When you’re ready to take your data into your own hands and run your own blog, own your own photos, and host your own apps, it’s time to find a good web host that can put it all on the web for you, give you the tools, bandwidth, and storage you need, and support you when you need help. Thankfully, there are dozens of great companies looking for your business, and this week we’re going to look at five of the best, based on your nominations.
Earlier in the week we asked you which hosting companies you thought were the best and offered the best combination of price to features, bandwidth, storage, and customer support. You came back with over 300 nominations for over a hundred companies, but sadly we only have room for the top five.
The poll is closed and the votes are counted! To see which of the contenders you crowned as the champion, head over to our weekly hive five followup post to find out who won, and discuss your thoughts on the winner!
Dreamhost
Dreamhost is one of the web’s most popular hosts, offering both standard shared plans starting as low as $8.95/month and dedicated server plans for customers with larger bandwidth and availability needs. The company has a reputation for regular perks and added features for its customers, including one-click installs for blogging and gallery software that make getting your own site up and running fast and easy. Dreamhost isn’t afraid to offer you valuable features either: unlimited email accounts, support for Google apps, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases, and more. Customer support is available when you need it, and the company has a great money-back uptime guarantee. You can check out all of Dreamhost’s plans here.
Hostgator
Hostgator rolls out the red carpet for its new customers with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, tons of easy to install site templates, and an uptime guarantee, all starting at $3.96/mo for their most affordable plans. Even their low-end plans feature unlimited email, 1-click installs, and a $100 Google Adwords credit for all of your customer-building needs. Choose the plan that works for you, and the longer you sign up for the bigger discount you get on your monthly hosting bill. You can check out all of Hostgator’s plans here.
Bluehost
Bluehost starts its shared hosting plans at $4.95/mo, and for your money you get unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited file transfer, unlimited email, a free domain registration, and more. Even their basic plans offer unlimited hosted domains, domain parking, e-commerce features, and more, including one-click Wordpress installs, databases, and more. You can check out all of Bluehost’s features here.
Linode
You can host your web site or photo gallery with Linode, but unlike other traditional hosting companies that offer shared hosting solutions, Linode offers Virtual Private Server hosting (VPS) where you spin up a virtual server with the memory, disk space, and file transfer that you need for whatever application you’re building or web site you’re hosting. Some users even use their Linode servers as remote desktop replacements, others use it as private, cloud-based application servers, and others use them to host their webapps, developed applications, and blogs. You get full SSH and root access on your servers, guaranteed resources, and your choice of linux distro on the servers you purchase. Prices vary depending on the type of server you’re looking for and the resources you want it to have, but start at $19.95/mo. You can check out all Linode’s offerings here.
A Small Orange
A Small Orange hosting reminds me a bit of what some of our other contenders were like earlier in their lives—homegrown hosting companies with a serious focus on customer service rather than size and scale. With A Small Orange, you can get a variety of plans with different bandwidth and disk space options that also feature unlimited databases, unlimited email addresses, unlimited subdomains, and more for as low as $35/yr ($2.91/mo). Few of their plans offer the same kind of unlimited disk and bandwidth options you’ll see from the big guys, but A Small Orange makes up for it with plans to suit every budget and every need, detailed stats, bit-by-bit upgrades for people who have needs that fall between plans, and more. Plus, A Small Orange is committed to real, quality customer support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can see all of A Small Orange’s plans here.
Now that you’ve seen the top five, it’s time to put them to an all out vote to decide the winner.
Honorable mentions this week include Rackspace, which handles both personal and enterprise hosting and platform services (backed by “fanatical support!”) and Nearly Free Speech, a contender in our last look at personal web hosts, who offers exceptional hosting plans for as low as $0.25 and promises to only make you pay for what you use. Finally, we should at least mention InMotion Hosting, which mobilized quite the effort to get their customers to vote for them.
Have something to say about the nominees that we missed? Did your favorite not get enough nominations to be included? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Share your thoughts in the comments below.
The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it’s not because we hate it—it’s because it didn’t get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it’s a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at [email protected]!
Photo by Ciprian Popescu.