Choosing a web hosting company for the first time can be tricky, especially for non-technical users.
There are so many hosting providers advertising all sorts of plans and a bunch of technical terms like shared hosting, VPS, cloud hosting, SSL that give beginners a headache.
But, it doesn’t have to be this way. In this post, we’ll help you choose a web hosting service for your first website and get started in minutes.
Some key things to know about web hosting:
- The ideal plan for beginners is shared Linux hosting. This is suitable for all kinds of websites including WordPress.
- Hosting prices range from $2.59 to $5.99 per month (price comparison table).
- The cheapest hosting plan for beginners is offered by Bluehost. It costs $106.20 for a three-year period.
- It’s better to have your domain name and website registered with the same provider.
- As your traffic grows, you can move your website to VPS or dedicated hosting.
- All hosting providers listed below support free migrations to a more powerful plan.
Our methodology
We’ve reviewed and rated a number of hosting plans using these criteria and based on our 20+ years of technical experience with website building, domains, and hosting,
We highly recommend all companies listed below without any hesitation. It’s the same hosting companies we’ve been using (for our websites and client websites) since we started our online journey in 2002.
Top Web Hosting For Beginners
These are the best hosting sites for beginners to web hosting.
1. Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting companies in the world. For many, it is considered the best web hosting provider for beginners.
Bluehost was founded in 2003 and hosts over 2 million websites in its data centers. It was the hosting company we’ve used back in our early days to host our first website and we still use them to date.
Pros of Bluehost
What makes Bluehost a great choice for beginners are three things:
1. Very easy and fast to get started – Bluehost offers perhaps the most user-friendly wizard to create a new hosting account. This is important for first-time users who don’t want to go through a dozen of options or questions.
2. Free domain name and email hosting – With your hosting package, you also get a free domain registration (for one year) and unlimited email accounts for free.
In simple words, this means that you can have all services your startup business needs (domain name, hosting, email) in one place. Plus creating a website with Bluehost is a super easy process with their 1-click installer service.
3. Transparent pricing – When you choose Bluehost for hosting your website, you’ll know in advance how much to pay for the period of the offer (as a new customer) and how much to pay after the offer ends. I’ll explain this in more detail in the next section.
Bluehost Pricing
The cost of creating a new account with Bluehost is $2.95 per month (for their Basic Plan). The features offered with this plan are more than enough for beginners so no need to go for a higher plan. You can easily upgrade if needed as your website grows.
The offer price is valid for the period you’ll choose at sign-up (36 months) and you’ll be asked to pay the full amount in advance.
With your registration, you also get:
- Free domain name registration (for 1 year)
- Free SSL Certificate (this is needed to keep your website secure)
- 5 Email accounts
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Once your hosting plan expires, you’ll be charged their normal rates which are $9.99 for the Basic Plan.
| Company | Initial Cost | Initial Commitment | Total Signup Cost | Renewal Cost |
| Bluehost | $2.95/mo | 36 months | $106.20 | $9.99/mo |
View Bluehost Plans for Beginners
2. Hostinger
Hostinger was founded in 2004 and they employ more than 400 people worldwide. They are a big company with over 29 million users in 178 countries.
Pros of Hostinger
What makes Hostinger one of the best options for beginners are:
Cheap web hosting – Their single shared hosting package is just $1.39 per month. It’s the cheapest you can find and is great value for money. This is the ideal choice if you already have a domain name for your blog or online business.
Beginner-Friendly Interface – Their signup process is easy and straightforward. There are no tricks or hidden steps.
Fast support – Hostinger offers 24/7 support so that you can get help when you need it.
Good knowledge base – Besides the regular support options, they also have a large pool of resources (blog posts, tutorials, etc) covering topics related to hosting, websites, and even SEO.
Hostinger Pricing
Hostinger offers three plans for beginners (single shared hosting, premium shared hosting, and business shared hosting).
The cheapest is the single shared hosting plan ($1.39 per month) but that does not include a free domain name registration. So, if you already have a domain select this package.
If you don’t have a domain name yet, select the premium package which costs $2.59 per month but it includes a free domain name registration. It’s still a great price and with your registration, you’ll also get:
- Free Email accounts
- Free SSL
- 30 days money-back guarantee
The renewal price for the single plan is $2.99 per month and for the premium package is $5.99 per month.
| Company | Initial Cost | Initial Commitment | Total Signup Cost | Renewal Cost |
| Hostinger | $2.59/mo | 48 months | $147.94 | $5.99/mo |
Compared to Bluehost, Hostinger offers better renewal prices but the initial post for the first 48 months is more. See our comparison table below that shows how the initial cost and renewal cost change for all companies.
View Hostinger Plans for Beginners
3. Inmotion Hosting
Inmotion hosting is a respected name in the hosting industry. They’ve been in business for more than 20 years and they offer a wide range of hosting packages to satisfy all needs.
Pros of Inmontion Hosting
The reasons we included inmotion hosting in our best web hosting sites for beginners list are:
90 days money-back guarantee – As explained in our hosting review criteria, the money-back period is an important factor in judging the trust a company has in its products.
Inmotion offers the best money-back guarantee policy in the hosting industry. And that reason alone is enough to make it to our list.
Developer-friendly – As your website grows, at some point you may need to hire a web developer to work on your website. Inmotion has the tools to make this an easy process.
Faster performance – Although all companies in this guide offer good performance, inmotion is continuously improving their infrastructure to give their customers the best possible performance and this means faster websites. We use inmotion for a number of clients and we are happy with the website performance.
Additional services – When you become a customer, you can get access to additional services (such as website design) for reasonable prices. This is a service not available in other companies.
Inmotion Pricing
Inmotion offers three shared hosting prices for beginners (Launch, Power, and Pro). For hosting your first business, the launch plan has everything you need.
The cost is $5.99 per month (for a two-year contract) and it includes:
- Free domain name registration
- Free website SSL
- Free email addresses (10)
- 90 days money-back guarantee
The renewal price will be the same as the initial offer i.e. $5.99 so there are no surprises.
| Company | Initial Cost | Initial Commitment | Total Signup Cost | Renewal Cost |
| Inmotion | $5.99/mo | 24 months | $143.76 | $5.99/mo |
View Inmotion Hosting Plans for Beginners
4. Knownhost
Knownhost is the company we use for this website (reliablesoft.net) for the last 10 years. Our traffic levels are pretty high so we use a high-end (and costly) hosting plan to make sure that our website loads fast and it’s always available.
If you’re starting out now, knownhost offers shared web hosting plans for beginners that are reliable and affordable.
Pros of Knownhost
What makes knownhost stand out from the rest of the hosting companies are:
Best support in the industry – The main reason we recommend knownhost for hosting your first blog or website is support. They offer the best support in the industry and we know this from experience.
Knownhost doesn’t have a call center like other hosting companies. When you need support you’re in direct communication with their technical department and this means getting a faster response and better solutions for your problem.
You don’t have to wait for a chat or telephone, you send an email support ticket and your problem gets solved.
99.9% Uptime – Uptime is a metric that shows how many hours a website was not accessible because of a problem with the hosting provider.
None of the companies are offering a 100% uptime but our experience with knownhost shows that although they promise 99.9%, in reality, it’s 100% uptime. We only had a few minor problems the last 10 years.
Same service for all packages – although you would expect to get a different service when you pay for an advanced package, the nice thing with knownhost is that they offer the same exceptional service to all their customers.
Knownhost Pricing
Knownhost offers three hosting packages for beginners (Basic, standard, and professional).
Their basic plan costs $3.47 per month and has everything you need to get started including:
- 5 Email Accounts
- Unlimited Premium Bandwidth
- LiteSpeed Optimized
- LSCache
Before signing up with knownhost you should note the following:
- Their plans do not include free domain registration (approx $14.99 per year)
- To get the $3.47 price you have to commit to a 3-year contract (total cost is $124.92)
- The renewal price (after the 3 year period) will be $257.76
- It’s not the cheapest hosting company but if you want great support, maximum uptime, and fast servers, this is one of the best choices.
| Company | Initial Cost | Initial Commitment | Total Signup Cost | Renewal Cost |
| Knownhost | $3.47/mo | 36 months | $139.42 | $6.94/mo |
View Knownhost Hosting Plans for Beginners
5. AccuWeb Hosting
One of the highly-rated web hosting companies is AccuWeb Hosting. They’ve been in business since 2002 and they offer a range of web hosting packages including windows hosting, Linux hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated VPS hosting.
Pros of AccuWeb Hosting
Accu Web Hosting is part of this list for three reasons:
Transparent pricing – Before signing up for any of their packages, you know exactly how much it will cost you to renew. This is important to avoid any unpleasant surprises after your initial plan expires. Below their pricing packages, they have a renewal price button that gives you all details upfront.
Good reviews – If you check their customer testimonials page, they have hundreds of real reviews from satisfied customers.
Worldwide Servers – although all companies have data centers across the globe, with AccuWeb hosting you can choose where your website will be hosted. For example, a local business in London can choose to have their website hosted in a London Datacenter than in the US and enjoy faster loading speeds.
AccuWeb Hosting Pricing
They offer three hosting plans for beginners (personal web hosting, small business web hosting, and enterprise web hosting).
If you already have a domain registered, you can select the personal plan which costs $3.09 per month, if not then you can select the small business plan for $5.09 per month.
To take advantage of the above prices, you need to sign up for a three-year plan.
The renewal prices are the same as the initial prices.
| Company | Initial Cost | Initial Commitment | Total Signup Cost | Renewal Cost |
| AccuWeb | $5.09/mo | 36 months | $183.24 | $5.09/mo |
View AccuWeb Hosting Plans for Beginners
How Much Does Hosting Costs for a Beginner?
The cheapest hosting plan for beginners is offered by Bluehost. The total cost is $106.20 for a three-year period. The package includes free domain registration, free SSL, and email accounts.
See the table below on how it compares with the other companies.
Best Web Hosting Companies For Beginners Compared
The table below shows how the top hosting companies compare in terms of:
- Initial cost: the cost per month when you signup for a starter plan with a special offer.
- Initial commitment: the hosting period you need to register for in order to get the lowest price (as indicated in the Initial Cost column).
- Total signup cost: the total amount you’ll have to pay at checkout.
- Renewal cost: the cost per month after the initial commitment period.
| Company | Initial Cost | Initial Commitment | Total Signup Cost | Renewal Cost |
| Bluehost | $2.95/mo | 36 months | $106.20 | $9.99/mo |
| Hostinger | $2.59/mo | 48 months | $147.94 | $5.99/mo |
| Inmotion | $5.99/mo | 24 months | $143.76 | $5.99/mo |
| Knownhost | $3.47/mo | 36 months | $139.42 | $6.94/mo |
| AccuWeb | $5.09/mo | 36 months | $183.24 | $5.09/mo |
To ensure that we are comparing the same features, all plans above include:
- Free domain name registration
- Free SSL
- Free email accounts
- All taxes and setup fees
What to Look For in a Hosting Company?
Before creating the list of the best web hosting plans for beginners, we analyzed the offerings of a number of companies using these criteria:
Initial Pricing – Obviously the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is the cost. Nobody wants to pay more for hosting than needed. We did our research and the companies presented above have the best prices for new customers.
Pricing After Offer Period – All web hosting companies referenced in this post (and any other post you’ll read on the Internet) have special pricing packages for new customers. What you should be careful about is the renewal price after their offer period ends. For you this means two things:
- First, on your initial sign-up, it’s better to commit to a longer plan so that you can take advantage of the discount for longer.
- Second, You need to know in advance how much you’ll have to pay for renewing your hosting package. This is the part that some companies are doing a better job than others.
User-Friendly Interface – as a newbie, you want an easy-to-use interface and fortunately, the onboarding process offered by the companies in this post is perfect for beginners.
Free Domain Registration – Besides hosting space, you’ll most probably need to register a domain for your website and it’s better to choose a company that offers a free domain name with their hosting plans.
One-Click Installers – one-click installer is a feature that allows you to set up a new website with a single click. This is especially useful if you have zero technical knowledge and you just want to set up a new website without going through tough technical questions.
Customer Support – at some point you might come across an issue or a problem and you’ll need support. Not all companies excel in this area so it’s important to choose a web hosting company that has a good support system.
Email Hosting Services – Besides hosting space and domain name, you’ll also need email addresses for your domain. The companies listed above offer that service without an additional charge.
Money-Back Guarantee – As you’ll see above, companies offer different money-back guarantee options. For me, getting the maximum period is important. It shows that a company has trust in its products and services.
Upgrade Options – Last but not least, when choosing a hosting company, you should also look at what kind of upgrade packages they offer and at what cost. As your website grows you’ll probably need a more powerful hosting plan and it’s better to get this from the same company. It will be cheaper and less stressful than having to move your website, emails, and domain from one service provider to another.
Conclusion
While you can change your hosting company if you’re not happy with the service, it’s better to make the right choice from the beginning and stick with them long-term.
The companies presented above are the best for signing up for your first hosting plan.
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