Like with so many things online, there are a ton of website hosting services. Where is the best place to host a website?
As you might imagine, all web hosts are certainly NOT created equal.
I’m going to offer you some insights from my own experience to help you make an educated choice about who hosts your home on the web.
2020 was quite a year.
For me, it was the year my websites got hacked and also when they slowed to near-dial-up speeds.
First world problems…but problems nonetheless!
I kept asking my assistant to look into why things were so slow and eventually it dawned on me. My host had made some poor business choices, namely overloading their servers.
When a hosting company puts too many customers on one server, naturally the server doesn’t run at optimum performance levels.
So, when a new host reached out to me as an alternative, I stood up and paid attention.
Obviously, moving 5 websites isn’t a decision you make on a whim.
I let it simmer. I asked my assistant for her thoughts. I waited to see what offer was on the table. It became the offer I couldn’t refuse.
After checking out the service, I actually partnered with this web host which brings me to this topic of where is the best place to host a website.
Now I could tell you which hosts not to choose and why, but instead of focusing on that negativity and possibly getting in trouble, I’m going to focus instead on my new host and the NUMEROUS benefits I’ve experienced since I made the move to their platform.
That being said, I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t highly recommend this service.
So, who am I talking about?
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The winner of Dale’s Best Web Host Award goes to SiteGround!
As soon as the first site was moved to SiteGround and I logged into the WordPress dashboard, I was flabbergasted by the speed. Every click resulted in the instant display of the desired screen.
With my previous host, I was waiting several seconds at least and sometimes up to 20 or 30 seconds on a super slow day. That is unacceptable!
If you’re unaware, site speed is a big ranking factor with Google. The Google recommended load time both on desktop and mobile devices is 2 seconds.
That’s right, you’ve got 2 seconds to put your best foot forward before a significant percentage of your site visitors are going to bounce and lower your ranking in Google.
Building a website on a slow host is a waste of time.
If you’re going to go through the trouble of building a site, you want it to be effective in serving your content to potential followers and customers.
So, site speed was just the beginning of the great value SiteGround has been to my business in just a few months.
Here are the other great things I’ve experienced since moving all of my sites over to SiteGround.
1. I’ve eliminated the need for multiple plugins.
All of my sites are built on WordPress and I highly recommend it for its versatility. That versatility can be greatly expanded through WordPress’ repository of more than 55K plugins.
There’s one caveat: mo’ plugins, mo’ problems.
The more plugins you have installed, the slower your website becomes. I was able to eliminate a few plugins because SiteGround handled those services as a part of my dashboard built right in.
Those plugins were for HTTPS protocol, backups, and caching. Not only does SiteGround offer free SSL certificates, they handle the force HTTPS as well, so I was able to uninstall the plugin I was using for that with my other host.
While I do recommend still running your own backups periodically, SiteGround handles the daily ones for me.
I also had a plugin for caching that I was able to remove.
2. It has saved me a bundle.
Not only is SiteGround more reasonably priced than my previous host, but it’s also saving me a ton of cash.
I’m no longer paying for extra backup features or having to pay my assistant hourly to handle those things for me.
3. Their dashboard is intuitive and user-friendly.
I’m spending a lot less time on the phone with support. In fact, I haven’t had to contact SiteGround support even once.
If you want to flush your productivity time down the toilet, have a clunky web host who can’t get their stuff together!
With SiteGround, if I need an email account on one of my domains, I can get that done in a few clicks. I’m not spending hours clicking around in cPanel trying to accomplish simple tasks.
SiteGround makes me feel like I know what I’m doing.
Everything is designed to make it simple to create and maintain your website just as web hosting should be.
4. Don’t be surprised if you hear from a SiteGround rep.
As I said, they reached out to me and have contacted me periodically. It hasn’t been annoying at all and they’ve never been salesy with me.
5. Their affiliate marketing is built right in.
So many times, it seems like you get sent to an affiliate platform and you may or may not like said platform. Some are better than others.
With SiteGround, your affiliate marketing dashboard is right there next to your website dashboard and everything is in one convenient place.
So, Where Is the Best Place to Host a Website? SiteGround!
I’ve been with SiteGround since September of 2020 and I can’t say enough good things about my experience with them so far.
I wish that I had moved a lot sooner!
Once I pulled the trigger and made the move, SiteGround immediately began undoing some of the damage I suffered at the hands of my previous host by saving me money.
As a result, they come highly recommended.
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