A little disclaimer before I get started: Most internet people who promote or “review” hosting companies make a profit when someone buys a hosting service through their link. In fact most hosting companies offer an average of $75 per sale you refer. This is why most bloggers and marketers like to promote hosting companies.

So… Now that you know this little piece of information, how much are you going to trust bloggers who “review” these companies? Well if they are ethical, and provide you with good information then you should trust them.

Having said that, I will only talk to you about the hosting companies that I have personally used and why I choose to work with them. No hype or fluff, just my experiences. I am not trying to lead you anywhere, just giving you my honest opinion. And yes, if you click on a link I do get credit for your purchase.

So let’s get started…

What Is Hosting

I know most of you are a little more advance and don’t require an explanation on what hosting is, but I don’t want to leave anyone behind.

“Hosting” simply put, is a service provided by a vendor which offers a physical location for the storage of files online. Those files are what make up your website. Web Hosting companies are like landlords, who rent you space on their servers which allow websites to be viewed online.

So if you want a webpage you must get a hosting service. And as you might have imagined there are 1,000s of options to choose from.

Are All Hosting Services The Same?

Web hosting companies (and the services they provide) are all not the same, not one bit. You have your Shared Hosting, Dedicated Web Hosting, Windows Web Hosting, Cloud Hosting, and many other options.

I use wordpress to develop most of my websites. If you are going to do the same, you must be sure that your hosting company can handle all your WordPress needs. Luckily WordPress hosting doesn’t require much, most hosting companies can handle a WordPress site, even with their most basic packages. However the real difference between companies comes with customer service, uptime, and speed.

A lot of times people who go with the lower priced solution experience the most problems and the worst customer service. Cheaper hosting services could limit your memory, and have occasional down times. Neither of these are not good for business, or SEO.

So What Hosting Company Do You Recommend?

WestHost

While reading one of my favorite blogs, Yoast, I noticed that there was an article about hosting companies and the different ways your host could affect your speed, performance and your rankings. Yoast recommended WestHost as a reliable, fast hosting company that knew how to really handle WordPress installations.

I also found out that WestHost’s sister company is VPS.net Which I am familiar with, as they are a very reputable and extremely reliable hosting company.

So Purely on his recommendation I decided to try WestHost for this blog. I had already started building this blog on Host Gator, but I am always trying new things and trying to improve on everything, so I decided to take a leap of faith and take Yoast’s recommendation.

as I said I had no problem with Host Gator but Yoast is a very intelligent blogger, and know his stuff so his opinion was all I needed to make the switch and give West Host a try.

When I started using WestHost I did notice that this new version of my blog ran faster than my previous version on Host Gator. So far I’ve had no problems with them, and the one time I had to call for support they fixed my issue in less than 5 minutes. I had made a pretty silly mistake on the back end settings, and to be honest I felt pretty silly when the technician over the phone told me what the problem was, I should of known! Oh well, it happens to all of us.

What If I Need More Power?

If you have a site that gets heavy traffic, 10,000 visitors per day or more, and you need far more control and stronger servers then VPS.net is where you need to go. VPS.net is WestHost’s siter company.

They offer scalable VPS cloud hosting to handle massive traffic, and they will will help you migrate your site from your old install to the new one! So if you ever outgrow West Host, they can help you move your site over to the new hosting.

I would estimate the 98% of bloggers out there would have everything they need on a hosting service with WestHost, but if your site ever moves up to the big leagues you can have the sister company, VPS.net,handle your growing host needs.

I would not start with VPS.net if you are just getting started, it would upgrade to it once you’ve outgrown WestHost, and to do that you need some massive traffic.

Any Others Companies You Would Recommend?

WestHost and VPS.net are the only 2 hosting companies that I’ve used and can put my seal of approval on. However, and I mentioned I have used 2 others that I would give honorable mentions to.

HostGator

I’m sure most of you have heard of Host Gator in the past; not only are they one of the most popular hosting companies out there, bu they’re also very reliable and have decent prices. I ran one website through them with not much traffic so I never had any issues with them. I had one problem, which I caused by deleting some files off my server, which they promptly fixed. Again, there is nothing wrong with HostGator, but I believe West Host is a slightly better hosting company, and their prices were similar.

PowWeb

Even though PowWeb came last on my speed test of the 3 hosting companies I’m recommending, I do think that they do offer a decent service if you are just getting started. They are by far the cheapest, and I have built many sites using their hosting. Simply because I knew that those sites would never get more than a few hundred visitors a day, and the people for who I built those sites for wanted to spend the least amount of money as possible.

PowWeb prices are usually $20 – $30 per year less than WestHost or HostGator. Actually, PowWeb only has only one price plan, and one price point. That is it. They are mainly targeting beginners and people whose website will never have heavy traffic.

I bought my first domain from them 8 years ago or so and ran my first websites through them. One of my sites is still hosted through them and has had only minor issues when installing an ecommerce plugin. I did have to call and have customer support help me install it. Something that I would of not had to deal with if I would of been using WestHost.

One other thing that I like about PowWeb over all the others is the control panel. I think that it is much better than all the others. It is very intuitive and user friendly. They are defiantly targeting beginners.

Again I would only go with these alternatives if money was an issue, or you are building something for a local business that will never get more than a few hundred visitors a day.

Speed Test

I tested 3 sites the 3 sites I currently run on those different hosting services and west host was the fastest.
Here’s the results:
Hosting Service Speed Per KB
West Host 0.2 seconds
Host Gator 0.3 seconds
PowWeb 0.18 seconds

I know that the above was not the most scientific test, all I did was run my 3 sites on an online speed test and those are the results that come up.

But they do correlate with my estimation on speed, and it also correlates with the pricing of their services.

Conclusion: Get Your Hosting Service and Get Started Already!

I know that looking for a hosting company can be a really dreadful task especially if you don’t know where to look. But as you might of guessed by now, in my opinion, WestHost will be the best hosting company for most people. It is easily scalable, and transferable to a more powerful hosting service if your site ever makes it big.

Also, this is the hosting I use for this website. I would not be able to recommend anything else. It is what I use and it was worked great for me. So stop looking, get your hosting through WestHost and get started already!

And yes, if you click on any of the links on this page, I do get to “wet my beak” in the purchase you make, but by doing so you will support this blog and keep all this free cool and awesome content coming!

Good luck finding a hosting company that works for you, and please, I would love to find out your thoughts on these or any other companies, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me if you have any questions!