Top 10 Free & Cheapest Web Hosting Providers In The UK
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| Top 10 Best Free Web Hosting In The United Kingdom |
Having an online presence is every new business venture’s top necessity in this age when word of mouth can only get you too far. Great services are now often shared via social media, and without a good website to showcase your services and/or products, there’s really no way to reach interested potential customers.
Your website is only as powerful as the web hosting it receives. That is why having a website requires good web hosting service just as much as it needs a great design.
If you are living in the United Kingdom and searching for best free web hosting that you can access to, this article below will help you out.
Factors To Consider When Choosing A Web Host In The UK
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| Photo: TechRadar |
Choosing a web host for your website is a big decision as it is an important foundation to ensure the success of your business. With the right web host, you can greatly improve and boost your website performance. Choose wrongly and you’ll end up causing all kinds of headaches as well as unnecessary expenses.
1. Speed - Your website’s speed matters greatly in keeping your customers on your page. Every aspect of your site’s design can affect how fast your website is going to load - from the images, videos, text, and other types of graphics. Your hosting will ensure that your site will meet these demands or you could lose valuable sales.
2. Server Locations - Depending on the location of your hosting’s servers, your web page will load faster because of low latency. It’s often good to have a server within the country or continent of your target audience.
3. Uptime - If your website is always down, customers leave your site. The higher the percentage of your hosting provider, the better your chances are of keeping your audience browsing through your site. Servers must stay up and running and so does your hosting provider to keep the uptime at maximum.
4. Response Time - Your server response time determines the speed of your entire website and will ultimately affect user interaction.
5. Disk Space - Your site hosting’s key component, disk space refers to the storage of your site’s content - images, videos, text, codes, etc.). The amount of disk space your website has and its speed can greatly affect your site’s quality, and, ultimately, your visitors’ experience.
6. Costs - Much like all other aspects of the website, the steep or low costs of a hosting service can often be directly proportional to their features and the quality of their services.
7. User Interface - The functionality of your website depends greatly on the ease of the interface it gives the user. This establishes the relationship between your viewer and your website.
8. Support - A reliable web hosting service means everything to your website. In the event of an unexpected down time, it’s important to have support available 24/7.
Your website’s success relies greatly on the performance of your web hosting provider.
How does Web Hosting work?
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| Photo: Daily Host News! |
So, your website basically lives on a server. The server holds all of your website as files that can be sent as needed. When a visitor makes its way to your website, the server needs to actively send information to the viewer.
Say your visitor wants to see your blog. The server will send the blog to their browser screen. Once they chose a specific blog post, the server will display that post on their screen. The type of website hosting service that you need depends on the size of your following and the specifications that you need.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the least expensive type of hosting service. It is the simplest form of hosting, but it is also the least powerful. This type of website hosting consists of one server that handles multiple websites and all of their files. Shared hosting is ideal for:
- Blog writers
- Small to medium organizations
- Small tech businesses
When websites on a shared host platform start getting a ton of traffic, it can cause unexplained lagging or downtime for the other sites on the server. When your website begins to gain more traction, the website can crash for seemingly no reason.
These shared servers are not ideal for growing your website or handling heavy website traffic. They also don’t have a completely customizable capacity.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the most expensive type of hosting service. This type of website hosting is ideal for larger organizations that have a server administrator on standby. It is equipped with more power that allows you to have more freedom for your website. Because it is more powerful, it is also more complicated to manage.
With a dedicated hosting server, the website owner has direct access to the server. They are the only website on this server. This is great! However, the website owner is then responsible for upkeep and updates for the server.
VPS Hosting
Virtual Private Servers, or VPS hosting, combines the best aspects of shared and dedicated website hosting, making it the happy medium between the two. The VPS host gives the website owner a dedicated “virtual” server with complete control over the environment.
This type of website hosting gives access to additional resources than you would get with a shared server while being a shared hosting service. There are just fewer websites on this type of server which ensures that you have more bandwidth and power.
Which Type of UK Web Hosting Is Right for You?
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| Photo: Bitcatcha |
WordPress Hosts
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems around. It makes creating a website quick and easy. Because of the rise in popularity for this CMS, most web hosting companies have been adding WordPress hosting packages to their offering.
These are usually designed around WordPress and offer additional features like 1-click installers for WP, expert customer support, and custom caching plugins to optimise performance. You can find WordPress hosting for almost any budget, from cheaper plans on shared hosting environments, to managed hosting services that give the website a lot more resources to work with.
Free Web Hosting
Free web hosting is not the best idea in most situations. The only situation where we would potentially recommend using a free web hosting provider is if you’re just testing some things and don’t really care about the general performance of the site.
Free hosting doesn’t support high levels of traffic or bandwidth, and some providers even push ads on your site. But, if you’re on a really tight budget, or just want to tinker around and see what it’s like to push a website live, then it’s a possible option.
Cheap Web Hosting
Finding the best cheap UK web hosting service is easier than ever! Providers are constantly competing with each other on price, and the impact on quality is negligible in most cases. Web hosting plans are already very affordable, but a few providers stand out as having the cheapest plans. You do need to check the renewal prices before signing up so you don’t get a surprise when the next invoice comes (a lot of cheap web hosts only discount the first invoice to get people on board).
Small Business Hosting
Every small business in the UK should have a website, even if it’s only a small one. Luckily for us, web hosting services are generally very good at supporting small businesses. Prices are affordable, good support is easy to find, you get plenty of disk space, and a lot of UK web hosts for small businesses come with an easy-to-use website builder so you can build your own site if you can’t afford to hire a web design agency.
There are also quite a few providers that offer heavy discounts for new sign-ups, which makes it even more affordable to get your small business website live.
Ecommerce Hosting
Finding a good web hosting provider for your UK e-commerce site will depend on a few factors. The main factor will be the size of your online store, as this will determine how much disk space and resources your site will need.
If you’re just starting out, then going for an affordable shared hosting provider is a good option. If you’re already quite big and have a lot of traffic, you might want to look at more powerful options like a VPS or cloud hosting services.
Alternatively, if you’re using WordPress, have a look at managed WordPress hosts. They are quite costly but can scale seamlessly as your product range and traffic increases on your ecommerce site. The support is also better compared to the shared hosting providers.
Reseller Hosting
If you’re looking to host your clients or start your own small web hosting company in the UK, then reseller hosting is the way to go. With reseller hosting, you can bulk buy web hosting plans, and then resell them to your clients at a higher price, it’s a great way to make some recurring income.
When searching for reseller web hosting, you need to look at a few factors. Then main ones being the disk space you get and the allowed accounts for that disk space. Some reseller hosts even allow unlimited accounts, which is great, though you have to be careful you don’t overdo it and add too many sites. When you have a few too many sites to your account, you might overstretch your server resources and this could slow down all the sites on that account.
It’s also important to have an in-built management system like WHM to easily create/edit/remove accounts, so definitely check if the web host offers it before signing up.
Other Web Hosting Comparisons by Country
While this specific page is about web hosting for the United Kingdom, we also built web hosting comparisons for other countries. We separate our comparisons this way as some hosts work better for some countries than others.
Top 10 Best Web Hosting In The United Kingdom - Free & Low Paid in 2022
1. SiteGround
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| Photo: Geekflare |
SiteGround is a web hosting company founded in 2004 in Sofia, Bulgaria. As of January 2020, it provides hosting for about 2,000,000 domains worldwide. It provides shared hosting, cloud hosting, enterprise solutions, email hosting, and domain registration. In 2019, the company employed about 500 people. It has offices in Sofia, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora and Madrid.
SiteGround was founded in 2004 in Sofia by a few university friends. In January 2015, Joomla partnered with SiteGround to offer free websites hosted on Joomla.com.
According to the company's website, in May 2020, it had 6 data centers in 6 countries: the United States, the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Australia and Singapore. SiteGround runs CentOS, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PHP, WHM and its in-house developed control panel – Site Tools on its servers. The company developed software for account isolation, monitoring and reaction, and speed-optimization, sold under the 1H brand and used by other Linux hosting companies. SiteGround uses solid-state drives to store data.
2. Hostinger
Hostinger International, Ltd is an employee-owned Web hosting provider and Internet domain registrar. Established in 2004. Hostinger is the parent company of 000Webhost, Niagahoster and Weblink.
Founded in Kaunas, Lithuania in 2004, the firm was originally named Hosting Media. In 2007, its subsidiary 000Webhost was established, providing free hosting worldwide. Hosting24, another subsidiary, was launched in 2008 in the United States, with data centers in Asheville, North Carolina and in the United Kingdom.
In 2019 Hostinger converted its Apache HTTP servers to LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) to increase the servers' performance. In mid-2020 Hostinger partnered with Google Cloud Platform.
In 2021, Hostinger was listed as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe.
In 2021, a group of investors led by the German entrepreneurs Jochen Berger and Thomas Strohe invested in Hostinger. They have acquired 31% of Hostinger’s shares from long-time employees and have become members of the company’s board.
Their cheapest web hosting plan is an insane £0.99/mo and comes with 24/7 support, 10GB of storage space, 1 email address, multiple web server locations for you to choose from, and their custom-built control panel, how’s that for value for money!
Regardless of the plan you choose, Hostinger offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and also allows you to monitor their server status in real-time. They have a server farm located in the UK, as well as others worldwide, allowing you to decide which location best fits your client base.
Despite offering very affordable plans, Hostinger doesn’t skip on speed, with even unoptimised websites loading in under 800 ms (their servers have great response times). If you do ever have a problem, you can get in touch with Hostinger’s fantastic support team via email, live chat, or logging a support ticket. Overall, if you’re looking for an affordable service that gives you high-quality connectivity, Hostinger is an excellent first choice (which is backed up by their positive customer reviews).
3. A2 Hosting
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| Photo: www.a2hosting.com |
A2 Hosting offers several features, which makes up for the fact that they don’t have servers in the UK. The main appeal of this host is that they provide unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth on all their plans. They also support Linux-based systems in addition to ordinary Windows web hosting.
When you sign up for an A2 hosting account, you get a one-script installer that works on most CMS systems, making setup a breeze. Each setup solution is customised to work with that particular platform, ensuring you get an optimal configuration for your CMS, from WordPress to Drupal, Joomla, and Magneto.
Like GreenGeeks, A2 Hosting doesn’t offer a server in the United Kingdom. They do have two servers outside of the United States, but they are in Amsterdam and Singapore. Nevertheless, the highlight of A2 Hosting is their Turbo Server with speeds up to 20 times faster than other options.
These Turbo Servers limit how many users are on a server, ensuring each person has a high-performance website. They also include SSDs and caching, which give an uptime of 99.98% on average.
In addition to the cheapest shared hosting option, A2 Hosting provides three other plans.
Read More: Top 10 Best Free Web Hosting In The World
4. Scala Hosting
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| Photo: PCMag Asia |
Scala Hosting is one of the most reliable hosting providers with consistently strong server speed. Their VPS servers’ performance is also as highly notable and competitive. To guarantee this, their 99.9% uptime guarantee offers offsetting account credits should there be more downtimes than expected. Scala Hosting also offers a comprehensive and powerful SPanel, Scala Hosting’s alternative to cPanel, made more developer-friendly for easy navigation.
Some of Scala Hosting’s strengths are their approach to security and impressive performance. Their own SPanel locks installation files for security, restricting hacker access to the server to upload malware. Traffic spikes do not become an issue either, as your site’s speed will remain untouched with their impressive connection time.
Support is also not overlooked and Scala Hosting offers 24/7 chat support to ensure you get all the help you need anytime. Scala Hosting’s plans offer competitive pricing, though renewal fees can go pretty steep. These plans include unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases, guaranteed resources, a free domain and free SSL, SSD powered servers, SShield Cyber security, and a lot more.
Other features of Scala Hosting include daily backups that are done remotely, a 1-click installer, free website migration, and the eleven years of progress Scala Hosting has on their hands, currently powering 700,000 websites from over 120 countries.
5. GoDaddy
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| Photo: The Verge |
No website owner has not heard of GoDaddy. The company's comprehensive plans all offer unmetered bandwidth and storage, a free domain, 24/7 support, 1GB database storage, easy to use cPanel, round the clock security monitoring and other features that make sure your website has everything it needs to achieve success. GoDaddy has web hosting plans for Windows and Linux-based multiple shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, virtual private servers, and dedicated hosting plans.
GoDaddy plans cater to basic sites, small business websites and complex, high traffic sites alike. Managing your site and domain in a single cPanel has become not only possible but also easier, making GoDaddy an easy choice for developers.
GoDaddy believes that earning your customers’ trust is as important as website speed, and they start with giving you a trustworthy com or .co.uk domain plus a matching email address. GoDaddy’s industry-leading load times and 99.9% uptime guarantee also ensures your site is always around to give your customers a great experience, keeping your branding in place at all times.
GoDaddy also offers tools for malware protection, unlimited malware removals, CDN performance acceleration, excellent response times, and a great user interface cPanel, all optimized to ensure your GoDaddy experience remains as powerful as the first time. Whether you’re just needing a platform to start building a name or an already established brand needing to continue excellent services, GoDaddy has your back.
6. GreenGeeks
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| Photo: Candor Blog |
GreenGeeks made a splash with their commitment to giving back to the environment by putting their energy consumption back three-fold into the grid via wind power. If you’re eco-conscious, you’ll appreciate the fact that you are helping save the environment by using their web service. But, apart from that, does GreenGeeks make the cut?
Simply put, yes they do. The web hosting service offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and email accounts on all their plans. They also provide one free domain name, which is an excellent option for new businesses that want to make their mark.
The web host speed depends on a lot of factors, such as the location of the nearest server. Unfortunately, GreenGeeks doesn’t have any servers in the United Kingdom yet, as you may have guessed from the price listed in US dollars. They do have a server in the Netherlands, but most of them are in the United States.
Nevertheless, GreenGeeks ensures that your website still has a great loading speed, so your SEO isn’t affected. Even if you are using a server located far away, their monitoring system is continually reviewing your website’s activity for potential lags. Plus, they have a PowerCacher, PHP7, and SSDs all working to give you the quickest speed possible.
All of these tools work together to provide an impressive uptime. While GreenGeeks promises 99.99% uptime, it often dips a bit below that number, but not too much to significantly affect your website.
7. Kinsta
If you run a WordPress site, you’ll probably want dedicated WordPress hosting. Kinsta offers a full suite of services and features that are exclusively designed for WordPress users who don’t want the hassle of managing their page. These services include updating WordPress and keeping up to date with the latest security patches. The service also offers a few neat add-ons like DDoS protection, hardware firewalls, and a free SSL certificate, regardless of the plan you choose.
Unlike many other hosting services, Kinsta doesn’t have physical servers and instead relies on third-party web hosting services. The main advantage of this is that you don’t have to worry about your server’s location since Kinsta will always pick the best site from Google Cloud.
If you’re worried about losing your data, Kinsta does daily backups for free, and you can pay an extra fee per additional backup. The service also has a hack guarantee, and if your hosting account does get hacked, the support team will help mitigate the damage and repair the site for free.
8. Bluehost
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| Photo: Nordic Coder |
Bluehost is a web hosting company owned by Endurance International Group. It is one of the 20 largest web hosts, collectively hosting well over 2 million domains.
Bluehost was among those studied in the analysis of web-based hosting services in collaborative online learning programs.
Bluehost offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting and WooCommerce hosting as well as professional marketing services. Their servers are powered by PHP 7, HTTP/2, and NGINX+ caching.
Bluehost has an excellent (and deserved) reputation for amazing infrastructure and useful support that are keen to help (even if not always online). They rank highly in tests of speed and performance, earning them their spot among the industry leaders.
If you're set on getting either high-quality VPS hosting or their equally powerful dedicated servers, make sure to go through what Bluehost has to offer.
9. HostGator
HostGator’s reputation can easily place them on any list, but HostGator does keep the standards it has set since 2012. HostGator offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, a Virtual Private Server (VPS), cloud hosting, domain names, a dedicated server, and their own website builder.
Their hosting plans will give you unlimited bandwidth and database, weekly backups, 24-hour support, and low renewal costs. If you’re using Perl, Python and Ruby On Rails, you’re in good hands with HostGator. HostGator makes use of SSD for hosting, which helps improve their server speed relatively. The only thing HostGator can improve on is their 99.94% uptime, but considering their exclusive features including round the clock support, that’s not actually so bad in keeping your website up and running, meeting the needs of your customers at all times.
From HostGator’s WordPress hosting dedicated to speed and security, to VPS hosting with dedicated control and scalable resources, and even dedicated hosting for full control and management not to mention ultimate performance, HostGator offers just the right plan. HostGator promises to provide the best hosting solutions for personal websites and business websites alike, and to help you achieve your website goals no matter what. Quite frankly, HostGator does deliver.
10. Cloudways
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| Photo: Landofcoder Blog |
Cloudways may be different from the rest in that it’s focused more on cloud-based hosting, but that’s not to say they fall behind in terms of server speed and security. In fact, speed and security are their top two strengths.
Cloudways believes you should focus on building a great website instead of looking into complex hosting details. That said, they offer a simple, worry free experience with their hosting solutions from their cloud providers, unlimited applications, 24/7 support, managed security, automated backups, real time monitoring and innovative control panel, among others, ensuring the performance of your site is optimized.
As a result, Cloudways is one of the best WordPress hosting providers you’ll find today. It’s fast, reliable and secure, earning Cloudways a spot in the top hosting providers in the UK. From launching your business to reaching its success, Cloudways has got your back with their high performance hosting and without costing you a lot to keep your site optimized.
Cloudways specializes in WordPress hosting, offering cutting-edge managed web hosting features such as advanced caches, a simplified Cloudways cache, and CloudwaysCDN that’s responsible for your site’s fast performance, resulting in a seamless experience every time.
Frequently Asked Questions1. Which is the best web hosting for the UK? Hostinger would be the best web hosting provider for the UK. They’ve got a London data center, GDPR compliant, premium features, and services great for all types of websites – all at a fair price. 2. Which is the best web hosting for small business? All web hosting brands featured in this article are great for small business websites. If your site experiences fast growth with an immense increase in traffic, you’ll need more resources and reliability to keep your business up and running. Consider upgrading to cloud hosting from Hostinger for their speed and reliability, or ScalaHosting VPS plans for scalability. 3. Can I host a website for free? Yes. There are plenty of free web hosting services around that you can utilize for your website. However, they come with performance restrictions and ads displayed on your website (which you have no control over). If you’re looking to actually build traffic and generate revenue through your site, we would strongly advise against going for these free services. 4. How much does web hosting cost? Expect to pay an average of £36 to £540 per year for shared web hosting services – excluding domain and SSL. Domains would typically cost you £2.99 – £100 a year, while SSL can cost anything from as little as £15 up to £250 per annum. These can build up to cost quite a bit, so we would highly recommend a web hosting service that offers both domain AND SSL for free, like Hostinger or SiteGround. 5. What is the cheapest and best web hosting service? Hostinger is the best web hosting you can get at a budget. At only £2.89 a month (with their 48 month plan), you’ll enjoy a free domain and SSL, unlimited bandwidth, 100GB SSD – more than enough for small or personal websites. |
10 BEST WEB HOSTING UK SERVICES (+ UPTIME/SPEED DATA
(By Ukwebhostreview, December 2021)
Ukwebhostreview simply test the best UK web hosting companies, using WordPress test sites to give us the data that means we can give you REAL insights into which web host is best.
These include server response times, uptime statistics, and customer server answering times. Seems simple right?
Along with all this, the web also have thousands of independent customer reviews (over 1400 to be exact!). Ukwebhostreview has researched, tested, evaluated, and rated the best hosting options (within the UK).
1. Hostinger UK: Best Overall Web Host (99p/Month)
+ 99.9% uptime guarantee (100% during the past month)
+ Choice of 7 different server locations (inc a UK based one)
+ Ultra-fast UK server response times
+ Free SSL certificate included
+ 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
+ 24/7/365 customer service (great live chat response rates)
+ Great value for money (cheapest web host we’ve ever tested)
Hostinger Cons
– No free domain name is included on the most basic plan
If you’re looking to host a small website or blog but don’t want to pay through the roof, you can nab a plan from 99p per month (yes it’s really that cheap). While the price can be tempting for many, it can also be offputting, dubbing it a cheap web host.
However, during my research and testing process, I found Hostinger to be reliable and fast.
Hostinger is a great all-rounder. Their control panel (hPanel) is a reskin of the popular cPanel but instead makes things as simple as possible for newbies. Everything you could want to access is there at your fingertips, from email accounts to MySQL databases, it’s really easy to navigate.
On top of offering awesome services for less than £1, Hostinger willingly advertises their performance and uptime statistics. You can see any planned maintenance, issues that are being investigated, and Hostinger’s servers’ overall uptime status.
Their response times are well within the average, and in my tests, actually exceeded this every time. Not only will you get affordable hosting with Hostinger, but you’ll also get a high-performance server available in multiple locations across the world.
It’s easy to think that the cheapest is never the best but with Hostinger it’s completely the opposite. The combination of amazing customer support, ultra-fast loading times, and features make it one of my favorite hosting providers.
2. SiteGround UK: Best Customer Service (£2.99/Month)
Siteground Pros
+ 99.9% uptime guarantee, regardless of the plan
+ Award-winning 24/7 customer support (I’ve never experienced such good service)
+ Choice of server locations inc the UK, Asia, Netherlands, Singapore and the USA
+ SiteGround’s unique and homegrown SuperCacher
+ Free SSL certificate for your website
+ Free Site Transfer (they’ll do the complete transfer from your old host)
+ 30-day money-back guarantee
Siteground Cons:
– More costly than other web hosts.
I’ve always raved about SiteGround when I started using them back in 2014, since then they have blown the competition away (just look at their growth). SiteGround often gets recommended by other companies, including the leading CMS platforms like WordPress.org, Joomla, and Drupal.
SiteGround has been rated highly by our community for the past two years and also by numerous Facebook groups. But why do they get such great feedback? For starters, they spend time developing in-house software that has been proven to speed up your website. With a recent refresh of their hosting plans, SiteGround now offers Supercacher to all customers, increasing the performance of your website.
As you’ll see from my review, my website hosted with SiteGround has consistently achieved 100% uptime. If you’re willing to invest a little more money into your hosting service, you’ll reap the rewards from SiteGround. They are reliable, secure, and without a doubt one of the fastest web hosting providers on the market.
Compared with other web hosts it’s by far the fastest we’ve tested.
3. iPage: Best Cheap Web Hosting (£1.50/Month)
iPage Pros:
+ Unlimited storage and bandwidth
+ Free domain name included
+ Over £100 in extras for just £1.50 per month
+ 99.97% average uptime on my test website
+ 24/7 support
+ 1-click installs with plenty of features
iPage Cons:
– Not enough performance for an eCommerce site
– iPage use Vdeck instead of cPanel
You get a whole lot more for your money than you’d think with iPage. This budget web host offers outstanding features for just £1.50 per month, not bad hey? iPage, for me, not only feels like a reliable and affordable web host but also a responsive, user-friendly tool that enables its customers to put together the full package.
For individuals or small businesses that feel overwhelmed with the hosting options available on the market, iPage makes things really simple. They offer one shared hosting plan that provides almost unlimited features like storage space, bandwidth, and emails.
Instead of fumbling around finding the right plan for your website, you can pay just £1.50 per month and get it all from iPage. While they don’t advertise an uptime guarantee, we’ve found they’ve always been very reliable. In fact, I’ve not seen my website’s uptime drop lower than 100% with iPage, meaning it rivals Hostinger and SiteGround.
While iPage’s shared hosting plan isn’t going to suit every website, it’s a really easy choice for personal websites, portfolios, blogs, and small business websites. All the tools you need are available, including a free website builder, free SSL certificate, and free domain name.
4. BlueHost: Best WordPress Hosting (£2.30/Month)
+ Exceeds performance expectations (100% uptime recorded over a 30 day period)
+ Unlimited Bandwidth
+ Free domain name included (nice touch)
+ No hidden charges that you’re not expecting
+ Intuitive UI and control panel
+ Quick live chat responses
+ Free SSL Certificate included
Bluehost Cons:
– There are limits in their T&C’s to ‘unlimited’
There’s no doubting the experience that BlueHost brings to the UK web hosting market. Established in 1996, they host millions of websites across the world.
If you’re set on, or already are hosting a site via WordPress, BlueHost can offer you a great marriage of value and performance (including speed and reliability). Their 24/7 customer support is available should you need any assistance.
Like SiteGround, Bluehost is officially recommended by WordPress. This means Bluehost meets stringent WordPress hosting requirements to offer the best WordPress hosting in the UK.
Whilst they are popular for shared hosting, Bluehost also has a lot of other tricks up its sleeve. For starters, their managed WordPress plans are 100% worth taking a look at if you’ve got a WordPress website. Important tasks like core updates, plugin updates, etc. are all dealt with by WordPress experts, so you can focus on what really matters.
Bluehost also boasts impressive VPS hosting plans and dedicated hosting. They are flexible in terms of how long you want your hosting term to run and offer a free domain when you sign up.
5. HostGator: Best Web Hosting for Beginners (£2.00/Month)
HostGator Pros:
+ My tests show a 99.99% uptime record over 30 days (they offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee)
+ Support available anytime (24/7/365)
+ Technical know-how is obvious when talking to advisers
+ Satisfaction or your money back! (45-day money-back guarantee)
+ Free SSL certificate
HostGator Cons:
– Customer support isn’t as fast as other web hosts
– Not as cheap when compared to its competitors
HostGator has been a solid presence in the web hosting community for years. As you’ll see from my reviews, HostGator churn out some impressive speed and reliability results at a fraction of the cost of other competitors.
As far as web hosts go, if you want an affordable pricing plan that offers eCommerce features, HostGator can dish this up on a plate with no fuss at all. They’ve taken their decade of experience and applied it across the board to appeal to a real selection of markets.
One of the things that HostGator does really well caters to beginners. Their platform is user-friendly, simple, and easy to understand. No, they’re not as powerful as SiteGround, but they are a really solid choice for individuals or small businesses who want an affordable hosting plan with little frills.
HostGator doesn’t just offer web hosting; you can purchase your domain, SSL certificate, and website builder through them too. If you’re like me and you’d rather have all your eggs in one basket rather than services dotted around the place, HostGator makes it easy to achieve this.
6. GoDaddy: Best Small Business Web Host (£2.99/Month)
GoDaddy Pros:
+ 99.9% uptime guarantee (my test website recorded an average uptime of 99.97%)
+ Generous money-back guarantee of 45 days if you’re not satisfied
+ Unlimited bandwidth
+ Plenty of storage even on their cheapest plan (100GB!)
+ High security measures including 24/7 monitoring and DDoS protection
+ Smooth customer journey and easy to use interfeace
+ Plans available for Windows and Linux users
GoDaddy Cons:
– Live chat is for sales only (not customer support)
• Watch out for the price increase at renewal
If you’re not sure where to start on your web hosting journey, GoDaddy is a great option. They provide plenty of features to get started, backed up by decent performance statistics, and aren’t too pricey!
I’d highly recommend them for beginners or small businesses looking to make a name for themselves. They make web hosting look easy, and provide an excellent user experience.
Although you might not turn to GoDaddy for superior performance and high-traffic websites, they do offer a wealth of tools and decent servers to get your website experience started on the right foot.
Known for being a domain name registrar, GoDaddy offers .co.uk domain names from just 1p for the first year! All of their hosting plans include a free domain name and come with unmetered bandwidth so you won’t have to worry if you get sudden traffic spikes.
GoDaddy hosting customers will have access to their simple cPanel interface, over 150 free 1-click install apps, multiple data centers, and on-demand resources.
7. GreenGeeks: Best Eco Web Host (£3/Month)
GreenGeeks Pros
+ Eco-friendly web host fuelled by 300% renewable energy
+ 10 years of hosting experience
+ No hidden fees
+ 99.9% uptime guarantee
+ Free SSL certificate with every hosting plan
+ Free domain registration
GreenGeeks Cons
– Lacking in customer service skills
– Not many currency options
If you’re worried about your carbon footprint, GreenGeeks are your go-to eco-friendly web host. Similar to SiteGround, this web host provides a variety of data center locations for you to choose from. This allows you to choose the closest location to where the majority of your website visitors come from, offering them a faster and better user experience.
Boasting a 99.9% uptime guarantee, green energy isn’t the only thing GreenGeeks is known for. With over a decade in the hosting industry, GreenGeeks are steadily climbing the ladder of popularity, hosting many websites worldwide.
With GreenGeeks, everything is straightforward. There are no hidden fees, you’ll get a free domain and SSL with each hosting plan, and ultimately you’ll feel better for choosing a green web host.
GreenGeeks aren’t for everyone but they certainly strike a nice balance between features and affordability. They’re a great choice if you’re just starting to dip your toes into the eCommerce world but don’t necessarily want to pay through the roof.
8. FatCow: Best Hosting for Small Sites (£3.00/Month)
FatCow Pros
+ Consistent uptime levels of 99.9% to 99.99% over the past 6 months
+ Unlimited MySQL databases
+ Unlimited storage and bandwidth
+ Renewable energy sources
+ Free domain transfer
+ Marketing credits upon sign up
FatCow Cons
– Middle of the road pricing
– U.S. focussed customer support
Another eco-conscious contender, FatCow boasts more of a playful nature that’s been around for 20 years. For many years FatCow was somewhat stuck in the ’90s but have, of late, updated their payment methods and features to bring themselves up to standards.
From only £3 per month, FatCow (for me) is a great contender in the unlimited hosting world. If you’re looking for simple yet effective, I’d highly recommend this host to increase your online presence.
Offering a balance of beginner and advanced features, FatCow sits comfortably in the middle in terms of value for money. In fact, they have consistently offered a stable uptime of 99.99% over the last 6 months, making them a solid choice if you want your website to be reliable.
However, FatCow’s customer support is US-focussed. Although you can get hold of them at some times during the day in the UK, you may not be able to talk to someone immediately depending on the time difference. For small websites, blogs, and personal websites, FatCow is a safe bet.
9. JustHost: Best UK Web Host for Blogging (£3/Month)
JustHost Pros
+ Unlimited storage space
+ Free website builder
+ Easy to use interface
+ eCommerce software including Cube Cart, Agora, and Zen Cart
+ Friendly support staff
JustHost Cons
– No uptime or service guarantees
– Lacklustre performance features
If you’re not worried about a nice-looking website and fancy features, JustHost provides quality hosting and customer service in a simple manner. Although they aren’t my number one choice, I can definitely recommend JustHost if you want affordable hosting without the frills.
Beginners can see this as a good opportunity to get on the hosting ladder with no fuss. While JustHost doesn’t offer the best performance of our top 10 web hosts, they’re by no means a poor choice.
The easy-to-use interface is just one of the gold star features that intrigue me. You’ll also get access to a free website builder which can be useful if you’re a complete newbie. There’s plenty of eCommerce software available if you want to sell a few products online.
For customers who are looking for a host who can provide a free website builder at a fraction of the cost of some of its competitors, JustHost is a solid and reliable option.
10. Heart Internet UK: Best ResellerUK Web Host (£2.66/Month)
Heart Internet Pros
+ U.K. data centre (great for U.K. based customers)
+ 24/7/365 support
+ Intuitive control panel
+ Free Jetpack plugin with every WordPress installation
+ Website monitoring
Heart Internet Cons
– Setup fee on their basic plan
– Expensive hosting pricing plans
– Lack of features
An award-winning UK web hosting company, Heart Internet boasts exceptional performance and value for money. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the pleasure of experiencing such promises, but there must be some truth behind their claims.
As web hosts go, Heart Internet provides a very user-friendly interface, offering beginners and experts alike a solid place to manage their accounts. However, it’s definitely not the best web host we’ve reviewed before.
In terms of value for money, we found the features were somewhat disappointing in comparison to big contenders like SiteGround, Hostinger, and Bluehost. Heart Internet’s hosting plans were more expensive than the competition and offered a lot less.
However, it can be difficult to find a reliable UK web host with a dedicated UK data center, and that’s why Heart Internet has earned a spot on this list. With around-the-clock support, Heart Internet is on hand to deal with any queries you might have regarding your UK-based website.
7 Best Web Hosting For UK
(By Bitcatcha, December 2021)
Since 2014, Bitcatcha.com have been recording performance data from over 40 web hosting brands we bought and tested. The 7 brands shortlisted here are all great for UK websites: GDPR compliant, features aplenty.
1.Hostinger UK – Best overall value web hosting
2.SiteGround UK – Best premium web hosting for businesses
3.Kinsta – Best managed WordPress hosting
4.Bluehost – Best for optimized WordPress hosting
5.DreamHost – Best WordPress endorsed hosting
6.ScalaHosting – Best cPanel alternative hosting
7.GreenGeeks – Best fast green hosting provider
Which Type Of Web Hosting Is Best For You?How to determine a good web hosting service, the types of web hosting available, and the benefits of picking a provider with a data center in the UK. Before you go bragging to all your friends about your newfound expertise in web hosting, let us do you the favour of stopping you right there, cause we’ve yet to talk about which type of web hosting is suitable for YOUR website. First up, you’re going to need to know what kind of website you’re looking to build. By doing so, you’ll know what sort of features you’ll need, the amount of resources required, and all the little extras that are required to run your website. Decide if the website you want is going to be a: Professional blog Looks like you’re trying to build a name for yourself in a niche with a specialized blog. Maybe you’re looking to build an income from a blog through affiliate marketing. Perhaps all you want to do is start a blog to trash talk your most hated celebrity. Keep an eye out for web hosting providers with dedicated WordPress support, 1-click WordPress install, WordPress site optimization, and really anything and everything WordPress related. If you’re looking to go BIG with your blog, managed WordPress hosting would be great for you, like Kinsta; if you’re just looking to build a simple blog, a WordPress-optimized shared hosting provider would do just fine, like Hostinger and Bluehost. Online store Ecommerce is all the rage these days, and you’ve got the perfect product that will revolutionize life as we know it! Start an online store and before you know it, BAM, instant billionaire! You’ll want to consider reliable web hosting services with added security, payment integrations with services like PayPal, shopping cart software, the likes of that. Most importantly, your eCommerce website must be fast! Depending on the traffic you’re expecting, established web hosts like Hostinger and SiteGround should be able to cover all your needs – in fact, they are our top choices for best eCommerce web hosting! Digital portfolio So you produce amazing work. So what? Everybody knows that you’re not a true professional in your craft unless you have a digital portfolio for your business, whether it be in photography, music, woodworking, or even miming. Think about stuff like whether the provider has enough space for you to host all of your work. If we’re talking about something like videography, you know it’s gonna be resource heavy, especially in regards to storage and bandwidth. Some shared web hosting services like DreamHost offer unlimited plans that give you unlimited storage AND bandwidth! Personal website Some people just want to build personal sites to keep friends entertained, or to journal their precious memories without depending on a certain social media platform that eats your privacy for breakfast. If that’s you, that’s totally cool. You’ll want a provider that has easy setup, inexpensive, yet still provides you with all the resources and support you need. Look no further than shared hosting offered by Hostinger. They’ve also got a kickass site builder that’s really easy to use! Public or private forum Looking to gather like-minded people to discuss everything under the sun regarding your favourite passion? Reddit not doing enough for you? Build a forum! You’ll get to invite friends and get them to drag their friends to discuss topics about motorcycling, gardening, DIY projects, or anything that enters that ol’ noggin of yours. Look out for a hosting provider that allows you to easily upgrade your plan or purchase resources separately in the future. Forums can start out small, but they can grow really fast if they pick up traction, so best find a web hosting service that can cater to those demands and keep your forum up and running at all times! You can start off with shared web hosting, but might want an option to upgrade to cloud/VPS hosting in the future – Hostinger and ScalaHosting would be a good choice here. |
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