Bluehost Review: Is This the Best Option for Your Small Business Website?

Is Bluehost the best option for your small business website? Here are five things you should know about this hosting provider and its plans, along with some alternative options.

1. The pros and cons of using Bluehost for your small business website

Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting companies, and for good reason. It’s inexpensive and easy to use, and it’s a great solution for small businesses that are just getting started. But it’s not for everyone, and it’d be a mistake to choose Bluehost without considering its major drawbacks.

For many small businesses, monolithic websites are their best choice when it comes to choosing a hosting provider. This type of website has a single physical point of failure — the web host. They control everything about it and have no oversight on what happens on the server or application level. Further, a monolithic website means a comparatively large security risk.

Since a monolithic website is not secure, some services providers provide a lightweight alternative. These providers include the lightweight Twinkle, which is similar but doesn’t offer nearly as many customization options. Since it’s also way more resource-hungry than a monolithic website, Twinkle is less suitable for most small business websites.

Another problem many small business websites have is that they lack a content management system (CMS). Sometimes, companies even hire a third-party provider to build one for them. The CMS often needs to be upgraded after every upgrade, and a CMS also has to handle the incoming and outgoing traffic from your website, emails sent from your service, and all other communication between the host and your website.

These are just a few reasons why choosing a private cloud hosting provider like Bluehost can be a better solution for your small business. Despite these shortcomings, however, there’s no question that a private cloud hosting provider is mandatory for an effective small business website. It’s critical to choose a platform that’s easy to learn, uses modern coding standards, allows you to customize things to your heart’s content, and is cloud-based.

While Bluehost offers many features for affordable pricing, these features come with a certain level of complexity that a new user may not be able to handle.

2. What other hosting providers are available?

There are many other hosting providers available. These include Godaddy, Hostgator, Siteground, Blue Host, Dreamhost, and Namecheap. All the hosting providers I mentioned above are popular and have great support. If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend using Bluehost.

Bluehost started as a hosting company for personal web developers in 2004. Now, it’s your go-to hosting provider for websites of all sizes.

I’m with Bluehost for four simple reasons:

Before you begin creating a website for your small business, here are five things you should know. Bluehost’s pretty straightforward plan called the Personal Convert to Website plan has some nice perks you won’t find anywhere else. Those perks are not cheap, though. I get it — particularly if you’re a total newbie on this kind of thing.

However, the free tier is close to useless for a new small business, as it’s not configured for over 100% of a typical visitor’s traffic. On the other hand, America’s Most Popular Premium plan is probably best for someone with a few million in annual visitor traffic. It turns these visitors into paying customers with higher stats than the free tier.

As a new business owner with zero experience, choosing between these two plans can feel very complicated. I understand why, too. The Premium plan comes with complicated scripts and tools to manage your site. That’s not necessary if you’re just trying to get your website up and running.

Bluehost also adds features you won’t find on competitors’ plans. For instance, you can integrate your landing page with your online store for additional exposure.

There are several other technical features on the Personal Convert to Website plan that I won’t cover here, as it’s definitely beyond the scope of my entertainment. However, I strongly recommend reading Jonathan Aufray’s beginner tutorial post for more information.

The price of the plan itself seems to be the most appealing feature for new businesses — as it’s absolutely free and easy on the wallet.

3. A review of Bluehost's plans, including the positives and negatives of each.

Bluehost is one of the most popular and inexpensive website hosting providers available today. It’s used by millions of customers and business owners around the world, and we’re here to help you decide if it’s a good fit for your needs. How do I use Bluehost for my small business?

When choosing a hosting service for your small business, there are three things to understand though:

Apart from a few things listed above, the general structure of a Bluehost plan is pretty simple and straightforward. The different plans you can choose from follow a structured path based on your chosen skills and expertise. For example, the Basic plan will provide you with absolutely no hosting needs and cost you exactly zero dollars per month, whereas the Enterprise plan will cost you $5 per month and offer three additional services, namely Page Builder (the site builder component of Bluehost), VPS (virtual private server), and MySQL database server.

To cut right to the chase, here’s a list of the most important things to consider when choosing a Bluehost plan for your small business website:

Here’s a brief summary of our top five best practices when using Bluehost for your small business website. If you notice anything missing, let us know in the comment section below!

During the first step of choosing a hosting service, you’ll choose between a free plan or a paid plan. The only difference between these options is the payment options you’ll have available.

Weighing the pros and cons of each will help you decide what is the best fit for you. Besides the plans, all your other website hosting details will remain the same, so the important thing to remember is to find a hosting provider that is flexible and will allow you to expand or contract your account as you see fit.

4. A comparison of Bluehost vs GoDaddy: Which is a better option for you?

Bluehost and GoDaddy are two of the most popular website hosting services available. With this article, you can learn about the two services and decide which is the right fit for your website.

On Bluehost’s website, they tell you all about their offerings, making it pretty clear why you should choose them. Overall, the features are described as:

These specs are not hard to understand. Bluehost offers incredible uptime features with their services. They even offer a free extra year of service if you want more peace of mind. Overall, their pricing makes them one of the most affordable options available.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider is that all of their plans include technical assistance all on your own if you need some help setting things up. GoDaddy is a little different. GoDaddy offers unlimited technical support from an existing customer base. This means a lot of the hard work of managing your website is already done for you, and you don’t have to worry about hiring a new person to help or writing new code to adapt your codebase. If it’s a seriously important website for you, you can hire one of their team of specialists directly. That’s not to say you won’t have problems with technical support. But with GoDaddy, you have a dedicated team looking out for you that is ready and able to help you in the most efficient way possible.

On BlueHost’s website, they also describe their technical support services better than GoDaddy. While GoDaddy only works with a limited number of staff members, Bluehost provides unlimited technical assistance to a base of customers.

However, there is very little publicity that’s been done on BlueHost’s kindness toward small businesses. As a matter of fact, other than their generous free additional year of service, there’s not much more information at all available for customers looking to check BlueHost out.

5. Conclusions on whether or not it's a good choice to use this provider for your online business.

To sum things up, I’ll answer a question that I’m sure is on your mind: is it a good choice to use Blogger for your online business? The answer is a resounding yes. Blogger is a great tool because it’s free and allows you to build a blog easily. It has excellent search functionality, and it offers tons of customization features. Compare that to something like WordPress, and you’ll see why blogging ahead of your competition gives you an edge. Here’s why.

I started a niche-standard GitHub website for my own personal projects, workshops, and professional work. Although GitHub is a simple CMS, redirecting to a custom domain makes it easy to install custom coding frameworks, add templates, and integrate with a variety of external services like Squarespace or Shopify. Some experts even recommend using a hosted service like Bluehost to reap the benefits of a custom domain. However, my site has a home on Blogger, and I use this platform to update weekly blog posts, conduct workshops, and record podcast episodes.

Bluehost is offering my clients two options for their accounts: bare-metal installation or cloud installation with MySQL and Mailchimp. Cloud-based hosting offers up faster page loading speeds and unlimited storage accounts with all the bells and whistles you’d need. In my experience, the MySQL connection speed boost has been especially beneficial, and I believe it’s a given for hobbyists and solo developers upgrading from blogs with static site layouts. However, the Midwest Shopify option gets close behind.

For the latest updates, news, and reviews of Bluehost services, sign up for the Bluehost Monthly Newsletter.

Although the free tier to Bluehost’s GitHub hosting plan is sufficient when starting or expanding your small business, the My Business tab is gold. This section tracks all your hosting data, including performance, uptime, and available resources. My Business accounts are backed by mylex.com’s 24/7 technical and customer support, which are both free.

For more details, check out the My Business tab’s installation guide, FAQ, and community.

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The Latest Trends in the Use of Drones in Media

Over the past few years, the use of drones in media has grown dramatically due to their ability to provide unique angles on stories that were never before possible to capture. Drone technology has helped revolutionize aerial photography and cinematography, making it one of the most exciting developments in the field over the past decade or so. This blog will go into detail about some of the most exciting applications of drone cameras in media today, as well as some of the future uses we can expect to see this technology applied to in the next several years.

How are drones changing news reporting?

We live in a world where access to information is just a click away, and yet that access often comes with obstacles: traffic, weather and many other factors can cause stories to go untold, and inaccessible. If you ask me, these challenges present an exciting opportunity for drone technology. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be your secret weapon when it comes to reporting on otherwise hard-to-reach places and events. UAVs are affordable (you can get started for under $1,000), easy to use (just like a radio-controlled plane), quiet when they fly (important for when you’re trying not to disrupt subjects or scare off wildlife) and simple enough that anyone can pick one up and start flying quickly.

Commercial applications for drones

There are numerous other industries that can benefit from commercial drone use. For example, construction companies could use drones to take photos of their worksites to quickly gain a better understanding of what needs to be improved. This would help them save time by not having to visit each location personally, but also cut costs by using fewer man-hours for quality control. The media industry has already begun using drones as well, which is why you may have seen them during last year’s Olympics coverage or at various high-profile live events like Coachella or Lollapalooza.

Filming Hollywood movies using drones

It’s only a matter of time before Hollywood starts using drones more often on movie sets. While there may be some pushback from unions, given how far drones have come, it seems like filmmakers are bound to incorporate them more often than not. That is especially true if they can find ways to make use of them that aren’t costly or require major changes to how movies are made. Even if drone technology does become more commonplace onset, it’s important for directors and their teams to ensure that they don’t disrupt other productions (and vice versa). That means union representatives need to work closely with production companies and location scouts while trying to make sure everyone has an opportunity to take advantage of these tools when possible.

How are drones making their way into the advertising industry?

For some time now, drones have been used for entertainment and advertising, although it’s a relatively new trend. With a wide range of uses from stunning videos to data collection, drones are a great way to get a new perspective on things that may be difficult to see or reach with traditional methods. In fact, YouTube has launched a dedicated Drone Channel just for drone footage. It’s worth noting that like most commercial use drones (involving flying), they need to stay under 400 feet and within line-of-sight; you also can’t fly over crowds or people who aren’t involved with your operation.

How are real estate agencies using drone photography?

The latest trends show that real estate agencies are using drone photography to showcase their properties. This tool is extremely useful, especially for places that don’t have good transport links or are difficult to access. Drone photographs can be published on websites and social media, along with 360° videos that showcase what it’s like to stand right in front of a particular property. Having these options means you can offer better service while also conveying a lot more information to potential buyers—giving you an edge over other agents who aren’t so tech-savvy.

Conclusion

If your goal is to provide up-to-date information, you can't go wrong with drones. The devices are inexpensive and easy to use, which makes them perfect for both amateur photographers and aspiring professionals. Professionals looking to branch out should think about investing in better equipment or training assistants to handle their equipment. If your goal is to provide entertaining content, however, you don't need much more than a drone and an imagination. Even non-professionals can deliver compelling video if they put some effort into it; practice often leads to improvement.

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A Review of the Best Cloud Hosting Providers

Cloud hosting is the latest and greatest way to host your website. But there are so many cloud hosting providers, how can you possibly choose? If you're looking for a side-by-side comparison of cloud hosting services, this is the article you need. We're going to look at: reviews, cost, speed, security, features, and more to help you find the best cloud hosting provider for your business.

1. Are you looking for a new hosting provider? Here are some of the best cloud hosting providers to check out.

There are so many cloud hosting providers out there that it can be hard to figure out which one is best for you. The best way to find the right one for you is to think about what your needs are and what you’ll be using the server for. Remember, most domain names have multiple hosting providers, so it is a good idea to check them all.

This could be a blogging platform, a file hosting service, a social media site, or a small online store. Many people have multiple purpose-built sites on different hosting services. I’m starting you off with a simple platform like WordPress or OneElements that could be used for a blog, social media, or online store. With only a few lines of code, you can have all of your content on your site hosted on a single platform.

With a couple of hitches, you could end up spending more hosting fees than you initially anticipated. If you’re uncertain about hosting fees, a good place to start reviews is from places like Unisite or WordPress.

This is a super simple piece of code, but it could have significant implications on your website speed if used improperly. Unfortunately, some people aren’t aware that when they host their site in the cloud, certain files can be transmitted over the wire without encryption. If this happens, the site will end up with a corrupted file. This isn’t a big deal until you start a business, as services like OneDrive and Microsoft’s OneDrive store vast amounts of information for every user. Cloud computing can be great for small, personal sites that you and only you maintain, but for business purposes, this could mean your hard work could be in the wrong hands.

With a few lines of code, you’re opening up your site to potential security flaws. Not only can the site be accessed without any authorization, but unauthorized users will be able to access your information and damage your account.

2. So, what is cloud hosting?

The two types of cloud hosting are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). With IaaS, your business is responsible for the underlying hardware, which you have complete control over. With PaaS, you don't need to worry about hardware because it's managed for you. When I say the platform, I’m referring to the data layer. IaaS doesn't create the data layer itself but instead delivers the infrastructure to store and process data.

The cheaper the price, the more you will save. Usually, you’re paying for the storage, but there are some great deals on platform hosting, too. For example, Let’s Encrypt and ServiceNow are two great companies when it comes to cheaper cloud solutions for web hosting. Let’s Encrypt is a top 100 CA in the industry, and it’s always a steal at $9.95 per month, helping secure your website and securing your ability to run your applications in the cloud, too. Depending on the features you want, you may be able to save as much as 50% on a yearly basis when compared to IaaS.

Platform hosting is where you have full control over your hosting plan. You have full control over your host’s infrastructure, which includes the cloud storage service, but it also includes other features, such as content delivery networks (CDNs), load balancers, backups, load-balanced server instances, and custom IPs. The more you play, the more features you get. With PaaS, there are more features that you don’t have with IaaS.

You probably want to pick a hosting plan based on the features your business needs. While the price is important, there’s also the fact that the platform you pick, provides you with equivalent or better server hardware — just because a larger seed budget allows you to go with a higher-end hosting plan, doesn’t mean your hosting plan is inferior. Rather than eating into your budget and only finding out later that your hosting plan isn’t as good as it could be, you can always upgrade your hosting plan at any time.

3. How does cloud hosting work?

Cloud hosting is a popular option for businesses that don’t want to deal with the hassle of server maintenance. Cloud hosting is basically a service that provides you with all the resources you need to run your website, including server space, storage, and bandwidth. There are many different types of cloud hosting services, each with its own pros and cons. Let’s take a look at some of them and the pros and cons of each one covered below.

1. AWS (Amazon Web Services): This provider offers an unbeatable option for anyone looking for a cost-effective hosting option. All you need to do is sign up for a one-time fee, give AWS a password (recommended: make it easy to remember), let them set up your account, and you’re good to go. It’s easy to set up projects on AWS, and one of the things they’re most known for is their ease of use. You can run projects on their services 24/7, and you won’t be charged for anything unless your traffic surpasses certain thresholds.

2. Digital Ocean: Another cloud-based solution, Digital Ocean is an awesome option for anyone looking for an affordable price, yet powerful server capabilities. It also has one of the most extensive and flexible setups you can get. There are plenty of hosters that come up short on connectivity, CPU power, or disk space, but Digital Ocean is a top contender in all these areas. They have the largest network of servers, allowing them to confidently offer a full suite of services to any client.

3. GoDaddy: With so many hosting companies to choose from, you might be wondering which one to choose. If you’re looking for a host that has better specs, pricing plans, and advanced features, then search no further. GoDaddy occupies that spot on the list because they fulfill all three criteria while offering affordable pricing as well. Not only does GoDaddy have a fine-tuned server setup, but their website is far simpler and quicker to use than the competition. Their data centers are well-stocked and their reliability is well-documented.

4. Cloud hosting can provide more security and better performance than traditional web hosts.

Cloud hosting is a great option for businesses that are working on large projects or that have a lot of traffic on their sites and need more security and better performance than traditional web hosts can offer. There are several cloud hosting providers online like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform to name a few.

In this comparison article, we will focus on the best cloud hosting companies to choose from based on the features of each available. So today we will be looking at:

Let’s start!

Before we dig deeper, I want to quickly say that over the last couple of years, pricing has gone down quite a bit for most cloud hosting services. Cloud providers are charging less for the same amount of RAM and disk space. Although you may still see higher prices from some providers, I find that the new pricing world is quite balanced these days.

If you’re looking for the cheapest cloud hosting plan, you can save a lot of money if you compare the new plan prices to the old plan prices I had listed earlier. When I compared the old pricing plan prices on November 27, 2019, the new plan prices were $49/mo for 1GB ram and 1TB for $69/mo. This price equates to savings of $16/month and $41/year! The savings here is not small.

Below are the cost comparison tables for the top three choices. I will be breaking down the cost of this plan section into three different cost categories:

I strongly recommend checking out the “least expensive” plan if your website has less than 5,000 followers, or your website has a single green icon or less. This is often called the “garden plan” or “free plan” of cloud hosting because of the free tier of resources. You get all of the resources that you would on a 1Gb plan with 1TB of storage, for free. If you have a newsletter that has over 1,000 followers or you have another website with a single green icon, go with the “less expensive” plan.

5. Cloud hosting comes with a whole host of awesome features, so let's look at those now!

One of the reasons why cloud hosting is so great is because it's a really secure way of hosting your data! Cloud hosting uses a lot of different data centers around the world, and you can choose to host your website with data centers that are located near your visitors. This means that your website will load much faster!

But there are a lot of different options when it comes to hosting your website. Cloud hosting services contain components that help operate the website, so you have to find out which features are most useful to you and choose the best one for your needs. Choosing the right features means more time on your website and a much better experience.

One of the most prominent benefits of cloud hosting is the speed at which your visitor will be greeted. As we already talked about before, different countries and data centers use different processing times. For example, if a visitor from Portugal stores his file on one of your data centers, it might take up to 3 minutes for that file to fully load. On the other hand, if the visitor is from Sweden, it could only take between 60 and 120 seconds for everything to load!

In addition, different kinds of content such as videos, graphics, and Javascript code will also affect the processing time. If you have to upload these kinds of files, it might take a few seconds than uploading a static image or a large text file. Cloud services always guarantee that your visitors will always have the fastest experience.

We thrive on convenience. Many of us like to have control over when and how we consume our products. That’s why many of us choose to consume our consumption at home rather than going out to an in-person shop. You don’t have to do anything to enjoy your products, they’re already at your home, ready for you to consume whenever you want. It’s that convenient!

When it comes to cloud hosting for your website, it’s truth be told that you don’t necessarily need to consume your website at home.

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Hosting Comparison: Bluehost vs. DreamHost vs. WP Engine

Choosing a web host can be daunting, especially when there are so many options out there. But if you're just starting out and your site's traffic is a while away from needing the resources of a high-end web host, you have the perfect opportunity to save big by going with one of the more budget-friendly hosting providers. There are thousands of hosts out there claiming to be the best, but how do you decide? Here we'll take three of them for a spin and see which one suits you best!

1. Bluehost vs. DreamHost vs. WP Engine

There are a lot of hosting companies out there. If you’re trying to choose which one to go with, it can be a little overwhelming. So which one is the best? Well, that depends on your needs. Like most things in life, it’s a trade-off. If you want a brand-name web host, go with Algonquin Web Hosting. You can get an amazing domain, some very powerful servers, the best web management tools, and all of the perks that come alongside the best web hosts. There are no embarrassing website downtime stories, absolutely no compatibility issues and they pay you a fair amount, too.

From an FPS perspective, Algonquin Web Hosting is a solid choice. They have a dedicated network of servers with dedicated internet connections to maximize your connection just like a DDoS attack would. That means you can get a super smooth uptime and faster page loads. Additionally, they have SSL certificate technology for added security just in case you get naughty with your romantic partners.

Where do I get hosting support? Hosting support from hosts comes in the form of emails, phone, chat, and even web experts in-person. When choosing a hosting company, you’ll want to make sure they have the best support staff. Again, this is imperative. Not only will you be emailing their support team and looking for assistance on your site, but you’ll also be looking for assistance with your website’s codebase, plugins, and themes. This might not be the first priority for you, but it will save the remainder of your workday a lot of time!

What if my site is using more than 1 backend? This is a very common scenario. It might be obvious right away, but a huge percentage of people might be overly reliant on their CMS or an app. This might result in your site’s code-breaking at runtime and won’t allow it to show up on the front end. It can also result in a lack of SEO and voting engine optimization, which leads to an inferior user experience.

2. Which pricing plan is right for you?

Pricing can be one of the most difficult things about business. It’s something that you have to get right the first time because you can’t change it later. There are two main pricing strategies used by most businesses: cost-based pricing and value-based pricing. With cost-based pricing, you base your prices on your production costs. Then you increase your prices whenever you go over your production costs. But what if your production costs come to you as a gift, rather than as an expense? Then you’ll only be able to charge what your income is. Is this the best way to run your business? No! With value-based pricing, you base your prices on your income. Then you increase your prices whenever you’re able to charge more for your services because these extra fees are exactly what your business produces. Using value-based pricing ensures that your business can always charge more and still give you the best ROI. It ensures that your business won't go out of business because you can no longer get more work out of the same resources because they cost more. This is exactly the right strategy to use when deciding whether or not to go for a budget-friendly Host.

Mobile-First IndexingBy now, everyone is aware of the importance of serving mobile users well. Google has been talking about supporting mobile-first indexing for a while, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t some sites that still have not given desktop users the best opportunity to see their content. And there will always be sites that won’t be consumer-centric enough for the desktop users but will opt to incorporate mobile pages because they think that it lends more relevance to the mobile users. So, before you decide on picking a web host based only on the fact that it can support mobile-first indexing, it goes without saying that the bigger the size is, the better this solution will be for it. If you have a fairly big site, it probably is nowhere possible to mobile-first index the full site.

3. Which features are most important to you?

You should always think about what's most important to you when selecting a new product or service to use. For example, if you're looking for a new phone, you should think about what features are most important to you. Do you want always-on LTE, or maybe just call-forwarding? A web hosting provider is no different — you want the highest-quality hosting, but you also don’t want to overspend for poor speed or a banal design.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what features are most important to you when choosing a web hosting provider.

1. What can you offer your customers? 2. How easily can you customize their website? 3. How easy is it to set up a backup and some basic security?

The first feature is often overlooked when choosing a host, but this is a critical aspect of the host and its business model. If you can offer your customers a free tier — a lower cost than before — but provide subpar performance and bandwidth, chances are customers won’t stay on your platform long enough to make up for it. A high-quality web host makes it easy for customers to set up their site with basic features and is a great resource when it comes to troubleshooting issues users might have.

Another instance of what you can offer your customers is customization. Many web hosts will have the ability to host a homepage for you or create custom pages for you that come with their own ads and redirects. It’s an awesome feature, one that still exists today, but you can only do so much unless you’re serving millions of visitors from thousands of different platforms monthly. It's impossible to keep up with every single request from each and every account, and the more you customize your site, the harder it is to keep up with all of them.

4. Features and pricing are important, but what about customer service?

It’s important to have a great product or service, but customer service is what will make your customers loyal. A great customer service experience can turn a one-time customer into a loyal one. You want customers to feel like they’re part of the family and that you are there for them if they have any questions or concerns.

HostGator is one of the most well-known hosting companies on the internet. They have dealt with celebrities, startups, and many other web celebrities over the years. They provide excellent service and have a large customer base who looks to join their community. HostGator hosts a friendly online community that is ready to help with any questions that you may have. They even host a chat room dedicated to answering any questions you have about anything you see on their online platform. Their customer service makes contacting them just like a phone call would be. Everyone is treated equally, and they have even been known to respond to support tickets the same day they are received. Not only are they great about responding quickly, but they are also quick to offer refunds or credits to their customers as needed. Most of their customers feel like they got their money’s worth when dealing with their company.

No Frills is another successful web host that has both its customers and staff on board. The company provides outstanding service to the people who have a true need for hosting and are willing to pay a premium for it. Many of its customers want to start a blog to showcase their accomplishments or share their ideas with the world. Once the blog is live they begin receiving more traffic from their site visitors. This is reflected in their amazing statistics and customer service. Their plans can be configured for a variety of different languages and sizes, Grids and layouts for both print- and online-friendly websites are available and their customer service is top-notch.

5. Bluehost vs DreamHost vs WP Engine: The verdict!

Bluehost and DreamHost are very similar in terms of pricing, features, and support. Both hosting providers offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth, one-click WordPress installs, and 24/7 support via chat and phone. However, DreamHost does not offer free SSL certificates, caching, or included domain names, while Bluehost offers all of these. Both companies pride themselves on their uptime status, with BlueHost having an exceptional 0.0000% uptime rate as of 2018, with DreamHost faring slightly better with a relatively new 2014 0.01% uptime rate. These are stats that are hard to beat!

Both companies can be very friendly towards WordPress installations. Bluehost offers its own site builder, as well as an extensive plugin library for marketers, while DreamHost offers a plethora of installed plugins on its platform to help make your writing and blogging experience that much more effective!

But, despite their massive user base, both hosting services have their downsides. Namely, that they don’t make it as easy as WordPress to set up a new site. Both companies have their own custom-made installers, and quite a few are annoying and strange. I learned this the hard way with my site hosted on Dreamhost. I was a very happy camper once I allowed them to install the Dream views.

Also, if your WordPress site is large, you may find that your hosting bill is actually quite high once you factor in the costs of your web host. I mean, you’ll only be spending as much as you would on your hosting fees if you were actually using it at full capacity for your site, but it will still add up. This is more of a concern for larger sites with a lot of traffic or for which you don’t mind having your site run through a server to host rather than a home server in your apartment.

As a general rule of thumb, my advice is to go with Bluehost if you’re just starting out or if your traffic is still growing and you’d like low traffic bills.

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Review of Flywheel: The Best WordPress Hosting for Bloggers

Choosing the right host for your blog can be a difficult process. At Review Signal, we've reviewed dozens of hosting providers and narrowed it down to our top three choices. In this article, we'll review Flywheel, the best option for bloggers.

1. What is Flywheel?

Flywheel is software that helps companies manage all of their customer interactions across multiple channels, whether that’s email, phone calls, live chats, or social media. You can use Flywheel to answer questions, solve problems, and provide information to your customers.

Flywheel lets companies and bloggers work together to create and maintain close relationships that will help grow their followers and business. Because each blog POSTs to its own dedicated Flywheel account, there is better management and monitoring of relationships and custom content.

It wouldn’t be possible to build a truly effective email list management system or a social media list management system without the help of a host or hosting provider that enables managing a list from multiple places. There are too many outsides in managing a list, and businesses need more than a website — and a hosting provider — to manage that data.

For example, a blog can only have one active list at a time. If you have 40 followers on your main page, you cannot populate the list of 2,000 other followers that each post to your blog. Likewise, when you delete a post from the online store, you cannot remove those followers as well. Instead, those followers must go somewhere. That’s where hosting comes into play.

Hosts help your list with resources and there are three main types: Caching hosts, Social platforms hosts, and data hosting. All three types can be implemented on your own website or on another hosting provider. While more granular controls and monitoring are built-in to most of the hosts, you can also hire third-party companies to implement this type of technology for you.

Flywheel will only work with journals, newsletters, and real-time message service (RTSP) platforms as of October 2019 (unless a Certified Consultant in Email Marketing Subscription Management or another technical expertise is added to the provider team).

2. Flywheel's features and benefits

It is important to understand the importance of features and benefits in copywriting. Features are attributes of your product or service. Benefits are what the features do for the customer. An online fitness trainer might have a feature of “Personal Training on Demand” and a benefit of “Fit Anywhere.”

What the Flywheel provider does to allow your website to scale to all kinds of traffic (source code below):

As a bonus, Flywheel’s pricing is the lowest for both managed and unmanaged hosting. When you compare it with other hosting providers, you can vary from $3–20 per month depending on the features you need.

Features The features of Flywheel include CRM integration to help managers track site performance and respond to customer service requests. Their own customer service team handles technical support. This allows you to issue site-wide support tickets which they will resolve for you.

Managed hosting:

To find out more details about features and benefits, go to their website. Instead of listing features and benefits, they list the different delivery methods they support.

As a bonus, Flywheel also has the best no-code hosting option for beginners. We believe that the two best host options (Review Signal’s Table Mountain and Wix’s Squarespace Hosting) would work better if you already had some experience with coding.

Visit the Flywheel website for more details.

If you’re already a Coder and you want to build better websites, then check out Wix’s Squarespace Hosting.

Squarespace’s easiest and fastest hosting option is a no-code CMS (Content Management System) WordPress plugin.

Being a lean team, we’re able to host our site with Squarespace without any hassle. The most difficult part about the site is the header. Let’s build a few sample website designs.

First, let’s try out a column layout with left and right-aligned columns.

There are five different template options:

Since it’s a no-code CMS, you can refine the code with advanced HTML and CSS blocks. Since there’s no PHP, the resulting code won’t require templating knowledge.

3. The downsides of Flywheel

Flywheel has made it much easier to work from home because you don’t have to worry about setting up a new remote working station. You just have to bring your computer with you. However, there are downsides to using Flywheel. For starters, you’re stuck with the subscription you get for bringing your PC to the office, which is a cost you’re not willing to bear.

Another major drawback to using Flywheel is that if your hosting account gets shut down, you can’t access the content stored on it. When your hosting account gets shut down, only the most recent version of your blog posts will be accessible. This is a turnoff because if you updated a post recently, you’d rather wait for it to upload in your account before publishing another. Unfortunately, if it’s a CMS platform like WordPress, WordPress, or DevShop, they’ll most likely place closure on your account.

One of the most important requirements for a successful blog is good content. In order to get traffic to your blog, the right post is posted at the perfect time, in the perfect place. A blog is all about creating content that brings in and engages your audience. You must entice your readers with the right content in order to get them to stick around for the ride.

Flywheel doesn’t make it hard to write a fantastic post. According to their website, they’ve helped thousands of bloggers build successful blogs and earn thousands of dollars.

Create a division between your home and work life to make time for blogging. Don’t plan on logging in every day, as that would wear you out and impede productive behavior. Schedule your time for blogging based on how much you can dedicate to working on your blog.

Flywheel lets you remote into your home office within minutes or choose the time of your choosing. You can then start writing at any point in time.

4. Why we think you'll love Flywheel, even though they don't have a free option

Flywheel is a website-building tool that’s very easy and very fun, and it’s particularly good for people who need to build a lot of different websites for different purposes. Although it’s not free, it’s very inexpensive and worth every penny.

Flywheel offers a wide variety of functions for website-building, and the Homepage is a great place to start. You can customize pretty much whatever you want, from the domain name to the home page size, and this is a place where you’ll get to choose a site-building style that best fits your own needs. The pictures below show how the site looks, before and after the company custom-made custom design was added to the homepage.

Reviews – Flywheel.com has ten levels of reviews, ranging from 'Very Satisfied' to 'Very Unsatisfied'. Every review is linked to a user account page that allows that reviewer to leave a comment or go back in time.

Bookings – Flywheel.com allows for bookings via an advanced form, so book your blogger regularly!

Plus – If you’re interested in using the site for paid advertising, you can look into the Plus option. However, if you would prefer a monthly buck, the host that comes with the Pro and Premier plans is your best bet. (Flywheel has a single-month plan and a yearly plan.)

Connect – If you’re connecting multiple websites together, this button allows you to find the hosts that are configured to work closely with each other.

Create – On the Create page, you can upload an image to your website, upload a CSS file, and have it created in about 10 minutes. You don’t have to have 100% CSS style in order to work, but if you need help uploading files, I recommend using the MyFiles Uploader.

Share – At any time, the Share button will allow you to upload a Linkable Link widget graphic for use in newsletters, on slide shows, and so on.

5. How to get started with Flywheel hosting

If you already have a website and want to use Flywheel as your host, the process is pretty simple. First, go to flywheel.com and create an account. Once you have an account, log in and you’ll be asked to choose a domain name. This is the name of your website, such as www.example.com.The option to use a subdomain or a c-block domain is optional. We recommend picking one of the hosted subdomains, such as.com or.biz, and using that as your hostname.

Alternatively, you can go with a c-block domain and it will be automatically selected. To test it out, simply go to flywheel.com/blog then click “try signing up”.

After you select your domain, you’ll be asked to connect your hosting provider via FTP or HTML code. Once connected, your hosting provider will provide you with an IP address. Once you’ve chosen an IP address and configured your hosting provider (which we suggest you do, but feel free to mess it up), you’ll be shown the “ready to start” page. The next screen will ask you to set your server to status 500. After you select the status 500 option, you’ll need to set your server to “preferred” so that whenever someone rates your site, it gets sent to an Amazon AWS instance on the flywheel.com domain. Next, you’ll be asked to enable file uploads. Wistia uses DropBox for our servers, so we’re going to enable this. If this is already enabled for you, skip this step.

Next, we’re going to be asked to configure your DNS server to point to our domain and to configure your Hostname to be our domain. Wistia requires two hostnames for everything to be displayed correctly—ideally, you want to essentially have the same hostname for all your websites. Plus, the faster your website is, the better it will run with Amazon AWS. It will also be faster due to the more frequent requests made by AWS.

If you already have a DNS server and Hostname setup, you can skip these two steps.

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HostGator Review: Is HostGator a Good Web Hosting Service?

When choosing a web hosting service, it’s important to understand the various features and characteristics offered by the company. For example, if you want to host a personal blog, then some services might be better suited for you than others. Learn more about HostGator and whether it’s right for you in our review.

1. HostGator Overview

HostGator is one of the most popular web hosting companies in the world. It is a great choice for both beginners and experienced users, as it offers great features at an affordable price. That being said, not all hosting companies are created equal. While Hostgator has a strong reputation within the online hosting industry, there are a few details that should help you make an accurate decision.

HostGator’s free plan means that you’re going to get a lot of functionality for free. The reason is that most hosting companies don’t provide some sort of free tier option, in order to encourage more referrals and customers to sign up.

On the other hand, some companies offer a different level of functionality depending on the features you choose. For example, some hosting companies might offer more RAM and storage, while others offer dedicated web servers with more resources. According to the features you get for free vs the features you pay for, you can pick between more or fewer features, completely dependent on what is important to you.

Once you’re set up with a free user account on the website, it’s time to plan out your site’s features and content, as well as your preferred content moderation system. If you have a blog, then you might want to have a look at the blog features offered by HostGator. Likewise, if your site features software or professional services your visitors can use, get more details about what you get in terms of features.

From hosting sites for your personal blog to running online stores, there is a wide range of things you can do. Whether you want a place to host your online store or hobby projects, there are a lot of possibilities. From videos to ebooks, people work from all parts of the world to create whatever they want. From articles and tutorials to shopping carts, people use all sorts of different software to create online stores.

2. HostGator Features

In this part of the HostGator review, we’ll go through the features of HostGator that make it a great web hosting service. 1. Free Domain HostGator offers a free domain with the purchase of a hosting plan. This is great for new bloggers who are just getting started with their blogs. You simply upload your content, create a proper landing page and you’re done. It’s very easy to set up and you can use it for both personal and business blogs so you can grow and scale your website very inexpensively. In fact, it probably is the most cost-effective way you can build a professional website with a web host.

Since we’re talking about blogging, web design, or website development, you may be wondering how you can help yourself when choosing a web host. It turns out there is an abundance of resources out there to help you out. Start exploring the following resources, there are many to choose from.

As a bonus, we’ll also be going through some of the must-know specifics that you should consider while choosing your web host:

2. Geo-Location

Before you go any deeper into your research for your web hosting, you should investigate your country and the surrounding area. This way you can keep some features close to your home and others abroad. This will ensure that some features aren’t tied to your location and that you can optimize your hosting for the best possible experience for all your guests.

Also, if you’re thinking about hosting a small business, then remember to plan for up to 100 GB of disk space per client. This isn’t enough on its own, but having cloud services will make your life a whole lot easier.

Performance. One of the most important factors that you can play a role in for your website is your hosting service’s performance. There are two primary reasons why a web hosting company will experience slow pages or slow responses. Besides that, their coverage.

3. HostGator Support and Customer Service

HostGator is a great hosting service that allows you to host multiple websites on a single hosting account, and they offer 24/7 customer support.

Here’s how to get started with hosting with HostGator.

What kind of hosting do you need? It’s important to determine what kind of hosting service will work best for you. A few factors to consider include:

What helps your business get the best from your hosting service? If you need help setting up a website, here’s a comprehensive article on the best web hosts for bloggers. If you need technical support for your blog, read our guide on managing their content. A web hosting account is necessary for your online content and business ventures, as anyone can publish content on the Internet.

Upload files regularly onto your hosting account to help boost content performance and work smarter, not harder. Aside from uploading files, external resources may include:

Here are a few ways to increase your hosting account benefits:

The space required in the hosting account is customizable, but it’s generally based on your traffic needs. If there is a substantial increase in traffic, you’ll need more hosting space.

HostGator’s customizable pricing model has customizable pricing for both small and large businesses. Each tool category has its own pricing structure. With their flexible pricing, they can accommodate all types of businesses and entrepreneurs with affordable pricing and colossal hosting resources.

Startups, small businesses, writers, freelancers, artists working from home, digital nomads — the tools you need for your online content are here. HostGator makes hosting accessible and affordable for everyone while providing quality, high-performance resources that help you grow your online business.

4. HostGator Pricing

HostGator is the largest web hosting provider on the Internet. They have over 7 million customers worldwide. They provide shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated server hosting.

Like other web hosts, you can use their dashboard to see statistics and compare your hosting fees with competitors. They also offer advanced billing solutions like open-ended billing and automatic billing.

HostGator is typically considered one of the easiest to set up web hosts on the Internet. The company offers a simple, no-nonsense install process with placeholders for your website’s settings and content, everything is automatically configured for you on the first day you set up your website. This is a huge advantage compared with other hosting companies that may require some additional help or configuration work on your side.

You can also purchase hosting packages directly from HostGator. For more information about their hosting packages, check out their website.

With many hosting services, you can open up your account to public access for free. However, most packages include extra security measures like SSL certificates and anti-virus software. If you don’t need these extra services and just want to enjoy your online presence with minimal added overhead, then consider going with a service provider with enterprise features.

Reliable and easy-to-use hosts are the main features you’ll want to look for when choosing a hosting service provider. You can’t pick one and forget it, as I’ve experienced before. There’s no point in going with super easy hosting if it’s cutting corners in the other parts of the business. This is why we have reviewed so many web hosts, and I hope that you’ll find the one you need, right here.

Finally, when choosing a hosting service, it helps to have a budget in mind as it will directly affect your monthly hosting fees. Remember, a smaller budget always means a higher monthly charge.

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