Which web host should I go with?

Published December 16, 2011 | By Guest

Question: My web host right now are having horrible downtimes, so I did some research and narrowed it down to these hosts:

hostmonster.com
hostgator.com
lunarpages.com
site5.com
inmotionhosting.com

I was also looking at dreamhost but I don’t think I can afford their plans right now…so from my list, which one do you recommend? any thoughts/past experience?

Answer:

Dreamhost is very expensive. They have the same unlimited shared hosting plans everyone else has, but I’m not seeing anything that makes them worthy of the extra money. Damn, that’s over 2x the going rate. Check this out “8.95/mo with two-year pre-payment of $214.80. $9.95/mo with one-year pre-payment of $119.40.” No way. Plus, they have their own control panel. ”Developed entirely in-house, our web panel can’t be found anywhere else.” That’s scares me. I won’t sign up for any hosting plan unless I know exactly what I’m getting. I’d pass on Dreamhost.

Site5 is unique in that you can choose your own hosting location. You can only host 1 domain on that $4.95 plan so if you need to host more, you’ll have to pay extra.

LunarPages is another expensive host. Good grief, you really found yourself some crazy pricing.

inMotion is through the roof, too. You have to pay your first born child to host additional domains and additional databases (blogs use databases).

HostGator is a little more reasonable on pricing and they’re an excellent host. A lot of affiliates use them.

Drum Roll, Please…

Out of the 6 hosts you mentioned, I’d definitely pick HostMonster. They have unlimited features with no restrictions on space, the number of domains you can host or databases. They run cPanel control panel and their version of cPanel is more robust that other hosts running cPanel. They use the SimpleScripts software installer. It’s got more goodies than Fantastico. I have a BlueHost account and I like it. Both BlueHost and HostMonster are basically the exact same thing, both owned by the same company.

You don’t say what kind of projects you’ll be using your web hosting account for, so I’ll throw in a few other even cheaper options.

Cheaper Web Hosting

WebHostingHub is my favorite for WordPress. Great performance, awesome support team. cPanel control panel.

iPage is even cheaper. vDeck control panel. No CRON jobs though. So if you’ll be running WordPress plugins that require CRON, they don’t even have it as an additional option, either. I checked with sales. If you don’t need CRON then take advantage of their super sale going on right now.

Cheapest Web Hosting

WebHostingPad is THE least expensive of all, yet they still have unlimited account features and cPanel control panel.