Best Web Hosting Sites for Blogs

New bloggers and veteran bloggers are always in need of reliable information about the best web hosting sites. Whether you are looking for the best free blog hosting sites, the best paid web hosting plans for bloggers that offer great site speed, or the best blog hosting sites for making money, this list has you covered. As a blogger who has spent extensive time researching the best web hosting sites for bloggers, I’d like to save you some time by offering you valuable information and insights all in one place. Drawing on my own experiences as well as that of other bloggers, I’ve compiled a list I hope you find useful. In a hurry? Check out the Conclusion paragraph at the end of each section for a quick overview of the results. Ready to dive in? Let’s go!

***Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links, which means as an affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Also, the prices listed are accurate as of the time of publication, but may change at any time.***

Difference Between Acquiring a Domain Name and Acquiring Web Hosting

Should you buy domain and web hosting from the same company or separately? Opinions vary on this, but the majority opinion is that it is safer to keep your domain name registration service separate from your web hosting provider. If you decide to switch web hosting services, having your domain name registered elsewhere will protect you from losing your domain name registration in the process. Even though this post is about the best web hosting sites for bloggers, three domain name registrars I would recommend are Domain.com, Namecheap and Google Domains. Each is reasonably-priced.

Features Bloggers Look For in Hosting Providers

When asked about the features that are most important in a web hosting site, bloggers preferences are clear. For beginning bloggers, cost is a huge factor. Another factor bloggers consider is the ability to monetize a website. Some free web hosting providers limit the ability for a blogger to make money. Site speed is a huge priority for most bloggers, so a web hosting site that offers excellent site speed is a plus. Bloggers also value web hosting sites that have a lot of uptime with very little downtime. No one wants to have a web hosting site that is always experiencing technical difficulties. Does a web hosting service have reliable security features? Is the web hosting platform easy to use? Other features that bloggers look for in a web hosting site include reliable customer service, backup features, and SEO tools. All of these areas will be covered more in depth below. Whatever your preference, you’ll find details to help you make an informed decision.

Best Free Blog Hosting Sites for Bloggers

For those just dipping their toes into the blogging pond, free blog hosting sites can be a great place to start. It’s a low-risk way to venture out into the blogging world. Some, such as WordPress.com, do not allow monetization (making  money). On other platforms, such as Medium.com, the content belongs more to the site than the blogger. If a blogger decides to upgrade to a paid plan later for more features, some plans offer that option. Sandra of Sandra’s Ark blog likes Blogger because “I don’t have to pay all the extra expense or have to think about renewing every few years.” Since Sandra paid for her own domain, her website does not have “blogspot” in her URL. Lee of the the Fibro Directory blog likes Blogger because “I don’t have to worry about the speed of the site or any technical issues. My focus is 100% on content and promotion.” Both of these bloggers chose to purchase their own domain names, but have continued to stay with the free hosting program. Here are some popular free blog hosting sites compared.

Conclusion: If you just want to get your thoughts out there and aren’t concerned about creating your own brand name, these on this best free web hosting list might be a good fit for you. These are the best free web hosting sites I found, and you might find others. Although I didn’t find any sites that offered free web hosting and domains, some of the best cheap web hosting providers listed below offer a free domain when you sign up for their service, although (as noted a few paragraphs above) it’s not considered the safest idea to have your domain and your hosting from the same provider. If you can afford to spend just a few dollars a month on hosting, the list of hosting providers below might have something for you. Most offer cheap web hosting with WordPress.

Best Inexpensive Web Hosting Plans for Bloggers

The following web hosting companies offer low-cost hosting for a monthly or yearly fee. Depending on the company, they may have some very appealing offers for first-time customers. Some may include a free domain for the first year. Check them out and see what you think. These prices are for shared hosting, which means that the company hosts multiple sites on its servers, not just yours. Once you start to get around 3,000 daily visitors, or 100,000 visitors per month, you may need to upgrade to a managed WordPress hosting service. Here are the links for the best shared hosting deals for beginning bloggers I’ve found so far. If the term is unspecified, it means the service is probably billed monthly instead of yearly. I also wanted to note renewal costs. If you find a blog hosting provider you like, you might not mind paying the higher renewal cost when the initial introductory bargain blog hosting term is over. These prices are current as of this writing.

Conclusion: There are a lot of great bargain web hosts out there. If you find a web host you like, the renewal rates for most aren’t unreasonable. The great news for bloggers is that because there are so many inexpensive blog hosting options, you could potentially hop around from host to host for a long time for very little money if cheap web hosting is your goal.

Best Blog Hosting Sites for Making Money

Basically, any blog hosting site that is compatible with the WordPress.org platform will allow you to advertise, include affiliate links, and write sponsored content. If you choose any of the sites listed in the chart above, they are compatible with WordPress.org. WordPress.org sites can be easily customized with plugins that are compatible with online shopping, and many of the plugins are free. There are some other blogging platforms that allow you to make money, but WordPress.org is by far the most widely used. From small blogging sites to mega-traffic monster sites, WordPress.org is the one most bloggers and web designers use.

Why would anyone choose any other platform other than WordPress,org? Great question! The main reason people choose to go with other website platforms for blogging if they want to make money is ease of use. Wix, Squarespace and Weebly all have paid options that allow you to make money with your blog, and each of them has “drag and drop” build features. Up front, the website is very easy to create. The Model A Ford club I belong to has a website that was designed with Wix, and the club is very happy with it. Any extras, like features that would allow for online purchases, have to be paid for. Conclusion: Unless you are very, very worried about your lack of technical skills, go with a web host that offers WordPress.org hosting, like Bluehost or any of the other inexpensive hosts listed above. There are plenty of YouTube videos out there for each step of the website-building process.

Best Web Hosting Sites for Bloggers Concerned About Site Speed

Site speed is critical for increasing traffic, and the better your traffic, the better your chances are of making money. In the following list, I grabbed data from a site that had run extensive load time tests on popular web hosting services. Each site tested was built with the same basic theme (Astra) and tested the starter-level service. After looking at the site load time results with different web hosting services, I put those results into a chart along with monthly price. I also noted whether the web hosting service was shared or managed. Managed hosting generally offers more perks, can handle more website traffic, is generally more expensive, and in the case of the services listed here only host WordPress sites. Shared hosting is what most bloggers start with. As previously noted, you might want to switch to managed hosting once your website starts to receive about 3,000 visitors per day. Here are the results of site speed tests done on popular hosting services:

Conclusion: Did you notice that the shared hosting service A2 is right in there with the managed hosting services? That’s because the shared hosting is done on a cloud server, which is better able to handle traffic fluctuations. NameHero, the second-fastest shared hosting service, operates with a cloud server as well. Five out of the top six site speed results belong to managed hosting services, which are quite a bit more expensive per month.

Best Web Hosting Sites for Blogs that are Free From Downtime

Your website is not doing you any good if no one can access it. Choosing a web hosting provider that has a lot of uptime with very little downtime is a important. Based on a study done by ThemeIsle, here’s a list of popular web hosting providers with the percentage of uptime noted.

Conclusion: The good news it that whichever web hosting service you choose for your blog, chances are quite good there will be very little downtime. As a former Bluehost user, I never experienced downtime on my site. So far, with NameHero, the only downtime I experienced was as a result of a mistake on my part. The web hosting market is so competitive, web hosting companies can’t afford to have downtime these days. That’s great for bloggers!

Best Web Hosting Sites for Blogs with Great Security Features

When I was looking at the security features offered by the best web hosting sites for bloggers, there were two factors I was looking at. Did the site offer a free SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate, and were there free website backups included. An SSL certificate means a site will have a secure https:// web address rather than an http://. For security reasons, many people are wary of visiting a website that doesn’t have an SSL certificate, so having one is a must. It’s nice for bloggers if a web host includes it in a package. Website backups are critical. Some backups are performed weekly, some daily. I discovered that beyond these two basic items, all of the hosts offered additional security features like firewalls, monitoring, spam protection and virus protection. Many just had different names for them. A company would not be in the hosting business without good security features, so I chose not to confuse people by comparing every last feature. Here are the results of my investigating:

Conclusion: Due to the highly competitive nature of the web hosting market, all hosting companies offer a variety of security features to prevent hacking and other security breaches. It was disappointing to note that A2 does not offer backups with its starter plan, nor does Bluehost. Other than HostGator, all offer free SSL certificates, so that now seems to be the industry standard. More good news for bloggers!

Best Web Hosting Sites for Blogs that are Easy to Use

For some people, ease of use means web hosts that offer a website builder within the hosting platform. For others, an easy to use blog hosting site might mean a site that offers a lot of tutorials. These days, you can learn almost anything by watching a YouTube video, so working without a drag and drop website builder is less intimidating than it used to be. For those looking for a drag and drop builder, here’s a list of both free and inexpensive web hosting providers I compiled that offer the option.

Conclusion: If a drag and drop site builder is important, you can actually test one out at NameHero before purchasing a plan. You could also try one of the drag and drop builders on one of the free websites to see if it would fit your needs. If none of the drag and drop web hosts appeal to you, you could always watch some YouTube videos about working with the WordPress dashboard and the Gutenberg block editor to see if you even really need a drag and drop builder. You might be surprised at how intuitive and easy building a site without a website builder can be.

Best Web Hosting Sites for Blogs that Have Great Customer Service

To gather information about customer service, read a variety of reviews and articles. The sites I list below were mentioned most often as having excellent customer service. When I did a small, informal survey of my own about the best web hosting for bloggers, five out of the twelve people who responded specifically mentioned how pleased they were with SiteGround’s customer service. Joanna of the Oko-Logic wellness blog wrote that SiteGround has “very responsive customer support” and she loves “the ease of the platform”. Sarah of the Insecure Housewife blog wrote about SiteGround “their customer service is top-notch and their platform is easy to navigate.” There are definitely some devoted SiteGround fans out there! In my personal experience with Bluehost, I never had any issues, so never experienced the great customer service they reputedly have. I have experienced timely, excellent support from NameHero.

Conclusion: Having great customer support is critical for a website to retain customers after the initial bargain/starter period ends. It was interesting to note that of the SiteGround fans who raved about the customer service, all of them who have been blogging long enough to have reached the end of the bargain/starter low price deal have chosen to renew their web hosting with SiteGround, even at the higher renewal price. That’s customer loyalty, and it’s very meaningful to note.

Best Web Hosting Sites for Blogs that Include SEO Tools

Another factor bloggers consider when looking for the best web hosting site for blogs is the availability of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools. If you want your blog to be found and indexed by search engines, good SEO practices are essential. Wix offers a free SEO tool called SEO Wiz. If your blog is hosted on WordPress, there are numerous free and paid plugins you can install to help your blog be found. Tools such as Yoast offer free and paid versions. There are other WordPress SEO plugins. A simple plugin search will reveal many options.

One other lesser-known factor that can affect SEO rankings is the location of your host’s servers. The web host Interserver offers a free SEO panel and has multiple servers in the United States. If your audience is based in the US, the location of the servers might give your SEO a boost. Hostinger offers 7 servers around the world, so if your audience is international in nature, using Hostinger would be to your advantage.

Conclusion: SEO tools are available on free and paid web hosts. Since tools like Yoast and Rank Math are WordPress plugins, any host that is compatible with WordPress will give you many SEO options. Before choosing a web host, it would be beneficial to check to see where their servers are located in relation to your audience. As for other SEO tools, like Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools, those are available to anyone, regardless of your blog host.

Best Web Hosting Sites for Blogs that Include Free Site Migration

For those who want to get bargain web hosting year after year, it is possible to go from one web host to another for quite some time. Does migrating from one web host to another hurt your SEO rankings? In most cases, no, but there are exceptions. If you migrate to another web host and it changes your web address, then you would have to add redirects to all of your post URLs, and that would definitely hurt your rankings. If you migrate from a web host with servers near your main audience to a web host with servers located far away, that could hurt your site speed. For example, I would never migrate to a web host with servers located exclusively in Europe, because most of my audience is located in North America.

Most of the time, migrating from one web host to another should not harm your rankings. Ideally, it should be seamless. If it’s done right, no one will be able to tell you have switched hosting providers. Some people are intimidated by the prospect of migrating their entire website to another host. The really good news for bloggers is that many web hosting companies now offer free website migration services. Check out this list, which includes both shared hosting providers and managed hosting providers, to see what various best web hosting sites for bloggers offer:

Conclusion: These days, if a web hosting company hopes to be competitive, some form of website migration option must be offered. As you seek to find the best web hosting for your blog, free migration services are certainly a nice perk. My personal experience with migrating my blog website from Bluehost to NameHero went very smoothly. There was not even a slight hiccup in my website traffic. I was extremely relieved that it actually worked as NameHero promised it would.

Which is the Best Web Hosting Plan for Your Blog?

I hope that this information about the best web hosting for bloggers has been helpful. Maybe in your quest for the best web hosting site you are only considering a few factors. My wish is that you will be able to take this information and make an informed decision about the best blogging websites and use it whenever you need it. There are so many web hosts out there competing for business from bloggers, you’re bound to find the best blogging platform to fit your needs.

Get Your Blog Noticed

Standing out from the crowd is tough, especially when it comes to blogging. Need to add some unique, memorable features? If you are a fan of tech tools, you might like my eBook containing information about some excellent free tools for adding interest to a blog, web page, or social media account.

Whether you are looking for the best WordPress hosting sites, the best free blog hosting sites, or if you’re ready to take your blog to the next level with a managed blog hosting platform, I hope you have a great experience. To your success!

Lisa Mitchell is a blogger and school librarian who likes to use her job as an excuse to stay up far too late reading books and noodling around with tech tools. To learn more about what this website has to offer bloggers and Pinterest users, click on over to the Tech page.

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