Our Top Pick for Almost All Sites: Cloudways
We recommend Cloudways for all websites of any size if you plan to build one or more sites and grow your online business over the long-term
Why we recommend Cloudways: We recommend Cloudways for basically everyone. In addition to providing lightning fast hosting (even for our big sites) I love that Cloudways charges monthly, so you’re never stuck with a host or plan you don’t love for a full year. And even more than that, I love that with Cloudways it’s really easy to add capacity if my traffic grows. Some hosts charge huge overage penalties if you get too much traffic and the cost to upgrade to the next level is often 3-5x the cost of the starter levels.
What they could do to improve: I would love to see more guidance on how to select the right server. With Cloudways, they’ll let you host your site with one of a whole bunch of different providers. In poviding that flexiblity, it’s more complicated for most beginners. If you’re getting started right now, the lowest cost plan with either Digital Ocean or Vultr servers is going to be more than enough for a very long time.
Compared to the competition: I’ve not had nearly the issues with site downtime that I’ve had with some providers. Compared to Bluehost, our other recommendation for new sites, your site is going to load a bit faster but honestly, Bluehost is fine and will be cheaper for the first year.
I’ve found Cloudways to be as reliable and perform as well as or better than any of ther other hosting companies I’ve worked with (including Biscoots, WP Engine, WPX, Siteground, Orange Geek, and others) but at a lower cost.
Our Top Pick for New Sites: Hostinger
We recommend Hostinger for new website creators while their site has about 25,000 visits/month or less.
Use Promo Code: INCOMESCHOOL
Why we recommend Hostinger: We recommend Hostinger as the best host for anyone new to building websites. Their process of starting up a website is very easy to navigate, basically acting as a step by step checklist. Their plans are cheaper than cloudways for about the same number of virtual assets (plus, if you use our discount link on the left, it’s even cheaper).
We used to get countless questions about how to set up WordPress and maintain it for a new site. On most hosting companies, there are too many confusing settings you have to sort through to set up WordPress. With Hostinger’s current interface, those issues become obsolete as this sets up the website for you. You simply choose the options you want and Hostinger does the rest.
What they could do to improve: Hostinger may provide plenty of features for first time users at a low cost. However, they could improve their upgrade speeds with more site visits. When the site gets large (over 25,000 visits/month) you will need to either upgrade to a better plan or migrate your site to Cloudways. But for your first year of blogging, going with Hostinger is a great option.
Compared to the competition: Cloudways is a top competitor for Hostinger. However, Hostinger is a great place to start if you are looking for a cheaper and easier starting process. It claims to have unlimited bandwidth for their premium account but its visits per month is lower than Cloudways when it comes to what it can handle.
Our Top Pick for Established Sites: Big Scoots
We recommend Big Scoots for established sites or for those who want reliable, fast hosting
Why we recommend Big Scoots: Big Scoots is what we host Income School and many of our large sites on. It’s built for speed and simplicity. Bigscoots won’t have any trouble hosting a blog of virtually any size without even flinching on speed, but isn’t overly complex or technical. Their support is quick to respond and amazingly helpful.
What they could do to improve: We’d love to see a few more approachable plans for our site creators who are between Bluehost and Big Scoots. Feels like it’s too big of a jump from a tiny plan to a giant plan. It makes an option like Cloudways a much better fit in most cases.
Compared to the competition: WPEngine is their primary competition, which we found to be PUNITIVELY expensive and we don’t like how they handle DNS. WPX was once our recommendation but now they have too much down time. SiteGround used to be good but their interface is dated and they also struggle with downtime. Orange Geek is a small family business that hosts large sites as well and they are good people and provide a good service but have no cPanel for easy management, and service requests are slow.
