Best Web Hosting Services for 2024 [CNET]

We compared popular web hosting services like A2 Hosting, HostGator and many others to help you find the best service to fit your needs now and in the future.

The following services aren’t as robust as our top picks, but they’re still reasonable offerings. Some specialize in one type of hosting, like WordPress hosting, so they’re not ideal for hosting a non-WordPress site or accommodating its long-term growth. Others have extremely high renewal costs or lack certain types of customer service. Pay close attention to the details when choosing one of these hosts.

Namecheap

NameCheap offers some of the cheapest pricing plans. Month-to-month plans in particular are less expensive compared with monthly plans from other services. Some other services might offer monthly shared hosting plans for $20, but all NameCheap monthly shared hosting plans cost less than $10. NameCheap also offers VPS, dedicated, WordPress and reseller hosting plans. NameCheap has a 99.9% uptime guarantee for VPS and reseller plans, as well as a 100% uptime guarantee for most shared, VPS and dedicated plans.

Each Namecheap plan comes with a free virus scanner, two-factor authentication and DDoS protection to help secure your data and your visitors’ data. SSL certificates are free for one year. After that year, you can buy SSL certificates through NameCheap for $6 per year with a five-year contract.

NameCheap offers 24/7 email and chat support but no phone support.

NameCheap plans start at $2 per month.

Hostinger

Hostinger offers competitive prices, with shared and WordPress plans starting at $3 a month, VPS plans starting at $5 a month and cloud hosting plans starting at $10 a month. Hostinger also offers a website builder with AI site generation tools; all you need to do is enter some basic information about your website, choose a color scheme and let Hostinger build your site.

Plans include SSL certificates, and all servers have advanced security modules to protect your data. All plans offer weekly backups, while higher-tier plans offer daily backups. Hostinger has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, but customer support is limited. Live chat is available 24/7, as is email, but Hostinger doesn’t offer phone support. 

Hostinger plans start at $3 a month.

SiteGround

SiteGround is known for its WordPress-optimized hosting plans and award-winning customer service available 24/7 via phone, live chat and email. Plans include security features like SSL certificates, spam protection and a web access firewall to help protect your site. The company also has a 100% renewable energy match.

SiteGround plans start at $3 a month, but it’s worth noting that prices increase significantly on renewal. The most basic plan rises from $3 a month to $18 a month and the increases for higher-tier plans are even more extreme.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy offers shared, VPS, dedicated and WordPress hosting plans, a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 customer support by phone or chat. GoDaddy is also the only web host on this list you can contact via text, and we found customer service highly responsive during our GoDaddy review. GoDaddy also had impressive server performance.

The big drawback of GoDaddy is that some security features are inconsistent. For example, SSL certificates are included with all shared hosting plans, but with the lower-tiered shared plan, you have to purchase an SSL certificate after one year no matter how long your hosting contract is. SSL certificates are also a paid option in lower-tiered VPS and dedicated hosting plans, but they’re included in the higher-tiered options.

GoDaddy Web Hosting plans start at $6 a month.

HostPapa

HostPapa has global data centers, so you can choose the best data center to reach your visitors the quickest. Hosting options include shared, VPS, managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting, reseller hosting and PapaCare, which is similar to managed shared hosting.

HostPapa has free SSL certificates, DDoS protection and other security features included in each plan, a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 phone, chat and email support. The lack of a dedicated hosting option means that if your site grows too large, you’ll have to migrate to another service. In addition, renewal pricing isn’t listed on plan pages and can be quite expensive. Moreover, some features, like automated backups and a security tool, are automatically added for an additional charge during check-out. These features are included in higher-tier plans, but not in all plans.

HostPapa plans start at $3 per month.

Hostwinds

Hostwinds offers unlimited storage and bandwidth, as well as unlimited free business email accounts with each plan. It offers shared, managed and unmanaged VPS, dedicated, reseller and cloud hosting plans, as well as a business-centered shared hosting plan it calls business hosting.

Hostwinds has a 99.9999% uptime guarantee, which is above average, and it offers 24/7 support via live chat, email and support ticket; there are no hours listed for the support phone number. Hostwinds plans also come with free SSL certificates and free nightly backups.

In comparison with other services, Hostwinds isn’t as forthcoming with information on other features or plan differences. Usually, services show detailed charts that lay out what features come with plans. Hostwinds’ shared chart, for example, lists only bandwidth, disk space and how many domains come with each plan.

Hostwinds plans start at $5.24 a month.

Bluehost

Bluehost specializes in WordPress hosting and many of its plans include custom themes and other WordPress tools. It offers shared, VPS, dedicated hosting, managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting, as well as an option called Online Store that includes additional e-commerce tools with each plan. All plans include two-factor authentication and anti-spam protection. You’ll also get an SSL certificate, but it’s only free for the first year on the lowest-tier plan; after that, you’ll be paying $90 a year.

Bluehost customers can call or chat with a customer support representative 24/7.

Bluehost doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee but instead says it resolves issues within 15 minutes of them being reported. It doesn’t say how many issues you should expect on average. If your site is down for about 15 minutes a week, your site could be down for about 13 hours a year, which is higher than standard. 

Bluehost plans start at $3 per month. 

Glowhost

Glowhost offers shared, cloud VPS, dedicated, semi-dedicated, reseller and what Glowhost calls elastic site hosting, which it compares to a managed VPS plan.

Security features include free SSL certificates and McAfee Secure, which is included for free, and customer support is available by phone or chat 24/7. Glowhost also promises 100% network uptime and 99.95% overall uptime. If it doesn’t live up to those expectations, you can take advantage of the 91-day money-back guarantee.

Glowhost plans start at $3.50 per month.

Mocahost

Mochahost offers shared, VPS, dedicated cloud, WordPress and reseller plans and 24/7 live chat support. Phone support and ticket creation are also available.

Free SSL certificates are included in each plan as well, but other security features, like spam and malware filters, come at an additional cost or with more expensive plans. 

Mochahost plans start at $3.18 per month, and the renewal prices are affordable too, with the lowest-tier plan renewing at $6.35 a month.

InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting offers shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress and reseller hosting with different tiered options for each type of hosting. InMotion Hosting also offers managed hosting services. These services can be purchased for one hour for $90, or you can purchase these services for three months, six months or a year with prices starting at $48 a month.

Each plan comes with free SSL certificates, DDoS protections and hack and malware protections. Automatic daily backups are also available, but these are an additional $2.50 a month.

All of this looks great, but our review process revealed serious issues with InMotion Hosting, including slow server speeds and a massive one-hour and 12 minutes of downtime during our week of testing. InMotion Hosting customer support was also impossible to get in touch with.

Shared hosting at InMotion Hosting starts at $2.60 a month when you choose a three-year plan.

Liquid Web

Liquid Web: No shared hosting. Security features include an integrated firewall and standard DDoS protections. Offers 100% uptime and 24/7 chat or phone support plus you can create tickets. Prices start at $5 a month for Cloud VPS hosting.

Web Hosting Hub

Web Hosting Hub: Offers shared and WordPress hosting. Has free SSL certificates but other security features cost extra. Offers 99.9% uptime and has 24/7 chat and phone support as well as ticket submission. Prices start at $6 a month.

WP Engine

WP Engine: Offers WordPress hosting. Security features like free SSL certificates and daily backups. Only custom-managed WordPress plans have an uptime guarantee, and the company offers 24/7 chat support, phone support is offered at higher plan levels. Prices start at $20 a month.

Kinsta

Kinsta: Offers WordPress, web app, managed database and static site hosting. Security features like free SSL certificates and automatic backups. Has a 99.9% uptime and 24/7 chat support. Prices start at $30 a month for WordPress hosting.

Pantheon

Pantheon: Offers WordPress hosting. Security features include DDoS protection and automated backups. Offers 99.9% uptime and customer support is available 24/7 via chat, phone or even Slack. They require you to sign up for both a Workspace and a Site plan; there’s a free Workspace plan and prices start at $42 a month for the Site plans.