6 of the Best Web Portals for Bloggers
Welcome to my website! There’s a good chance that you landed on this page because you’re looking to compare web hosting services with these requirements in mind:
- Affordability
- Uptime
- Speed
- Solid customer service
As of 2021, the number of websites online is rapidly approaching 2 billion, many users are small business owners, bloggers, web designers, developers – and of course shoppers (source: Live Internet Stats).
Your website host provides an online home for your website. It stores your site on one or more servers so that anyone can access it using a browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge.
With this in mind, your choice of web hosting providers and the plan you select is important. There are many companies that offer web hosting services on many levels. Below is a list of them that I think have some great features at the best prices.
 | Free Starter | Pros | |
SiteRubix is great for beginners with its easy step-by-step set up. Powered by Wealthy Affiliate, anyone can have a fully functional WordPress website up and running in just a few minutes. You can even incorporate affiliate links and ads within your free site. The free website option is excellent for those that want to try building a website blog without paying a dime. Create great content on your free SiteRubix website and rank in search engines for free. Starting a free website on SiteRubix through Wealthy Affiliate gives you access to the first 10 modules of world class affiliate marketing training and a community of entrepreneurs that can help you get started. | |||
 | Shared Starter | Pros Strong security features. Extensive domain-management tools. Excellent cloud hosting offerings. Unlimited data transfers per month. Generous money-back guarantee. Useful WordPress staging feature. Cons No Windows-based servers. No reseller hosting plans. No telephone support. | |
DreamHost features great speeds and a 100% uptime guarantee. Their generous 97-day money-back guarantee speaks volumes for their product confidence and is hard to pass up. An employee-owned company, DreamHost provides excellent 24/7 customer service. A company that follows an environmentally responsible business model, they're always looking for ways to lessen their eco footprint. | |||
 | Economy Plan | Pros Affordable 1-Click WordPress Install Multiple Payment Options Windows & Linux OS 1-Click add-on installs Cons Support not always prompt Restoration Fees Apply Limited Live Chat Support. | |
GoDaddy has been in the web hosting business for 22 years and is widely recognized as a domain registration and web hosting provider. GoDaddy offers reliable and affordable WordPress hosting plans, one-click installs, and the latest updates, so you have the most recent features available for your site. They offer a great selection of themes and add-ons for site enhancement. If you have multiple sites, then consider the Deluxe plan as it offers unlimited websites, storage, and bandwidth at a very reasonable introductory price. | |||
 | Basic Plan | Pros | |
All Bluehost plans include unlimited bandwidth, 5 email accounts, unmetered bandwidth, five email accounts, and a free domain for the first year. Customer support is available 24/7 through phone, email, or live chat. Additionally, they offer strong security support, a money-back guarantee, and lots of user-friendly apps to use with your site building and management. Their introductory rates are the lowest around. However, expect a substantial increase after the introductory rate ends. They charge a fee for site migrations which other hosts do for free. | |||
 | WordPress.com Hosting Free Website Free Subdomain 3 GB Storage 24/7 Support | Pros | |
WordPress.com is owned and managed by Automatic, Inc. and offers a basic website for free. WordPress.com is a basic service that features online support with step-by-step guides, video tutorials, and forums in multiple languages. A wide selection of responsive, mobile-friendly themes are offered to suit anyone's taste. Support is available 24/7 through email and community forums. This option is good for those just looking to create a blog at no cost and you don't mind the customization and monetizing restrictions. | |||
 | Premium Shared Hosting | Pros | |
Hostinger has a history that goes back to 2004 when it was founded under the name of "Hosting Media," Since its humble beginning, the Lithuania-based company has expanded with offices worldwide with more than 29 million customers and growing. Shared hosting rates start for a little as $.99 per month based on a 4-year subscription. Seems like a long introductory period. Nonetheless, not a bad deal at the cost of $47.52 for 4 years of great web hosting services. Upgrades can be done at any time. | |||
Compare Web Hosting Services – Shared Website Hosting
Shared web hosting houses many websites on a single network server. This is usually the least expensive option as the maintenance costs are shared among the subscribers.
This type of hosting is a good way to get started with your internet presence because of its low introductory rates. In shared hosting, the provider is generally responsible for managing server resources. These services include server software installation/upgrades, security updates, technical support, and others.
Shared website hosting is best for those with smaller websites that have relatively lesser requirements for processing, memory, and bandwidth. For example, hobbyists and small businesses are likely candidates for shared web hosting.
Compare Web Hosting Services – Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is a service that maintains the behind-the-scenes technical areas of the WordPress environment. These include server speed, website uptime, security, daily backups, software updates, and scalability. Many web hosting services have included managed WordPress hosting packages due to their popularity.
Compare Web Hosting Services – Dedicated Servers
In a dedicated hosting plan, the server is exclusively yours and you don’t share RAM (Random Access Memory), processing power, or bandwidth with anyone else. This plan is best if you have a high volume of traffic on your website. The result is a superb performance for your projects, even under high workloads. Dedicated hosting plans come in two types: managed and unmanaged. In the managed service the host takes care of the technical tasks like optimizing, backups, and security. The unmanaged dedicated server plan will require you to take care of those duties.
Compare Web Hosting Services – Cloud Hosting Services
Cloud hosting makes use of virtual network resources that include servers, data storage, and printers. All of these are provided by the web host through a single service.
Server resources are created as needed and provide a computing environment for applications and data storage for multiple users at the same time. For example, a physical server can be virtualized and combined to host several cloud servers, all of them sharing the processing power, memory, storage, and other network resources.
Compare Web Hosting Services – Virtual Private Servers
Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or Cloud Servers allow you to scale resources as you need them, rather than being restricted by the limitations of a physical server. VPS servers use processing power (CPU), memory (RAM), and storage from various network resources depending on your requirements. This type of configuration provides scalable and cost-effective resource allocation.
Customer Service
Good customer service is one of the core features that make a web hosting provider stand out from its competition. It’s their business to provide timely solutions to any problems or questions that arise either before, during, or after your membership.
Unexpected issues are inevitable at times and it’s nice to have experts you can turn to for help. Most of the providers offer technical assistance by phone, email, or online chat. The wait times have never been longer than 3 minutes and the technician is usually very knowledgeable and can resolve any issues quickly. All of the services have extensive FAQ pages where you can look up information or answers to your questions. Most critically, getting your questions or problems resolved quickly is a good sign of a well-managed web hosting provider as it speaks volumes for the priority they give their subscribers.
“Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.” Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
If you have a large website with several pages, images, and large page sizes, you’ll want to go with unlimited bandwidth (or traffic) to prevent losing production or sales.
Compare Web Hosting Services – The Bottom Line
There are lots of web hosting providers out there from which to choose. All are competitive in terms of pricing, offerings, and performance. Ultimately, the provider that you sign up with will depend on your needs and budget. I found that many of the biggies offered the same services and comparable levels of performance in terms of load speeds and uptime. The differences were mainly in the entry prices that ranged from free to around $5 per month.
The internet has changed the way we shop around for our needs. That includes web hosting services. Search online reviews from actual customers for the most candid evaluations.
Finally, a review of the web hosting providers’ policies to ensure what you can expect of them and what they expect of their customers. The policy should state clearly their money-back guarantee so you can get a refund if you’re not satisfied with their services.
Compare Web Hosting Services – Web Hosting Q & A
The following are some web hosting terminology that you will come across when shopping around for hosting services. Each one is explained in terms that are easy to understand and will hopefully make your selection easier.
What is Bandwidth? How does it affect my site visitors’ experience?
In web hosting services, bandwidth measures the capacity of data that can be transferred from one point to another within a specific amount of time. Your website data is made up of your pages, images, and lines of programming code. When someone accesses your website, all of that data is sent to their computer or mobile device. Hosting providers usually offer “Unlimited” or a stated limit of Gigabytes per second (GBps or GB/s) or Terabytes per second (TBps or TB/s). Note that bandwidth is not internet speed which is a common misconception.
You can calculate your site bandwidth requirements at any time to ensure that you have enough to accommodate your site visitors. As your website grows and you have more visitors, you will require more bandwidth. You can easily upgrade your site to cloud hosting services where bandwidth is unlimited.
What is CDN?
CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of servers that are placed in different geographic locations with mirrored copies of websites and databases. Having copies of websites in multiple locations allows your web hosting service to deliver content in the quickest and most efficient manner.
Web Hosting Q & A
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud Computing distributes your website data among an entire network of data centers and an abundant amount of resources. One of the primary benefits of using cloud hosting services is its flexibility in building applications, websites, and other services. Cloud usage is scalable as customers are charged only for the services they use and do not pay for any unused capacity. This makes cloud hosting a relatively cost-effective method of network operations and storage.
What is DDoS?
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is a server or network cyber-attack that inhibits or prevents full network functionality. A DDoS attack usually starts with malware distributed among vulnerable devices in the network. When a set number of devices are infected with the malware, an attack is launched, and each system begins sending a flood of requests to the target server or network. The traffic overload causes a performance slowdown or complete failure altogether.
What is Domain Parking?
Domain parking refers to the registration of an internet domain name without that domain being associated with any services such as e-mail or a website. This may have been done with a view to reserving the domain name for future development, and to protect against the possibility of cybersquatting.
What is PHP 7?
PHP 7 is the latest version of a programming language with enhancements for web applications that run at the most optimal speed while making the best use of system resources.
Web Hosting Q & A
What is SSL?
Developed in 1995 by Netscape, Secured Socket Layer (SSL) was the first widely used network protocol to allow encrypted communications between network devices. SSL technology creates a secure link between a web hosting server and browser to ensure privacy and integrity with data transmission.
What is SSD?
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently. These devices typically use flash memory and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is also sometimes called a solid-state device or a solid-state disk. SSDs lack the physical spinning disks and movable read-write heads used in hard drives (“HDD”) or floppy disks.
SSD’s are a type of storage device that uses flash memory to store data. These drives provide better reliability and is more efficient than hard disk drives. Moreover, since SSDs don’t have any moving parts, they use less power to function. This results in longer battery life for laptops.
The benefit of solid-state drives is that they allow faster caching, database queries and websites to function up to 200 percent faster than the older technology of hard disk drives (HDDs). A faster website means that your visitors will enjoy their browsing experience on your site.
Web Hosting Q & A
What is a Subdomain?
Search engines regard subdomains as websites that are separate from its parent domain. Subdomains can be used to serve different niche market segments. A subdomain is a branch of your master domain and is useful for organizing your business. The URL for a subdomain is easily identified by the same root URL with a different name to the left. For example, a domain URL of gosolarcharge.com could have blog.gosolarcharge.com and shop.gosolarcharge.com as subdomains.
What is Virtual? And how does it apply to servers?
Virtual refers to something that’s not real. The term is widely used in the information technology field when referring to a concept or an image as opposed to physical reality. For example, an vision for a new rocket invention and the physical rocket itself. The idea (vision) represents the virtual side and the new rocket is the physical result of that idea.
A virtual server in a web hosting environment mimics a dedicated server and is created as needed with different IP addresses, operating systems, administration, and security.
What is VPS?
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is set up on a physical server and configured with several virtual servers. Each virtual server is managed separately and can run using different operating systems like Linux, Windows, etc.
Thank you for browsing my website. Feel free to share your thoughts or questions about the best web hosting services below and I will respond to all of them.
This site is really informative and educative. I have really acquired a lot of information about web hosting services.
From the review, you could see that web hosting by sitrubix powered by Wealthy Affiliate and wordpress stand tall.
Thank you for helping bloggers with the best web portals. If you really want your website to perform then don’t look further.
I wil come back for more information
Hi Osei Kwame,
Thank you for you comments on my web page. I’m glad you were able to learn something from the information provided. I will be adding web hosting definitions in the near future.
All the best,
Larry
Your article comparing the hosting services and what each one offers was very enlightening, and through. For those who know what they need when they start online marketing, this gives them a shopping edge. So much information in one place. Information is a great commodity and when you find a way to share it to help others, things go together fast.
Those of us who are a bit technology challenged are grateful for the help of a great group of networked friends to help answer questions. Then I personally call on the Tech department of Wealthy Affiliate, and so far the fact that I don’t always correctly request the help I need, some arrives! They are great for working out any issues I have had and even though as you state, they don’t offer telephone support, the response to a request or question is rapid, within a few minutes.
I do like to know what is available and what the costs are, to remain positive and objectively knowledgable about the different parts of working online. Thank you for sharing your information.
Hi Sami,
Thank you for your comments. As prices for web hosting change frequently, I hesitated to display the current pricing on my page. That may change in the future if I can find a way to update pricing real-time. I’m glad you were able to gain info from my post. More to come soon.
Larry
If you have never owned a blog or website then you really have never cared much about web hosting. However if you do own a blog or website then a great web host is very important. Likely the most important in keeping your site running smoothly,
This is a great page for anyone looking for hosting to come to in order to make an informed decision
You have reviewed likely some of the most dependable and reliable hosts. Thank you for taking the time to help educate myself and others
Hi Dale,
Thank you for your comments. The idea is to help those who are shopping for web hosting services. There are thousands to choose from and it’s hard to know which one to go with. I’m adding information to the page so there’ll be more soon. Let me know if you have questions or if I can help.
Thanks again.
Larry
hellooo dear, wow what a wonderfulll content yu have here, i was actually doing some research online when i saw your website and i saw your content are of great value to me, i never knew i could get some free website, thanks alot for the information, i already saved these post so as to come back for future referencing, thanks alot
Hi Skuchmane,
Thank you for your comments. i will be adding more information and more web hosting services as I review them. Glad you are able to get some information from my page.
Larry
Hey nice article you have there, your thoughts are indeed invaluable. I was researching online on quality web portal and hat will be more effective for bloggers, I was directed to this article. Having gone through the features of various web portals highlighted in this article, I am overwhelmed. However, the features of Bluehost really intrigued me and I will loved to explore it
Hi edahnewton1,
Thank you for your comments. I’m glad you were able to gain some good information from my web page.
Larry
Great information on the different web hosting available. I was really interested in seeing the cons for each. As you look each of these up, they tell you how great they are, but of course they don’t list their weaknesses. Out of the list, I think I like Hostinger the best. You have some great information on terminology I really had no idea what the terms meant. Great site!
Hi Leahrae,
Thanks for checking my webpage. The web hosting services are all very competitive. They all boast the fastest access speeds and the highest percentage of uptime which is very close in many cases. So a lot of times the buyer’s selection is based on the entry level pricing, customer service and money back guarantee. The ones on my pages all offer good services. Thanks again for your comments.
Larry