5 Absolute Best Web Hosting For Beginners (2024)
Hosting a website is usually intimidating for beginners because of all the settings, terminologies, and plans involved. To help you out, we’ve compiled the best web hosting for beginners in 2023.
Bluehost
SiteGround
Hostinger
DreamHost
HostGator
The best web hosting for beginners is the best option for newbies just learning how to host their websites. It's overwhelming to decide the hosting provider to sign up with when you don't know much about web hosting.
When choosing the best web hosting provider for beginners, it's important to choose the simplest one, with an easy-to-navigate control panel, freebies like an SSL certificate, affordable pricing, and reliable customer service.
How to Choose Beginner-Friendly Web Hosting?
If you've never tried web hosting before, choosing the best one might be hard. Here are some factors to consider when choosing the ideal hosting provider for your website.
User-Friendly Interface
You should first consider if the hosting service comes with a user-friendly interface. Starter website owners need an intuitive interface, whether it’s with a cPanel or a custom-made panel. This makes it suitable for those without hosting experience.
Customer Service
Even if the hosting platform is easy to use, it's helpful to have reliable customer service. Beginners usually have many questions, and issues with onboarding or managing your site might arise. So, the hosting service should come with 24/7 customer support and knowledgeable agents.
Hosting Performance
Don't only focus on ease of use; the web hosting provider should offer great performance. This includes impressive loading and response times and a reliable uptime of 99.9%. The web host should have speed-enhancing features like a CDN.
Extra Features
Choosing a beginner-friendly hosting service with other essential features for running a website is important. This includes an SSL certificate, a free domain, automated backups, and more.
Affordable Pricing
Beginners don't want to start with a costly web hosting service. You can always choose higher plans later, but choosing a hosting provider with affordable plans is better. Most of the hosts on our list come with cheap plans that offer good value for your money.
Best Web Hosting for Beginners
After detailed research, we’ve compiled the top five web hosting services for beginners.
1. Bluehost
Best Overall Hosting for Beginners
- It features a simple setup wizard for easy onboarding.
- Custom hosting dashboard for managing multiple sites in one place.
- Free email hosting to create your email accounts.
- Free SSL certificate, domain, and CDN from the cheapest plan.
- Round-the-clock customer support with a well-trained team.
- Constant upsells on the system.
- The website speed is not as fast as other web hosts offer.
Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosts and is an ideal choice for beginners. The web host offers a beginner-friendly onboarding process and affordable pricing plans. With a customized dashboard on top of the standard cPanel and one-click installers, Bluehost is a perfect choice if you've never used a web host.
Bluehost is your best introduction to the world of hosting, as it comes with feature-packed plans and an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface. Beginners have all they need to get started with website hosting, like free email hosting and 24/7 customer support, and the hosting plans are affordable and designed with all the essentials.
You get a free domain, free SSL for the first year, and a free CDN from the shared hosting plans. Bluehost provides 24/7 customer service and custom themes for designing your website, and from the Plus plan, you get unlimited websites. Aside from shared hosting, Bluehost offers dedicated hosting, VPS hosting, and WordPress hosting.
Key Features
Bluehost Website Wizard
When you first sign up for Bluehost and choose a payment plan, you get a wizard that will guide you through the onboarding process. With the wizard, you get instructions on how to set up your website in a few minutes. This helps beginners set up their websites quickly.
Resource Protection on Shared Hosting
The shared hosting plans on Bluehost come with resource protection. This ensures your website gets all the resources it needs while using a shared server, offering quality performance.
Bluehost Maestro
The web host features cPanel with a custom dashboard that is easy to navigate for beginners. This dashboard allows you to manage all your WordPress websites from a single place.
Automatic Installations and Updates
If you're using WordPress hosting on Bluehost, you can benefit from the automatic software updates that maintain your site performance and security. It also includes a one-click installer for creating additional sites and using third-party apps.
Pricing
- Free Domain & SSL (1st Year)
- 20 SSD Storage
- Optimized WordPress Hosting
- 1 Website
- Daily Backups (1st Year)
- 40 SSD Storage
- Free Yoast SEO
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Products
- Customer Accounts
- Store Analytics
- PayPal Support
- Optimized CPU Resources
- 100 SSD Storage
- Free Dedicated IP
- Malware Scanning
Read more Bluehost pricing or Bluehost review
We recommend the Plus plan for beginners, as it offers unlimited websites and other freebies but isn't as expensive as Choice Plus. You can always upgrade to the Choice Plus when handling more traffic.
2. SiteGround
Best for WordPress Sites
- Managed WordPress hosting features in shared plans for beginners.
- Free and unlimited resources in all the plans.
- Free website transfer for WordPress sites.
- Compatible with CMS and CRM applications.
- Built on Google Cloud infrastructure for impressive performance.
- Non-WordPress website transfer costs $30.
If you’re just getting started with hosting and managing a WordPress site, SiteGround is the ideal choice. The web host offers a custom-built beginner-friendly dashboard with a seamless onboarding process that any novice will benefit from. Although it's a bit more expensive than Bluehost, it offers top-notch customer support and freebies.
SiteGround is the best choice for hosting a WordPress website, and it offers impressive speed with Google Cloud infrastructure, a free CDN, and a SuperCacher. If you're just starting with a WordPress site or need WordPress-friendly shared hosting, SiteGround is ideal, as it allows easy website management.
This beginner-friendly web hosting provider offers WordPress installation, managed automatic updates, the WP Starter wizard, expert support, and other WordPress enhancements in all the shared hosting plans. You can also go directly for the WordPress plans, as they cost the same as the shared hosting.
Key Features
Easy to Start from Scratch or Transfer
If you don’t have a website yet, you can start building one with SiteGround, as the web host offers WordPress, Weebly, and many other apps. There is also a seamless transfer from your existing host to SiteGround, as it offers a free WordPress migration plugin and free email migration, but professional site migration costs as low as $30.
Optimized for Third-Party Apps
With SiteGround, beginners can install different kinds of CMS and CRM applications. It is compatible with a wide range of apps based on PHP and MySQL, like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
Free and Unlimited Features
From the Startup plan on SiteGround, you get unmetered traffic, free SSL, free email, free CDN, free email migrator, and unlimited databases. The higher plans also offer unlimited websites along with other freebies.
Easy Management with Site Tools
SiteGround has a custom control panel called Site Tools, and this makes it easy for beginners to manage their databases, emails, and DNS zones, upload files, park domains, and more. A Client Area offers access to hosting accounts, domains, and other important services.
Pricing
- 1 Website
- 10 GB Disk Storage
- Free SSL & Domain
- Site Capacity: 10000 Visits
- Daily Backups
- Unlimited Websites
- 20 GB Disk Storage
- On-demand Site Backups
- Site Capacity: 100000 Visits
- Site Staging
- Priority Customer Support
- 40 GB Disk Storage
- White Label Access
- Site Capacity: 400000 Visits
- Increased Server Resources
The plans also come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The GrowBig plan is recommended for beginners because it has unlimited websites and more resources, giving you room to grow. It also features useful tools like on-demand backup copies and site staging.
3. Hostinger
Best Budget Option
- Impressive performance with global data centers.
- Focuses on security with a free SSL certificate.
- Custom control panel for easy use.
- Offers free migration from your old web hosting.
- WordPress-friendly features are available in the shared hosting plans.
- Customer service takes a long time to respond.
Beginners who don't want to spend a lot of money on hosting for the first time will prefer Hostinger. Even after the introductory price discounts, the shared hosting plans are the cheapest, starting at $3.99 when they auto-renew. Despite this, Hostinger offers impressive value for your money with a beginner-friendly control panel, freebies, and top speed.
Hostinger is one of the well-known web hosting providers, popular for their very cheap yet valuable plans. Beginners on a budget will enjoy using this web host because it comes with all you need to get started, including free website migration, a custom-made control panel, and free and unlimited resources.
Despite being affordable, Hostinger has all the power your website needs to function. Hostinger is based on a self-healing infrastructure, SSD servers, LiteSpeed technology, HTTP/3, IPv6, and unmetered bandwidth, starting from the Premium plan, giving you room for traffic growth.
Key Features
Easy Onboarding and Use
Rather than the cPanel, Hostinger comes with an hPanel, which is very easy to use and multilingual. You don't have to be a professional, as the intuitive interface makes it easy to start and even offers free migration.
Top-notch Security
All the hosting plans on Hostinger come with unlimited free SSL certificates. The plans include DDoS protection, automatic updates, CloudLinux, LVE containerized environment, and automated website backups for complete security
WordPress-Friendly Features
Even if you're paying for shared hosting, Hostinger offers a complete solution with one-click WordPress installation, expert support, and automatic updates. It also features WordPress staging that allows you to make a copy of your website and try out different content and layout types.
Global Data Centers
Hostinger features data centers worldwide, so you can always enjoy speed regardless of where you are. The web hosting provider has data centers in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Lithuania, Singapore, India, Brazil, and the USA, so simply choose the one nearest to you and change the location at any time.
Pricing
- 1 Website
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- 100GB Bandwidth
- 1 Email Account
- Managed WordPress
- 100 Websites
- 100GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 100 Email Accounts
- Free Domain Name
- Unlimited FTP Accounts
- 200GB SSD Storage
- 2 CPU Cores
- 1.5GB RAM
- 100 Parked Domains & Subdomains
Read more Hostinger pricing or Hostinger review
It’s advisable to go for Premium Web Hosting as a beginner, as this allows you to host up to 100 websites. The plan comes with a free domain, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited free SSL, and free email hosting.
4. DreamHost
Best for Flexible Pricing
- Flexible pricing with discounts on the plans.
- Features a custom-made dashboard for easy use.
- Automatic backups to keep your data safe.
- Includes a WordPress website builder and one-click installer.
- The hosting service is powered by Solid State Drives (SSDs).
- There are only a few CMS installations available.
DreamHost is another top-notch web hosting provider that is ideal for beginners. This is the best choice for you if you prefer a cloud-based web hosting service. DreamHost also comes with a WordPress website builder for starting your site from scratch and allows you to pay monthly with no long-term commitment required.
DreamHost is a well-known web hosting provider for beginners, with convenient shared hosting and cheap plans. The host comes with a beginner-friendly control panel, an inbuilt WordPress site builder, and feature-packed plans; plus, WordPress recommends it.
One of the highlights of DreamHost is the flexible pricing plans, as you can pay monthly with no commitment, yearly, or every three years. The plans also come with a 97-day money-back guarantee, so you can test the host for longer before you decide to stick to it.
Key Features
Automatic Backups and Updates
When using DreamHost for your WordPress site, you can benefit from automatic WordPress software updates. It also provides automatic website security updates, so your data is kept safe.
Custom Hosting Dashboard
Like a few other web hosts, DreamHost has a customized dashboard. Beginners can easily manage their website on DreamHost with a responsive interface and helpful tutorials.
Free and Unlimited Features
On the DreamHost shared hosting plans, beginners will get free domain registration, a free SSL certificate, free professional email addresses, and free privacy protection. Its packages also come with unlimited storage and unlimited traffic.
100% Uptime Guarantee
DreamHost provides its users with a 100% uptime guarantee, so your website is always running without downtime. The hosting service provides constant monitoring, redundant cooling, and emergency generators to keep the website running.
Pricing
- One Website
- 50GB SSD Storage
- 6 MySQL Databases
- 5 Subdomains
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited SSD Storage
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Subdomains
- Free Email
As a beginner, you can choose one of the plans depending on whether you’re hosting a single site or unlimited websites. It’s advisable to choose Shared Unlimited as it is still highly affordable and comes with scalable resources.
5. HostGator
Best for Small Businesses
- Free and unlimited resources on all the hosting plans.
- Features multiple applications for one-click installs.
- Unmetered bandwidth on all the plans.
- Ideal for online stores with eCommerce tools.
- Round-the-clock customer service with quick response.
- Renewal pricing is much more expensive.
HostGator stands out for its hassle-free web hosting services that appeal to small businesses, online stores, and bloggers. The web host is great for anyone that doesn't have experience in hosting and offers competitive prices for its shared hosting plans. It is easy to use with the traditional cPanel and an attentive customer service team.
HostGator is the final option on our list, popular for its highly affordable and valuable shared hosting plans. The web hosting company uses the traditional cPanel and features a native user interface that makes onboarding easy.
There are freebies in the hosting plans that will give you more value for your money, and it is WordPress-friendly. HostGator also has a 99.9% uptime guarantee to ensure that your website is always running with little downtime and above-average loading times.
Key Features
Free and Unlimited Essentials
HostGator comes with a free SSL certificate, free domain registration, and free one-click installations. The web host also comes with unmetered bandwidth, so it can handle website traffic as it increases.
Multiple One-Click Installs
Aside from WordPress, HostGator allows you to install CMS, CRM, and other kinds of apps with the push of a button. Some of the apps include Magento, Drupal, Joomla, and phpBB.
Automated Daily Backups
When hosting your website with HostGator, you can enjoy daily automated backups. You can restore your website data with a single click.
Reliable Site Security
HostGator will give you a Positive SSL certificate to protect your data and increase the legitimacy of your website. It also partners with SiteLock to protect your data and remove malware.
Pricing
- 1 Website
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Unlimited Email
- 10GB Storage Space
- Chat Support
- 5 Websites
- $500 Google Ads Credit
- Unlimited Add-on Domains
- 40GB Storage Space
- Chat & Phone Support
- Unlimited Websites
- Free Assisted Migration
- Positive SSL
- Unlimited Storage Space
- Dedicated IP Address
Read more Hostgator review
As a beginner, it's advisable to choose the Baby Plan, which comes with 73% off for the first time. You can host up to five websites, and it comes with unmetered bandwidth and free email. It also offers phone and chat support, with a free domain for one year.
FAQs
GoDaddy is an ideal choice for beginners who want to set up a website from scratch and start hosting it. The web hosting provider has an intuitive and simple platform, with cPanel site management and a website builder.
Hosting a website can cost as low as $2 per month. This depends on the web hosting provider that you are using. Hostinger provides the most affordable and beginner-friendly hosting services on our list.
Bluehost is the best web hosting provider for beginners in 2023. The web host offers seamless onboarding, easy use, and affordable plans. The setup wizard will guide you when you first sign up.
What is the Easiest Web Hosting Provider for Beginners?
With our complete guide, you have all you need to know about the easiest web hosting providers that beginners can use. We considered the ease of use, performance, speed and uptime, customer service, and affordability of the pricing plans when compiling this list.
Bluehost
SiteGround
Hostinger
DreamHost
HostGator
Here are some resources to help you as you enter the world of web hosting:
- What is Web Hosting? Beginner’s Guide
- How to Host a Website
- Bluehost Reviews
- Bluehost vs. SiteGround: Which is Better Value for Money?
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Martin Luenendonk
Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.
This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.