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If you’re looking to start a new business, side project, or just a hobby website, one underrated part of getting started is choosing the best hosting service.
Hosting is essentially the service that powers the servers that keep your website up and running. A good hosting service will do its job and require very little from the website owner. A bad hosting service will cause you endless headaches, and a poor experience for the users who visit your site.
Some services will offer “too good to be true” pricing, and often they are just that. The trick is to balance your immediate needs, your short-term budget, and your long-term goals.
We took a look at the top options and broke down our two favorites for your next website.
WP Engine:
From everything we looked at, WP Engine is easily the gold standard in hosting options for a Word Press site. It is just the right combination of fast, simple, supportive, and scalable. You won’t find odd gimmicky discounts or unresponsive customer service. They have a very thorough offering, extremely helpful support team, and strong documentation to help you get your site up to snuff.
The basic setup includes some beautiful advanced WordPress themes, and their blog has extremely helpful resources for standing up your dream website.
They manage to accomplish all of this without breaking the bank.
You can build and host your site for just $20 a month right now which allows for up to 25,000 sessions! If your site picks up faster than expected, you can easily swap to the Pro plan for just $50 a month.
The load times are some of the fastest we could find for an out-of-the-box hosting solution. Our website actually runs on WP Engine! We couldn’t think of a better endorsement than that.
If you’re building a WordPress site and you’re looking for simple, reliable, transparent hosting, WP Engine is the best place to start.
Name Cheap:
Namecheap is also an excellent choice for hosting if your needs are a bit smaller and more general. Their “Stellar Business” plan allows for unlimited websites, and their 50 GB SSD compares to WP Engines’ basic plan, which is about $20 a month when billed annually.
Namecheap combines to offer one of the best domain buying marketplaces on the internet and can serve as a one-stop shop to get yourself set up with a website quickly and seamlessly.
The only major drawbacks are it’s a bit harder to scale a site on Namecheap, and they don’t offer free premium themes and seamless WordPress compatibility. But the lower cost, reliable speed, and service as well as the combined offering make Namecheap a great place to stand up your new website.