- Hey guys.
My name is Christian Taylor.
Welcome back to Craylor Made where I like to show you
how to build websites, how to get online,
and how to build a brand.
Today, I am so excited for this video.
I have put in weeks of preparation
to show you the best place to buy any kind of web hosting
whether it's for a WordPress site,
or a completely custom site, or something else,
here are seven very popular web hosts,
I'm gonna break them down and let you know
where you should spend your money
and where you should host your website.
Stay tuned.
(upbeat music)
If you wanna know all about online marketing,
social media, and building and online presence,
go ahead and hit that subscribe button and click the bell.
Without further ado, let's get right into the video.
I'm gonna start with Bluehost because
they are such a popular web host.
Chances are if you Google where to buy
web hosting or best web host,
Bluehost was likely at the top of a lot of lists.
One thing right off the bat that bothers me about Bluehost
is that you have to buy yearly for the first sign-up.
It's really weird.
When you sign up, you have to buy a block of
one year of hosting, but then after that,
you can renew monthly.
That's like going up to a girl and
asking her to marry you at first sight.
Maybe I just wanna try monthly before
I commit to paying for a year of hosting.
Bluehost has it all backwards.
They're like, we need that one year commitment
and then you can switch to monthly.
What?
Okay.
I went ahead and signed up for a year of hosting for $60.
One thing to keep in mind when you sign up for Bluehost
is some of the upsells are pre-checked.
They are really working overtime to
sell you stuff you don't necessarily need
or stuff that may be helpful,
but you don't have to pay for it.
Pay attention on that sign-up screen
to what you're paying for and if you
don't want the CodeGuard for backups
or site lock or whatever it is they try to sell you,
go ahead and uncheck that box.
The setup process for WordPress was super elegant.
They let you pick from tons of free WordPress themes
right there when the site is being set up
and they pre-install plugins you should have
like a caching plugin to speed up your site
and an anti-spam plugin.
These are plugins that Bluehost just
puts on there by default,
which I actually think is kind of cool.
Maybe you're not really into tinkering with plugins,
you just wanna install WordPress
and you want it to work well,
Bluehost is gonna make sure that you have
a smooth and solid experience.
The website in the hosting felt really fast
thanks to that caching plugin I just mentioned
and I really love that Bluehost makes it
super easy to get support.
There's no hiding things behind dark patterns
or any of that.
You just click help, you do a live chat,
and they are right there to help you.
I did have a pretty positive experience with Bluehost.
They do try a little too hard to upsell.
They're kind of constantly throwing stuff in your face
so if that bothers you, maybe pick somewhere else,
but if you're looking for the most flexible web host
with lots of different add-ons and
options available for purchase
that you can add to your website and your hosting experience
like G Suite for email hosting,
backups, all that kind of stuff,
I think you're going to love Bluehost
and I can definitely recommend them for the
most flexible hosting and the most options.
Next, let's talk about SiteGround and boy,
do I have things to say about SiteGround.
Unlike Bluehost, they offer you a monthly option
right from the start, which is awesome,
thank you SiteGround,
except they charge you a $14.95 ding fee
as a setup fee if you choose monthly.
Why?
Why are these guys trying to make it
so hard to just try a month of hosting?
Everything was just downhill from here.
I went ahead and signed up for the hosting
and it was not easy to setup WordPress.
I had to dig around in some scary convoluted
retro looking menus and the entire SiteGround panel
is just dated, very cluttered,
and extremely hard to find what you're looking for.
It took a solid 30, maybe 40 minutes
for my site to be set up,
but there was no indicator of that.
Wow, thanks for the communication guys.
It would be nice to know that there's
about a 30 to 40 minute window for the automated setup,
so do keep that in mind if you choose SiteGround.
However, I would strongly advise against choosing SiteGround
for two reasons.
Number one, I really dislike their panel,
which I already talked about,
it's cluttered and it's hard to use, but number two,
they make getting support so ridiculously hard,
and I cannot get behind that.
Look, if you're trusting a company to host your website
and to hold the files so when
someone types your domain name, your website comes up,
you need a company you can rely on
and you need a company you can reach out to
if you're having any trouble or if your site is down
or anything like that.
In the amount of time it takes to
get SiteGround's attention is unacceptable.
They use what's called a dart pattern.
A dart pattern is where you manipulate an interface
in such a way that it makes no sense
to get to where they don't want you to get,
so they don't want you to contact them.
They try and deflect you by looking at
their knowledge-based articles and all this stuff
and as you can see in this screen recording,
to contact them, you literally have to press this tiny,
absurd, little link that you probably would miss
if you're not really paying attention to contact them.
That's not something I can support
so I would recommend staying away from SiteGround
and choosing someone else.
Let's talk Namecheap.
Namecheap has always been a company I've loved
for both web hosting and domains.
I have all of my personal domains with Namecheap
and I have recommended them in the past to my web clients.
It is really easy to set up and their new
easy WP hosting is so extremely intuitive
and it is the fastest I have ever seen
a WordPress site get set up and up and running
and on the internet.
As you can see here,
Namecheap's easy WP hosting is completely targeted
at being fast, easy, and simple with nothing else,
no gimmicks, and it's very reasonable,
costing only $3.88 a month or $30.88 a year.
It was really hard to find downsides to Namecheap's hosting.
It's incredibly fast and smooth and the
experience is just so simple,
I think this is gonna be appealing for
those of you who don't wanna tinker with
a bunch of panels or settings.
However, the issue I had with Namecheap's easy WP hosting
is that they don't offer daily backups even as an upsell.
Every other host on this list offers daily backups
either included in the cost or for an upsell,
a paid upsell, which I think is reasonable.
It's not uncommon for a host to ask you
for extra money to back up your site daily automatically,
but Namecheap just has nothing, nothing at all.
They don't include automated daily backups
and they don't let you pay for automated daily backups.
The best you can do with easy WP is create a manual backup,
which is free, but you have to remember to do that
and the whole point of automated backups
is to make sure that if your site crashes
or gets hacked or anything happens,
your backup is there and you didn't even
have to think about it.
You just restore the backup and you're good to go.
You can use an external backup service like CodeGuard
to backup your Namecheap easy WP hosting,
but that costs around $5 a month or $60 a year,
so when you figure that in,
you're paying about $9.88 per month for Namecheap's hosting,
which is a little bit expensive.
It's not completely unreasonable and it is
not the most expensive option on this list,
but you are gonna have to keep that in mind
when you're buying hosting if you want those daily backups.
Trucking right along, let's talk about HostGator.
This is another one of those very large hosting companies
that you might recognize right away.
They've been out there for years
and they have a huge presence online.
My experience with HostGator was very interesting.
They do the little things that drive me nuts,
like the prices they put on their website
are for 36 months of hosting.
They'll be like, only $5 a month,
but it's actually like $15 a month
if you pay month-to-month and it's
$5 a month if you pay for three years at once.
However, that's kind of a pretty common practice
and I will say that they thankfully
let you pay month-to-month with no issues,
no setup fees, no forcing a year of hosting on you.
If you wanna buy a month of hosting from HostGator,
you can buy a month of hosting from HostGator.
Overall, the panel was a simple and
relatively nice experience.
My trouble with HostGator is that they
actually don't offer enough upsells for my preference,
or the types of upsells I'm looking for.
I know you're like, Christian, what are you talking about?
No one likes to be upsold.
I know, but hear me out.
HostGator's WordPress hosting plan
includes a one gigabyte CodeGuard account.
CodeGuard is an external backup service
and HostGator has worked with them to
offer daily backups up to one gigabyte of files.
I'm like, what happens if my WordPress site exceeds
a gigabyte of files 'cause if you
upload a lot of images and stuff to your blog,
that's not uncommon for it to be bigger than a gig of files
and the HostGator account itself is bigger than a gig
so you could exceed that perfectly fine.
I chatted in their live chat.
I'm like, how can I upgrade my CodeGuard
if I require more than a gig of backup per day?
They're like, you actually can't.
I'm sorry, HostGator, did you just miss an opportunity
to upsell me and have me pay you more money?
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what just happened.
(man laughing)
- Got him!
Got him!
(man laughing)
- HostGator's support is also extremely slow.
They do make it easy to get to,
so I'll give them credit for that.
There's no dark patterns like with SiteGround,
but you're gonna be waiting awhile.
It is painfully slow.
For the support, price, and no ability to increase
the backup storage, I would not recommend HostGator.
I personally would stay away from them.
Next, we're gonna talk about iPage.
Once again, this is another popular web host
that you may have heard about and I'm
not exactly sure why they're so popular.
My experience was kind of similar to SiteGround with iPage,
but maybe not as bad.
They have a lot of upsells,
they have a cluttered and confusing panel,
and then they make it hard to buy things you wanna buy
after the fact.
For example, when you go to sign-up with iPage,
they're like, buy backups, buy this, buy that.
Maybe you're not ready for that yet
so you may uncheck the things, buy just the hosting,
and if you decide you wanna add daily
backups to your site later,
I could not find it anywhere in the panel.
I dug through every single menu and it ends up,
you have to go to the main iPage website,
not through your hosting panel,
and buy backups through there.
Overall, the panel was just extremely confusing,
it was kind of hard to set up WordPress,
it took a couple extra steps to get things up and running,
and I think there are plenty and better options out there.
I guess I don't have a huge problem with iPage,
I don't have an issue with their support or this or that,
but I didn't have a great experience there
and I personally would stay away from iPage.
We got just two left, so let's talk about Hostinger.
This is a web host that I expected to hate
based on their website, but I actually ended up loving them.
Here's what I dislike about Hostinger.
They're one of those websites that when
you go to their site,
they try to pressure you to buy immediately.
As soon as you go to their site,
they have this countdown, starting from 21 hours,
and they act like they're having this super mega sale
and if you don't buy within 21 hours,
you're gonna miss out on the deals, but here's the thing,
that's just their price.
That's always their price.
Any time you go to their site,
that 21-hour countdown starts and it just
resets every time you visit the site.
Based on that alone,
I had a bad taste in my mouth going into it
and trying Hostinger.
I was very cautious.
I'm like, if they're doing this,
what other sorts of annoying tactics
are they doing to try and pressure me,
but what I found was completely different
from what I expected.
Hostinger had the most impressive setup screen
I've seen on any web host.
They made it super easy to install WordPress
and get going right away,
they weren't too pushy about upselling me
on the initial signup screen,
and they even give you a temporary URL
to start editing your site right away
without having to point your domain there yet.
If you don't know what I'm saying,
when you buy a domain name,
you have to point it to the web host
and this can take up to 48 hours
before your domain points there.
Hostinger solved this issue by giving you a temporary URL
that you can use to modify your site
and start building it until your domain name
is pointing to them, and I think that's really efficient,
it's very considerate of your time,
and I'm a huge fan of what Hostinger is doing.
In addition, they offer lots of quality add-ons
like daily backups for 95 cents a month,
or G Suite for email hosting, or Nord VPN,
and all of these are easy to add at any time,
it's right there in the panel.
You just go and you add it to your account
and it's very simple.
The hosting with Hostinger was also speedy fast
and I was just overall blown away
with the service I received from Hostinger.
Their 24/7 support is no joke.
It's right there in the bottom-right corner.
You just click it and you chat away
and someone replies usually within a minute.
I was very impressed.
I was so impressed with Hostinger,
that I'm recommending them as the best overall option,
the balance between value, support, and features.
If you're looking for the most well-rounded experience,
Hostinger is gonna be for you.
To wrap things up, let's look at our last company,
and that is DreamHost.
DreamHost offers the best month-to-month options,
in my opinion, if you're kind of looking for that
well-rounded experience and you don't wanna break the bank
and you're not able to pay yearly.
DreamHost has plans from $4.95 per month,
no catches, no setup fees, no big gotchas,
just $4.95 a month, you can get started right away,
and they make it simple to sign-up for that.
Like many of the other hosts on this list,
there are some upsells that are pre-checked
during the checkout, which I don't love,
but it is so common that I'm not gonna
get onto DreamHost too much for that.
The panel was a little bit confusing,
but the graphics are inviting and
DreamHost does offer lots of upsells for you.
One thing I love about DreamHost is they
do daily backups automatically and they do it for free.
You don't have to pay anything else,
it doesn't matter how big your website is, none of that.
If you're catching what I'm saying,
this is a great value for $4.95 a month.
There are some hoops to jump through
to get to their support.
It's not ridiculously complex like SiteGround
and I wouldn't necessarily call it extreme dart patterns,
but they do try to deflect you just a little bit.
However, when you're able to get to their support,
they are relatively helpful, they're friendly,
and I don't think you're gonna have any issues there.
I would recommend DreamHost if you're
looking for a month-to-month option
and the best value and not breaking the bank.
In conclusion, if you're looking for the hosting
with the most options and tinkering available,
Bluehost is gonna be for you.
They have a very robust panel with
plenty of upsells and add-ons that
you can purchase and set up and it's gonna be
kind of a lot of fun if you like to
tinker around with different features
and services with web hosting.
If you're just looking for a simple and
easy set it and forget it web host
for your WordPress website, Namecheap is gonna be for you.
There's hardly any options to mess with,
but that's the beauty of it if you
don't wanna worry about things.
Just keep in mind that extra added cost for CodeGuard
if you want your website backed up daily.
If you're looking for the best most well-rounded web host
and the best overall balance of value,
features, and add-ons,
then you definitely should go with Hostinger.
Finally, if you're like I really don't have a lot of money,
I just wanna pay the minimum amount possible monthly
and that's it, I can't afford to pay yearly,
I don't wanna have to pay for upsells
or extra things for daily backups or any of that,
then DreamHost is gonna be the way to go for you.
Which web host did you pick?
I'd love to know your thoughts down in the comments below
and if you liked this video,
do be sure to hit that subscribe button
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when I release new videos.
With that said, I will catch you guys next time.