Free web hosting plans may have sufficed during the early stages of your online company, but if your website is becoming slow as it grows and your website traffic increases, you may need to consider upgrading your Web server.
We have selected the best hosting companies in the UK based on the latest in-depth reviews.
Table of Content
- 1 Best Hosting Companies 2024
- 2 What is a Hosting Company?
- 3 How to Choose the Best Hosting Company
- 3.1 Know What You Need
- 3.2 Compare What You Need to the Packages the Web Hosting Services Offer
- 3.3 Look For Server Reliability and Uptime
- 3.4 Examine If Company Policies are Environment Friendly
- 3.5 Ask for a Guarantee That You Will Receive Full Support Services and Policy Adherence
- 3.6 Test Server Responsiveness
- 4 How Do Hosting Companies Make Money?
- 5 Hosting Companies to Avoid
- 6 Full List Of Hosting Companies
Best Hosting Companies 2024
From our research, here is a list of the best [INSERT INDUSTRY] companies April 2024:
- Hostgator
- In Motion Hosting
- Bitpak
- Blue Host
- Dream Host
What is a Hosting Company?
Web hosting is a service that allows people and corporations may use the Internet to create a website or a web page. A web host, often called a web hosting service provider, is a business that provides the technology and services needed to access a website or webpage on the Internet. Websites are stored on servers, which are computers that are specialised to hosting websites. To view your website, all Internet users must type the URL or domain into their browser. Following that, their machine will connect to your server and provide your websites to them via the browser.
Web hosting firms provide servers for persons and businesses who do not have a high-speed internet connection or enough bandwidth to maintain a server. They often have many programs, plugins, themes, and other items that may be placed on the website.
How to Choose the Best Hosting Company
After you better understand what a web hosting provider offers, you need to evaluate each web host you are considering if you want to assist your site to be as effective as possible from the outset. Here are some of the way to choose the best web hosting services for you.
Know What You Need
At the start of your business, you need to sit down and write out your requirements for a web hosting provider. After that, when you compare your list to what each possible web hosting provider has to offer, you will be able to prioritise them more simply.
If your website, for example, has a particular specialisation, you will want to keep that in mind. Speed and storage may be important considerations if you create a photography website. Several hosts additionally provide Content Delivery Network (CDN) services for content-heavy sites.
When it comes to contract durations, many web hosting companies provide a variety of possibilities. Monthly and annual plans, as well as discounted pricing for multi-year contracts, are likely to be available.
Compare What You Need to the Packages the Web Hosting Services Offer
You may be accustomed to having Google or another provider manage your email correctly. That’s why, when it comes to your business and website, email is frequently an afterthought.
However, if you want your email to match your company’s logo and website name, you’ll need a host for that service as well. In some cases, your hosting package will offer a limited-use email account. Exploring your email hosting alternatives is highly suggested, especially if you plan on employing email marketing to reach your audience.
Look For Server Reliability and Uptime
Another essential feature to look into is what kind of uptime assurances your desired server offers, which impacts how dependable the hosting service is.
The proportion of time that your website is online and available to internet customers without any difficulties is referred to as “uptime.” Naturally, you’ll want your site to be up and running as much as possible, and your host should offer near-perfect uptime.
It would help if you also inquired about the host’s response time in the event of a server outage. When attempting to establish an online following, having your site go down regularly is not ideal. Look for past evaluations that demonstrate host dependability to get a sense of what you’re getting into.
You’ll be able to handle this phase more quickly if you’ve previously identified what you need from your web host. Some hosts give only essential services, while others may provide unique features that make your life much simpler.
Examine If Company Policies are Environment Friendly
You may be asking how “environmental friendliness” relates to web hosting. However, firms that provide a virtual product or service should consider this factor.
Some businesses solely operate from remote offices to lower their carbon footprints, while others invest in energy-efficient appliances and environmentally friendly supplies. It would be better if you looked into what your host is doing to lessen its impact, regardless of the circumstances.
Ask for a Guarantee That You Will Receive Full Support Services and Policy Adherence
Along with site backups and restoration services, the need for dependable technical assistance should not be overlooked. You may not require this level of service if you have in-house programmers and technicians.
It is critical to examine each hosting provider’s customer assistance alternatives, and individual plans may differ in this regard. In terms of assistance, lower-level methods are more “hands-off,” but managed plans, and more expensive alternatives frequently include premium help.
Once you start developing your website, you never know what will happen. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to read over your preferred web host’s return policy carefully. It’s vital to have choices if you’re unhappy with your host or change your mind about the site entirely.
You might wish to add additional features to your website after it’s up and running. With that in mind, it’s worth checking out what your host has to offer in terms of “extras” at this point.
If you’re looking to start small and grow as your site expands, be sure you can add new features quickly and easily without having to jump through hoops or transfer your entire site. Having the option to select features “a la carte” allows you to create a plan that includes everything you require.
Test Server Responsiveness
There is one more crucial factor to consider once you’ve put your selected host through its paces and gone through all of the other elements. You may test the host’s responsiveness for yourself rather than trusting claims and evaluations at face value.
It’s a little simpler to test server responsiveness on a site that is already live. If you have signed up for a plan, you may use a service like Pingdom to get a rough idea of how well it will operate.
How Do Hosting Companies Make Money?
Let us take a look at the most common types of web hosting plans and see which one would best suit your needs, whether you’re just getting started with your online business or seeking to expand your current one.
Most people who start an internet company do so on a shared hosting plan to save money, and they are unlikely to receive a lot of traffic at first.
That is exactly what shared web hosting services entails. Your website is hosted on a shared server with other websites. The shared cost is a benefit of this system, and you can share a super server with hundreds of other websites for as little as $5 to $10 per month.
The most significant downside of a shared hosting account is that you are at the mercy of the other websites on the server. A really popular site might harm your own site’s performance. If you are the most popular site on the server, on the other hand, you will be able to use a super server for a very cheap cost.
Reseller Hosting Services
Reseller hosting accounts are essentially shared hosting accounts with additional features to assist you in reselling hosting space.
Reseller web hosting services include more technical control, billing software to assist you charge clients, and other benefits. If you want to start a business selling web hosting, reseller web hosting is the way to go. Otherwise, continue with a shared hosting package if you are just getting started.
Colocation Hosting Services
You rent rack space from a data centre when you colocate. In colocation web hosting services, offer electricity, cooling, physical security, and an internet connection in exchange for you bringing your own server gear. This implies that you are in charge of your server software, data storage, and backup methods, among other things. If the web host server’s hardware breaks, you are in cost of replacing it and getting it back up and running.
Self Service Hosting Services
You purchase the servers, install and configure the software, ensure that your machine room has adequate cooling and electricity, and double everything for redundancy.
Cloud Hosting Services
Web hosting on the cloud is a relatively new hosting technique that allows hundreds of independent computers to collaborate and seem like one large server. As the demand develops, the hosting business may add more cheap hardware to create a larger grid or cloud.
The advantages of cloud web hosting is that if your website receives an exceptionally high traffic volume, your web hosting package can absorb the surge rather than shutting down your website.
If your website is becoming more popular and you want to switch from a shared hosting plan, you should generally take this first step.
Virtual Private Servers
A single physical server is shared by all virtual private servers but behave as several independent servers. A virtual private server (VPS) connects shared web hosting services and purchasing your dedicated computer. Even though each VPS instance shares physical resources, they are each given their own slice of processing power.
Dedicated Hosting Services
When you get a dedicated server from a hosting company, you rent one physical server. If you desire, you can have complete control. You do not have to worry about other websites on a shared server using your resources and slow your site down if you have a dedicated server.
If your online business evolves into a presence that receives a lot of internet traffic, a dedicated server is usually the highest kind of server you will require. While a dedicated server is more expensive than shared hosting, your business will have grown to the point where you can afford the additional expenditures of having your server.
Managed WordPress Hosting Services
Many web hosting services are now offering “Managed WordPress Hosting” due to the growing popularity of WordPress as a web building platform.
Managed WordPress hosting is a service in that your web hosting provider keeps your WordPress installation up to date, which can help prevent your website from security issues that could enable hackers access.
Hosting Companies to Avoid
Your website is more than simply a virtual storefront hub for some businesses; it’s a significant source of revenue and a vital aspect of your branding and communications strategy. Downtime or being stuck with a lousy web host may be quite costly.
So, what should you look for when it comes to analysing a web hosting provider? How can you tell an excellent web hosting provider from what’s bad?
First and foremost, if anything seems too good to be true, it probably is. Many web hosting providers will promise you the moon with enticing offers.
Next, regardless of who you are or what site you want to host, you will almost certainly need to contact customer support at some point. It is one of the few human lines of contact web hosting services have – and, unfortunately, many hosting companies have sought to minimise expenses by outsourcing to low-cost countries or closing off critical channels.
Another thing to look at is how the web hosting provider company manages downtime, especially if the web hosts have promised 99.9% uptime. Examine the terms of service to see what you are entitled to – the top web hosting services will generally offer you free hosting time if your site goes down for a lengthy period or if they fail to reach the uptime guarantee they’ve provided.
This one doesn’t get mentioned frequently, but it is still significant. Firewalls, anti-virus software, and encryption are one thing; server location and data privacy are another. If the web hosting provider servers are located in another nation, not only will load times be delayed, but your data will be subject to the country’s potentially inadequate privacy rules.
Full List Of Hosting Companies
We have compiled a list of Best Hosting Companies below: