- So you're trying to build a website,
and you've been told
that you need this thing called web hosting.
What is web hosting?
Why do you need it, and where should you buy it?
Today, we're gonna be comparing some names
you've heard of before, and some you probably haven't.
This video is sponsored by TrueName Domains,
find the perfect domain for your brand,
at the link in the description below.
A big part of branding is an online presence.
Developing, and maintaining a website is a necessary step
in brand and business development these days,
especially now that building a website
is easier than ever before.
You wanna do it right,
and you'll quickly find out
that an integral part of building a website is web hosting.
That's great.
But what is web hosting?
Well, a web hosting account is simply a section of a server
or a beefy computer
that holds the website files that you create,
or the files that a website builder creates for you.
Web hosting at its basic form,
is like having a Dropbox or Google Drive account.
You're paying for file storage on a cloud platform.
So does everyone need web hosting?
If you load a page on the internet,
it's hosted on a server somewhere.
So while every website needs web hosting,
you might not need to purchase web hosting for your website.
If you're using a platform like Wix,
Squarespace, or Shopify, these are hosted platforms.
This means you just pay one monthly fee
to access the website builder,
and they'll automatically host it for you
on their own in-house hosting.
And this is very important to know.
WordPress.com and WordPress.org
are two very different things.
WordPress.com is a hosted website builder.
WordPress.org is a free website builder,
where you have to bring your own web hosting to use it.
Since WordPress is the most common reason
you'd purchase web hosting,
this video will focus on web hosting
from a WordPress perspective.
Now, you might be thinking,
cool, I'm confident I need web hosting,
but where do I buy it?
GoDaddy?
After all GoDaddy is a household name
for domains and web products.
GoDaddy is the main player in this space,
and chances are you've heard of them.
If you've watched my channel before,
you'd know I'm not a fan of GoDaddy.
They're known for selling you stuff you don't need,
overcharging you every step of the way,
and having lackluster customer service.
But GoDaddy has been stepping it up
in the hosting department,
and I decided to give their WordPress hosting a shot.
The value proposition is impressive
for their introductory plan at $11.99 a month.
You get daily automated backups, a malware scanner,
and free SSL for the lifetime of the hosting account.
For those of you who know GoDaddy,
you'll know they're always trying to upsell you
things like an SSL certificate.
So, to see it included for free is shocking.
Also shocking is the included staging environment,
a valuable tool for more advanced web users.
Staging environments are a recent addition to hosting plans
from some higher-end hosting providers.
GoDaddy offers WordPress-staging capabilities
in their deluxe plan, at $17.99 a month.
I got to say this WordPress hosting from GoDaddy
is actually decent.
I'm used to go daddy products being comically bad,
but GoDaddy is stepping up their game.
Unfortunately, I have serious reservations
about recommending GoDaddy for any reason,
due to the culture of their company.
They're still classic GoDaddy,
selling other products and services no one needs
for an absurd fee and having lackluster customer support.
They do offer phone support,
and the reps have always been easy to understand,
but they aren't very helpful.
And forget it with the live chat support.
These reps can never seem to understand basic questions.
So while GoDaddy's hosting is actually quite decent,
I wouldn't touch GoDaddy with a 10-foot pole.
It's not worth it for the deception
and frustration that's sure to take place
when you become a GoDaddy customer.
And this is where it's important to understand,
not all web hosting is created equal.
There's no one best web hosting for everyone.
So here are some hosts worth considering
for different use cases.
If you're on a budget,
it is possible to get decent starter web hosting.
Namecheap offers web hosting starting at $2.88 per month.
This is not going to be the best hosting ever,
but it gets the job done.
Namecheap hosting uses cPanel,
a common management panel for web hosting.
The overall theme at Namecheap is, it gets the job done.
cPanel feels more clunky and dated than ever.
And the base plan is definitely sluggish.
It gets the job done, it's just not lightening fast.
There's no fancy dashboard to manage WordPress,
but you can still install it with a few clicks.
It actually is possible to use a staging environment
with Namecheap through Softaculous.
As far as security goes, Namecheap has you covered,
kind of.
SSL is free for the first year,
but Namecheap will charge you for each additional year.
An SSL certificate gives you that lock icon in your browser,
and ensures that your website
is running on a secure protocol.
I wish SSL was forever free,
like every other host on this list,
but I suppose you get what you pay for.
When it comes to getting help,
you hope for quality competent customer support
to resolve issues.
With Namecheap, unfortunately there's no phone support,
and their live chat support,
well, gets the job done.
For basic issues or questions, it's speedy and smooth.
For more complex issues expect to wait 30 minutes or longer
to get issues resolved,
but they will help you out and get it taken care of.
One really important aspect of web hosting
is automatic backups.
As you make changes to your website,
it's impractical to remember to back it up each time.
That's why I personally won't buy web hosting,
unless it has automatic daily backups.
Namecheap does offer this
on the stellar plus plan for $4.88 per month,
but it's missing in the $2.88-per-month introductory plan.
Overall Namecheap is the best starter web hosting
for anyone on a tight budget.
It's no frills, it won't be a luxury experience,
but you can get your website hosted
for half the cost of a Starbucks coffee per month.
But let's say you wanna spend a whole Starbucks coffee
on web hosting every month, if you've got more to work with,
I'd take a look at DreamHost.
Starting at $8 a month,
DreamHost comes with WordPress pre-installed,
and an updated management panel that's refreshingly simple
compared to cPanel.
SSL is free for life,
and its certificate is installed and renewed automatically.
DreamHost's speeds feel similar
to Namecheap's stellar plus plan,
and you're getting a more polished experience all around.
That's not to say it doesn't have its quirks.
The automatic backup management is goofy.
Instead of simply seeing a dropdown of available backups,
picking the desired date and restoring,
DreamHost gives you a series of options.
You can restore the most recent backup on mid-range backup,
or the oldest backup.
I prefer panels that give me a dropdown of dates
I can restore from,
but I do appreciate that every single DreamHost plan,
even the cheapest plan,
offers automatic backups.
Here's the insanely cool thing about DreamHost.
They offer a 97-day money back guarantee.
This is already crazy generous, but it gets better.
If you cancel your hosting at any time
within the 97-day window,
everything you've paid for up to that point
is automatically refunded.
This just goes to show you
how confident DreamHost is in their offerings.
And I think it's a great option for starter hosting,
that's a step up from Namecheap.
Regardless of where you like to buy your domains or hosting,
it's important to find the perfect domain for your brand.
This brings us to today's sponsor, TrueName Domains.
Your domain should clearly describe who you are
and what you do.
It's a more significant part of your brand than ever before.
Good domains are notoriously difficult to find.
What you think is your perfect choice is already taken,
or it's not clear what your options are.
The great news is that there are new domain options
that are not only available,
but more relevant and memorable.
Most people know about .com domains,
but there are actually hundreds of other domain extensions
that you can use that are often a better fit
for your brand and business.
A lot of these fall under the brand of TrueName Domains.
TrueName Domains have anti-phishing technology,
which blocks malicious variations of your domain
being registered and used by hackers.
They're more specific, prevent compromise,
and tell people exactly what you do and what you're about.
They're also treated the same in SEO as legacy extensions.
There are TrueName extensions for brands
spanning almost any niche you can think of.
So if you're a creator, you could use a .studio.
If you're a gamer or live streamer,
you could get a .live domain.
I'm so excited to bring my community a special offer
for you to get your own domain for your project,
whether it's one you're actively working on,
or something you plan to launch in the future.
My friends at Dynadot are offering 50% off
standard TrueName Domains for my community.
I recently got the domain craylor.academy
to use for my newly-launched course workshop,
which to me was a much better choice
than crayloracademy.com.
Go to the link in the description, or go to dynadot.deals
to get the exclusive offer of 50% off
with promo code, Craylor.
Simply search some of your preferred keywords,
and you'll be able to browse all of the available domains.
I really wanna know what the domains are that you chose.
Go ahead and share the domain or domains that you got
in the comments section, so I can check it out.
Thanks to TrueName for sponsoring this video.
And now let's take a look at some premium hosting options.
If you want to luxury WordPress hosting experience,
Flywheel is for you.
Starting at $15 a month, Flywheel is a reliable
and effortless hosting experience that just works.
Everything from the setup experience,
management panel, and customer support,
are crafted to be clean and elegant.
Flywheel is there to make your life easier,
so you can spend more time on your business.
Every Flywheel plan brings a smooth experience,
and your site will be speedy on any plan.
Flywheel plans are based on resources.
Each plan has a cap of monthly visits,
storage, and bandwidth.
The tiny plan allows for 5,000 visits per month,
and prices increase from there.
Everything about Flywheel makes it a joy to use.
SSL is included for free,
you can manage full site backups with a click,
and do everything you need
to keep your site running smoothly.
Flywheel has great chat support,
but they don't offer phone support
until you get to their agency plan for $290 a month.
And that's the thing about Flywheel.
The price balloons quickly.
It's designed for bigger businesses that value performance,
reliability, and ease of use over cost.
If your site is getting close to 400,000 visits per month,
and you're making thousands of dollars per month
from your business,
what's $290 a month for web hosting?
But for most of you,
you're just looking for web hosting to get you started.
I still feel that the Flywheel base plan
is a good fit for this.
So if you're looking for luxury hosting
that just works and is a pleasure to use,
look no further than Flywheel.
Now we've covered a lot of scenarios and use cases,
but one important aspect
is how many websites you need to host.
All of these web hosts
have options for hosting multiple sites,
but one host stands out in particular,
if you have several websites
or are a freelance web designer.
That web host is Cloudways.
And it's brings a similar luxury experience like Flywheel,
with a unique twist.
At Cloudways, you get a dedicated hosting instance
with a specific amount of RAM, storage, and bandwidth.
It's your choice of an instance from DigitalOcean,
Linode, VULTR, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform.
Cloudways lets you host as many websites as you want
on your hosting instance, but it's up to you
to make sure you don't put too many websites on an instance,
where everything is running slow.
Posting options start at $10 a month for one gigabyte of RAM
and 25 gigabytes of storage.
Cloudways has a decent management panel,
you'll get automatic backups for each website,
free SSL for life, a staging environment,
and basic controls over your instance.
Cloudways is great for hosting enthusiasts
who want the freedom to choose
from different independent data centers,
but it's also a great value overall
for anyone hosting multiple websites.
The chat support is mediocre.
It's not nearly as good as Flywheel.
The panel sometimes glitches and throws errors,
but the support has always been able to help me out
when this happens.
Overall, Cloudways isn't as smooth as Flywheel,
but you get what you pay for.
A two-gigabyte server for $22 a month,
could comfortably host five to 10 websites
with moderate traffic.
At Flywheel, you would be paying a minimum
of $15 per site per month,
so five sites would cost you $75 or more.
Cloudways is my personal web host of choice.
I have over 10 WordPress sites
hosted on a two-gigabyte VULTR high-frequency instance,
and I've been really happy with the reliability I've seen
over the years.
Cloudways is the only host on this list
to offer a free trial,
and everything is billed hourly.
This means you can try it out for two weeks,
decide to cancel,
and you'll only get billed for two weeks of service.
So these are the hosts I'd say are worth your time.
If you're on a tight budget, go with Namecheap.
If you've got a bit more to work with,
and don't mind spending more effort setting things up
in exchange for some savings, give DreamHost a shot.
If you're after that luxury premium hosting experience,
you have to try Flywheel.
And finally, if you are a more advanced user
seeking power and reliability,
definitely check out Cloudways.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
What about Bluehost?
Hostinger?
HostGator?
What about all of these popular web hosts I didn't mention?
Are they worth considering?
Well, it's obviously a case-by-case basis,
but for the three I've mentioned,
it's generally not worth your time to use them.
You might find some gimmicks or features that look enticing,
but these companies tend to have generally poor service
and reliability,
and aren't known for quality.
If you enjoyed this video,
click here to discover the best place to buy domain names.
And speaking of domains,
don't forget to claim your TrueName Domain for 50% off
at the link in the description below.
With that said, I'll catch you guys next time.