There are plenty of web hosting companies out there, so many that you may never get to review them all before making a decision.
The situation is even more tragic if you are a blogger on a budget, because you need servers that are both reliable and reasonably priced.
Here is a short review of 6 small web hosting companies bloggers love (real bloggers’ opinion, not made-up reviews).
1. NameCheap
URL: https://www.namecheap.com
NameCheap’s Value Hosting (Shared) package is affordable for all bloggers and it is sold at $9.88 the first year against the standard (and renewal price) of $38.88/year. The package comes with 20GB SSD disk space, unmetered bandwidth and you can host up to 3 domains on it.
I have used NameCheap’s Value package for two years as I needed a stable host with up-to-date MySQL for my blog and forum community. I experienced seldom downtimes and database issues over the time I was with NameCheap, but the staff resolved them promptly. Support was always responsive and available to help me, so I was satisfied with the service no matter the small issues I ran into.
Cam Secore’s review of NameCheap hosting at Reviewpon adds more information you may want to keep in sight before you choose NameCheap as your host.
2. Phastnet.com
Phastnet is a small business hosting provider that sells packages starting at $4.21/month.
THGM Writers president, David Leonhardt, says about Phastnet:
I’ve been with Phastnet.com for over a decade now. After a while, I consolidated all my sites and some client sites to Phastnet because I could count on personal service when I needed it. Prior to that, I had been spread across three or four hosting companies, and I had a negative experience with one of the biggies, who shut my site down and were unreachable by phone or email.
3. ASmallOrange.com
A Small Orange is a US-based hosting provider that serves mostly small bloggers and webmasters on a low budget. In fact, its cheapest offer — 500 MB of diskspace and 5 GB of bandwidth — comes at only $2.92/month.
Thiru Kumaran talks very well about A Small Orange in his review at Techatrons.com:
ASO has excellent uptime, and according to my experience I’ve hosted my 8 blogs on it.. and didn’t face a downtime still now. (…) Their ticket support never betrayed me.
4. Linode.com
Linode offers unmanaged VPS hosting, so you will need to be an expert at configuring your own VPS and possibly manage it via command line in order to use the service. The smaller package starts at $10/month.
Bill Patrianakos wrote feels positive about Linode’s services:
If you put a gun to my head and made me choose one over the other I’d go for Linode still. They’ve been around longer, I trust them more
WhatsWP’s review by Joyce is also based on real experience.
5. LittleDancer.net
I’ve been a client of this small hosting provider — run by a fellow blogger and friend — since 2014 and it has proven reliable for all my blogs, and efficient with support. There were downtimes for maintenance but the admin always did her best to bring the service back online as soon as possible. Issues fixed themselves once she moved her service to new servers. Note: the relationship is not a bias for my satisfaction as a customer
LittleDancer.net offers free Shared packages in addition to paid packages (Shared, Reseller and Alpha Reseller).
6. IceGlow.net
URL: http://iceglow.net
Iceglow.net is a privately owned small hosting provider that mostly serves bloggers and graphic designers. The owner is a graphic designer, blogger and web developer herself and she is now a friend and part of my network. Note: the relationship is not a bias for my satisfaction as a customer
I have had a good experience with Iceglow.net since I decided to use it to host two of my character blogs. The admin was always available to respond to support tickets and I am still satisfied with the overall service. There are no more downtimes since the service was moved to another, more stable server.
The hosting provider offers a free package (500MB, 100GB of traffic) in addition to shared and reseller packages, starting at $15.00/year.
IceGlow.net was also recommended here.
Who is your hosting provider? Would you recommend it to other bloggers?
Share in the comments.
