What is Web Hosting to Choose? Best Offers to Consider

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Not so easy to choose the best hosting offer for its website. Especially if it’s the first time. The offers are very numerous and it is not always easy to navigate. These are services that are sold on a fixed price basis, the quality and reliability of which are variable and it is difficult today for novices to differentiate between all suppliers.

Also, I propose you discover below a small comparison presenting you with three solutions. They are relatively close in terms of rates and features and will surely satisfy you.

Contents

Our TOP 3 Recommendations for 2023
WEBSITE, DOMAIN NAME, EMAIL?
How to Choose Web Hosting?
Which is Web Hosting to Choose?
RATES AND MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

Our TOP 3 Recommendations for 2023


Unique Offer Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited traffic A domain offered	Unlimited Pro Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited traffic A domain offered	Pro Hosting 250GB Disk Space Unlimited traffic A domain offered
SUBSCRIBE TO THE OFFER	SUBSCRIBE TO THE OFFER	SUBSCRIBE TO THE OFFER

All the offers presented above are for shared hosting services and not dedicated server rentals. However, they are perfect for hosting one or more websites. This, as well as hosting the website of a company, an association, or an individual.

The duration of the contracts and the minimum commitment will vary from one month to one year and all offer many additional services such as the installation of CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal), anti-DDOS protection, etc. However, these benefits “offered” must not be taken into account in your choice. Last but not least, you will not have the 14-day withdrawal period on this type of “consumable immediately” service.

Infrastructure, reliability, and performance must be the criteria to watch for first.

WEBSITE, DOMAIN NAME, EMAIL?

If you are looking for hosting for your very first website, the easiest way is to book the domain name and hosting space (storage) in one place. It is even simpler than most hosts today systematically offering a domain name when you subscribe to a hosting offer.

This has several advantages if you are not an expert in site management:

Storage space and domain name will be linked without any special configuration (i.e. the domain name will display the contents of your hosting space without sometimes complex DNS configuration …)
Management of FTP accounts, email addresses, and MySQL databases will be centralized.

This choice is not irreversible. Domain name management and hosting can be done easily at two different providers.

How to Choose Web Hosting?

There is no real free website hosting today * to get serious about the Internet. But the rates have become very reasonable and the price will not be the first criterion of choice. Faced with more and more similar offers, it is especially with a little experience that we will identify the best hosts. The software offer will also be important even if most hosting companies now allow:

Automatically install a CMS
To choose your version of PHP

The devil is nestled in the details, only the experience will indeed discover the minor disadvantages or limitations of a provider: unable to change a configuration variable, too low limit of the number of mailboxes, no compression module etc … In short small details that may one day make you regret your choice!

Which is Web Hosting to Choose?

So I chose to retain “only” 3 solutions “general public” year after year I have rarely been disappointed despite sometimes intensive use and in a context often professional:

o2switch and his “Unique Offer”.
1and1 and its “Unlimited Pro” offer
OVH and its offer “Web hosting pro”

All offer indeed the minimum vital to host a website in good condition namely:

Reliability, response time, overall performance
Reactive and reachable phone support
SSH and GIT access
PHP7 +
Multi-Site / Multi-Domain / Multi-FTP / Multi-MySQL
Unlimited traffic
Immediate or near-immediate delivery
Free SSL certificates.

RATES AND MAIN CHARACTERISTICS


Unique Offer Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited traffic A domain offered	Unlimited Pro Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited traffic A domain offered	Pro Hosting 250GB Disk Space Unlimited traffic A domain offered
SUBSCRIBE TO THE OFFER	SUBSCRIBE TO THE OFFER	SUBSCRIBE TO THE OFFER

ABOUT 1AND1

I know that 1and1 does not necessarily have friends at Webmasters but I have never had any problem with them. I host at-home websites that are more than 10 years old some of which have never been inaccessible!

Admittedly, there was a time when their administrative console (the back-office client) and their support were not at the top but things have evolved in the right direction. The “Unlimited Pro” offer is perfect for both getting started and even coming: storage space, traffic, and unlimited sites. Three things to know, however:

except for an error on my part, the servers (and IP). This could have an influence – limited – on SEO.
GZIP compression is not available
MySQL databases are limited in size to 1 GB per database. No problem for a classic site. Problematic for special needs.
No SSL certificate “Let’s Encrypt” yet.

ABOUT OVH

OVH (On You Host) is the leader in web hosting. A booming behemoth that offers extremely complete and competitive offers for almost 20 years. If it is rather to avoid first price offers, the “pro” offer is unbeatable in terms of quality and price. You will have 250GB of storage space for an unlimited number of sites. And 4 databases including one that can hold 2GB of data.

With a back office rather pleasant to use including “for dummies” OVH has only one flaw: its success. Indeed, the company suffers overall more service cuts than the other two. The small plus appreciable:

the ability to administer its databases directly in phpMyAdmin without having to go through its client area.
the fastest delivery on the market!

ABOUT O2SWITCH

The latest of the selection, o2switch is a recent host installed in Clermont-Ferrand. Very active in the WordPress community, o2switch offers only a relatively innovative offer. Rather than “geek-oriented”, the offer is extremely efficient given the price, thanks to SSD disk hosting and a truly unlimited offer.

The only downside, the offer is unique it is not “scalable” unlike the other two (migration to other higher, dedicated servers, etc.). Be careful, this will not prevent you from setting up sites with very high traffic. The most appreciated little things:

The most responsive support of our selection
The only host of our selection offering unlimited.
Available HTTP / 2 protocol
New in 2023: possibility to activate a varnish cache

* In reality, there are free hosting offers to store a few static pages or a waiting page for example. This is particularly the case with OVH (10-month start), Infomaniak (10-month domain plan), and Alwaysdata (100-month free offer). To benefit, however, you will have to order or transfer a domain name directly to them.