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Let’s take a minute to look at a scenario…

You plan to do some online shopping, so you take yourself over to the eCommerce website of your choice. You’ve added one or even multiple items to your cart or basket. You start the checkout process and enter your personal information, along with your payment information.

Before you proceed, the baby starts crying or the phone rings, and you quickly close the browser window.

The above is a prime example of someone abandoning their cart.

Find more statistics at Statista

According to Statista, the average online shopping cart abandonment rate worldwide in 2019 was 69.57%. Almost 7 out of 10 people didn’t make a purchase they added to their cart. However, this statistic isn’t all doom and gloom.

For an eCommerce company, this is an opportunity. They know you were interested in buying products. In fact, they knew the exact products you were interested in. This provides them with valuable data that they can use to try and win your custom back.

Let’s take a look at some interesting abandoned cart recovery statistics…

General Abandoned Cart Statistics

• eCommerce brands suffer £14.3 billion in sales revenue losses each year
• Checkout optimisation can help to increase conversions by 35.62%
• Extra costs like shipping and taxes are the number one reason why shoppers abandon their cart
• Being made to create an account during checkout is the second reason for abandonment
• 7.57% of shoppers will abandon their cart if the page takes more than 3 seconds to load
• The ideal number of fields during checkout is 12 to reduce the abandonment rate
• 81% of eCommerce shoppers between the ages of 18-65 abandoned a purchase at least once
• Free shipping can help to win back custom via abandoned cart recovery emails
• Automated cart recovery emails can help to lower cart abandonment rates

Abandonment Rate by Sector/Industry

• The travel industry forms the highest abandonment rate with 81.8% of carts being abandoned
• Clothing represents the most abandoned product
• Retail abandonment rate is 72.8%
• The gaming sector has the lowest abandonment rate of 64.2%

Abandoned Cart Rate by Device

• Mobile users have a higher abandonment rate of 85.65%
• 80.4% represents the average abandonment rate on a tablet
• Desktops form the lowest abandonment rate of 73%

Abandoned Cart Recovery Statistics

• More than 40% of abandoned cart recovery emails are opened
• 28.3% of online sales revenue is generated from successful abandoned cart recovery emails
• Conversion rates of 4.64% are due to abandoned cart recovery emails
• The non-profit industry achieved an open rate of recovery emails of 56.84%

Time and Location Statistics

• The most common times for abandoned carts are between 1pm-2pm and 6pm-9pm
• Asia and the Pacific Islands have the highest abandonment rate of 76.3%
• Almost 90% of carts are abandoned during the weekend
• Shopping cart abandonment in North America is 74%
• European countries have the lowest cart abandonment rate of 70.9%

Ad Retargeting Statistics

• Retargeting ads are 76% more likely to get clicks than normal display ads
• 30% of online shoppers report a positive experience due to retargeting ads
• 72% of millennials like retargeting ads
• Personalised ads are three times more likely to be successful than normal ads
• The best platforms for remarketing ads are Facebook and Google Display Network

Reasons for Cart Abandonment Statistics

• 17% of shoppers abandon their carts during checkout due to concerns around security
• 10% of shoppers abandon their carts because there isn’t enough choice of payment methods
• 46% of shoppers abandon their carts due to coupon or discount codes not working
• 55% of shoppers abandon their carts because they had to re-enter credit card information
• Extra costs like shipping and taxes are the number one reason why shoppers abandon their cart
• Being made to create an account during checkout is the second reason for abandonment
• 7.57% of shoppers will abandon their cart if the page takes more than 3 seconds to load
• 80% of shoppers are deterred from completing a purchase due to a poor returns policy

References

• https://www.barilliance.com/cart-abandonment-rate-statistics/
• https://www.dynamicyield.com/blog/shopping-cart-abandonment-ebook-announcement/
• https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/consumer-psychology-ecommerce-checkout-infographic/
• https://99firms.com/blog/shopping-cart-abandonment-stats/#gref/
• https://sleeknote.com/blog/e-commerce-statistics
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonment_rate
• https://www.shipbob.com/blog/cart-abandonment/
• https://www.creditdonkey.com/shopping-abandonment-statistics.html
• https://www.annexcloud.com/blog/31-shopping-cart-abandonment-statistics-for-2021/
• https://conversionfanatics.com/just-much-can-security-seals-increase-conversions/
• https://neilpatel.com/blog/5-ecommerce-stats/
• https://dsim.in/blog/2018/06/08/13-retargeting-ad-stats-probably-didnt-know/
• https://growthbadger.com/remarketing/#chapter-0/
• https://swoopnow.com/shopping-cart-abandonment/
• https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/abandoned-cart-emails

Mobile commerce is a rapidly growing market. It’s estimated that there is 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. It’s imperative that businesses focus on mobile marketing to ensure success.

People use smartphones a lot. In fact, statistics show that most people spend 2 hours and 51 minutes, on average, per day on their mobile devices. We live in a society where people are addicted to their smartphones. Next time you’re out and about or in a coffee shop, pause and look around. Note how many people are using their smartphones.

Globally, there are currently 7.7 billion people in the world. Over 40% of these have a smartphone. There are opportunities to be made here, especially for marketers.

When you consider how many people will find your website on their mobile device, it’s extremely important to make sure you are using a great web hosting platform to ensure web hosting server speeds that will load your content in 3 seconds or less. Take some time to compare the best web hosting providers, it’s more important than you might think.

At UK Web Host Review we’ve researched and put together the top smartphone user statistics and turned it into a handy infographic (embed code below). 

Smartphones have undoubtedly become a worldwide phenomenon which means web designers and developers, app programmers, and business owners have to think and market their products and services in more advanced ways.

General Smartphone Statistics

• 77% of Americans have smartphones
• There were 204 billion apps downloads in 2019 worldwide
• Smartphone users worldwide reached 3.8 billion in 2021
• 66% of smartphone users are addicted to their phones
• In the U.S., 63% of Google’s visits are via a mobile device
• Google Chrome drives 61.1% of all mobile search traffic
• 80% of internet users own a smartphone
• Customers spend 69% of their media time on their smartphones
• In 2019, the most searched thing on a mobile device was Facebook with 233,100,000 searches
• iPhone X was dubbed the best-selling smartphone in early 2018
• 50% of smartphone owners now check mobile devices, first thing in the morning
• The U.K. has the highest number for smartphone penetration at 82.2%
• About 3 in 5 consumers check their email on the go
• 75% of smartphone users expect to get immediate information while using their smartphone
• Worldwide, more people own a mobile phone than a toothbrush

Mobile usage statistics have the ability to give business owners the upper hand when facing their competitors. Understanding the essential mobile usage trends can increase your ROI and CTR.

Mobile Usage on Websites Statistics

• A load time of 5 seconds or less guarantees 70% longer viewing sessions
• Google may remove your website from search engine ranking pages (SERP) if it is not mobile-friendly
• It takes less than a second for a mobile user to reach an opinion about your website
• 9 out of 10 customers are lost due to a lower mobile-friendly experience
• Slow loading images put off more than 50% of users from using a webpage
• 57% of users would be put off a badly designed mobile website
• Smartphone bounce rates are 37% compared to only 28% for tablets
• More than 50% of users who have a poor mobile experience have a negative view of the business itself
• Nearly half of users will be put off a website if the content is irrelevant
• The default standard load time of a website on a mobile device is 2 seconds

Understanding how mobile traffic accounts for certain statistics can help us predict future digital trends and ways in which individuals and businesses can optimise their websites to cater to mobile users.

Mobile Traffic Statistics

• Global mobile traffic accounts for 30 exabytes per month
• By 2022, this figure was expected to reach 77.5 exabytes per month
• Mobile devices account for more than 50% of all internet traffic
• In India, 73.67 percent of webpages are accessed via mobile phones
• In Africa, more than 60 percent of all web traffic was via a mobile device
• The most popular use for mobile internet is for watching movies or videos online
• The most downloaded apps on the App Store are Netflix, Tencent Video and Amazon Prime Video

Pitted against smartphones and the internet, social media is a huge competitor in the digital world. Nearly three-quarters of the global population are interacting with social media apps via their mobile phones which is an important statistic you can leverage to sit on the throne.

Social Media on Mobile Statistics

• 64% of Pinterest’s referral traffic comes from smart devices
• Snapchat has 186 million daily active users worldwide
• 55% of social media engagement is on a mobile device
• WhatsApp was downloaded around 66.6 million times
• 72.4% of the worldwide online population will be accessing social media via mobile
• 39% of the most used apps are social media apps
• India has the highest number of Facebook users

Local search and local search intent has never been more important than it is now. In the midst of a global pandemic, many individuals have shifted to shopping locally and supporting local businesses. Now, more than ever, small businesses should focus their marketing efforts on local SEO to ensure they get their slice of the pie.

Local Search Statistics

• 40% of all mobile searches are for a local business or interest
• 46% of all searches performed on Google are for local information
• 66% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies with local information
• 88% of customers using local search trust the reviews they read
• 49% of consumers will only engage with a business with a minimum of a four-star rating
• 30% of consumers consider a business as reliable if they respond to reviews
• 68% of consumers provided a local business review upon request, using a mobile phone
• US local advertising revenues have exceeded £158.8 billion
• Brands that improve the accuracy of location information by only 20% see conversions rate increase by 216%

References

• https://www.iab.com/news/digital-ad-spend-hits-record-breaking-49-5-billion-in-first-half-of-2018/
• https://www.statista.com/topics/779/mobile-internet/
• http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/worldwide
• https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/apple-s-app-store-revenue-tops-us-54-billion-in-2019-1.1372916
• http://www.businessofapps.com/news/mobile-advertising-now-makes-up-92-of-facebooks-ad-revenue/
• https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amazon-ad-revenue-top-11b-year-as-digital-overtakes-traditional-spend-study-1188292
• https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/data/smartphone-users-expectation-statistics/
• https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2015/July/How-Mobile-Phones-Are-Changing-the-Developing-Worl.aspx
• https://www.omnicoreagency.com/digital-marketing-statistics-2018/
• https://cnet.co/2Q5vxCB
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/responsive-design-list
• https://twitter.com/iprospect
• https://mklnd.com/2Q2yOTb
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/284202/mobile-phone-internet-user-penetration-worldwide/
• https://www.smseagle.eu/2017/03/06/daily-sms-mobile-statistics/
• https://www.upwork.com/hiring/for-clients/11-mobile-app-trends-will-dominate-2018/
• https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-countries-by-smartphone-penetration-and-users/
• https://themanifest.com/app-development/mobile-app-usage-statistics-2018
• https://www.socpub.com/articles/the-5-mobile-marketing-mistakes-infographic-14849
• https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/interactive-report/gen-z-a-look-inside-its-mobile-first-mindset/
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mobile-ecommerce-websites-essential-so-shopping-cart-shane-barker/
• https://www.biznessapps.com/blog/2018-mobile-marketing-report-stats-need-know/
• https://www.millforbusiness.com/blog/mobile-marketing-statistics/
• https://www.aumcore.com/blog/2017/10/06/mobile-marketing-statistics-for-2018/?lipi=urn:li:page:d_flagship3_pulse_read;RDWhLeY/TAGf6h/lIpLYnQ%3D%3D
• https://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-raked-in-9-16-billion-in-ad-revenue-in-the-second-quarter-of-2017/
• https://www.iprospect.com/en/us/news-and-views/news/pov-2017-q3-paid-search-trends-report/
• https://blog.globalwebindex.com/chart-of-the-day/1-in-5-using-voice-search-on-mobile/

Facebook has come on leaps and bounds from its launch in 2004. As of Q4 2019, Facebook had almost 2.5 billion users.

It is the most used and most popular social media platform, opening its arms to individuals and businesses alike. Like most technologies, Facebook is ever-changing and advancing. Knowing who is using the platform, where they are using it, and in-depth statistics can help you with your marketing strategy.

Facebook has the ability to connect people and businesses together. This allows businesses to take advantage of social media to reach out to new customers. People rely on Facebook, making it an essential tool to understand.

We’ve put together an infographic that contains all of the latest Facebook statistics (embed code is at the bottom of this post). 

General Facebook Statistics

• Facebook has over 2.5 billion users worldwide
• Facebook is the third most visited website in the world
• People aged 65 and over are the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook
• 51% of American teenagers use Facebook compared to 71% in 2015
• 41.3% of monthly active users (MAU) are from Asia-Pacific
• High-income earners represent 74% of Facebook users
• 88% of Facebook users use the platform to connect to family and friends
• The highest levels of traffic occur between 11am – 2pm on Wednesday and Thursday
• 59% of 18-29-year-olds understand how Facebook’s algorithm works
• The Facebook app is the fifth most-downloaded app in the App Store
• 10.1% of users are in the U.S. or Canada

Facebook Usage Statistics

• On average, users spend 38 minutes per day using Facebook
• 52% of American’s use Facebook for news
• In the U.S., 15% of social media users use Facebook to shop
• The average time spent on Facebook will remain the same
• 300 million active daily users are creating Facebook stories
• On average, 1.66 billion people log onto Facebook every single day
• 1.4 billion people use Facebook groups
• In the last year, 42% of Facebook users took a break from the platform

Facebook Marketing & Advertising Statistics

• Only 6% of advertising revenue on Facebook is from desktop
• 94% of Facebook advertising revenue is from mobile
• In 2019, the average price of Facebook ads decreased by 6%
• The average cost per click (CPC) on Facebook amounts to £1.37
• In 2019, Facebook ad impressions increased by 37%
• 90 million small businesses use Facebook
• The average organic reach for a post on Facebook is 5.5%
• On news images on Facebook, men appear twice as often as women

Facebook Video Statistics

• Videos account for around 11% of Facebook posts
• Mobile-friendly videos account for almost half of Facebook’s video revenue
• 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound
• Live streams are 4x more likely to be watched than recorded videos
• Square Facebook videos get 35% more views than landscape videos
• It costs 7.5% less to engage users with square videos compared to rectangular videos on desktop and mobile

References

• https://qz.com/1707287/use-of-facebook-among-senior-americans-has-doubled-over-recent-years/
• https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/pi_2018-05-31_teenstech_0-01/
• https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/q3/Q3-2019-Earnings-Presentation.pdf
• https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/972892/reasons-being-on-facebook-usa/
• https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/#facebook
• https://www.emarketer.com/content/average-social-media-time-spent
• https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/how-to-unlock-your-creative-potential-on-stories
• https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/many-facebook-users-dont-understand-how-the-sites-news-feed-works/
• https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/Q2/FB-Q2-2019-Earnings-Release.pdf
• https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/q3/Q3-2019-FB-Earnings-Transcript.pdf
• https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks
• https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/q3/Q3-2019-FB-Earnings-Transcript.pdf
• https://www.quintly.com/blog/facebook-media-study-2018
• https://www.facebook.com/business/news/making-it-easier-to-build-mobile-first-video-ads
• https://digiday.com/media/silent-world-facebook-video/
• https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/shifts-for-2020-multisensory-multipliers
• https://buffer.com/resources/square-video-vs-landscape-video
• https://www.facebook.com/business/news/building-video-for-mobile-feed
• https://hootsuite.com/resources/the-state-of-digital-in-q3-2019
• https://apps.apple.com/story/id1438574124?ign-itscg=as10001&ign-itsct=BESTOF_SC18_PT122_US_SI1438574124
• https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/Q2/Q2-2019-Earnings-Presentation-07.24.2019.pdf
• https://www.emarketer.com/content/instagrams-new-explore-ads-signal-potential-changes-to-organic-reach
• https://www.journalism.org/2019/10/02/americans-are-wary-of-the-role-social-media-sites-play-in-delivering-the-news/
• https://www.emarketer.com/chart/226979/social-media-activities-performed-by-us-social-media-users-by-platform-feb-2019-of-respondents
• https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/generation-z
• https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/
• https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2018/Q4/Q4-2018-earnings-call-transcript.pdf
• https://hootsuite.com/resources/the-state-of-digital-in-q3-2019

How much does it cost to host a website 2024?

Web Hosting can cost as little as 80p per month for shared hosting, from the likes of Hostinger. Alternatively, if you need web hosting on a large scale, dedicated hosting can cost upwards of £50 per month.

Although that’s the answer, in a nutshell, I want to discuss the different types of web hosting, when you might need each type of hosting, and how much it costs to host a website in 2024. To do this, I need to go into a lot more detail. I have the upper hand to be able to do this; I’ve signed up to lots of web hosts over the years to give you a truly representative example of what to expect.

1. Different Types of Web Hosting

As I briefly touched on already, there are a few different types of web hosting that you can choose from. Although there can be even more variations than this, generally speaking, the main types of hosting are shared hosting, cloud hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting.

Shared Hosting:

Shared hosting is considered the beginner level of web hosting. If you have a small website or blog, or a website that generates low traffic volumes, this is the cheapest and best option for you. The reason why shared hosting is much cheaper than it’s alternatives is that you are sharing resources from a single server. That single server is delivering a service to multiple customers (not just you).

Cloud Hosting:

Have you heard of ‘the cloud’ before? It’s often used to describe cloud services like OneDrive or Dropbox. It’s essentially lots of servers working together to provide a continuous level of service. If one server were to go down, another one would kick start in its place. It’s considered extremely reliable and for this reason, it’s slightly more expensive than shared hosting.

VPS Hosting:

VPS is the term used for Virtual Private Server hosting. It’s better than shared hosting because it will appear as though you have control of your own server. However, although you may have more control compared to shared hosting, you are still sharing a single server with other customers. The main difference is that the number of customers is a lot smaller than shared hosting. You should, therefore, notice a difference in performance between shared and VPS hosting.

Dedicated Hosting:

Dedicated web hosting means business! You’ll rent and pay for your own dedicated server. Therefore you are not sharing your resources with anyone. Dedicated servers often come with a managed and unmanaged option; this is the difference between you managing your server (including security updates), or the web host managing the server. If you don’t have the time to or haven’t run your own server before, I suggest choosing the managed option, to begin with. However, this can be substantially more expensive compared to unmanaged dedicated server hosting.

How much does it really cost to host a website in 2024…

I hope I’ve now been able to give you an overview of what each type of web hosting offers. I will, of course, go into the specifics of each in terms of pricing, but I wanted to mention something quickly before we continue.

This may seem obvious, but the more features you opt for (or want) in your web hosting plan, the more expensive it’s likely to be. For example, a web host’s basic plan may offer hosting for one website, 10GB storage space, and include a single domain. The next tier may offer unlimited websites to be hosted, include free SSL, and offer tools for analytics. This is going to cost you more, but it may offer you more of what you actually want.

2. The cost to host a website (Web Hosting)

We’re now going to take a look at the real cost to host a website, including different hosting types. I’m going to show you some comparisons of different companies who I personally recommend in each category. Hopefully, this will give you enough information so you can make an informed choice.

Shared hosting cost

£0.80 – £11.47 per month

Shared hosting tends to be where people begin. Shared hosting is usually the cheapest type of hosting as you’re sharing a portion of a larger server. From my recommendations, Hosting is the cheapest option at only 80p per month!

Cloud hosting cost

£3.80 – £48.00 per month

Cloud hosting is a good choice if reliability is one of your priorities. If one server fails, another is ready to ensure you don’t have any downtime. However, cloud hosting can be slightly more costly than shared hosting, but not by much. HostGator offers cloud hosting from as little as £3.80 per month, followed closely by A2 Hosting.

VPS hosting cost

£1.00 – £19.21 per month

VPS hosting is when shared hosting isn’t quite cutting the mustard, but you’re not ready to splash out too much cash. VPS hosting servers range in price quite a lot depending on features. You can get VPS hosting from IONOS (1&1) from just £1 per month.

Dedicated hosting cost

£65.76 – £525.00 per month

Paying for your own server is a big step. However, it grants a lot of control and means that you won’t have to share your server resources with anyone else. Dedicated hosting is expensive, ranging from £65.76 per month with BlueHost’s entry plan and reaching £525 per month with SiteGround’s expert plan.

3. Additional costs to host a website (and extras)

Once you’ve got the actual web hosting part of your websitesorted, you may want to know about additional costs. These are optional, however, some may be required for your website to go live. For example, a domain name is essential. Some web hosts may include this as part of your hosting, whereas others won’t.

Let’s take a look at some of the additional costs you may want to consider in addition to the cost to host a website…

Domain Name

A domain name is your website address. It allows people to visit your website on the internet. It’s also kind of a brand name. If you have business cards or use advertising/marketing, your domain name will often be part of this.

There are a variety of extensions (or TLDs) you can choose. If your website solely targets U.K. customers, you may want to consider a .co.uk extension. However, if your target market is global, a .com would be my recommendation.

Just to confuse things a little, when you purchase a domain name, this also has extras you can pay for. For example, privacy protection will ensure your website’s WHOIS listing doesn’t display public information about yourself.

SSL Certificate

An SSL certificate will not only protect your website visitors and customers, but it also promotes trust in your website. When you have an SSL installed, your website address will have a small padlock icon next to it. If you’re selling products or services on your website, this is an absolute must-have.

Most web hosts will include an SSL for free via Let’s Encrypt and many website builders can generate them, too. However, for those that don’t, an SSL can be quite costly.

123reg sell SSL certificates at an affordable cost if you need to buy one separately. There are of course other providers like GoDaddy, but they’re slightly more expensive.

CDN

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) can help speed up your website, as well as offering additional security.

A content delivery network (CDN) refers to a geographically distributed group of servers which work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content.

Content on your website like HTML, JavaScript, images, and videos will be quickly loaded. This gives your website visitors a better experience and can help with SEO. CDNs can also help with security issues like DDoS attacks.

Some web hosting providers will include a free copy of CloudFlare CDN within their hosting package. Alternatively, if you want to upgrade your CloudFlare CDN plan or purchase one separately, this can be done on CloudFlare’s website.

4. The cost to host a website (summary)

By now I hope that I have been able to give you an overview of how much it costs to host a website. We know that it’s often dependent on what type of hosting you choose. We also know that web hosting pricing can vary by company quite a lot.

Web hosting can cost as little as 80p or as much as £500+. Most web hosts will offer three or more tiers of pricing plans, offering flexibility and scalability. A lot of them will also offer a money-back guarantee, so if you think you’ve chosen the wrong hosting, you should be able to find a way out.

In summary, this is how much it costs to a host a website in 2024:

Shared Hosting: 80p – £11.47 per month

Cloud Hosting: £3.80 – £48.00 per month

VPS Hosting: £1.00 – £19.21 per month

Dedicated Hosting: £65.76 – £525.00 per month

My recommendation would always be to check out a web host’s reviews before you purchase. Places like TrustPilot are good to get a feel for a company based on customer’s experiences. Alternatively, you can read my reviews which are always 100% honest and unbiased. I sign up for each company with my own credit card and report back on my findings.

Windows hosting is serviced on the Microsoft ASP.Net framework. The other main sort of hosting is Linux hosting, that uses the PHP framework for coding apps and websites. Windows hosting generally uses Microsoft SQL (MSSQL) databases while Linux generally uses MySQL databases. This is not always 100% true, but 9 times out of 10 that is the truth. You can also use MySQL databases with Windows. 

When you search for Windows hosting on Google, Godaddy instantly pops up. However, there are lots of other Windows hosting providers that you need to know about. I’ll discuss the best ones briefly in this article. 

Before deciding to go with Windows hosting over Linux hosting it’s a good idea to understand what Windows Hosting is and who it is for. We’ll dive into that discussion before I outline the top 7 Windows hosts of 2019.

What Is Windows Hosting?

Windows hosting is a type of web or app hosting that uses the Windows operating system. Most of the common web hosting plans offer Linux hosting, for example, WordPress normally runs on Linux hosting. For this reason, it’s safe to assume that when a web hosting provider doesn’t specify the hosting type, it’s most probably Linux hosting.

Linux vs Windows

Trying to choose a new hosting plan can be overwhelming. If you can decide whether you want to go with Windows or Linux first of all, that’s half the battle. If you plan to create your site in ASP.net you’ll need a Windows server. You’ll also want to use Windows if you don’t like cPanel, and prefer using Plesk. Again if you are looking for more control then you might want to go for Windows. For people using Sharepoint or other MS solutions, Windows is great. 

On the other hand, if you are looking for cheap shared hosting that you can host your WordPress blog or WooCommerce website on then you’ll want to go for Linux. You can use Windows for WordPress but Linux is more suited to the job. If your site is created in PHP, again Linux will be the OS for you. If you are looking to use Apache, PHP, CGI, Perl or Python then you’ll need to opt for Linux. 

Who is Windows Hosting For?

Windows is the best choice for some apps and website owners. Windows runs on a familiar operating system (OS) – the current Windows OS has over 400 million users, it’s easy to use for a lot of people because that is what they are used to. Windows hosting doesn’t use cPanel as Linux does, instead, it uses a control panel software known as Plesk. 

Normally programmers are familiar with cPanel and Linux setup, however, that’s a bit of a generalization as you do get Windows developers who specialize in C# and .net. 

A good reason to use Windows web hosting is if your organization already uses a lot of Windows or Microsoft tools. Also if your website is built in ASP.net then you’ll definitely need a Windows server. 

The Downside of Using Windows Hosting

Although there are many instances where Windows hosting is the best approach. The opposite is also true in many situations. Windows hosting is not as secure as Linux hosting for one. Windows hosting is a bit more expensive than Linux hosting. Windows can also be less stable than Linux based OS. You’ll need to have someone on hand to help you if your Windows website isn’t performing consistently.

Windows hosting is designed for more suited to IT or development teams who are developing C# apps or ASP.net websites. I’d probably go so far as to say Windows hosting is not for new businesses (in general) because shared hosting packages are cheaper, more secure and more accessible. And normally always based on Linux OS.

That being said if you are looking for the best Windows hosting, then you probably have a good idea of what you are using it for. Let’s jump into the 7 best Windows web hosting providers. 

1. A2 Hosting (£2.94/ Month)

BEST FOR –Turbo powered Windows shared web hosting

If you are looking for cost-effective shared web hosting that runs on the best tech, then look no further than A2 Hosting. Founded back in 2001, A2 Hosting has an anytime money-back guarantee. You can choose from VPS or shared Windows hosting packages. 

A2 Hosting Windows Packages and Pricing

The “Turbo” Windows shared hosting plan for just £6.46 per month is the fastest shared Windows web hosting package around.  All of the shared Windows hosting from A2 Hosting has an anytime money-back guarantee and they offer free website migration. So if you have a Windows website elsewhere, you can have it transferred over to A2 Hosting completely free of charge, and with little to no, downtime.

• Lite (£2.94/ month) – 1 Website, 5 Databases, Unlimited Storage, Unlimited Transfer, Plesk Onyx 17.8 Control Panel and Free SSL & SSD
• Swift (£3.53/month) – Unlimited Websites, Unlimited Databases, Storage, Transfer, Plesk Onyx 17.8 Control Panel, Free SSL & SSD
• Turbo (£6.46/month) – Unlimited Websites, Unlimited Databases, Unlimited Storage, Unlimited Transfer, Plesk Onyx 17.8 Control Panel, Free SSL & SSD, Turbo (Up To 20X Faster), A2 Site Accelerator

Click Here To Visit A2hosting

Pros

• 24/7/365 Customer support
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• 45-Day money-back guarantee

Cons

• Just 1 MySQL database on the basic plan

3. WinHost (£3.14/ Month)

BEST FOR – Windows specialists who offer one-click Windows Applications

WinHost is a web host that is focused on providing premium Windows hosting. If you want to take advantage of a host that offers one-click installation for Windows-specific applications, then WinHost is ideal for you – you can deploy CMS systems like nopCommerce and DotNetNuke in minutes. Additionally, WinHost offers free website transfers, so that you can ask them to port your website over to their websites to minimize stress and downtime. 

WinHost Windows Packages and Pricing

As with most hosts, the longer you sign up, the cheaper the hosting gets. If you want additional security you can add SiteLock on for £15.84 per year. However, if you opt for one of the higher tier plans, you’ll get this for free. They price their hosting both by how long you sign up for and also the number of FTP users that you want to add to your account. 

• Basic Plan (£3.14/month) – 3GB disk space, 50GB bandwidth, 10 FTP users
• Max Plan (£6.31/ month) – Unlimited disk space and bandwidth, 30 FTP users
• Ultimate Plan (£12.66 /Month) – Unlimited disk space and bandwidth, 100 FTP users
• Power Plan (£28.54 /Month) – Unlimited disk space and bandwidth, 250 FTP users

Click Here To Visit Winhost

Pros

• 24/7 Support
• 99.9% uptime
• One-click app installer

Cons

• None

PRO TIP: Remember to sign the BAA to activate your HIPAA compliant email hosting. 

4. Bisend (£3.14/ Month)

Best for – Managed hosting for small to medium-sized businesses US / Hong Kong

Founded back in 2011, Bisend is owned by Light Red Tech Co Ltd, which is a UK based company.  Bisend specializes in Windows hosting – as such they are a great choice. They have invested in decent tech, like powerful solid state drives (SSD). This means they have great performing servers. If you’re looking for a company that has their servers built with the latest Microsoft Windows technology and specializes in this area, look no further than Bisend.

Bisend offers shared and VPS hosting packages on this tech. Making them great for performance.  You’ll get the leading industry standard control panel for Windows – “Plesk” when you choose to host with Bisend. Bisend uses servers in both the US and Hong Kong, as such they are best for people who are serving customers/ visitors in those regions. They also provide a ready-code environment so that you can get coding as soon as you purchase a server from them. 

Bisend Windows Packages and Prices

When you choose to host with Bisend you get a free domain name for the first year and free SSL certificates. They also allow you to choose from their US or Hong Kong server locations. Below is a list of their Windows Hosting Packages and Prices. 

• Standard (£3.14/ Month) – 1 website, 10GB SSD Disk Space, 50GB Bandwidth, 50 Email Accounts, Site Memory: 256MB, 2GB Database
• Pro (£4.72 / Month) – 5 websites, Unlimited SSD Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, 100 Email Accounts, 2x faster than the “Standard hosting”Site Memory: 512MB, 4GB Database
• Business (£11.08 / Month) – Unlimited Websites, Unlimited SSD Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Email Accounts – 4x faster than Pro plan, Site Memory: 768MB, 8GB Database

Click Here To Bisend

5. DiscountASP.NET (£7.94/Month)

BEST FOR –  Certified Microsoft Golden partner, good for beginners

Discount ASP.NET was founded back in 2003. They are a website host and a certified Microsoft Golden partner and they are fully licensed under the Microsoft’s Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) Program. Discount ASP.NET operates out of data centers in the US and Europe/ UK. and offers 24/7/365 support. If you decide to go with Discount ASP.net then you’ll benefit from a free domain name. Their name is a bit deceiving as they are not particularly cheap as the word “Discount” would suggest.  

ASP.NET Packages and Pricing

Unlike most other hosts on this list, ASP.NET offers just one ASP.NET hosting plan. This could be a pro or a con. The plan comes with free months free if you pay upfront for a year. The features offered are as follows:

• Base Web Hosting Plan (£7.94 / Month) – 1000MB disk space, 80GBB monthly data transfer, free website migration, control panel, 500 email addresses

Click Here To Visit Discountasp

6.  1&1 IONOS (£1.59/ Month)

BEST FOR –Reliable, cost-effective, feature-rich web hosting

1&1 IONOS are one of the biggest and best web hosting companies in the world. They were founded in 1998 and currently have over 12 million customers. As a well-established web host, you know that you can put your trust in 1&1 IONOS. They also offer 24/7 customer support, should you need to resolve any issues.  Although I was tempted to put these guys at the top of the list, they do up their price to £6.35 after the initial period (6 or 12 months) has expired, so I put them in their relevant “realistic” place on the list. After all the article did say more than just IONOS. But realistically – they are fantastic at what they do.

Amazingly all three of IONOS’s Windows plans come in at £0.79 for at least the first 6 months. The “Business” plan stays at this price for a massive 12 months, which is impressive. Here is an overview of their ASP.NET hosting packages and pricing:

• Business (£0.79/month for 12 months, then £6.35 per month) – 1 Website, 100GB storage, 25 MSSQL DBs, 25 email accounts free domain
• Pro (£0.79/month for 6 months, then £7.94 per month) – 5 Website, 250GB storage, 100 MSSQL DBs, 100 email accounts free domain, SiteLock malware protection
• Expert (£0.79/month for 6 months, then £11.12 per month) – 50 Websites, 500GB storage, 500 MSSQL DBs, 500 email accounts free domain, SiteLock malware protection, Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Click Here To Visit 1&1 IONOS

7. GoDaddy (£4.76/ Month)

Godaddy is one of the most popular hosts on the planet. They offer 24/7/365 customer support, DDoS protection, and 99.9% uptime. Their shared Windows hosting plans use Windows® Server 2012 R2. They offer a nice backup service, but sadly it’s not bundled with the plans, you need to pay an extra £2.37 per month for that. However, I’d say that it’s pretty necessary for keeping your website safe because in the event your site gets hacked you’ll be back up and running inside one click. 

GoDaddy Windows Packages and Prices

When you decide to host your Windows website with GoDaddy, you have a choice of three plans as follows:

• Economy – 1 Websites, Free domain name,  100 GB, Unmetered Bandwidth, Business Email, 10 x 1GB MySQL databases, 1 MSSQL (200MB) database, 50 FTP accounts
• Deluxe – Unlimited Websites, Unmetered storage, Unmetered bandwidth, Business email, 2 MSSQL databases, 25x 1GB MySQL, 50 FTP accounts
• Ultimate – Unlimited Websites, Unmetered storage, Unmetered bandwidth, Business email, Unlimited MSSQL databases, Unlimited MySQL, Unlimited FTP accounts

Click Here To Godaddy

The Bottom Line

There are some instances where Windows hosting is perfect, and others where you’d be best to opt for a Linux server.

Database driven websites or “dynamic websites” rely on a database to run. MySQL is an extremely popular database, especially for PHP websites and websites that run on a content management system, for example, WordPress or Joomla. Databases make it easier to organize the content of your website.

When you use a database for content you can store large amounts of information, making dynamic websites great for blogs or eCommerce sites, and everything in between. The alternative is a static website, where the data is pasted directly onto the website and the data remains the same. You then have to go into each page to change the content.  Databases are also used for systems like business management systems where you have a lot of information to store and you want to be able to retrieve it easily. 

Databases also have the added benefit of not only being able to handle and retrieve large quantities of information, but you can also have multiple people working on a database at one time. MySQL is an open-source database management system and as such is free to use. However, you’ll normally use it via a website host – some of which offer MySQL hosting for free.

In this article we’ll explore the top 10 MySQL hosting options, these are hosts that offer MySQL database hosting and relevant tools to go in and manage your database.

Before I get into the best MySQL hosts, let’s first understand why it’s a great idea to use MySQL in the first place.

Why Should I Use MySQL?

MySQL is the most versatile database, as it can run on just about any platform – Microsoft, Linux, MySQL, FreeBSD, macOS, and Solaris. MySQL is also feature-rich. Ideal for working on massive datasets, often used by large websites (as well as small ones) to manage all of their data. Although MySQL is great for large companies, it is easy to use, making it a great choice for a beginner. 

When it comes to performance – MySQL is fast, even on shared hosting packages. You can use Apache, PHP, and other programming languages with MySQL, again adding to the flexibility of the database.

What Different Database Hosting Is Available?

Understandably you might want to know what other options are available to you. There are currently six main types of hosting MySQL is one. Then there are five others as follows:

• MSSQL (Microsoft SQL) – Used to store and retrieve data, compatible with Linux and Windows
• MS Access – MS Access used to be a big thing, but it’s not used by professionals anymore. It is a Windows-based database that has a graphical UI, it’s bundled with the Microsoft Office suite. 
• Oracle – Used by banks, hence it is super secure. Can run on both Windows and Linux Oracle Corporation actually also own MySQL
• PostgreSQL – Open-source and object-relational database available for Linux and Windows
• MongoDB – Cross-platform database, classified as a NoSQL database, MongoDB uses JSON with schema. 

What to Look For in Your MySQL Hosting Provider

MySQL database hosting is offered by most reputable hosting providers. So what should you look for when choosing a MySQL database host? 

Firstly, check out how many databases you get with your plan. While most small projects require just one database, larger projects can require a few databases. Some hosts even offer unlimited databases, so that way you know you will have all of the databases you need. 

You’ll need a host that supports PHP in addition to MySQL hosting. That aspect is normally a given. You’ll also want to look for cPanel or Plesk to manage your database/s. cPanel is great for spawning and managing databases. 

Alright, now we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into the Top 10 MySQL database hosting options of 2019.

1. Hostinger (£0.99 per month)

BEST FOR – Small to medium businesses

The super cheap £0.99 per month plan from Hostinger will get you just one MySQL database. This also doesn’t include a domain name. For just £2.59 you can get their Premium plan with unlimited MySQL databases and a free domain name. All of their shared hosting plans come with one business email account for free. Hostinger is great for customer support, you can contact them any time as they are available 24/7/365. Hostinger has their own custom developed control panel for you to manage your account. 

Oto.ne thing that is great about Hostinger is the fact that they d weekly backups for free. That’s great news for security, in case your website gets hacked, you’ll always have a backup to revert to . 

Click Here To Visit Hostinger

Pros

• cPanel
• SSD Drives
• 99.999% uptime guarantee
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited disk space
• One-click app installer
• Free website transfer
• Unlimited emails
• Free SSL certificates
• Free domain
• Unlimited subdomains
• Instant setup

Cons

• Just 1 MySQL database on the basic plan

3. HostGator (£2.18 / month)

BEST FOR – Beginner hosting with unlimited MySQL databases

No matter what kind of hosting you require, HostGator has you covered. You can bundle your database hosting with shared hosting, dedicated hosting or VPS. Hostgator also offers decent reseller hosting, if you’re thinking about setting up your own hosting company, then they are a great choice. They also offer a 45-day money-back guarantee. 

HostGator is home to some 8 million domain names. They offer a massive 4000 website designs to choose from for the front end of your website. Alongside a website builder, you’ll get a free domain name with your hosting and unlimited MySQL databases.  You’ll also get phpMyAdmin to administer your databases. 

Click Here To Visit hostgator

Pros

• 45-day money-back guarantee
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• phpMyAdmin
• Free domain name
• Website builder
• 4000 designs
• Cost-effective
• Feature-rich

Cons

• Lots of upsells

PRO TIP: Remember to sign the BAA to activate your HIPAA compliant email hosting. 

4. A2 Hosting (£2.42 per month)

Best for – Cheap feature-rich shared hosting packages

Founded way back in 1999, A2 Hosting was originally called Iniquinet before renaming in 2003. A2 Hosting is now one of the fastest-growing and leading web hosts. A2 Hosting is best known for its 20x Turbo hosting, but they also offer just about every type of hosting package you’d ever need. Including great reseller hosting, with all of the software you need to start your hosting empire. The only downside to A2 Hosting is that they only operate out of 3 locations, Singapore, the US, and Europe. 

You’ll get a free SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage even with their lower plans. When it comes to database hosting, with their basic “Lite” plan you get 5 databases and for just £1 you can upgrade to their “Swift” plan to get unlimited websites and databases. What’s more, you can also get cPanel to manage your entire website. 

Click Here To A2hosting

5. BlueHost (£2.43 / month)

BEST FOR – Scalable, cost-effective web hosting with unlimited databases.

BlueHost is one of the leading web host providers. You’ll get every type of hosting from Bluehost. From beginner hosting with one-click app install, for WordPress and other apps. You can also get cloud hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting and VPS hosting. They offer 24/7 customer support via chat, phone, and email, which is great for those starting out. You get a free domain name and a free SSL certificate. 

Again Bluehost offers phpMyAdmin, the leading database admin tool so that you can create and change your databases. You get 20 MySQL databases with their basic shared hosting plan. For all other shared hosting plans you get unlimited MySQL databases. 

Click Here To Visit Bluehost

6.  InMotion Hosting (£5.06 / month)

BEST FOR – High spec, 90-day moneyback guarantee fully featured hosting

InMotion offers the full range of web hosting packages shared, dedicated and VPS. InMotion has created its signature web builder called Premium Web Builder – which is free to use for people who host with them. In all honesty, their website is a bit of a turn off as it is so old fashioned looking, but their features and packages are decent. 

When it comes to disk space, Inmotion doesn’t disappoint, they offer unlimited disk space on all plans, unlimited emails, and unlimited bandwidth. You’ll get a free domain name and if you want to transfer your hosting over to them from another host, you can do this for free and experience no downtime. This is ideal for SEO. Backup and restore is also available on all plans. 

Inmotion offers data backups and a massive 90-day money-back guarantee. This is the best in the industry. You’ll get a free domain name and they’ve also invested in the best top of the range SSD drives, that are used for all plans. The only downside is that you’ll get just 2 MySQL databases on their “Launch plan” and will need to upgrade to their top shared plan “Pro” to get unlimited databases, this will cost you £11.64 per month. 

Click Here To Visit InMotionhosting

7. SiteGround

BEST FOR – Unlimited MySQL databases with cPanel and phpMyAdmin

Let’s cut to the chase, SiteGround offers unlimited MySQL databases with cPanel and phpMyAdmin to manage them. They also offer a 100% uptime guarantee which is unheard of. Their databases are stored on separate hard drives to keep them performing efficiently. They also offer free SSL certificates and a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

The main downside to Siteground is that they only allow 10GB of webspace, while others on this list offer unlimited. also they only allow 10,000 website visits per month on their lower “Startup” package, even their “GoGeek” larger package curbs the visitors and storage space. 

Click Here To Siteground

8. iPage (£1.50 per month)

BEST FOR – Small businesses, blogs or new projects

When you sign up with iPage you benefit from a wide range of features, such as 1000s of templates, free SSL certificate, and a free domain. You also get £200 free ad credits, which is a bonus. What is great is that you get free unlimited disk space and unlimited MySQL databases. You can manage your databases with phpMyAdmin.  Additionally, they have a drag and drop web builder to make life easy. 

You can lock in the low introductory price for up to 36 months depending on what plan you go for. iPage is geared toward offering easy to set up hosting with everything you need to get your project or plan off the ground.  They don’t cater to larger resource-heavy websites or apps that would require a dedicated server. But they are perfect for smaller projects. 

Click Here To iPage

9. Web Hosting Hub

BEST FOR – Small businesses or blogs

Founded back in 2010, Web Hosting Hub isn’t just a website host, they also offer web design services. They have their own in-house web development team and offer free hosting for one year when you decide to hire them to create your website. They offer a free domain name, 24/7 US-based tech support, unlimited bandwidth, disk space, and email and free SSL certificate. For managing your databases, Web Hosting Hub offers cPanel and SSH access. 

Web Hosting Hub is only any good for small businesses or projects as they only offer shared hosting. With their lowest-priced offering they give you 10 MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. But if you pay just £1.60 more per month you’ll get unlimited databases. They also offer a decent 90 day, no-quibble money-back guarantee.

Click Here To Webhostinghub

10. GreenGeeks

BEST FOR –Small businesses or blogs

GreenGeeks is an eco-web hosting company. They offer a free domain name, free transfer, website builder, email accounts and a support team that you can contact 24/7. GreenGeeks offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Greengeeks have a 30-day money-back guarantee, great security features and a 30-day money-back guarantee. But what about the database side of things?

You get Unlimited MySQL databases from GreenGeeks. I love the fact you get cPanel with GreenGeeks as it’s great for database management. They also use the best SSD hard drives and offer a free drag and drop builder,

Click Here To Greengeeks

In Conclusion

There is no cookie-cutter approach to hosting. Everyone has different needs and will resonate with a particular host. When it comes to MySQL hosting, make sure you know what you need. If it’s unlimited hosting then go for Hostinger, Hostwinds or HostGator. Always check out the other features that you are getting with the package you choose. I hope that this guide has helped you to pick the best MySQL host for you.

Website builders or website design software can make the whole process of creating a website easy, even for the complete beginner. Web builders are all-in-one solutions, that for the most part, will take care of all of the technical aspects of your website, but not all web builders are created equally.

No matter what your dream website is, there will be a web builder that fits your own unique needs.

Web builders can easily be used to create a website in a matter of hours. Rather than the months that it can take when developing all of the features from scratch. The best web-builder for you needs to have the tools in place to easily drag and drop features. All you need is an internet connection and your Mac and you’re all set. 

You’ll want to make sure that your website works well on mobile devices and has the features you need. Whether that looks like – enough space for all of your professional photographs or eCommerce functionality, there will be a MacOS website builder that suits you.

What website builder is best?

As you might have guessed from what I’ve said so far, the best website builder for you might differ from that of someone else’s needs. To bring your dream to life, you’ll need an easy to use interface and some design software, or a website builder that works seamlessly with an Apple device. 

Most of the builders that are on the market have been refined over the years and are now so easy a child could use them.

You’ll also want a web builder that offers website hosting and a professional domain name if you are new to the online space. That way you don’t need to get into the finicky business of pointing DNS’s or uploading sites to hosts. The best web builders offer everything that you need, including integration with payment gateways and custom business email addresses.

What’s more, you can save a tonne of money by using a website builder rather than investing thousands of dollars (or euros or pounds) in a web dev expert. The only real reason you need a web developer these days is for bespoke app builds and complex back-end business systems. The rest can be done with easy to use web design/ website builder tools that you can access cheaply, within a few minutes.  

After working in the online space for two decades, I’ve seen a lot of great and not so impressive web tools that make it easy (or not) to build and update your websites. In this article, I’ll go over 10 of the very best Mac website builders for your convenience.

1. | Wix (From Free)

BEST FOR – Complete beginners who want an intuitive end-to-end website builder for MacOS

Wix is an extremely impressive free web builder for Mac users. It has just about every sort of feature you could imagine and plenty of fresh designs that you can implement in seconds. All you have to do is follow their intuitive interface, answer some questions and just like magic, your website will appear. 

Wix uses sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) to create your website if that’s what you prefer. Your job is then simply to add in the content to ensure that your website says what you want it to portray and add in any features. 

You can create complicated websites like eCommerce Subscriptions directly from Wix, or if you need something simple like a static website, then that’s really easy for you to set up too.

If you’re looking for a more hands-on approach you can use Wix Editor or Corvid. Corvid is an option for the more adventurous sort who wants to get involved in the coding side of things. You can even develop apps with Corvid from Wix.  

The Wix Editor is a great tool that you can use to edit and alter the look, feel and functionality of your website. Most importantly the Wix ADI (The artificial intelligence option) or the Wix Editor doesn’t require you to have any coding experience, which will come as a relief for most users.

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Visit Wix

3. Divi (From Elegant Themes)

BEST FOR – Intermediate bloggers wanting to create a beautiful feature-rich WordPress website

Divi is an amazing WordPress theme for bloggers that allows you to design your website in pre-coded elements (a bit like Blocs). The UX is simple to use (when you get the hang of it). I love the fact that you can buy Divi for life for under £238 – this is ideal if you have multiple blogs that you want to create. Also ideal for and vouched for by many successful bloggers that don’t want yet another monthly subscription.

Alternatively, they are £70.6 for a year. They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so giving Divi a go is relatively risk-free. 

If you are using Divi on a Mac you can either download a WordPress instance or use the builder online. Beginners will want to use WordPress hosting to set up their Divi blog. 

The more advanced user can create a local WordPress installation on the Mac. Allowing designers to work offline.  This can be good for developers and must be done in a Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (MAMP) environment. 

Divi is praised by bloggers all over the world. Themes in general for WordPress can be hard to use. But Divi allows you to create just about any type of blog with awesome features without having prior coding experience. 

Divi doesn’t offer WordPress hosting, but you can check out our selection of free WordPress hosts here. 

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Visit Divi

4. Weebly

Best for – All-in-one web building tool for freelancers and entrepreneurs

Weebly is much like Wix in its functionality and ability. We’ve actually compared both Weebly and Wix website builders in the past, and there are 7 main differences you need to know.  When you go over to Weebly you can create your website via your Mac online, with their easy to use interface. You get to choose if you want an eCommerce store or a website. 

The best thing about Weebly is that you can do all of the technical aspects of your website in a step-by-step manner. You are guided through the whole process, so you literally don’t need to have any prior technical experience. 

You can do just about anything with Weebly – just drag and drop photos, videos, and elements to create your website. It is more suited to the small-medium sized business as the features required by larger websites are not supported and migration to other CMS platforms can be tricky. 

Weebly offers a free version of their web builder for MacOS – which is perfect for students, teachers, and projects that need to be shared with a larger audience. 

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Weebly

5. | Squarespace

BEST FOR – New MacOS business users who quickly wants an online presence.

If you are looking for a ridiculously easy way to use your Mac and create a professional online digital presence, then Squarespace could be the ideal solution. You don’t need any special coding abilities, as they take care of everything.

Squarespace has optimized their websites for performance and mobile responsiveness, which is great for modern businesses. They also take care of your domain name and hosting, so all you have to do is use their tools to create a great looking website. 

Squarespace offers a wide range of professional layouts so that you can have a beautifully designed website in minutes. You can edit these templates to suit your business needs. Squarespace has thought about everything for small businesses to get off the ground such as integrating email marketing, appointment tools and logos. 

With Squarespace, you can edit your content directly on the page (known as inline editing). This makes the creative process much easier. Squarespace offers several plans but watch out as their lower tiers take a 3% transaction fee. You get a free domain name with Squarespace, which is perfect for new businesses.

Squarespace also supports your podcasting and blogging requirements.

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Visit Squarespace

6. | EverWeb

BEST FOR –Feature-rich entry-level MacOS specific Website builder – Create unlimited pages

Everweb is a website builder that is specifically designed for MacOS. Naturally, it had to be part of this list. All of the websites created via EverWeb are 100% responsive, so they’ll look great on all devices, from desktops to smartphones. 

One thing that is brilliant about EverWeb is the fact they allow you to create unlimited websites. They also offer over 600+ features (widgets)  that you can easily deploy.

EverWeb offers hundreds of customizable templates and the ability to add custom code to make your website stand out from the crowd. They even allow you access to over half a million stock images to add to your website. 

Everything is super simple with EverWeb, but if you do get stuck they have a great knowledge base and an online community forum. They also have 24/7/365 customer support via phone. 

You can either build your website from a blank page or use one of their templates. 

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Visit Everweb

7. | Sparkle

BEST FOR – Making websites in MacOS via an intuitive app

Sparkle takes the hassle out of creating a website. You can get started for free today by downloading their Mac app.

Sparkle also offers built-in SEO to help you stand out in the search engines as well as easy social sharing tools.

Some people use Sparkle to test marketing angles, while others use it to create blogs and business websites. They offer three levels of service that allow you to publish anything from a single site (with a maximum of 10 pages) to unlimited websites. 

Sparkle is a modern Mac application that works seamlessly with the MacOS. However, it is a bit pricey compared to others on this list. You can visually create your mobile responsive website in a matter of hours.

Sparkle is ideal for trying out ideas, however it is a bit expensive for unlimited pages and sites. The free Sparkle website creator tool allows you to create a single site with a maximum of 3 pages. Your free site will also sport the “Made with Sparkle” branding. 

The Sparkle app offers an intuitive user interface, specially designed for people who love the Mac UX.

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Sparkle

8. | uKit

BEST FOR –Small business MacOS website builder

uKit offers a massive 350 templates that can be customized to your needs. You just need to search your business niche and preview all of their designs. You can also start your site from scratch if that is how you’d like to work.

Like the other products on this list, you don’t need to be a coder to create a professional site with uKit. What’s more – you can take advantage of uKit’s marketing tools to drive traffic to your website. 

uKit has been created to make building your website easy and fun. They offer predefined color palettes and grids to ensure that your website branding is consistent and coherent. 

uKit also offers unlimited pages, photos, videos, and traffic (bandwidth). Additionally, they have eCommerce functionality so that you can set up your online store with uKit. uKit will handle all aspects of your website, however, they don’t offer free professional domain names. 

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Ukit

9. | Blocs

BEST FOR –Mac Specific Website Builder Tool – ideal for beginners

Blocs is another visual design web design software that allows you to create mobile-friendly websites. True to their name, Blocs works on the concept of stacking predefined “blocks” or sections of your website. 

It’s easy to change the padding, styling and content of your new website with blocks. They also offer some nice animation tools that allow you to create parallax sections that zoom in and out as you scroll.

If you are looking for an intuitive and fast website builder that requires no coding, then Blocs could be for you. 

You can build as many websites as you want with Blocs and also create them offline. This can be ideal if you find yourself in a location with no Wifi access. All you’ll need to do is download your Blocs software to your Mac. Blocs make everything really simple, so that making your website is like childsplay – once you find your way around their software.

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Bloc

10. | uCraft (From Free)

BEST FOR –Free website builder for MacOS

Ucraft is a free website builder that allows you to make just about any type of website, from a blog to a professional business site. They offer a wide range of slick templates to choose from so that all you need to do is add in your content. 

uCraft also offers free cloud hosting for your website, via Google Cloud.

If you want to start an online store, Ucraft has you covered. They allow you to take payment via a massive 50 different payment providers. The eCommerce website solution is cost-effective from uCraft at just £31 per month. 

If you are looking for a basic site, you can use their templates and hook up your domain name for free. Even the free plan comes with 24/7 support, which is awesome. Getting started is super easy, and if you want to opt for one of their premium plans you can take advantage of their free trial to find out if uCraft is for you. 

uCraft offers SSL certificates, SEO tools, Google Analytics and everything you need to get your website off the ground. Get started for free, and only upgrade if you need additional features. 

Packages and Pricing:

Click Here To Ucraft

The Bottom Line

The web site builder or design tool you use for creating your website on your Mac depends on your needs. If you prefer to work with an app then Squarespace or Sparkle are your best choices. If you like to work online then Weebly or Wix would work for you. 

Webflow has some nice animation tools and uCraft on the other hand offers some nice tools for new businesses like a logo builder and free hosting. I hope that you’ve found this of macOS website builders interesting and informative in making your perfect choice.

There are a lot of factors to consider when choosing the ideal PHP host for your website. Uptime and performance are two defining factors that affect how the end-user feels about your website. Think of a website that is offline when you visit it, isn’t that a big turnoff? Or one that takes forever to load. These are also two of the myriad of defining criteria that go into Google’s algorithms for host-level SEO. Obviously, as the website owner, you’ll also want to take cost into the equation when selecting the best PHP web hosting company to fit your budget.

What is PHP and Why is it Used?

PHP is a general-purpose programming language, most commonly used to build websites and applications. PHP stands for Hypertext pre-processor. Originally PHP stood for “Personal Home Pages”, which is a lot less glamourous, but that just lets you know where the PHP programming language was born. 

With almost 80% of all websites running on PHP, it’s the #1 programming language of choice for websites. W3Techs say that eight out of every 10 websites run on PHP. This means that there are a lot of different website hosts to choose from to power your PHP website. This article is meant to demystify all of the fluff and provide a list of reliable PHP hosts.

Choosing The Best PHP Hosting Companies

After working in the online space for two decades I’ve come across all sorts of web hosts, some great and others are simply frustrating. This article is meant to be a guide that allows you to omit the months (or even years) of overwhelm that it takes to find the ideal PHP website host. 

When selecting the best PHP web hosting providers for this list we took the following four criteria into consideration:

• Uptime
• Speed
• Pricing
• Customer support

PRO TIP: Also lookout for the “renewal price” when selecting a host for the long-term. A lot of hosts advertise low hosting prices for a short period of time. After which the price often quadruples.

1. HostGator Cloud (£2.18/mo)

BEST FOR – Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited storage

HostGator is one of the biggest names in the hosting world. HostGator offers all sorts of benefits that make it one of the top PHP hosting providers. For example, unlike Bluehost, you can migrate your site over to HostGator for free. 

HostGator offers unlimited bandwidth and storage, which makes it an amazing deal for just £2.18 per month. You’ll snag a free SSL certificate and unlimited email accounts as well if you decide to host with HostGator. 

When it comes to performance HostGator isn’t too shabby either. They have fast page load times and a 99.9% uptime. Making HostGator a great PHP hosting provider for SEO-friendly websites. 

A major downside to HostGator is that you’ll experience a steep price increase after the first 6 months have passed. The renewal costs are around £7.90 to £11.90 per month for most of their accounts. So that’s definitely something to look out for. 

You could jump ship and take advantage of another hosting provider after the 6-month period has passed.

Click Here To Visit Hostgator

Pros

• 15 Data centers
• Free lifetime domain
• Free Wildcard SSL certificate
• One-click installation
• Scalable

Cons

• Price jump after 6-12 months

3. Bluehost

BEST FOR – Uptime and Performance – Great for beginners

Despite being banded around the web as the best cheap hosting provider at just £2.43 per month, I’m here to burst that bubble. Sure, Bluehost offers a decent PHP hosting experience, but you need to pay for a whole year upfront. 

Putting a barrier in the way of setting up hosting for some people that may have a lower monthly budget. In fact, the low price is merely introductory, but you can lock it in if you sign up for 3 years, which is a long time in the online space. 

Bluehost is a leader in the industry and offers some great features, such as 99.99% uptime guarantee and a super simple website hosting setup. You can install CMS solutions like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla with one-click, which makes it a great solution for beginners who don’t mind paying for years hosting upfront. 

Another downside of choosing Bluehost that’ll only apply if you want to transfer your existing site over to them is the fact that they charge £118 to migrate your website onto their platform. This is super steep and some providers will offer you this service for free. 

On a positive note, you’ll get a free SSL certificate and professional email addresses to match your domain name. You’ll also get a free domain name for your first year from Bluehost. 

Click Here To Visit Bluehost

Pros

• Fast load time
• 30-day Money-back guarantee
• Great customer support
• Unmetered bandwidth
• cPanel

Cons

• You need to pay annually
• Don’t offer free website transfer

4. Hostinger (£2.59 per month)

Best for – Cheap, SEO-friendly PHP Hosting

Hostinger has data centers in 8 international locations. This is ideal for SEO as Google factors your website location into where they show your website. Hostinger also has an amazing page load time, which is great for SEO.

Like other hosts, you can only take advantage of the low prices when you sign up for a longer duration.

Most of the PHP hosting packages from Hostinger offer unlimited resources with the exception of their lowest plan.

You’ll get a free domain name with Hostinger for one year as well as a nice 30-day money-back guarantee. If Hostinger didn’t charge for priority support and SSL certificates they’d be higher up on this list for sure. 

Click Here To Hostinger

5. SiteGround (£3.14 per month)

BEST FOR –  Daily backups and WordPress optimized hosting for smaller websites.

If you want to lock in the low price from SiteGround, you just need to sign up for a year, which isn’t too bad compared to other hosts. However, you need to keep an eye out for the higher renewal price after the first twelve months, when the price will jump to £9.48 per month. 

I’m a fan of hosts that offer daily backups and Siteground offers this service, which is nice. This keeps your website safe in the event it gets hacked or there is a server error, you can restore it in minutes. 

You get just 10GB of storage and bandwidth that’ll support 10k monthly visitors inside the price displayed, which is ok for a smaller website, but you’ll quickly need to upgrade with this size of hosting plan. 

SiteGround has servers in several global locations, which is great for selecting the most appropriate location for your server in relation to your ideal website visitors. If you are looking to move an existing PHP website over to Sitehost then they offer this service free of charge. 

Click Here To Visit Siteground

6. A2 Hosting (£3.11 per month)

BEST FOR –Blazingly fast page load times

If you are looking to port your website over to A2 Hosting you’re in luck, they offer free site migration. A2 Hosting also has blazingly fast page load times that will please the most impatient website surfer, not to mention Google. Google penalizes slower websites so this is certainly a HUGE selling point for A2 Hosting. 

You’ll also get a free domain name, free SSL certificate and some great customer service if you choose A2 Hosting as your hosting partner. They also offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. 

The renewal price for A2 Hosting is £7.93 per month, which isn’t too steep. 

On the other hand, the basic (cheapest) plan from A2 Hosts only allows for one PHP website and 5 MySQL databases.

Click Here To Visit A2hosting

7. GoDaddy (£2.90 per month)

BEST FOR – Established PHP host that is easy to use with great performance

GoDaddy is probably the most well-known website hosts of all time. They currently boast 18.5 million customers and they have over 9k employees all over the world.

Although they are one of the most famous brands, they are not great when it comes to bang for your buck. You’ll need to pay extra for features like emails, backups and SSL certificates, which can bring them in at a much higher price. You cant do without most of these features, so really these features should be bundled as part of the package.

GoDaddy also only offer a free domain with some of their more advanced hosting solutions, like their WordPress hosting that comes in at £6.34 per month. 

The storage offered is pretty decent though, you’ll get 100GB of disk space and unmetered bandwidth, which is enough for most medium-sized PHP websites.

Click Here To Godaddy

8. iPage (£1.50 per month)

BEST FOR –Cheap PHP hosting for beginners who already own a domain name

iPage is a great host for people who are on a budget. The low price of £1.50 is locked in for the first three years, which is way cheaper than a lot of other hosts who have higher renewal prices. They are also an eco-friendly host, which is ideal for the times we live in. 

You’ll benefit from great 24/7 customer support and a free SSL certificate as well as free professional email addresses when you choose iPage as your host. 

On the flip side, domain names are extortionate from iPage and they also charge £120 for transferring your PHP site over to their hosting. This is a lot when you think about other hosts that offer this service for free. If you don’t have a site to port over and already have a domain name from another host, then iPage could be a great option for you. 

iPage doesn’t perform so well when it comes to page load times, hence it’s ended up lower down on our list. 

When you look at the acceptible use policy with iPage their “unlimited bandwidth” is actually not what it seems. It actually amounts to 2-3GB of storage when you look at the fine print.

Click Here To iPage

9. DreamHost

BEST FOR –Established eco-friendly PHP hosting

DreamHost was founded way back in 1996 and is a pretty well-known host with over 400,000 customers and over 1.5 million websites. They offer unlimited bandwidth and a massive 97-day moneyback guarantee. If you’re looking for a host that is eco-friendly then Dreamhost could be a great choice for you as they are a carbon-neutral PHP hosting provider. 

DreamHost is also extremely cheap at just £2.06 per month for PHP hosting. 

DreamHost doesn’t offer cPanel, instead, you get their own control panel, which will take you time to learn. I can’t say I am into other types of control panel as cPanel is best in class, so its a pity they don’t offer cPanel. 

The load times and uptime from Dreamhost are OK but nothing special.

Click Here To Dreamhost

The Bottom Line

There are many cheap deals that allow you to get up and running with your PHP website in a matter of hours. However, it pays to check out the renewal price. 

Often the introductory price is quite low and tempting, but the price rises significantly in around 6 months. Sometimes the price can be locked in for up to 4 years, so make sure you consider this and also read the fine print – such as the “Acceptable use policy” that outlines what unlimited means to that particular company. 

HIPAA Compliant Hosting is a must for healthcare workers. The stakes are simply too high when storing lots of sensitive patient data, to risk the information falling into the wrong hands. Making sure that your hosting is HIPAA compliant goes a long way to ensure that patient data is stored safely and complies with current legislation.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was put in place to keep patient data safe and secure. This means that data transferred or stored must adhere to the strict rules set out in the HIPAA legislation guidelines. 

One thing that becomes difficult when looking for HIPAA compliant hosting is finding reliable hosting at a low cost. Other requirements, such as – HIPAA email hosting, HIPAA cloud hosting, HIPAA databases and whether your business requires HIPAA dedicated hosting are also important.

Finally, you’ll need a host that offers FTP security, so that when you are transferring data to and from your host – the data is kept secure. 

In this article, we’ll explore everything that you need to know about HIPAA compliant hosting and some hosting providers that offer high-quality solutions.

What are the 3 Components of HIPAA Law?

The HIPAA legislation covers your entire organization. The law also states that employees should be aware of the HIPAA law, so training is advisable for everyone who works in the healthcare sector. The 3 main components of the HIPAA law can be summarised as follows:

1. Policies

2. Record keeping

3. Technology

Your host has a big part to play in all three areas. As they will be providing technology that must comply, holding records that must be stored securely and all parts must adhere to strict policies. Furthermore, you need to think about every single piece of data that is transferred online and whether it adheres to the strict HIPAA legislation. Otherwise, you’ll be at risk of incurring a financial penalty.

The 18 HIPAA Identifiers

HIPAA legislation protects “individually identifiable information” both at rest and in transit, this is known as Protected Health Information (PHI). There are 18 key identifiers that must be protected as follows:. Name

3. Address

4. Dates related to an individual 

5. Telephone numbers

6. Fax number

7. Email address

8. Social Security Number

9. Medical record number

10. Health plan beneficiary number

11. Account number

12. Certificate or license number

13. Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers

14. Device identifiers and serial numbers

15. Web URL

16. Internet Protocol (IP) Address

17. Finger or voice print

18. Photographic image 

19. Uniquely defining characteristics 

As you can see, that’s a lot of information to keep track of!

What is a HIPPA violation?

Before we get into the best hosting providers that offer a HIPAA compliant service, let’s look at what a HIPPA violation is and why it’s important to avoid this. 

Normally HIPAA violations incur large financial penalties. The main thing you need to watch out for is that you’ve successfully performed organization-wide risk analysis. Doing this identifies risks to confidentiality, integrity, and availability of protected health information (PHI), It’s also imperative to enter into a HIPAA-compliant business associate agreement (BAA).

What are the HIPAA Compliant Hosting Requirements?

… and who needs to comply with the HIPAA legislation?  

The legislation sets standards for electronic healthcare transactions and how patient records are handled. HIPAA covers a wide range of sensitive information. For example appointments, treatment information, healthcare records, and medical health histories.

There are certain precautions that must be made to ensure that people who are storing, controlling, disposing, and providing access to medical records do so in a way that ensures their safety and privacy is kept intact. Businesses that work closely with a healthcare company are also required to adhere to the legislation. As such, hosting providers must be HIPAAcompliantt to work with a Healthcare Organization legally. 

What are the Encryption Requirements for HIPAA?

When selecting a HIPAA certified host they must follow strict encryption and decryption guidelines, as follows:

• Encryption and Decryption – 164.312(a)(2)(iv): Implement a method to encrypt and decrypt electronically protected health information.
• Encryption – 164.312(e)(2)(ii): Implement a mechanism to encrypt electronically protected health information whenever deemed appropriate.

These requirements were taken from hipaacentral.com.

As you can see HIPPA hosting complex and a must for anyone working in the healthcare sector. Let’s dive into the best HIPPA Compliant hosts:

Best HIPAA-Compliant Web Hosting

1. LiquidWeb.com (£238 per month)

BEST FOR – Flexible Hosting, Ideal for Large Healthcare companies in the US or Europe

LiquidWeb offers cloud dedicated servers, and cloud-based virtual private servers (VPS). They even offer 2 pre-configured HIPAA-friendly packages that you can select and use straight out of the box. This is a lifesaver if you don’t have the time or resources to configure your server.  For some reason, many hosts require you to call them up and discuss your requirements. Great for some people… sure, but not everyone has time for that. I’d expect my HIPAA compliant host to be automated, and for this reason, LiquidWeb comes up top of our list. 

Alternatively, you can also work directly with one of Liquid Web’s specialists to create a customized plan. They are particularly great when it comes to managed dedicated server hosting. LiquidWeb offers instant provisioning, so if you choose to go with LiquidWeb, you’ll be up and running in minutes. Bonus!

LiquidWeb has a world-class customer support team that is both knowledgeable and quick to respond.  They have a really cool customer support offering name – “24/7 Heroic Support®” where the staff is always available when you need them – via phone, chat, and email.

The company owns five state-of-the-art data centers in both the US and Europe. One thing that I love about LiquidWeb is their 100% uptime guarantee, certainly not something I come across very often. And a great feature for Healthcare workers who can’t afford to waste time waiting for data to arrive, especially in emergency situations. Data is also backed up and monitored, as well as balanced with their block storage and load balancer add-ons. 

World Class HIPAA Dedicated Servers

As well as cloud hosting, LiquidWeb also offers HIPAA-Compliant Dedicated Server hosting. Meaning you can go ahead and order a dedicated server with LiquidWeb and ask for it to be made HIPAA compliant – Can’t say better than that!. This is especially useful for larger organizations that require a lot of space and flexibility with their hosting. 

Their dedicated servers are fully customizable and built-to-order. LiquidWeb offers a wide variety of both Linux or Windows operating systems for your server to run on. 

Best HIPAA FTP Hosting

When it comes to transferring your sensitive files to your server, this process must also be HIPAA compliant. FTP hosting and file transfer is covered when you decided to go with LiquidWeb as they offer a “ServerSecure” platform that adheres to the encryption standards and audit controls required to comply with HIPAA legislation. LiquidWeb has also been externally audited to ensure that it complies with both HIPAA and HITECH legislation. This gives extra peace of mind. 

LiquidWeb HIPAA Compliant Packages and Prices

It’s complicated to put a hard and fast price on HIPAA hosting as every company has different requirements. However, LiquidWeb gives a base level cost as follows:

• Single Server HIPAA Hosting – Linux starting at £238, Windows starting at £285
• Multiple Server HIPAA Hosting – Linux starting at £625, Windows starting at £760

Click Here To Visit Liquidweb

Pros

• 24x7x365 support
• 14 Data Centers
• 100% guarantee that you’ll pass audits

Cons

• Don’t publicly display prices

Who offers the Best HIPAA-Compliant Email Hosting?

Sending healthcare information via email is allowable, according to HIPAA. This’s surprising, as sending and receiving messages can be notoriously insecure. To ensure your email is HIPAA compliant you must ensure that your email host offers end to end encryption, that they’ll sign a business associate agreement with you, configure your email correctly and then you must also train all employees how to make sure that their emails are protected. 

HIPAA compliant email hosting is focused on secure encryption, audits, and integrity controls that protect data in transit. GoDaddy offers robust, secure HIPAA compliant email hosting services.

3. GoDaddy.com (£6.74 per user/mo)

BEST FOR – Affordable and easy to use, professional HIPAA Compliant Email Hosting

Godaddy offers two HIPAA compliant hosting packages as follows:

• Microsoft Office 365
• Business Premium

You’ll need to activate your mailbox and agree to the Office 365 Business Associate Agreement to take advantage of HIPAA email hosting from Godaddy. The HIPAA email hosting from GoDaddy is easy to use, there is no front-facing difference to their HIPAA email hosting – the only alteration (that you don’t see or feel) is that there are strong encryption, security and privacy features running in the background. 

GoDaddy HIPAA Email Hosting Plans & Pricing 

All of the email plans from GoDaddy offer 1TB secure storage

• Online Essentials – £6.74 per user/mo
• Business Premium – £9.32 per user/mo,  can be installed on up to 5 devices
• Advanced Security – £13.28 per user/mo, includes business apps – however, these apps would all have to be checked and approved for HIPAA compliance. 

Click Here To Visit Godaddy

Pros

• Cheap
• Easy to use
• Setup in minutes
• Professional email name
• Spam filtering
• HIPAA-compliance features with premium plans
• 99.9% uptime guaranteed
• Fast & Secure

Cons

• Need to pay for each individual user

PRO TIP: Remember to sign the BAA to activate your HIPAA compliant email hosting. 

4. Amazon Web Services (AWS) (Free++)

Best for – Cheap, SEO-friendly PHP Hosting

If you’re looking to host with a renowned cloud hosting platform, then Amazon Web Services (AWS) could be for you. AWS use the common HITRUST Security Framework to ensure that their services comply with HIPAA and HITECH legislation. AWS is great as you can get up and running for free and scale to mammoth proportions. 

If you are not technically minded, the AWS will be extremely complicated. In fact, I’ve known seasoned developers who struggle with setting up services inside AWS. They have so many settings and unique names for things, the whole process of getting your cloud hosting off the ground with AWS can be daunting. For this reason, you could find an AWS expert or partner to create your cloud server account for you. Again make sure that you’ve signed a BAA with AWS to ensure that you are HIPAA compliant.

Click Here To Amazon

5. Rackspace (contact for pricing)

BEST FOR –  Amazing customer support & HIPAA-Ready Solutions for Healthcare

Texas-born Rackspace has been around since the internet was officially unveiled and available to the public. Founded in 1996, Rackspace is now the trusted host for half of the Fortune 100 fastest growing companies in the US. More importantly, Rackspace offers end-to-end HIPAA compliance and are experts in the space.

Like LiquidWeb, Rackspace takes their customer so seriously, they’ve trademarked the signature name “Fanatical Support™” – and they use Net Promoter to track customer satisfaction. Rackspace is available 24/7/365 via phone, email, and chat. No matter what kind of hosting you need, you’ll find it with Rackspace. They offer public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud services. Again you need to give them a call to get a quote. 

Click Here To Visit Rackspace

6. OVH

BEST FOR – Blazingly fast and secure HIPAA cloud hosting in the US

OVH is a massive worldwide host based in Roubaix, France. They have 27 data centers located in  19 countries all around the world. This is great news if you are looking for fast servers, because the closer they are to your physical location, the quicker they’ll load. 

OVH has a whopping 300,000 servers across all of its data centers. OVH has invested in next-gen tech so that they can deliver blazingly fast and secure services. Unfortunately, if you’re looking for HIPAA compliant hosting you’ll need to opt for one of their US servers as they are the only ones that  have been certified by HIPAA.

The OVH hosting package – vCloud Air is the package you want to look out or if you’re on the hunt for HIPAA compliant cloud hosts. OVH states that the following products and servers have been tested for HIPAA compliance. 

Products:

• Dedicated Servers
• Hosted Private Cloud
• Public Cloud Services

US data centers:

• Vint Hill, Virginia (East Coast)
• Hillsboro, Oregon (West Coast)

Click Here To Visit OVH

7. Atlantic.Net

BEST FOR – Security-conscious, easy to use HIPAA hosting

Another company that has been around since the dawn of the internet (1994) is Atlantic.net. Founded by university students in Orlando Florida, Atlandtic.net has come a long way.  All of the servers from Atlantic.net, whether cloud, website or databases have been independently audited. Again they offer a brilliant 100% uptime guarantee, which is essential for mission-critical sensitive data. One thing that Atlantic.net excels at is making its solutions simple and easy to use. 

Atlantic.net uses an encrypted VPN to tunnel your information through save channels as well as multi-factor authentication, SSL certificates for added security. Atlantic.net has servers all over the world, specifically in the US and UK. 

Click Here To Atlantic

8. Inap (Tailored plans)

BEST FOR – Innovative hosting

Inap, previously known as “SingleHop” is a hosting provider that has grown rapidly since its beginnings, as a shared server host in 2006. Inap is a US hosting provider that focuses on automation and innovation.  What is a bit odd is that they require you to contact them to set up your hosting, which seems a bit slow and not automatic? 

Inap partners with the leading compliance experts AlertLogic so that they can deliver unparalleled security and HIPAA compliance. 

If you want to use Inap for your HIPAA compliant hosting, then you’ll need to “hop” over (pardon the pun) and have a 30-minute review to ascertain your business needs. Inap offers users an account management features and lots of security features like DDoS protection.

Click Here To Inap

9. Colocation America (£62.70 per month)

BEST FOR – Cost-effective, US HIPAA  bare-server or hybrid cloud servers

Colocation America offer secure dedicated servers that comply with all of the HIPAA requirements, and they passed their recent Audit.  The features they use for this include a dedicated firewall, diligent monitoring, encryption, and a disaster recovery plan. Colocation America has 22 data centers, also offers a  nice 100% uptime guarantee.

Colocation America focuses on providing storage, hardware and connectivity over a robust infrastructure. You have the choice of leasing a full bare-metal server or using their hybrid cloud solutions that include AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Click Here To Colocation America

Who Needs to Comply with HIPAA?

Not everyone that works in healthcare is required to comply with HIPAA. Below is a list of the healthcare bodies that must comply with HIPAA:

• Doctors
• Clinics
• Hospitals
• Psychologists
• Chiropractors
• Nursing Homes
• Pharmacies
• Dentists
• Health Insurance Companies
• Company Health Plans
• Medicare and Medicaid

The Bottom Line

The fines for HIPAA are extortionate, per violation or record it’s £79 to £39,679. The maximum penalty is £1.2 million per year for each violation. So making sure you are fully covered, if you work as a healthcare professional is essential. When you think about the possible fines, the cost for hosting seems like a tiny amount, for you to pay for your peace of mind.

Wondering how to find the best secure hosting? Protecting your website from an attack has never been more important. Many people underestimate how damaging it can be to have your website be subject to cybercrime. This can result in a loss of business and often a complete loss of valuable resources – like data. Therefore taking measures to ensure that your website is secure by selecting a host that has gone to extra lengths to protect your website is a must in 2024.

Most sites will come under some kind of attack, whether from hackers, bots, malware, DDoS attacks, and security leaks or some other form of intrusion.  The good news is, if you sufficiently protect yourself, then you can ward or attacks or easily reinstate your site within minutes. 

In this article, we’ll discuss the threats that your site might be subject to as well as what hosting companies go the extra mile to protect your online presence. Surprisingly enough, some of the cheaper hosts are the biggest players who have the best security measures in place. 

Keeping Your Website Secure

To ensure your website is kept secure, you’ll need to protect it from the most common types of attacks. As always, prevention is better than a cure, but if you find yourself at the receiving end of hacking, a backup can save your website’s life. So making sure that your host is not only taking all and any measures possible to protect your site is a must, but also taking regular daily backups can save the day in many cases. The most common types of cyberattacks are as follows:

• Birthday attack
• Cross-site scripting (XSS) attack
• Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
• Drive-by attack
• Eavesdropping attack
• Malware attack
• Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack
• Password attack
• Phishing and spear-phishing attacks
• SQL injection attack

Understanding what type of attacks are commonly used on websites, can help you take measures to secure your website.

What to Look for in a Secure Host

As you’ll see, when selecting a secure host we need to look for measures to protect our websites or apps from the above attacks. Above all, we need to look for the following qualities in our hosting provider to ensure that all security measures are covered.  

• Availability and Uptime
• Backup & Restore
• DDoS Attack Mitigation
• Firewall Protection
• Malware Scanning
• Software Security
• SSL Certificates
• 24/7/365 Support

What Hosting Security Measures Are You Responsible For?

While choosing a secure host is half the battle. There are also things that the website owner is responsible for in relation to keeping your website secure. According to HostGator (a leading web host), they suggest that you take responsibility for the following if you want to keep your website secure:

1. Password security
2. Account settings
3. Keeping all installed website applications up-to-date
4. Keeping your site malware-free
5. Using your site in the right way

Now that you’re thoroughly convinced of the importance of securing your website, let’s dive into 7 hosts that have security at the core of their hosting plans.

1. A2 Hosting (£2.42 per month)

BEST FOR – Fast and Secure Hosting utilizing VPN technology

A2 Hosting is well known as a leader in performance-optimized hosting. A2 Hosting is based in Michigan, in the US, and they also have servers in Amsterdam and Singapore. A2Hosting has implemented some nice security features to keep your website protected. 

These security features include –  free wildcard SSL certificates (and other SSL certificate options). They also offer free DDoS protection. If you want to go the extra mile then I’d suggest you opt one of their OpenVPN hosting packages. A2Host has ensured that their VPNs don’t slow down your website. Which is great as slow websites are bad for SEO and your visitors. OpenVPN is an open-source commercial software that implements a virtual private network (VPN). This creates a virtual tunnel for your data to travel safely through.   They also offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 network monitoring.

Click Here To Visit A2hosting

Pros

• Affordable shared hosting
• Great for beginners
• Flexible
• SiteLock feature

Cons

• Higher renewal fee

3. HostGator (£2.18 per month)

BEST FOR – Unlimited everything and good security protocols

HostGator is among the top hosts in the world. They offer everything you might expect from a great website host, such as – 1-click app installation, unlimited domains, databases, MySQL databases, disk space, and bandwidth. Wow – that is a lot of stuff to offer bundled with hosting plans. They also offer a 45-day money-back guarantee and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. All that is great, but what about security?

HostGator is protected from DDoS attack (UDP flood) as well as a custom firewall and a large mod security rule that protects servers from a wide variety of attacks. HostGator says that they “also employ additional server security methods and precautions that are confidential”. I guess they don’t want to disclose everything because that would present a vulnerability to new attacks. They do disclose their free SSL certificates and 24/7 customer support, which are features that we look for in high-security hosts. 

Click Here To Visit Hostgator

Pros

• 45-Day money-back guarantee
• 24/7 Customer support
• Free SSL certificates
• Unlimited everything

Cons

• Lots of upsells

4. 1&1 IONOS (£1 per month)

1&1 IONOS is arguably the biggest host on the planet right now. Well, this is certainly true in Europe anyway. The hosting packages start as low as £1 and that even goes for some of their top tier packages. What to watch out for, is that they boost the price in 6-months or a year (depending on your plan). When you sign up with 1&1 IONOS you get a free lifetime domain name. Normally hosts give you this for a year, not a lifetime, so if you stick with them then you might get some great deals and save £100’s in the process. 

On the security front, they offer wildcard SSL certificates on all of their plans. They also offer a backup and restore function, which is essential if anything happens to your website, for example, a natural disaster or a cyber attack. Having downloaded backups and also the ability to restore them to a previous instance is priceless. If you choose some of their pro or expert packages you’ll get SiteLock. SiteLock protects your site from malware and is the leading software, used by top hosts. 

Click Here To 1&1 IONOS

5. Bluehost (£2.43 per month)

Bluehost is an established website host and is even recommended by WordPress.org. You get a free domain, email accounts, and a one-click app installation. They offer shared hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated hosting, WordPress hosting and Cloud hosting. But how do they do on the security front?

Firstly, all packages come with “Positive Wildcard SSL”, and 24/7 customer service – which is both essential for security. But that’s just the beginning, they also provide three layers of anti-spam protection – “Spam Experts”, “Spam Hammer”, and “Apache Spam Assassin”.

One nice feature is the ability to blacklist IP addresses, which can be important when under a cyber attack. They also provide secure shell (SSH) access, with which you can access configuration files individually and securely. Bluehost also offers one-click integration with Cloudflare, which secures and speeds up your site. Cloudflare is particularly good for crushing DDOS attacks, so that’s exactly what you’ll need to protect your site and keep it secure. 

Bluehost also offers a nice 99.9% uptime guarantee. The business plan, that comes in at £15.86 per month comes with SiteBackup Pro – which is a powerful automatic backup service that allows you to download your own backups. They have gone the extra mile to make sure that hosting with Bluehost can be as secure as possible.

Click Here To Visit Bluehost

6. InMotion (£5.07 per month)

BEST FOR – High-quality secure SSD hosting

InMotion isn’t as cheap as the first two hosting providers on this list, however, they do offer some great features such as free SSD storage that makes your site faster. They also offer a free SSL certificate and 24/7 customer support. Inmotion has created a signature customer support system called “Premier Support™” where new account specialists will help you with setting everything up. If you are looking to port your site over from another server, then you can do this for free too – with no downtime. For security, they also offer free DDoS protection

Click Here To Visit InMotion

7. GreenGeeks (£2.34 per month)

BEST FOR – Small businesses or blogger looking for eco-hosting

GreenGeeks is the brainchild of Trey Gardner, who established GreenGeeks in 2008 as an eco-hosting company. Webhosting can have a massive impact on the environment as there are so many computers (servers) drawing a lot of electricity. GreenGeeks uses wind energy and various other protocols to ensure a negative carbon footprint, believe it or not, GreenGeeks is 300% powered by renewable energy – beat that! 

GreenGeeks gives the complete beginner everything they need to get their website off the ground. This includes free SEO and marketing tools, a drag and drop editor and unlimited SSD storage. 

On the security side of things, GreenGeeks provides Cloudflare CDN, to protect you from DDoS attacks, and nightly backups. They offer 24/7/365 customer support additionally you can get fully protected with their add-on services like Cloudflare, SiteLock, and OneClickSSL.

Click Here To Atlantic GreenGeeks

In Conclusion

All of the hosts on this list have their own USPs (unique selling points). A2 Hosting is great for speed and offering OpenVPN, 1&1 IONOS is great because they give you lots of resources cheaply and GreenGeeks is a brilliant eco-friendly host. Every business or website has its own unique requirements, so it’s a great idea to review what hosts offer and choose a host that aligns with your business.