelancers, individuals and small organisations since. Everyone picks up on the ease of navigating and managing sites through the service.”

Greg Hallmark

I own DesignPath Media, a web development company located in Nashville, Tennesse. We've been making websites since 1995.
http://www.designpathmedia.com
  • SiteGround – “The best hosting provider I’ve ever done business with is SiteGround. Hands down the best from both a technical standpoint and with regards to customer service. Great host for WordPress. Fast load speeds, etc… But their customer support is amazing. I love dealing with the folks at SiteGround. They always seem to go above and beyond the call of duty in helping me with any issues I may encounter. I strongly recommend them for small businesses.”

Brian Ferdinand

Brian Ferdinand is an interactive designer, developer, educator, and user experience specialist. A lifelong learner, Brian handles design duties and sets the pace for studio development efforts.
https://weareshop.agency
  • DreamHost – “My first suggestion for small businesses would be Dreamhost. The customer service has been excellent and they have multiple packages that can meet almost any small business need. They can start with a simple shared hosting for most small business needs and can scale up to a VPS or dedicated server for those needing more power to run an e-commerce or more complicated site. They also have data centers in most states, so you could have your server host be local to help with local page speeds and more.”
  • Cloudways – “Cloudways is also an exceptional hosting option. They are a great solution for smaller businesses that may have more website based needs, as they allow you to choose the type of server setup you need. Cloudways servers can also easily scale and allow for setting up staging sites for testing and site change deployments. Some of their packages also provide managed hosting, which is great for small businesses that need one less thing to worry about. In all the dealings I have had with them, from hosting sites that get a couple thousand views a month to sites that get three million views a month, their customer service has been outstanding.”

Derek Rippe

Derek owns and operates 5.12 Design Lab, LLC out of Tacoma, WA and specializes in custom, affordable website design and development services for small and micro businesses, proudly built on WordPress and the Genesis Framework.
https://512designlab.com
  • SiteGround – “Currently, I’m using SiteGround for my business clients – a rollover from a previous company that closed and I inherited the clients. But I’ve been extremely happy with SiteGround. Their hosting is affordable, easily scalable, and reliable. Their customer support is always quick and helpful.”
  • WP Engine – “A handful of clients are using WPEngine, which I absolutely love. I was fixing to move 20+ clients to an Enterprise solution with WPEngine, but the cost was too much of a barrier for me (it would have been in the neighborhood of $600/mo). But the services WPEngine offers are top-notch (assuming you can host email elsewhere). I love the ease of their production, staging and development environments. Plus, their support staff is always immediately available.”
  • TMDHosting – “I’ve been using TMDHosting for a few small personal sites. After Bluehost was acquired by EIG and the service went south, I was looking for a very cheap but US-based service that had no intentions on joining EIG. TMD has performed well, all things considering. Support can be a bit slow, and not always US-based, but for the needs of my personal, low-traffic website… it’s fine.”

“The only other thing that I mention to EVERY potential client I speak with, is to avoid any EIG-owned hosting company. I’ve worked with several in the past, and always been disappointed. I had accounts with both Bluehost and Site5 before they were acquired by EIG, and watched the service and support nosedive a few months after the acquisition. These are things no business owner wants or needs to deal with, and as a result I pretty much exclusively recommend either SiteGround or WPEngine for hosting.”

Richard Pearce

Richard has been helping small businesses establish their online presence since 1995. These days he creates online training courses about building better websites and how to start or grow a web design business.
www.siteskills.com
  • CloudAccess.net – “My number one choice for small business web hosting is the lesser known, but highly capable CloudAccess.net. This US-based host specialises in Joomla and WordPress hosting and is currently the provider of the official Joomla demo site. A potential problem for small businesses websites that are powered by a content management system (CMS) is who to contact when things go wrong. It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of the CMS project blaming the web host and the web host blaming the CMS. That doesn’t happen with CloudAccess.net because, in addition to their normal support, they also support the CMS (on their Standard and Business plans). One particular standout feature is their choice of email hosting platform called CloudMail. The interface and anti-spam/anti-virus features are far superior to what you’ll find from other hosts. Your website is the front door of your business, so pay a little more and entrust it to the experts.”
  • SiteGround – “It took me a long time before I was comfortable enough to recommend a budget web host who provides a quality service suitable for small businesses. SiteGround ticks all the boxes and they have established a reputation for providing fast service and a rich set of features, even on their cheapest plan. By using their free staging site feature, you can experiment making changes to a copy of your website, rather than risk messing up your live site. As with the other providers in this list, they also include free SSL certificates, which these days are an essential feature. On the downside, their customer support can be a bit hit and miss. Although their response time is extremely fast, it can take some time for them to understand the exact nature of your problem. The better you can communicate the problem, the faster it will get resolved. If price is your number one priority, then SiteGround is worth a look.”
  • Cloudways – “There are now several platforms offering powerful and versatile hosting solutions that ensure websites load quickly, are well protected and can be easily scaled up as necessary. However, their platform essentially just provides the infrastructure – all the setup and management is left to you. You need significant technical experience to operate these sites which is often beyond the scope of the typical small business. That’s where Cloudways comes in. They provide a user-friendly interface to these platforms making it far easier to deploy and manage a website. Despite this, it is a more technically demanding solution and it’s likely that you’ll need someone on your team with some hosting experience to get you going. Should things go wrong, technical support will only get you so far, so Cloudways hosting is best suited for a business that has one or more IT people on the team.”

Ross Johnson

Ross has been immersed the web design industry since 2005. As a designer, strategist and marketer he helps brands and non-profits realize the true potential of digital marketing.
https://3.7designs.co/

“It can be tempting to look for lower priced options when it comes to hosting your website. Typically these lower plans ($15 a month or less) are what we call “shared hosting.” Shared hosting means your website is hosted on the same machine as thousands if not tens of thousands of other websites — all sharing the same resources. This is how companies can offer such low prices.

The low price comes with a trade off. You’ll experience poor performance and intermittent outages. Your website is too important for that and there is no reason you should spend less on hosting than you would your cell phone.

Look for either “managed hosting” or a VPS. If you’re using a platform like WordPress the best solution is almost always “managed hosting” where the hosting provider helps manage the security, software and performance of your website.”

  • WP Engine – “For WordPress managed hosting we recommend WP Engine. They offer excellent performance, support and capabilities.”
  • Flywheel – “Flywheel is another dedicated WordPress hosting service we recommend, also providing good features, performance and support.”
  • Liquid Web – “If you need more flexibility or aren’t using WordPress, we recommend LiquidWeb. They have a wide range of plans and have hands down the best support we’ve ever encountered.”

Shea Newkirk

Shea Newkirk is an entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in the tech and design industries, focusing on creating truly unique & engaging experiences. Shea is currently the CEO of design & web development agency LBWD, specializing in e-commerce solutions with a customer-first approach.
https://www.longbeachwebdesign.com
  • SiteGround – “When it comes to web hosting, especially for the average small business owner, I think having great customer support is key. My top recommendation is SiteGround hosting. They have consistently crushed it on the support side of things, and are always working to improve their hosting services as well. The combination of advanced feature set and ease of use makes it a win time and time again. We host the majority of our customers with Siteground and love using them on a daily basis.”
  • Amazon Web Services – “If you are looking for a high end solution that scales with your well established business, then I think Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the way to go. I love how reliable their hosting is and the wide variety of features and addons they provide to really help expand a quickly growing business with a larger user base. Efficiently scaling is key to an enterprise level business and AWS provides all the tools and then some to get the job done.”

Billy Whiffen

Co-Founder at Fruitbowl Studio creative design agency and Managing Director at Welcome To Ignition Ltd, an ecommerce and print on demand management agency.
https://fruitbowlstudio.com
  • Fasthosts – “As a small business owner, the importance of reliability and flexibility cannot be overstated. This is the reason we recommend Fasthosts to all our potential web clients. I have been using their different packages for over 10 years. Their customer support is second to none. I have spent many hours on calls with their dedicated support team, but never longer than 5 minutes in a queue. They offer great, low price packages perfect for service based businesses requiring a simple, static website right up to dedicated servers capable of supporting multiple sites and large ecommerce stores. They also offer a great, cloud solution for businesses who experience fluctuations in traffic due to seasonal shopping, events or other factors. You can easily adjust the memory and disk space to accommodate the extra traffic and reduce it back down after with no need to pay for a larger package all the time.”
  • SiteGround – “If you are using, or planning to use, WordPress or WooCommerce for your website then you should be looking at SiteGround. Recommended by WordPress themselves, they offer three great value, managed hosting solutions. All three include an automated WordPress installer and setup to help you get up and running faster or if you already have a site, you can make use of their free migration plugin. We once had an issue with the plugin; the site we were working on was very large, and they manually transferred the site for us. The primary benefit of their managed hosting is that they automatically take care of the security and updates of your site for you at server level. Knowing your site is secure is a massive stress reliever for any small business.”

Michael Neely

Since 2015, I have built over one hundred WordPress websites for my clients. Whether building custom-coded WordPress themes, using popular page builders, or implementing new Gutenberg blocks, I stay current on the ever-changing world of WordPress.
https://michaelneely.net
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine is a relative newcomer in the world of WordPress hosting. I have heard a lot about WP Engine and have seen flawless performance from WP Engine working with clients who hosted their sites with them. Their recent acquisition of StudioPress allows them to offer super-premium themes built on the Genesis framework as a perk of their hosting packages. They are not the cheapest hosting option, but they are great value for the money. “
  • SiteGround – “SiteGround is another boutique hosting company offering hosting platforms for WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Joomla, and Drupal. How good is their hosting? SiteGround is one of the three web hosting companies officially recommended at WordPress.org. Competitive pricing also makes SiteGround one of my web hosting recommendations for small business.”
  • Bluehost – “Bluehost is the largest of my recommendations powering approximately 2% of websites on the Internet. Bluehost is also recommended by WordPress.org. Extremely competitive pricing is one of the perks of working with Bluehost. You’ll also enjoy 24/7 telephone support, free SSL certificates, and free domain name registration for the first year. If you are starting a new WordPress site or starting a new business, I recommend Bluehost as one of your options.”

Michael Tighe

Michael has worked in websites and digital marketing since before 100mb Iomega zip drives. During that time he has built an extremely well rounded skillset... Loving equally typography and well commented code, as much as he does piloting drones or leading his super talented team over at Solid. His worst fear is letting people down, and he’ll probably drop everything to help you if you asked nice enough.
http://asolidsite.com
  • Flywheel – “When we have a mission critical WordPress website that needs lightning fast speeds and 24/7 support that actually like their jobs… we choose Flywheel. The size of site doesn’t matter, but the more important the website – the better it is to trust Flywheel. They also feature an amazing user control panel and a ton of tools that make our lives easier AND more secure. A few great examples are Force-SSL and their built-in inherent website security. A company well worth checking out.”
  • Atrema Technologies – “For the majority of our projects we work with a local Canadian partner called Atrema Technologies. Their data centre is located within Canada (for those that do not want their data in the US), and they are a team that is incredibly easy to work with. From WordPress sites to custom servers, I get to talk with a technical expert anytime I need anything. The Atrema team is extremely hands-on; I’ve gotten to talk with and know the team there, and it is just refreshing to work with a company that isn’t so big they don’t really need to care about you. These guys treat every project I bring them with respect.”

Rebecca Holdstock

An independent Web Designer and Frontend WordPress Developer with 18 years' experience working with small businesses. Rebecca works across business sectors, helping her clients to make the most of their online presence including advising them on which hosting providers to choose. Working independently has meant she has worked on sites hosted with many different providers, giving her good insight on which to base her recommendations.
https://rebeccaholdstock.co.uk/
  • 34SP – “My number one choice would be 34SP.com, a UK Hosting provider based in Manchester. They are not the cheapest, but the service they provide is top notch and value for money. They offer specialist WordPress hosting on fast servers and will make regular platform updates automatically taking away the worry about security. Backups and a secure certificate (a necessity these days) are included. If you want to make changes to your site, you have a staging area where you can test and experiment on a copy before going live. When switching, they will migrate your site over for you and you can talk through setting up your email with a friendly member of staff.”
  • SiteGround – “If you have less budget or if you want to host more than one site, then I recommend SiteGround. They offer similar features on their packages, although they don’t have the staging facility. When needing support you can speak to someone on the phone but often ‘chat’ is faster.”

Tim Brown

Tim Brown is the Owner of Hook Agency, a digital marketing agency driving website traffic and conversion, focused primarily on construction companies and small business.
https://hookagency.com

“I come at this problem from the point of view of someone who LOVES WordPress, and believes it’s the best possible option for small business. #1 because it’s extremely easy to find a developer to work on your WordPress project (even if your former developer goes AWOL), and #2 because there are so many great extensions (plugins) to WordPress allowing you to use open source awesomeness to help with SEO, image optimization, and thousands more things – Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and Webs aren’t open source, so they could never create all of these tools for their platform.”

  • WP Engine – “Wp Engine is our #1 recommended hosting platform because of its emphasis on security, daily backups, and having a super intuitive staging system, that allows you to test your changes before moving them to live. We love how simple WP Engine makes everything, and that it saves us time!”
  • GoDaddy – “Mainly for its extremely helpful customer service, I think GoDaddy still deserves props for its commitment to hosting, and domain registration. It’s upped its game to compete with the likes of WP Engine with Managed WordPress Hosting, and is a solid option for hosting in my opinion.”
  • Flywheel – “A fast follower of WP Engine, Flywheel allows you to create ‘blueprints’ or basic setups of starter theme, and plugins so you don’t have to start from scratch every time with your WordPress instances. I think Flywheel is an excellent third option, particularly for WordPress.”

James Wood

I've spent the last 15 years pushing the limits of web technology to help organisations find new customers, grow their audience & build loyal communities. I build unique websites for companies, giving them the tools to deliver value to their customers.
https://onward.studio

“First, talk to your website developer. They’ll know more about your web platform than you do, so talk to them about the capacity, scalability and performance that you’ll need for your business. Developers work with hosting platforms every day, so they’ll know what you need to look for to get the best out of your site.

Second, understand that there’s a difference between personal and professional web hosting. ‘Shared’ hosting, which is what you get for those offers that are less than $10 / month, is slow, has poor uptime and is insecure. Your business is professional, so it should use professional hosting to make sure your potential customers get a snappy, reliable experience.

Lastly, know what you’re looking for in a web host. SSL is vital to avoid alarming ‘insecure’ warnings. A global Content Delivery Network will help your site stay fast wherever in the world someone is accessing it from. Uptime should be at least 99.99%. And your host should be scalable — avoid hosts that cut you off or over-charge you when your website becomes popular, look instead for hosts that let you instantly upgrade your plan to cope with your level of traffic.”

  • Amazon Web Services – “Without a doubt, the best performance and reliability we’ve had for our sites is Amazon’s AWS. It’s fast, secure and has excellent uptime. It has an excellent backup system to help you avoid catastrophes. It’s also more scalable than any other host we’ve found, with lots of plan levels that start very cost-effectively and only need to increase once your business is attracting lots of visitors. It supports lots of operating systems and platforms, including WordPress, Magento, Drupal and Joomla.”
  • WP Engine – “If you’re using a WordPress site, you won’t go far wrong with WP Engine. They cover all of the professional basics like SSL and CDN, and have generous visitor capacity in their tiers. It also helps deal with some of WordPress’s weaknesses, providing strong backup and caching tools. It’s not the cheapest service out there, but the customer service and added value it offers your business makes it well worth the investment.”

Susan Smith

Susan Smith specializes in web design for the construction trades. With a tried-and-true process, she brings them a steady flow of leads through a kickass website, helps them get great reviews, and attract top workers. No bull sh*t. Just results.
https://justforcontractors.ca

“If you are a startup or small business, price will always be a concern when looking for web hosting services, but it shouldn’t be your only concern. Looking for a host company can be very confusing when you don’t know what to look for in a provider. Some hosting providers may have some of the best marketing out there to get your business, but they aren’t always the best option. On a typical monthly subscription, pricing plans can be as low as single figures or reach as high as triple digits, depending on the hosting plan you need.

The 3 most important factors you should consider when choosing a host company are speed (how long it takes a site to load), uptime (needs to be at least 99.94%), and customer support.
Two great host companies are:”

  • A2 Hosting – “A2 Hosting is a solid web host all around, with extremely high uptime and excellent page loading speed; they claim to be 20X faster. This is really important today as people won’t stick around waiting for your website to load. They have great customer support, either through live chat, email or phone 24/7/365.

    A2 provides a few helpful, preventative measures to keep hackers out of your site with HackScan; a free service that includes virus scanning, 24/7 security monitoring, and a brute force defense.

    A2 Hosting offer very fast, high performance web hosting services suitable for websites of all sizes.

    On average, A2 Hosting’s prices are slightly higher than what you’ll find from other companies, they come in around the middle of the pack, but worth it because they offer good value for your money and have package plans that work with your budget.”

  • SiteGround – “SiteGround is a hosting provider with an excellent uptime score. They also offer uptime guarantee, providing you with one month of free service if uptime falls below 99.99% and an additional month if uptime falls below 99.90%.

    SiteGround takes pride in their customer support; their knowledgeable support staff is available 24/7/365.

    All SiteGround servers are highly optimized for speed and are super-fast.

    Worried about getting hacked? (it happens all the time) Another great feature, SiteGround sets all of your websites to auto-update so that you no longer have to worry about installing the latest patches or software updates.

    SiteGround’s pricing is also a bit more than the average, but well worth the price. The best pricing you receive is when you first sign up, so sign up for the 3 year plan. However, with no hidden fees, the price is actually significantly less than companies like GoDaddy.”

When it comes to hosting providers A2 Hosting and SiteGround are 2 of the best companies; they both have blazing fast hosting with amazing uptime and great support.

Jane Horwood

Web designer and developer of 20 years, based in Cambridge UK. I work with small to medium size businesses, start-ups, not for profits and charities.
catfishwebdesign.com
  • WiserHosting – “I have been using Wiser Hosting for about 15 years and they are my go-to web hosting company. Their prices start at £24 + VAT for a year’s hosting, which is extremely affordable. I have hundreds of clients using their services who I believe are all very happy. If there are problems, I am able to email and get a prompt response. There is also a contact phone number and I know that some of my clients have spoken to them direct.”

Bobby Breaux

Have hosted client websites on web hosting company platforms since 2000.
https://sneakerwebdesign.com
  • InMotion Hosting – “My company, Sneaker, has been using InMotion hosting since the 4th quarter of 2013, which is unbelievable. Since 2000, we’ve been through many hosting companies to finally arrive at a company that manages their growth and administrates their servers with consistent excellence. We have tried just about every major hosting company, or at least the top 20, in that time frame.

    A pattern we always see is that a hosting company starts off with super fast hosting, great support, good internal organization and a lot of enthusiasm. In our world, IT and web companies talk and word of mouth gets these start-up web hosting companies off the ground. Then the hosting company will experience tremendous growth at about 1.5 yrs to 2 yrs after their glorious introduction. That’s when the majority of them take the dive, because they can’t handle the growth. They hire server admins that they shouldn’t have hired, and things get messy. Things don’t work the same anymore. Servers are filled with too many websites.

    But InMotion is not that kind of company. They have some internal business goals that have kept them on track. They work with me on my hosting pricing. They help us with Unix/Linux migrations from other hosting companies to their hosting, and their support has worked through every issue we’ve had since we started in 2013. The issues have been rare. We have a Dedicated Server on InMotion, and it’s been very solid, and we run a VPS server at InMotion. We were running 2 VPS accounts, but one of the servers was having some issues. The other one has been steady since we started using it in about 2016. We can perform automated backups through WHM, we have access to SSH to move files quickly within the InMotion network, we can secure access to server and hosting administration with white and black listing of IP’s and subnet masks, etc.”

  • GoDaddy – “We have a lot of clients on Godaddy. I would recommend getting on a VPS plan. GoDaddy seems to be fairly consistent. The shared hosting plans are sufficient for companies that are just starting out with basic websites and few visitors, but not recommended if you really want your business to be taken seriously. If you go beyond a few visitors and a 10 page site with static content, you need to step up your game and get on a VPS, because at that level, you have a lot more flexibility. It will end up paying for itself if you’ve got a web development company that’s trying access things like the php.ini, or the database. Adminstering websites can be a lot easier through cPanel, with root level access, on a hosting plan that offers SSH and allows php settings to be adjusted. A step further is having control over your versions of PHP and MySQL. If you’re website has a user base, or ecommerce, then you’re probably going to need all of this stuff.

    The good thing about GoDaddy is that they’ve been a big company for a long time, so their infrastructure has already been through the trials that smaller hosting companies experience when everyone abandons their web host to migrate to the latest and greatest new hosting company. GoDaddy’s way beyond that. Their support is easily accessible. They will be here tomorrow and the next day. There isn’t a day that goes by that we’re not doing something on Godaddy, and in general, things are easy to do there.”

  • Bluehost – “We have a few clients on BlueHost. We’ve never had problems with them. As usual, if you’re on a shared hosting plan, performance, access to hosting management tools, and access to adjust server settings can all be issues. That’s across the board, happening with any shared plan on any hosting company, for the most part. It doesn’t matter what hosting company you’re on, if they are one of the top 20, in general, their shared hosting is going to be slower than VPS or Dedicated, hence the pricing structure. I don’t recommend shared hosting for any serious business. Bluehost has been a pretty solid solution for our clients that have sites hosted by them. We haven’t had any issues with them in the last 3 years.”

Chris LaFay

Chris founded Classic City Consulting after dreaming of the perfect work-life balance. Not only does he get to enjoy designing + implementing websites, he also gets to play with his dog, travel, enjoy family dinners, and keep up with baseball.
www.classiccity.com
  • WP Engine – “WPEngine (WPE) is our company’s primary hosting provider for WordPress websites. There are a few key elements to look at when determining a good fit. In my opinion, WPE checks all the boxes. First, you want a hosting provider that has security baked in at the sever-level and not just plugins. I’ve been using WPE to host client sites for the last two years and we have not had to deal with any hacked sites or security breaches. Also, if something does go wrong, WPE provides a rolling 30 days of backups. This allows you to restore a backup with a single click. Most small business sites can be restored within 5 minutes.

    Another benefit for WPE is a staging site. Whenever one of our clients needs an overhaul or some testing of a new plugin, we copy the site down to a staging location to make all the changes we want. This way we don’t have to touch the Production site and our developers can safely make the changes they need to without worrying about breaking the live site.

    Lastly, WPE has live technical support and the agents will dig into the problem with you and work to find a solution as quickly as possible.”

Antti Koskenrouta

Antti Koskenrouta is the founder of Mukava, a Washington, DC-based WordPress development company. Mukava builds made-to-order WordPress websites, custom integrations and plugins to meet the clients’ needs. As an active member of the WordPress community, Antti has spoken at several WordCamps.
https://mukava-agency.com
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine has emerged as one of the best hosting solutions for WordPress. Their plans include separate enviroments for development, staging and live sites, malware scanning and removal, and an easy-to-use backup system. Their page-load times are pretty much unparalleled, and for the most part, their customer service is fast, knowledgeable and helpful. There are cheaper alternatives out there, but WPE truly offers a great value for your money.”
  • DigitalOcean – “For those with some Unix skills, Digital Ocean offers a fantastic value for anyone wanting to set up their own servers. They have consistently added to their offerings, so there are very few limitations to what you can build or host on their infrastructure. Their documentation is really robust, which allows even those with just basic Unix skills to get started. Based on my own experience, the barrier of entry is much lower than with AWS, and therefore maybe more suitable for smaller operations. Digital Ocean is also very affordable, which makes it a strong contender.”

Brian G. Bearden

Brian G. Bearden is the CEO of Upstream Marketing, a company that improves conversion rates through a strategic approach to marketing and web design. Brian is the author of “52 Tips to Turn Your Website Into A Sales Machine.”
www.upstreammarketing.net
  • GoDaddy – “I like GoDaddy and one of the main reasons is their US based support. They have very educated customer service people that are available to answer your questions, and walk you through any questions or problems you have. The one thing I don’t like about GoDaddy is that they are in the business of trying to sell you everything including the kitchen sink. You only need to register the domain name and sign up for the hosting account. Just keep clicking “no” for any of the other services they offer (other than the SSL Certificate). You may get follow up emails and even personal phone calls trying to sell you more of their services. You don’t need anything else.

    I have many clients that host with GoDaddy because they are reliable and very affordable. I recommend that you purchase the domain name and hosting under your name with your credit card. This way, you own everything in your name. Don’t let your website design company register your domain or hosting under their name. Again, you need to own everything under your name.”

  • A2 Hosting – “I was referred to A2Hosting.com by a client of mine. They are an affordable hosting company and one of the top features is how secure their servers are. They take extra steps to make sure that they keep their PHP versions updated. They pride themselves on having very secure servers. Unlike GoDaddy, where I do not recommend their WordPress hosting packages, I do like A2Hosting’s WordPress hosting packages. I like their Turbo Package. The Turbo Package includes everything that most small business websites will need. They have an SSL Certificate that is included in this package.

    Like GoDaddy they have additional services that can be added on, but unless you have a unique website, I would recommend discussing these additional services with your webmaster or web design company before purchasing any of them. I have experience with their support team and they have been quite responsive to my needs.”

  • HostGator – “HostGator is my third choice. They have very affordable hosting packages. I recommend their Business Plan package, which is under Shared Web Hosting. Your WordPress site will work just fine with this shared hosting package.
    I’m not that familiar with their customer service personnel because I have not had any issues that made me need to contact them.”

Zach Schwartz

Expirit was founded by Zach Schwartz with a vision to help small brands go big. Today, Expirit serves as the go-to branding agency for top-quality work at affordable prices. Expirit offers brand and web development, graphic design and digital marketing.
expiritco.com
  • GoDaddy – “Our favorite thing about Go-Daddy is their outstanding 24/7 customer support. Whether you are having a hosting issue or just need a walk-through on how to complete a specific task, Go-Daddy is there to help you. Unlike many other customer support centers, Go-daddy never takes too long to answer your phone call.

    In regards to pricing, Go-Daddy has many easy-to-use and inexpensive hosting options for beginners and small businesses. We especially like their $8.79/month, “Deluxe Web Hosting Plan”, which features unlimited websites, unlimited storage and unlimited subdomains!

    Go-Daddy is one of the biggest names in web hosting, which means their online communities are really big too! Have an issue and you don’t want to place a call? You’ll be sure to find a lot of answers on online forums!”

  • Bluehost – “When it comes to great pricing, BlueHost is the go-to place for a reliable, low downtime hosting provider. BlueHost has beginner plans starting at $2.95/month and $5.95/month for unlimited websites, unlimited storage and unmetered bandwidth.

    In our experience with BlueHost, their customer service can be a little slower to get on the phone than Go-daddy. However compared to other hosting providers, their customer service is definitely a close second!

    As far as user-friendliness goes, BlueHost takes the cake with their extremely user-friendly interface. Whether it’s editing important hosting files in the backend or simply setting up a WordPress website, BlueHost makes it as easy as it gets!”

  • HostGator – “HostGator is a very affordable option. They offer cloud hosting and 24/7 customer support like GoDaddy and BlueHost. HostGator is up there in the top tier of web hosting companies, however, their page loading times are not very fast. They also charge for backups.”

Roberto Severino

I'm a self-taught digital marketer with a passion for SEO, PPC, and social media marketing, although I also love web development too. I also like to draw and read in my spare time and am a geek at heart.
https://robertoseverino.com
  • HostGator – “HostGator has been my main hosting provider of choice for years. The company is always reliable and available to answer each question I have. Their customer support team has also saved me from some very dire situations where I would break the code on my website, or something would happen with the .htaccess files I’d edit. I love how everything you need is there to not only host your website, but easily install WordPress on a new domain. It’s also incredibly easy for you to create subdomains and go into the CPanel to view your information in case you wanted to use FTP to access your sites from there.

    Although there are times where the customer service could be improved, most of the time, the people I’ve spoken to have been helpful and friendly, and always willing to educate me on how to fix site problems and bugs. Their customer service on the phone is the best too. For example, I had a client whose site I needed to migrate over from another hosting provider, and I was able to reach a representative within minutes. They made it clear what would be required to transfer a website domain, and the breadth of knowledge they had was impressive.

    A few months back, I upgraded the hosting on my website to their business plan and saw a massive difference in the performance. For just $16 a month, I get outstanding hosting which has helped my site score in GTMetrix and it loads in less than 2 seconds. I have nothing but glowing words for Hostgator, and would highly recommend them to anyone looking to build a new site for their business. Look into their business hosting, and you’ll be astounded as I was when I made the upgrade.”

  • Flywheel – “Flywheel is a more recent discovery I made, but was blown away by their hosting when I tried it out for a client site I recently worked on. I had been familiar with their development tool called “Local by Flywheel,” which allows you to have a local environment on your computer for any WordPress sites you build. I hadn’t even thought about their hosting much until I ran into a problem where I needed to show my dev site to a client, but had no way of doing it when turning off my computer.

    So one day, I looked at Flywheel’s site and decided to try out a plan costing roughly $30 a month. This was the perfect solution for my needs, as I was able to transfer the client website onto their platform easily and have a staging environment to still work in. The website speed of my client site was unlike anything I had ever seen. In GTMetrix, a popular site speed measuring tool, the site was able to load in a little over a second! Because their platform doesn’t rely on Apache by default, there’s no need to have as many caching plugins on WordPress. Your code is already minified and compressed, for the most part, so you can focus more on ensuring your site is mobile-friendly, and the on-page search engine optimization is in order.

    If you can spare at least $100 a month for Flywheel and have multiple business sites you need hosting for, the platform is entirely worth the price. Their customer service is a cut above the rest. You can even reach out to them on weekends, and they’re there to answer any questions you might have about their hosting and other products.”

Tom Hayes

Tom is a full stack web developer with 8 years' experience in front end development, back end development and systems administration.
https://tomhay.es
  • DigitalOcean – “DigitalOcean is a great option for people with a fair amount of Linux experience. The platform allows you to spin up individual VPSs (virtual private servers) known as “droplets”, and configure them to your own needs. DigitalOcean offer a range of droplet sizes with different processing power which are scalable to your requirements, and their very competitive pricing system ensures you only pay for the time and bandwidth your droplet uses.

    Their support is fairly minimal, based on a knowledgebase system rather than direct support, but their documentation is extremely extensive (in fact their articles on systems administration are some of the best guides around) and anyone with a basic grasp of the command line should be able to get a server set up in a few hours.”

  • Cloudways – “For those who feel a little intimidated by the terminal, Cloudways offers a friendlier interface for DigitalOcean (and several other VPS providers). Not strictly a hosting provider in the standard sense, Cloudways acts as a fluffy “wrapper” for your VPS and provides thing like a “proper” command panel, 24/7 expert support, stack optimisation and super-fast caching that may otherwise take you hours of valuable time to put into place. It’s a great option for those a little less technically minded and the pricing is very competitive.”
  • Flywheel – “For those who need a more managed solution, Flywheel is an excellent option. Specialising in WordPress hosting enables Flywheel to do this one thing extremely well. Offering priority support, a 99.95% uptime guarantee and ongoing technical account management to proactively assist you through every stage of a project, Flywheel can help your site progress and build with your business.”

Roy Harken

Marketing Coach and Project Manager for small businesses looking to grow their income, connect with new clients and automate lead generation.
https://royharken.com

“I help sales professionals by providing website tools and pre-made websites to help them automate their lead generation. After selling thousands of tools, typically the next question I get is, “Where should I host my website?” I’m happy to share my recommendation not only based on my own experience of hosting websites since 1996, but also based on the feedback of my 5,000+ clients to date.

My strong recommendation is to only use a hosting company that offers cPanel support. It is widely used and most website managers will know how to use it. Among other features, it will help you setup emails, view website logs and run backups. The most important feature in my opinion, is the ability to download the websites and settings, and easily move your hosting to another company. In fact, migrating your website between cPanel hosting is so easy, many companies will offer migration for you. It’s a small effort on their part to gain a new client.”

  • Namecheap – “If you are an absolute startup and want the cheapest way to get started, I’d recommend Namecheap.com. As of today, their cheapest shared hosting is $2.88 per month for up to 3 websites or $4.88 per month for unlimited websites. They offer email support and I’ve had most of my issues resolved in a few hours. After you signup, it takes a little bit of effort to get access to your cPanel account, but once you do, everything works the same with namecheap.com as it does with any other hosting company. If you are starting your first website and looking for a solid hosting company and dirt cheap prices, this is the way to go.”
  • A2 Hosting – “If you are an established company and your website is a significant part of your business plan, I’d recommend a2hosting.com. This is where I personally host my own websites and hosting that I’ve set up for my clients. Their mid-Price shared hosting plan is $12.99, which supports unlimited websites and all the bells and whistles you may need. If you have a high traffic website and page load speed is a factor for you, they do offer Boost with up to 20X faster page load speed for around $12 per month. Most of my issues or server update requests have been resolved by email in under an hour.

    Another nice feature of a2hosting.com is they offer FREE SSL certificates, which are recommended for all websites by Google. While other companies may be a bit cheaper per month for hosting, when you include the SSL certificate cost, the prices may be cheaper with a2hosting.com in the end.

    A2hosting.com also offers reseller packages, which is the primary reason why I use them. If you want to host websites for your clients or become a website wholesaler, these reseller packages will allow you to set up separate cPanel accounts for each client. Their cheapest reseller account is $30 / month and will allow you to create up to 40 cPanel accounts.”

  • Liquid Web – “For high volume websites or websites that require HIPAA certification, I’d recommend liquidweb.com for hosting. They are known for their support and guarantee you can reach support within 59 seconds. My experience is that I can reach support within 15 seconds typically, and most issues are resolved within a few minutes. Their hosting starts at around $60 per month and they offer hosting for: Managed WordPress, HIPAA compliant Servers, Dedicated Servers, VPS (Virtual Private Servers), Multiple Server Configurations with Failover for 100% guaranteed website uptime and more. They also offer a SLA (Service Level Agreement) so that if your website is down for even an hour, you will get a credit for the entire month. In the 8 years that I hosted with them, I only experienced one outage of a few minutes. By the time I had reached their technical support, their monitors had already discovered the issue and were in the process of fixing it.”

“While there are hundreds of hosting companies that may work for you or your business, these are the 3 hosting companies I would recommend without hesitation. I have experienced multi-day outages with some other well-known companies, so along with shopping for price, I would also do research into their technical support, service level agreements, and average time to resolve an issue.

My recommendation is to stick with cPanel hosting and backup your websites before and after any major updates are done to your account. You will want to back up your account before any major updates because if your website designer makes a major goof, you can restore the last good working version of your website on your own.

My other recommendation is to use Godaddy or another domain name registrar to register your domain name. If you register your domain at the same place you host your website, the hosting company may hold your domain name hostage to continue hosting your account.

In short, if you are working on a bare-minimum budget, namecheap.com is the cheapest way to start. For 80% of companies that are looking for an affordable price and solid support, a2hosting.com is the way to go. If your business is making a significant income on your website, want your own server and need the best support available, liquidweb.com is the place to go!”

Brent Lightner

Brent Lightner is the founder and CEO of Taoti Creative (www.taoti.com), a Washington, DC-based creative/technology agency. Brent started Taoti from a college dorm (Juniata College) in 1996 where he started building websites to pay for school. From bedroom to dorm room to basement to their current headquarters on Capitol Hill in DC, Brent has worn every hat and served every role at Taoti.
www.taoti.com
  • Pantheon – “Pantheon is a great hosting option once you’ve outgrown the entry level stuff like GoDaddy. The nice part about Pantheon is that they build in development, staging, and live production environments out of the box. They also include many DevOps (Developer Operations) tools that are normally associated with much more sophisticated hosting operations. And they use containerized and distributed systems to get the best of shared and dedicated cloud hosting paradigms for a fraction of the cost it takes to set up all this infrastructure yourself.”

Angela Roche

Founder of Design By Day, a brand & digital agency based in Manchester, UK.
https://www.designbyday.co.uk

“Not all hosting companies are made equal and in my experience you do get what you pay for. If your website is critical to your business, which it most likely is, then hosting is not something you want to scrimp on!”

  • 34SP.com – “34sp.com is the hosting company of choice for us at Design By Day and we recommend them to all our clients. 90% of our customers are hosted with them. We’re WordPress specialists, so the WordPress hosting package is perfect for our clients.

    They are at the higher end of the hosting price spectrum as their WordPress hosting is fully containerised for maximum security and performance. But they are not unaffordable for small businesses. Their customer service is great too – their team are always happy to help, restore backups or even migrate your website for you. They have clearly taken their time to create a simple, clean and easy to use dashboard for your hosting accounts – something which is often overlooked by cheaper hosting companies. 34sp are the go-to-guys for WordPress hosting, no other recommendations necessary!”

Justin Staples

Located in Austin, TX and serving companies nationwide - JS specializes in web design, SEO and digital marketing solutions for small businesses.
https://js-interactive.com
  • SiteGround – “SiteGround has been a preferred partner of mine who I strongly recommend for your business. I’ve been collaborating with them for a number of years now. They offer a variety of add-on features and free tools such as SSLs and CDNs at a very competitive price. They have good performance, fast servers, 24/7 support and security features that you won’t find among other competitors. Support should be a primary factor when making a decision to partner with a 3rd party hosting provider, and SiteGround seems to be on top of their game with their customer support calls and chat. Highly recommend these guys to any business looking for premier hosting at an affordable rate.”
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine specializes in WordPress Hosting, and with about 75,000,000 websites powered by WordPress, WPE is a viable option for any small business looking for a flexible solution online. They’ve developed an outstanding reputation for being a premier hosting solution for WordPress sites. I have worked with them on a handful of websites and have found their customer support to be top-notch. WPE offers several features such as CDNs and SSLs at no additional cost. Some small businesses may see WPE as being pricier than their neighbouring competitors, with the most basic plan starting at $35/mo. However, note that WPE’s most basic package also includes a Dev/Stage and Production environment; an important feature that often comes at an additional cost with competitors. This alone makes their solution worth the price – having a very friendly environment and support team for development.”

Ethan Anderson

Ethan is owner/founder of web design agency, Big Imprint. For nearly 10 years they have been building and supporting websites for small businesses and non-profits.
https://www.bigimprint.com
  • Flywheel – “My top recommendation for website hosting for small businesses would be Flywheel (www.getflywheel.com). Flywheel offers high-quality managed WordPress hosting. My experience has been that Flywheel is easy to use, reliable, has a good feature set, and is backed by a high-quality support team. You might pay a bit more than some other companies, but I feel it’s worth every penny. Features like staging for site redesigns, easy SSL certificates, managed WP updates, etc. are very useful. I will say from time to time the interface has been slightly buggy, but that’s to be expected with any web interface and it’s always been quickly remedied. For small businesses looking for a WordPress host, I would start your search with Flywheel.”

Drew Sirico

With 18 years of Digital Marketing experience, Drew has broad expertise in web technology as well as traditional marketing principles, leveraging digital acquisition tactics to produce substantial growth for Edible Arrangements International, Inc.® and other clients/brands over the years.
https://www.beelocalmarketing.com
  • GoDaddy – “This may come as a surprise to many, but sometimes one of the biggest can be one of the best, and with annual revenue north of $2B, GoDaddy is certainly one of the biggest. It is the largest domain registrar in the world, but does that make it the best hosting provider? Probably not. The reason I recommend GoDaddy to small businesses is simple;

    1. Solid performance
    2. Reasonable prices
    3. Options & ease of use
    4. Support

    Many hosts, large and small can stake claim to owning top spots in any of these categories, but I feel that GoDaddy has proven itself enough in each to get my thumbs up.

    A recent test of their economy package with a fresh WordPress install yielded 99.96% uptime over a 10-month period with an average load time of 455ms. Each of those results would likely be considered Top 5-ish among major web hosting providers.

    Performance aside, GoDaddy’s economy package is still seen as expensive at $7.99 p/mo compared to Bluehost or HostGator, which have economy packages under $3 p/mo and post similar performance metrics. GoDaddy has responded with promotions frequently, such as the current offering at a $2.79 p/mo first year rate with the standard $7.99 renewal. Where it starts to shine, however, is on the Deluxe and above plans where GoDaddy offers unlimited sites, storage and subdomains for a $3.99 p/mo 12-month teaser with a $10.99 renewal, more or less matching the other large providers.

    If you take your small business seriously, you probably shouldn’t be on a shared economy plan with any provider. GoDaddy offers an entry-level VPS (Virtual Private Server) business hosting package at $22.99 p/mo, and with unlimited bandwidth, that becomes easy to recommend.

    One downfall of GoDaddy is the annoying and often confusing onslaught of upsells during the checkout process. But if you can make it through the cart and figure out all the components you need, the setup and integration of your options should be seamless, even with 3rd party products like Microsoft Office 365. GoDaddy offers their own easy-to-use product user-interfaces along the way, many times eliminating the need to ever log into cPanel. Installing WordPress is an absolute breeze.

    Lastly, I give GoDaddy 5 stars in the one area which is often seen as their shortcoming; Support. Ignoring any quantitative or qualitative data about this subject online, I will speak from personal experience. In the dozens, if not hundreds of various contacts I’ve made to GoDaddy support over the years, be it Live Chat, Phone or Email; whether the issue seemed to be on their end or one of my many “Doh!” moments, I have NEVER left the session disappointed.

    As a PostScript, I’d also recommend GoDaddy web hosting to small agencies, like mine, where you can become a reseller of virtually all their products. Their domain name registration tools and online ordering are white-boxed, easy to setup and maintain (as well as integrate with your own website) and offer generous revenue shares. While this does not influence my personal review of its service, and certainly won’t make me a millionaire at my level of resale, it is a nice perk for small agencies.

    So, in conclusion, there are some hosts out there with better performance. Many with cheaper points of entry. But at the package price point where it matters for small business, the variety and ease of option management and accessible, helpful support make GoDaddy my #1 choice for small business web hosting.”

Evgeny Kasperovich

euGenius Vision SEO strategies deliver results, rank businesses on page #1 of Google, and increase clients' sales. By using our search engine marketing and social media services, our clients gain online visibility, increase their traffic, and dominate the market!
https://eugeniusvision.com
  • SiteGround – “Amazing customer support, very reliable. SiteGround has a monthly limit for visitors, so if people build high traffic sites, they might be better looking at WPX. For local businesses, SiteGround is a great option.”
  • WPX Hosting – “WPX is probably my number #1 choice with great customer service and no traffic limit.”
  • DigitalOcean – “Buy a $10 per month VPS and host your site on it. It’s more technical to setup and people need to understand what they are doing. You will have to do most of the things on your own by using this option.”

David Harris

I'm the managing director and co-owner of One2create Ltd. A marketing, web and creative agency based in Hampshire.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidharris-one2create/
  • WP Engine – “If your website is built in WordPress, this hosting platform is targeted towards optimum performance for WordPress websites.”
  • Microsoft Azure – “If your website is an enterprise web system then Azure was created with your developers and your website visitors in mind.”
  • Your Web Design Agency – “The hosting environment provided by your web design agency – because they will have ensured that it is set-up to run the website that they have built for you in the most optimized format possible.”

Alan Neale

Soma Digital Agency focuses on helping clients achieve success online by improving their digital strategies for lead generation, conversion and sales.
https://soma.ie
  • Flywheel – “Flywheel is the best web hosting for WordPress sites as it a managed platform with its own caching hardware, which makes your site lightening fast via PHP7.2. They have a great real-time 24 hour support and a live chat facility.”
  • Blacknight – “Blacknight is a very established web hosting provider based in Ireland and has customers around the world. They have great customer service and decent prices.”
  • domainname – “DomainName.ie is a great platform for sourcing the best .ie or .com domain and affordable hosting for your business. They give great advice on buying the best domain and hosting package to suit businesses of all sizes.”

Keith Saye

Keith has run a hosting business for small to medium businesses since 1999 and has experience in both shared and dedicated server hosting, both at data centres and at client owned facilities.
http://www.bigblastdesign.co.uk
  • 20i – “I have used several shared hosting facilities since 1999, however, so far 20i has been one of the most consistent in terms of high levels of service, quick response and huge value for money.

    Whereas other shared hosting providers often charge for items such as large mailboxes, SSL etc., 20i allow very generous resources right from the off. HTTPS wildcard certificates are offered as standard within packages and these pass all necessary browser tests for everyday websites. This is a great saving for you and your clients if you wish to have a secure website – really a must for most websites.

    Support is very important when hosting sites, and knowing that you will get highly responsive, helpful and top-notch support staff really makes a difference when issues arise, as they inevitably do.”

Matt Perrenoud

A web design and dev for many years, I build cool internet things for my clients.
https://grindstone.design
  • KnownHost – “KnownHost.com is my pick of the litter, especially for Managed VPS boxes. Great price and truly amazing support. 3 data centers to choose from in the US. Too many other hosts sell “Managed VPS” products that aren’t well managed at all. KnownHost support and responsiveness on any server issues that I run into are what really set them apart. I’ve heard good things about Liquid Web in this regard as well, but their prices are quite a bit more than KnownHost’s.”
  • Vultr – “For unmanaged server space for development purposes or temporary hosting I like vultr.com quite a bit.”
  • WP Engine – “For pure WordPress hosting where the client wants their own hosting and I don’t have to worry about leaving them with a subpar host, wpengine.com is the way to go.”

Barbara DiLisio

I create brands and websites for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
https://wickydesign.com
  • KnownHost – “I run multiple websites, so service and support is important to me. I have been using KnownHost for 2 years and the experience has been great. The hosting they offer is top of the line and their service and support is great. I’ve never had to wait more than a few minutes to hear from their support team. I like that they aren’t as big as some of the other companies because I feel they offer more personal attention.”

Jay Buys

CEO of Visceral, a San Diego based digital agency focused on helping organizations that are making the world better. Let me know how I can help.
https://www.thisisvisceral.com
  • Liquid Web – “I’ve been working with different hosting providers for almost twenty years and Liquid Web is the best I’ve ever worked with. I know a lot about servers and can usually handle most things on my own, so when I have a problem that stumps me, I need to be able to talk to someone who really knows their stuff. Liquid Web has solved every crazy issue I’ve ever thrown at them (which is quite a few since my team and I manage a lot of websites). You can get in touch with a knowledgeable and friendly technician in a very short period of time, which is extremely rare in the hosting business. Great products and solutions at affordable prices with the best support team in the industry makes this my #1 recommendation by far.”
  • Flywheel – “While a lot of hosting companies focus on an “any type of server you can imagine” business model, Flywheel is hyper focused on creating the best platform specifically for WordPress websites. With lots of built-in features like free SSL certificates, nightly backups, and server-side caching, Flywheel takes all the effort out of hosting for WordPress. They’re also reasonably priced for what you get, and have great plans for hosting just a single site or for agencies like mine that host a lot of different clients and projects. There are a million reasons to be using WordPress for your small business website and Flywheel takes all of the stress out of WordPress hosting.”
  • SiteGround – “Simple, reliable and extremely affordable. SiteGround is an excellent choice for any small business and especially those on a budget. They have both basic and easy-to-setup options, as well as a “geeky” options for developers like WP-CLI and Git integration. They also have a friendly and helpful support team, which is pretty much everything you need for a small business hosting solution.”

Cody Sharp

Cody has spent the last 18 years working on websites, is Google Analytics certified, and has a decade of professional marketing experience generating leads/revenue for B2B’s and B2C’s. In 2011, Cody founded Sharp Guys Web Design, a digital marketing company dedicated to providing small to mid-size businesses the marketing presence their businesses deserve.
https://sharpguyswebdesign.com

“Our company designs only WordPress websites so our clients typically are going to be using WordPress specific hosting. With that in mind, the 3 hosting companies I would recommend are going to be Flywheel, WP Engine, and SiteGround.”

  • Flywheel – “Flywheel is my favorite host and now includes 24/7 tech support. The biggest difference is they do a great job of getting things right the first time you ask for their help. I’ve used them for 5 years on websites that have very small amounts of traffic, and for websites that have a million visitors a week and they can scale accordingly. We focus more and more on website speed and they are among the best hosts for speed in the tests that we have done. They also offer free SSL licenses, which they make extremely easy to set up. I would say they are relatively easy for newcomers to use.”
  • WP Engine – “WP Engine provides great WordPress website hosting. Their price point starts a little bit higher than Flywheel, so usually I would go with Flywheel if it’s a smaller client I’m working with. And by small, I’m talking about the web traffic to the website, which is how both companies set their pricing. WP Engine just started offering a great partnership whereby they provide the entire Genesis WordPress theme framework as part of their regular hosting price. That’s hard to beat. These guys are fairly easy to use as well, but have more technical switches and levers you can pull without asking for help.”
  • SiteGround – “Neither of the two options above have the ability to do hosting above and beyond WordPress websites. So for clients that really want us to be able to handle everything in one single location (email addresses, domains, etc.), I can recommend SiteGround. While their support isn’t quite as good as either Flywheel or WP Engine, they do provide a good service and the pricing is very reasonable.”

Gina Ramsey

Gina Ramsey is the President of Pink Dog Digital, a full service digital marketing agency. Gina started this project because she recognized a need for a consultative digital marketing approach that scales to the size of the client.
www.pinkdogdigital.com
  • Bluehost – “I would recommend Bluehost to any small business owner that has limited technological experience/ knowledge or has a limited marketing budget. Bluehost offers free domain registration for a year to protect your business, as well as a free SSL Certificate to protect your customers. If you like to work at all hours of the day and night like me, you do not have to worry about things going awry with your website because Bluehost provides round-the-clock support services. The WordPress installation and low-budget services should be good enough reason alone to choose Bluehost, as WordPress is essential to the success of any small business.”
  • DreamHost – “If you don’t quite know what you are looking for in a hosting provider, I would recommend Dreamhost. With Dreamhost you get more than just web hosting; they offer a wide variety of hosting solutions set to fit any small business need. They also prioritize fast and reliable website loading services, which allows for improved user experience and optimal traffic. From experience, I can confirm Dreamhost is committed to providing their customers with the very best rather than focusing on making a profit, which is something I value in a company.”
  • Google Sites – “I know recommending Google may seem cliché, but that is only because Google has proven itself as a superior hosting service time and time again. The digital world is constantly changing, and I am constantly learning new things to provide my clients with the best services I can. The web provider I see changing the most is Google; every day I discover a new plugin, a new update, or a new service. If you are a small business that is looking for a versatile hosting provider, I would highly recommend looking into Google Sites.”

Phelan Riessen

I believe all businesses should have a website presence that generates a return on their investment, so I created NonStop Marketing to get the most from being online.
https://nsmworldwide.com
  • SiteGround – “I have worked with a dozen of the top name brand hosting companies. They are all okay, but SiteGround is my favorite go-to shared hosting. Why? Because they offer the most memory (RAM). The top hosting accounts, and I’m looking at you, the daddy of all hosting, offer only a partial bit of RAM for your shared hosting accounts. Why does RAM matter? Because some plugins don’t even work on low memory hosts. Google judges your site by the speed on how fast the site loads and memory is crucial for this.

    SiteGround also offers free security certificates by Let’s Encrypt. Whether you have one website or are a serial entrepreneur, having a cost-effective security certificate for every domain is important for the credibility of your visitors and Google’s algorithm.”

K. Morawski

Web design & online marketing specialist with more then 11 years of prof. experience.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/krzysztof-morawski/

“Depending on the company’s budget & or their outsourcing web partner competencies I would recommend one of these 3 solutions:”

  • OVH –

    “STARTER
    OVH with their Cloud Web hosting service. Why? Good speed thanks to the SSD disk combined with the simplicity of managed hosting & a relatively low price. For whom? Best for beginners with almost zero knowledge about hosting & people looking for a good but cheap service.

    SEMI-PRO

    Again OVH with their Cloud SSD VPS. Why? Great in terms of value for money. My personal favorite is the VPS SSD 3 because of the 2 vCore processor and 8GB RAM. It will give you a much, much better performance than any standard hosting service. However, you must have the server configuration done by someone who knows how to do it in order to benefit from this. For whom? Businesses that are looking for high quality, but want to keep their costs down.”

  • Infomaniak –

    “PRO
    Managed Cloud Server from Infomaniak. Why? Great powerful and fast servers that can be easily upgraded according to your needs and much better than OVH for customer support. For whom? Businesses that are looking for the best quality even if you have to pay for it.”

Vernette John-Joiles

Vernette John-Joiles, is a website designer/developer, workshop and seminar facilitator and online branding consultant. She has worked with start-up and small to medium businesses to assist with the development of their online presence. She is the winner of the 2018/19 BeMogul Award for being recognised as being an influential business owner and entrepreneurship, and also an expert contributor partner for Women on the Web.
www.7dwebdesign.co.uk
  • Smart Hosting – “If you are looking for a hosting provider that provides excellent customer service, then I rate these guys as the best! I have used them as a reseller option for my clients for the last 2 years so that I can set up and maintain website hosting on their behalf, and I can say that Smart Hosting have the most communicative, responsive support team… on the planet!

    Using their dashboard to manage and customise your account settings will either be very simple for you if you’re somewhat conversant with hosting jargon, or you’ll find that the learning curve will not be very steep if you think that you’re not very tech savvy. These days, we all want something quick and simple that does not require too much thinking time, and Smart Hosting have worked hard to provide that.

    They weigh in just as heavy as some other brands when it comes to server uptime, speed and all the other goodies that you could want from website hosting. One of the reasons why they would be so good for your small business is that they have extensive FAQs and articles to help you troubleshoot any niggles that you may encounter, and they do so in such a way where you don’t have to be digesting heaps of info…especially when you already have so much going on when it comes to keeping your business going.

    They may not be as well known as some other hosting brands that I could mention, but I can say that they are the most uncomplicated. I think you’ll come to appreciate how they work to keep you updated on changes that they are making to hosting packages, and what your options are to make sure that you are still getting the best value for money.

    If I could sing… correction… if I could sing well… I’d be the lead soprano with a praise chorus about Smart Hosting, and how much time they have saved me (for my own personal website and as a reseller) and also my clients. Sometimes the bigger names don’t always have it right as we can be led to believe. Sometimes it’s the smaller names that save the day!”

Craig Newman

I’m Craig Newman. I specialise in designing and developing Wordpress themes for medium to large companies to use in the real world. I try to create sites that will have a great user experience for end-users, as well as easy to use functionality behind the scenes for the owners, who need to be able to curate content on the Wordpress platform with ease.
https://purplecustard.com
  • WP Engine – “I develop websites exclusively for small to medium sized businesses and always utilise the WordPress platform to design upon. Most of these sites will also be running multiple plugins: for example, WooCommerce, Slider Revolution, Yoast SEO etc. The overall site speed is, by default, very slow (even when you disable any of the unneeded scripts from themes or plugins).

    I’ve testing many hosting solutions out over the years and have finally found one that is perfectly designed to host WordPress sites. WP-Engine has so many features for WordPress users; Backup points, each WP site gets a dedicated IP address, CDN (Content Delivery Network), Free SSL Certificates, Staging & Production environments, site migration, environment stats, redirect rules, GIT push and many more great tools specifically designed for WordPress sites.

    Just note that this is not the cheapest hosting option out there, but you get what you pay for and WP Engine makes sure all of my 50+ client WordPress sites are always running fast and smooth!”

  • GoDaddy – “This is my second choice based purely on the great support they provide. I’ve used GoDaddy several times in the past for cheap, easy to use, shared web hosting and email. If you have simple HTML5 websites, this is the hosting company for you. However, if you’re running complex WordPress themes, for multiple clients, I would only advise using GoDaddy if you’re trying to get your business off the ground and don’t have a huge budget. As with any cheap, shared hosting packages, you can’t expect your websites to be lightning quick, but with GoDaddy they have a decent back-end with access to everything you need (cPanel, SQL’s, Backups, Installation etc).”
  • tsoHost – “Very similar to my number two pick in price and options, although they do not have the same level of support as some of the other hosting companies. On the plus side they do have a simple and intuitive backend for hosting multiple domains, hosting accounts and email accounts. Navigating your way around software installers to custom DNS settings is a breeze.”

David Marmon

An experienced and accomplished web designer and online branding strategist, David Marmon injects years of experience and creativity into every project he touches. He is the visionary behind the Marmon Designs brand. He is a strong believer in collaboration and building a community that shares a vision for the future.
https://marmondesigns.com

“I’ve utilized dozens of hosting platforms over the years, and worked within many more on host providers that our clients use.”

  • Bluehost – “Bluehost is at the top of the list because they have what a good host should have: experience, little/no downtime, a variety of affordable packages, free SSL, Cpanel, and solid support. The free SSL is a big one.”
  • Flywheel – “The second host I would recommend, and this is for WordPress only, is Flywheel. It is by far the best host for a WordPress site because it includes CDN capability, automated daily backups, and staging site support. They’ll also migrate your site for free!”

Leanne McMahon

15 years' experience working with small and medium sized companies, helping them take their website to the next level and turn it into a powerful marketing tool.
www.euds.uk
  • SiteGround – “Finding SiteGround was a bit of a revelation. I build sites on WordPress and some hosts can struggle to serve it up fast. Not SiteGround, lightning fast, especially when using their own optimiser plugin. The live chat support is also second to non. 9/10 times they solve the issue you’re facing there and then on the chat.”

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