Author: Camila Santiago

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How to Trade Crypto in 6 Steps 

Someone learning how to trade crypto with a laptop and phone

Simply put, trading crypto is the act of buying and selling cryptocurrencies or digital currencies, for conventional fiat money via an exchange as a form to make a profit. For those who can keep up with the volatility of cryptocurrencies, trading crypto can give much higher returns than traditional investments. We’ve listed the six steps you should follow to trade cryptocurrency.

How to Trade Crypto In 6 Steps

You can make crypto trade by exchanging one crypto for another (such as Bitcoin to Ethereum) or buying or selling crypto using fiat currency (like US dollar to Bitcoin). Also, some investors may use cryptocurrency trading to increase market exposure. 

Crypto options trading refers to derivatives trading, which is a form of agreement or contract between two parties or more, whose value is based on an underlying financial asset, index, or security, previously agreed-upon between the parties. 

As with stocks and other financial markets, trading cryptocurrency can be complex, so before starting off, we’d like to stress the importance of understanding the assets and technologies involved in trading crypto. If you’re ready to venture into crypto trading, there are six steps to follow. 

Steps for cryptocurrency trading

Step 1: Open a Crypto Exchange Account

You can’t simply buy crypto using your bank account to start trading cryptocurrency. The first step to trade crypto is to open a crypto exchange account. 

A crypto exchange is a platform that allows users to buy and sell crypto. The best crypto brokerages on the market are Binance and Coinbase. To open a crypto exchange account, you’ll need to share some personal information, such as date of birth, personal address, Social Security number (in the United States), and your email address.

Step 2: Fund Your Account

Once your crypto exchange account is up and running, you’ll need to fund it. The easy way to do it is to connect your bank account with your trading account. Then, you can transfer fiat money through bank deposit, debit card, or wire transfer. Wire transfer is typically your cheapest option to fund your account, as it offers little to no fees. Trading fees may vary, so you can look at Coinbase and Binance’s transaction fees at their dedicated fee pages.

Step 3: Choose a Cryptocurrency to Trade

The most popular coin among traders is the two strong coins available on the crypto market: Bitcoin and Ethereum. But there are thousands of other fast-growing cryptocurrencies to choose from. Choosing the right cryptocurrency for you will involve many factors, such as risk management, market and technical analysis, and its market cap. 

Most traders prefer to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum as they have a higher trading volume than smaller altcoins. But, many crypto traders allocate a portion of their capital to smaller altcoins. In this case, you should use your own judgment on whether you should stick to smaller altcoins or go for more substantial and stable cryptocurrencies. 

Step 4: Pick a Strategy

Similar to trading stocks, experienced traders know they need a strategy – trading, in general, involves risk and pitfalls. Strategy, in this case, is the plan or the roadmap you will develop to guide you and mitigate financial risks in all your trading endeavors.

There are plenty of strategies to choose from, but the right method will depend on many factors, including experience, knowledge, analytical skills, patience, and discipline. Strategies can be divided into two: active and passive. 

Active trading strategies include day trading, swing trading, trend trading, and scalping – these strategies require more attention and constant monitoring and management. On the other hand, passive investment strategies don’t demand much attention and enable a more hands-off approach. Some examples are HODL and index investing. 

Step 5: Start Trading

Now that you’ve picked the crypto you want to trade and have developed the right strategy according to your risk profile, knowledge, and skills, it’s time to get your hands dirty. There are two ways to trade crypto: actively and automated. The most effective and easy way is to automate this process by using trading bots. 

These bots will automatically execute orders based on your strategy so that it can help you maximize your trading profits, reduce risks, diversify your portfolio, and give you leverage over manual traders. 

Step 6: Store Your Coins

If you’re exchanging crypto, you’ll need to store your coins in a wallet. Crypto exchange apps aren’t wallets. They do hold your crypto coins, but they don’t store them. Think of it like a physical wallet you use to keep your money – you can use a bitcoin wallet to store your bitcoin in digital form.

In general, crypto wallets come in two main types: hot and cold wallets. Hot wallets require an internet connection to function, and you can use a specific app to store your crypto. Cold wallets use a storage device that looks like a pen drive, and you can store your crypto. But it also refers to any storage that does not require an internet connection – it can be a physical box, a piece of paper, a hardware wallet, or a list of numbers and letters that you keep in your head. If you opt for a hardware wallet, Ledger Nano X and Nano S are the most popular cold wallets on the market.

Pros & Cons of Trade Crypto

Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, so it’s very common to see Bitcoin prices fluctuate over 10% in a single day. This is a great opportunity for high-risk profiles to make a profit quicker than in the stock trading market. 

However, in the same way it’s a lot easier to make a profit, cryptocurrencies are risky. Trading crypto isn’t something for you risk-averse investors who cannot handle volatility. Read our article on the pros and cons of cryptocurrency to learn if it’s worth investing in.

Crypto Trading Vs. Stock Trading

Stocks and cryptocurrency are two very distinct types of investment. Both investments are liquid assets, but that’s the only commonality they share. 

In simple terms, when you invest in stocks, you own a percentage stake of the company you’ve invested in. Also, you can only buy and sell stocks during the opening hours of the stock exchange. The stock market is regulated and extremely strict, so there are penalties if you don’t comply with its laws and regulations. 

On the flip side, cryptocurrencies are decentralized, and the crypto market doesn’t have to deal with international laws and regulations. And as opposed to the stock market, in which you get dividends if your stocks perform well, you won’t get paid dividends in the crypto market. Instead, you can lend or stake your tokens to earn passive income.

The risks and returns of crypto are higher than other investments. Crypto trading is often considered more high risk than stock trading, but it depends on what stocks or cryptocurrency you’re trading and how you’re trading it. 

Before trading cryptocurrency, you should be aware that you risk losing your money to the market. If you really believe in the future of cryptocurrency, holding your crypto assets for the long term may be more beneficial than trying to time the markets.

How Crypto Trade Works

The structure of the cryptocurrency trade is very simple. There’s a buyer and a seller. As far as a zero-sum game goes, one person will gain and the other will lose. Understanding that will help you to minimize potential loss and optimize your gain. 

When there are more people buying or trading crypto orders than selling, the price goes up, as the demand for the asset rises. Conversely, if there are more people selling than buying, the price usually goes down.

Market Patterns & Cycles

Both the stock and crypto markets work in cycles. It’s crucial for every trader to learn to read and perceive market trends, patterns, and cycles to know where and how you can position yourself. At first, the crypto market may seem complex, but as you begin to understand, it gets a lot easier. 

Reading the market is an ongoing process – one way to do it is to run a Technical Analysis (TA) of the market. There are a variety of complex indicators that a trader could use to analyze the market but for the purpose of this article, let’s stick to the basics. 

  • Market structure and cycles

You can spot patterns on a market over years as well as within hours, days, and weeks. In the case of the crypto market, it has four phases: the accumulation phase, the run-up phase, the distribution phase, and the run-down phase. In crypto, the best time to buy and sell is in contrarian investing – which means going against the market: selling when the market is buying and buying when the market is selling.

  • Chasing the whale

The “whales” are individuals or a group of people who basically dictate the market trend and behavior, by holding or selling large amounts of cryptocurrencies. So, why should you follow what these individuals or institutions are doing? Simply put, because they know what they are doing. If you’re able to anticipate the intention and movement of a whale, you can follow up with your strategy and maybe profit from that. 

  • The psychology of the market

As the name suggests, this tool provides the market sentiments. The overall feeling of greed and fear of investors tends to set market trends as well. 

As a rule of thumb, all investors should leave their emotions out of the trading game, as the emotional pressure may leave investors anxious over losing buying and selling opportunities and losing control over their investments.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for How to Trade Crypto

We’ve listed the frequently asked questions on how to trade crypto.

Bottom Line on How to Trade Crypto

Trading cryptocurrency can be daunting and quite complex, especially for first-time traders. The process itself isn’t difficult, as it just involves a few steps until you can buy or sell the cryptocurrency of your choice. However, the prep is much more important – without a proper strategy, mindset, tools, and emotional intelligence, trading can be much riskier. Whether you want to make money to start a business, or simply want to make a long-term profit, you can do it by trading crypto. 

In other words, at the end of the day, the most important thing is to make your own decisions, using available information and using the best judgment, as well as to make sure you are properly educated.

In addition, strategies can differ from person to person – according to their risk profile, financial management, knowledge, trading capital, and preferences, which means there are a lot of responsibilities involved in this game. If you read this article until the end and decide this is the time you’ll become a crypto trader, before downloading a crypto brokerage app or putting money on a hot wallet, you must evaluate your own personal situation before deciding to take the first step into cryptocurrency trading.

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5 Trending Types of Business to Start in 2023 

Businesspeople analyzing the trending types of business

Are you looking for the best type of business to quickly start your own company and finally ditch your traditional 9-to-5 job? The market is growing and expanding due to changing trends, so if you have the ambition to start a new business in 2023, we’ve wrapped up the five types of business that will be trending this year. 

However, it doesn’t hurt to say that all of these types of business, as well as their niches may require specific skills, business licenses, training and certification. If a type of business listed here sounds interesting to you, make sure to do your own research of what’s needed to set up or register a business in that area.

1. Mental Health

Mental health is an aspect of our emotional, psychological health, and well-being. It helps to determine how we can handle stress, and anxiety, relate to others, and make choices. Our mental health impacts what we do, think, feel and say. 

Why is it important?

The pandemic shed light on the importance of creating and cultivating good mental health so that we can prevent diseases and mental conditions. Addressing mental health in the same way and degree of importance as physical health is crucial to breaking bias and fighting the stigma that those who struggle with mental health conditions are ill or problematic.

According to the World Health Organization, in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety, depression, and stress increased by 25% among people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in every five adults has at least one mental health condition. The use of prescription medication and counseling also spiked during this time, which made mental health a concern in many countries around the globe. 

Who is it best for?

There are many opportunities within the mental health and wellness industry to explore. The wellness market alone is at more than $1.5 trillion, with 5.1% annual growth. This type of business isn’t limited only to larger corporations but also small businesses and independent workers. The industry is very extended, and the areas to explore are the following categories:

  • Health: It includes medical devices, apps, teletherapy and telemedicine, remote healthcare services, and personal health trackers
  • Fitness: Personal trainers, fitness instructors, bodyweight training, gyms, fitness apparel, fitness and yoga studios, supplements, and weight loss
  • Nutrition: Supplements and vitamins, nutrition apps, diet programs, juice cleansers, and subscription food services
  • Sleep: Sleeping tracking apps and devices, blackout curtains, and gravity blankets
  • Mindfulness: Meditation-focused apps, yoga and meditation props, and apparel

2. Cyber Security

According to the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK, “cyber security’s core function is to protect the devices we all use (smartphones, laptops, tablets and computers), and the services we access–both online and at work–from theft or damage.”

Why is it important?

Our lives are so connected with our smartphones, computers, and other devices that it is hard to imagine how we’d function without them. Nearly all fundamental parts of our modern life are digital–from real-time payments to online banking to shopping and social media. 

The number of cyberattacks also increased 50% year-over-year – it’s estimated that, on average, 30,000 websites are hacked every day. That said, it’s more important than ever to protect our data from malicious attacks. 

Cybersecurity’s market growth is attributed to the growing need for strict compliance with regulatory requirements and complexities in digital security due to the increasing number of cyberattacks on both individuals and enterprises. From 2021 to 2026, the cybersecurity industry is expected to reach a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.7%–from $217.9B in 2021 to $345.4B in 2026. This may be one type of business that will see continual growth rate, as it’s always changing to stay ahead of cybercriminals.

Who is it best for?

The cyber security market is broad and it offers various verticals with a number of opportunities, however, initiating a business in this area requires some level of expertise and skills.

Professionals in the area can work both B2B and B2C, but opportunities and high-ticket projects are likely to happen in the business-to-business model. In this case, there are many opportunities, such as:

  • Consulting (both independent contractors and agencies)
  • Cyber security specialist
  • Cyber security writers and freelancers
  • Security auditor 
  • Vulnerability researchers

3. Financial Services

Financial services describe all areas within the finance industry, including everything from money management to payments and digital banking technology. The financial firms involved in this sector include banks, insurance companies, fintech, lenders, and financial institutions. 

Overall, these firms are responsible for managing money in various degrees and responsibilities. For instance, a payment service provider accepts and transfers capital between payer and payee. 

Why is it important?

The financial services industry is one of the most critical sectors of the economy, leading the world in earnings and equity market capitalization, including all types and business sizes within the market. 

The strength of the financial sector is so vital that it dictates a nation’s economy, which means that if the financial services sector fails, it can drag a country’s economy down.

Who is it best for?

Most financial activities are migrating to digital, and many other finance-related business opportunities are surfacing. If you’d like to venture yourself into the finance sector, here are some career opportunities in this type of business:

  • Financial advisor business
  • Bookkeeping service
  • Business brokerage company
  • Stock day trader
  • Money lending company
  • Accounting software business
  • Auditing firm
  • Payment service provider
  • Cryptocurrency exchange
  • Day trading crypto

4. Elearning

Education has changed with the advance in edtech and elearning platforms. The modern education process will never be the same again, as the internet has changed the way we learn for good. Learning and formal education are no longer only a thing for kids and college-age students.

Elearning is a type of business that’s an excellent way to deliver learning through digital resources. The pandemic accelerated this movement which is now widely adopted by corporations, institutions, and schools all over the globe. 

Why is it important?

Elearning breaks the stigma that knowledge is restricted to school education and it can be done anywhere, at any time and it accommodates everyone’s needs. Other benefits of elearning are cost reduction, consistency, effectiveness, and scalability.

The future of education is digital and the global edtech market is set to grow from $152 billion in 2018 to $342 billion in 2025. In other words, it is a highly profitable sector with much potential.

Who is it best for?

The five main industries utilizing elearning the most are healthcare, education, corporate business, computer and IT, and retail/ecommerce. However, nowadays, you can provide an online course basically about anything, from cooking to digital marketing, to financial advice. 

For professionals in one of these industries who wants to explore the e-learning realm, opportunities lie as:

  • Course creator
  • Learning Management System (LMS) providers
  • Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) providers
  • Cloud hosting

5. Ecommerce

Simply put, ecommerce is the buying and selling of goods or services via the internet, and the transfer of money and data to complete the sales. 

The ecommerce industry is growing exponentially, and more ecommerce businesses are emerging while the digital economy is expanding and reaching every corner of the globe. More and more people are turning to their computers and mobile phones to shop for their goods, search for reviews, compare pricing and look for market trends. 

The most traditional types of ecommerce are B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Consumer), D2C (Direct to Consumer), C2C (Consumer to Consumer), and C2B (Consumer to Business).

Why is it important?

Besides the fast-growing pace, consumer adoption, and how it has changed the way we shop for our goods, ecommerce is quite convenient and it offers a wide range of options. Businesswise, ecommerce creates brand awareness, increases the company’s reach, and gives marketing opportunities. 

Who is it best for?

Everyone from independent freelancers to small businesses to the largest corporations can benefit from this type of business. You’ll gain the ability to sell goods and services online at scale. Here are some examples:

  • Retail: The sale is direct to the final consumer with no intermediary
  • Dropshipping: The sale of products that are manufactured and shipped to consumers via a third party
  • Digital products: Digital assets such as templates, courses, ebooks, software, or media that must be purchased for use–these represent a large percentage of ecommerce transactions
  • Wholesale: Products sold in bulk. Wholesale products are usually sold to a retailer, who then sells the products to consumers
  • Services: Skills like coaching, writing, mentoring, consulting, and influencer marketing, are purchased and paid for online through an ecommerce shop
  • Subscription-based: Subscription services are the recurring purchases of products or services on a regular basis–they can be weekly, monthly, and bi-monthly. 

4 Software to Help You Start or Grow Your Business

When it comes to starting a small business, it’s crucial to have the right tools at hand, in both work performance and results. The key, however, is to find the right software you need to start–especially for a small business. Whether you’re a freelancer, startup, or entrepreneur, we’ve listed the most important tools and best options in each category.

Asana logo

Best Project Management: Asana

Pricing: Free tier, or $13.49 and $30.49, monthly, per user

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A project management platform will help to deal with both easy and complex tasks, as well as plan, organize, delegate, and manage all resources between you and your team. Asana is user-friendly and offers some of the best project management tools available on the market. It fits businesses of any type and size and it helps to manage even the most complex projects. 

  • Automatically generate reports, graphs and charts
  • Easy to use and beginner-friendly
  • It works for both small and larger teams
  • The premium version is more expensive than overall competitors
Gusto logo

Best Payroll Software: Gusto

Pricing: Starts at $39 per month, plus $6 per month per person + free trial for small businesses

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Whether you work with a small team or intend to hire more people, you should consider a payroll software solution to manage your payroll and taxes for your workers. Gusto simplifies and automates the entire payroll processing. The company has an excellent UX and UI, easy payroll processing, and benefits for numerous employees. It’s quick to set up and run, and it’s mobile-friendly. 

  • Free trial option for small business owners
  • Unlimited payroll
  • Automated taxes and filings
  • No international payroll 
  • No household employee expenses
  • No mobile payroll app
Shopify logo

Best Ecommerce Software: Shopify

Pricing: Free trials for 14 days. Pricing starts at $29 per month.

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If you decide to start an online store, we recommend Shopify. The ecommerce platform is an all-in-one hosted solution mainly focused on first-time users. The built-in features offers an easy to use interface, with drag and drop capabilities. Also, Shopify helps your online store to leverage your marketing by helping you to boost campaigns on social media platforms and create unique URLs.

  • Multichannel selling
  • Extensive payment options
  • Sell around the world with local language support
  • High transaction fees
Hostinger logo

Best Web Hosting: Hostinger

Pricing: Starts at $1.99/month

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One of the first steps to set up a business is to have a website up and running. In this case, you’ll need a web host, a domain and a website. Hostinger is the best web hosting provider out of all the web hosting sites because it’s easy to use, it’s affordable and it provides a high-performance website to its users, even on entry-level plans. 

  • Performance-driven 
  • Affordable
  • Beginner-friendly
  • Customer support could be better

Bottom Line on the Types of Business

Do you want to start a business in 2023 but aren’t sure where to start? The good news is that nowadays you don’t need lots of funding, and investment. With little money, lots of focus, drive, and a good internet connection, you can launch a successful business from the comfort of your own home. 

We’ve listed the top trending business ideas to get you started, from the mental health and wellness industry to financial services. If one type of business isn’t quite right for you, consider one of the others. They’re all growing rapidly, so be sure to also arm yourself with the right software to help you succeed in business.

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5 Best Cheap Web Hosting Services – 2023

Young professional researching on the best cheap web hosting services

Choosing good and cheap web hosting for your website doesn’t have to be expensive–affordable web hosting can also be high quality. With the right choice, you won’t just get hosting–you can also get the ability to design and build an affordable website for your small business. 

Hostinger is our pick as the best overall affordable web host provider because of its initial cost, low renewal rates, and its user-friendly interface. We’ve listed other options for both beginners and advanced users with small budgets, so if Hostinger isn’t right for you, another option may work better.

Best Cheap Web Hosting

Product

Initial Pricing

Renewal Rates

User Experience

Performance

Customer Service

Hostinger logo

Hostinger

Starts at $1.99/month

Minimal renewal rates

Intuitive control panel and beginner-friendly interface

Performance-driven and it uses LiteSpeed servers

Only live chat and email support

Namecheap logo

Namecheap

Starts at $1.58/month

2x higher than initial cost

Smooth UX and user-friendly website builder

Low-performance

24/7 live chat but no phone support

Bluehost logo

Bluehost

Start at $2.95/month

3x higher than initial cost

Straightforward and beginner-friendly tools

Slower servers compared to competitors

Three 24/7 live chat lines, email, and phone support

iPage logo

iPage

Starts at $1.99 per month

Up to 5x higher than initial cost

Easily accessible to low-level users

Slower servers compared to competitors

24/7 phone support, live chat, and email

Dreamhost logo

DreamHost

Starts at $2.59 per month

2x higher than initial cost

Modern and clean panel, easy to navigate

High enough performance speed

Live chat from 3:00 AM to 9:30 PM PST

Hostinger logo

Hostinger: Best Overall Cheap Web Hosting Service

Pricing: Starts at $1.99/month

4.9

★★★★★

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Hostinger is our top pick as the best cheap web hosting service for more reasons than its low price. The company is considered one of the fastest web hosts on the market. The average page load speed is 143 milliseconds and the cheapest plan can load in under one second. Hostinger also makes it easy to manage a website using hPanel, an intuitive, user-friendly, and straightforward control panel. 

Hostinger also lets you choose how you want to pay for your hosting services. For single shared hosting plans, pricing starts at $1.99 for 48 months. But if you don’t want a long-term commitment, the company also offers a monthly tier that costs $9.99, plus a $4.99 setup fee. Plan renews at the same price.

Besides the monthly plan, all the other payments are made upfront. Hostinger’s customer service has no free phone support (you have to pay $2 per month extra), but you can count on their live chat and email support. According to many users, the live chat and email support are responsive and efficient. 

Premium shared hosting starts at $2.99 per month, and both Premium and Business shared hosting lets you host up to 100 websites and offers one free domain, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited databases. The downside, however, is that Hostinger offers no daily free backup for entry-level plans unless you upgrade to premium packages, such as Shared Business, Business WordPress or above. 

The company still offers weekly backups instead, for the plans Shared Single, Shared Premium, Single WordPress, WordPress Starter, and VPS plans.

Why we chose it: Hostinger is our top pick because it’s performance-focused, it’s beginner and user-friendly and its plans are affordable even for tight budgets. Read our full Hostinger review for an in-depth look.

  • Beginner-friendly
  • Low cost plans
  • High-performance
  • No free daily backup
  • Customer support could be better

Pricing: Hostinger also lets you choose how you want to pay for your hosting services. For single shared hosting plans, pricings are the following:

  • Monthly: $9.99 + $4.99 set-up fee. Plan renews at the same price
  • 12 months: $3.49/month and it renews at $5.99 monthly
  • 24 months: $2.49/month and it renews at $4.99 monthly
  • 48 months: $1.99/month and it renews at $3.99 monthly
  • Premium shared hosting: Starts at $2.99/month for 12 months and it renews at $8.99 monthly
  • Business shared hosting: Starts at $4.99/month for 48 months and it renews at $8.99 monthly
Namecheap logo

Namecheap: Best Cheap Web Hosting Service for Affordability

Pricing: Starts at $1.58/month

4.0

★★★★★

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Although Namecheap is best known for selling domains, it also offers affordable web hosting services. The company lives up to its name – the low-entry plan tier starts at as little as $1.58 per month and you get a free website domain and the ability to host three websites. 

The renewal prices are also minimal – just two times higher than the original price. That means, for instance, if you choose the entry-level plan (Stellar Plan), you’ll pay $21.88 for the first year and $42.88 to renew the contract. Namecheap displays the renewal rates in a small disclaimer right below the “Get Started” button, so no surprises when renewing your plan. 

The storage capacity for the most basic shared hosting plan is 20GB SSD, unmetered bandwidth, free CDN, and free SSL certificate. Namecheap also offers a free website builder with 200+ templates to choose from, drag-and-drop interface, and a responsive design, which makes Namecheap user-friendly. 

When it comes to performance, Namecheap falls behind its competitors. For instance, the shared hosting plan doesn’t support more than 100GB of file upload, so if you need to upload larger files, you should choose Hostinger instead which is performance-focused. Namecheap customer’s support is limited – similar to Hostinger, the company offers only live chat and email support but no phone customer service. 

Why we chose it: Namecheap offers affordable plans with minimal renewal rates, and it’s user-friendly. Read our full Namecheap review for an in-depth look.

  • Most affordable with low renewal rates
  • Free domain name
  • User friendly
  • Limited customer support
  • Poor performance

Pricing: Namecheap offers three different shared hosting plans: Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar Business. 

  • Stellar: $3.88 (billed monthly), $1.88 (billed annually) and $1.58 (2-year contract)
  • Stellar Plus: $5.88 (billed monthly), $2.98 (billed annually) and $4.98 (2-year contract)
  • Stellar Plus Business: $9.88 (billed monthly), $4.98 (billed annually) and $4.68 (2-year contract)
Bluehost logo

Bluehost: Best Affordable Web Host for Ease of Use

Pricing: Starts at $2.95/month

4.5

★★★★★

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If this is your first time building a website, then you should consider Bluehost. The tools are beginner-friendly and Bluehost offers a website builder, for just $2.95 per month. Quick start smart templates, unlimited uploads, one-click WordPress access and drag-and-drop capabilities are some of the features of its website builder tool. Bluehost also works with WooCommerce integration, mainly focused on ecommerce platforms.

Pricing starts at a promotional rate of $2.95 per month for a basic shared hosting plan for 36 months and it auto-renews at a regular rate. The company offers a knowledge base page that compares all their plans and a pricing renewal table. For instance, if you pick the entry-level plan (called Basic) for 12 months at $2.95, the renewal price will be $9.99.

For this plan, you can get one website, 50GB SSD storage, a free domain for a year, as well as a free CDN, and free SSL certificate. 

If you want to start with a WordPress website, Bluehost is also a great option for you. Its WordPress hosting plan gets you one WordPress website, storage of 20GB, free SSL, and custom themes also at $2.95 for a 36-month contract. 

However, one of the cons of Bluehost is its control panel. Often used by many web hosting providers, cPanel has changed into a user-friendly interface but the system is oftentimes fragile and it already happened that the cPanel server accidentally removed all data during major updates, and if the website has no backup, users risk losing data. 

Another downside is that Bluehost only offers free migration within the first 30 days after signing up. In case you need to migrate the website after this period, you’ll need to pay for it.   

Why we chose it: Bluehost is an excellent option for beginners and those who want to build their own websites. Also, the company provides WordPress hosting at the same price as the basic shared hosting plan. Read the Bluehost review to learn more about its features and pricing.

  • Excellent option for first-time users
  • WordPress hosting available
  • WooCommerce integration for ecommerce shops
  • cPanel as control panel 
  • Paid migration

Pricing: For shared hosting plans, Bluehost offers four options: Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro. For WordPress hosting plans, prices are the same. 

  • Basic: $2.95 (12 months & 36 months)
  • Plus: $5.45 (12 months & 36 months)
  • Choice Plus: $5.45 (12 months & 36 months)
  • Pro: $13.95 (12 months & 36 months)
iPage logo

iPage: Best Cheap Web Hosting Service for Personal Websites 

Pricing: Starts at $1.99/month

4.7

★★★★★

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If you’re not sure which plan you should choose for your first website, iPage makes it easier for you. The company has been on the market since 1998. It offers a straightforward single plan, which is ideal for those who want to set up a personal website. iPage is also a great option for freelancers, bloggers, and small business owners who need plenty of storage and don’t have much budget to invest in web hosting.

Go Plan comes with unlimited websites, unlimited storage, free SSL, free domain for a year, free email address, and a website builder. Pricing starts at $1.99 per month for 36 months. The company has a pricing page too, displaying its regular renewal rates. For example, the $1.99 monthly plan for 36 months renews at $8.99/month. 

Similar to Bluehost, iPage building functionalities are easily accessible to low-level users–all templates are customizable and responsive. You can also create a WordPress website with the one-click installer feature if you wish. 

If you plan to turn your website into an online store, iPage allows you to shift it into an ecommerce shop quickly and easily. The online store functionality is free, and it comes with personalized shopping carts, PayPal integration, email marketing integration, and a one-click installer. 

Also, if you plan on scaling your business in the future and migrating to a business website, iPage offers advanced solutions with additional resources. In this case, you can shift to advanced web hosting solutions such as VPS and Dedicated Server hosting.

Why we chose it: iPage offers a single and straightforward plan for all its users with many unlimited free features such as unlimited storage, unlimited websites, and a free domain for a year. 

  • One straight to the point single plan
  • Many unlimited features
  • Free online store
  • Lack of variety in plans
  • No cloud-based hosting options

Pricing: iPage offers one single plan. It starts at $1.99 per month for 36 months, $2.49 per month for 24 months, or $2.99 per month for 12 months. All pricing tiers should be paid upfront.

Dreamhost logo

DreamHost: Best Cheap Web Hosting Service for Monthly Plans

Pricing: Starts at $2.59/month

4.8

★★★★★

Visit

For those who don’t want to commit for long and just need to host a website for a year or a few months, DreamHost lets you do that. The Shared Starter hosting plan starts at $1.99 with no commitments or contracts; you’ll get one website, unlimited traffic, WordPress pre-installed, free SSL certificate, and unlimited disk space and bandwidth. 

The second shared hosting plan is called Shared Unlimited, and as the name suggests, you’ll get unlimited websites, unlimited email, unlimited traffic, and bandwidth. This plan starts at $2.99 per month, and you can cancel at any time. 

Although not a free web hosting provider, DreamHost offers its users other benefits such as a 97-day money-back guarantee, an advanced and user-friendly control panel that’s easy to understand (as opposed to the standard cPanel that comes with many other web hosting providers), and competitive performance for an affordable price, and free migration. 

The downside of DreamHost is the renewal pricing, which is higher than the initial ones. However, the company is transparent about the initial promotional tier and provides a disclaimer right next to the pricing.

Even if renewal rates aren’t the same as intro pricing, you’ll know right off the bat how much you’ll be paying when the contract expires. DreamHost only offers free email with the Shared Unlimited plan. That means, if you choose the Shared Starter plan, you’ll need to add email for $1.67 monthly.

  • Monthly plans with no commitment
  • Free migration
  • User-friendly control panel
  • Renewal pricing higher than initial pricing
  • No free email on Shared Starter plan

Pricing: For shared hosting plans, DreamHost offers two plans: Shared Starter and Shared Unlimited.

  • Shared Starter: Starting at $2.59 monthly for three years, $2.95 monthly for a year, and $1.99 for the monthly plan–no commitment or contracts.
  • Shared Unlimited: Starting at $3.95 monthly for three years, $2.95 monthly for a year, and $2.99 for the monthly plan–no commitment or contracts.

Methodology for the Best Cheap Web Hosting Services

The method we used to analyze the best and most affordable web hosting providers was to think of what a small business wants when searching for a web host. Saving a few pennies is good, but it shouldn’t be the only criterion. That’s why we considered others, such as renewal rates, UX, customer service, and website performance. 

  • Initial pricing: We checked if the initial pricing is the best bang for the buck for the first years or months.  
  • Renewal rates: However, renewal pricing isn’t always what you pay initially when the contract expires, so it’s essential to know how much more you’ll pay afterward. 
  • User experience: It’s critical, especially for first-time users, to have a user-friendly and clean customer interface to navigate and find the tools you need by yourself easily.   
  • Performance: Affordable prices don’t always mean good website performance, so we also looked into what a web hosting service provider can do for its entry-level users when it comes to overall performance.
  • Customer service: Similar to the UX, beginners need fast, responsive, and effective customer support whenever they need it.

What Else You Need to Know About Affordable Web Hosts

There are some common features a good and affordable web hosting service should provide to its users. Security features and a user-friendly control panel are as important as pricing and performance. But not everyone is familiar with some technical expressions, names and features – these are some other things you should know about affordable web hosting providers before you choose the best option for your business.  

What is a CDN?

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network and it refers to a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to accelerate content delivery on the internet.

Why You Need an SSL Certificate

An SSL Certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and is used to secure and encrypt sensitive information like credit cards, usernames, passwords, and other private data sent over the internet.

Anyone who deals with sensitive data, including people, software, and all types of devices needs to use an SSL Certificate. 

What’s the Difference Between cPanel & hPanel?

cPanel is a Linux-based control panel to help users with website and server management; it’s typically paired with WHM (Web Host Manager).

hPanel, on the other hand, is a control panel created by the web hosting company Hostinger and its team of researchers and developers, which means it is only available for Hostinger users. Oftentimes, hPanel is considered an upgraded model version of cPanel, but more intuitive and beginner-friendly. 

Shared vs VPS vs Dedicated Hosting: Which One You Should Choose

Shared hosting is the cheapest option being the perfect option for first-time users and small businesses with little to no technical expertise. Virtual Private Server (VPS) still offers a shared server space among its users but in this case, the host offers a partition for each user and dedicated server space. 

Dedicated hosting as opposed to the shared hosting option, offers complete server control and a dedicated physical server. Both VPS and dedicated hosting require higher technical expertise and are recommended for mid to larger companies with heavy traffic. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Cheap Web Hosting

We’ve listed some of the most frequently asked questions about low-cost web hosting service providers.

Bottom Line – Best Cheap Web Hosting Services

Choosing the right web hosting service provider for your small business doesn’t have to be a difficult task. However, affordable pricing doesn’t always mean the best service or high-performance, but some companies are here to prove they can still offer inexpensive plans without compromising quality.

Hostinger is the best overall web hosting provider for small businesses because it’s easy to use, works with powerful servers, and provides a high-performance website to its users, even on entry-level plans, at modest costs.

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IONOS Review: Pros, Cons, and Alternatives

IONOS is a web hosting and cloud partner focused on small and mid-size businesses. The company is the leading web hosting provider in Europe and one of the largest in the US. In this IONOS review, we cover its pros and cons, pricing, and features.

What separates IONOS from the pack is its expertise. IONOS has more than 30 years of market experience in developing a robust infrastructure. They’re experts in logging as a service (LaaS) and their portfolio of services vary from selling domains, website builders, web design services, online store builders, and web hosting. It offers affordable, relatively fast, and scalable website hosting performance.

Screenshot of IONOS website homepage
Source: IONOS

Our Verdict 

Ionos logo

IONOS

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You’ll see in this IONOS review that its web hosting services cater to three types of users: entry-level and first-time users, intermediate, tech-savvy business owners, and advanced ones. At less than $1 per month as entry pricing (in promotional pricing, it may cost $0.50) for 12 months, you can get their bestselling plan with a tier of features that fits any type of business–and scales as you grow. All plans come with a domain name included for a year, a professional email account with 2GB, free Wildcard SSL, and Site Scan.

  • Affordability
  • Fast website performance
  • Monthly billing hosting option
  • No free website transfer
  • Limited customer support
  • Registration limited to few countries

IONOS at a Glance

Most IONOS services are straightforward–you know what you’ll get for the service you’re signing up for. The web hosting plans are no different. The pricing structure is easy to understand, and the company displays a table comparing all hosting services on the hosting page. But if you still are not sure, you can visit its dedicated web hosting landing page.

The Essential plan, the entry-level web hosting package, is slightly more expensive than the Business plan, but only for first-time users. The Business plan starts at $0.50 for 12 months at its promotional pricing, while the Essential costs $4 per month for the same period. You’ll have to pay in full, annually, and IONOS will inform you about the basic contract terms such as renewal rate and total amount at the checkout page after three steps. 

The company advertises itself as “blazing fast hosting” and the fastest in the US. However, many users have reported that IONOS page loading speed can be slower than some of its competitors. Hostinger, for instance, has an average load speed of 143 milliseconds, while IONOS delivered 898 milliseconds on average in 2021. But this isn’t bad news for companies with less traffic. 

There is a bit of transparency when it comes to IONOS’s pricing. Prices and plans are straightforward–it guarantees a refund in the first 30 days, and cancellation is online or through the phone. 

Speaking of customer support, IONOS falls short in this aspect. Despite advertising 24/7 customer support, the live chat is only available for customers. Non-registered users can only contact the customer service team through phone or email. 

Who IONOS is Best For 

IONOS focuses on small to mid-size organizations. However, the company also provides web hosting services for scalable businesses and complex, mid to large companies. 

Pricing 

Screenshot of Ionos pricing page
Source: IONOS

IONOS’s plans start at $0.50 (promotional pricing) for the shared hosting 12-month Business plan. The goal is obviously to get you to sign up for a plan that has more features, but also renews at a higher rate than the lowest-priced plan.

Essential: Pricing starts at $4 per month for 12 months, then it renews at $6 monthly

Business: Starts at $0.50 per month for 12 months, then it renews at $10 monthly

Expert: Starts at $8 per month, for 12 months, then it renews at $16 monthly

For WordPress users, IONOS offers a dedicated hosting plan. Pricing ranges are similar to shared hosting plan tiers. The storage capacity is slightly lower than in shared packages (25 to 200GB versus 50 to 500GB); however, the WP storage type is SSD. PHP and RAM in WP packages come with more storage.  

Here’s a comparison between the three shared hosting plans offered by IONOS.

Ionos logo

Plans

Essential

Business

Expert

Price

Starts at $4/month for 12 months

Starts at $0.50/month for 12 months

Starts at $8/month for 12 months

Unlimited storage

Unlimited website

Professional email included

Domain for a year

CDN

SSL Certificate

Unlimited traffic

30-day money-back guarantee

Above, we’ve listed the main features you should consider when choosing the right web hosting  plan for your business. The best one depends on your needs and priorities. However, things like storage type and space, website capacity, security badges, traffic capacity and guaranteed refunds are essential for all types of business. 

IONOS Features

There is a broad range of features, and looking at all of them may be confusing, especially if you’re not familiar with some technical names and acronyms. In this IONOS review, we’ve analyzed and listed the main features to look for.

Storage

Even if this is the first time you’re building a website and most likely won’t need to upload heavy files at first, over time, you’ll need to grow your database, so you should consider larger data storage limits. 

IONOS offers unlimited storage for the Business and Expert plans and 10GB for the Essential plan in the entry-level plans. Shared web hosting plans use HDD storage, while WordPress packages offer SSD, which are faster in reading data than the traditional HDD. 

The Business plan provides the best bang for the buck–it’s the most affordable and has unlimited storage. 

Domain and Email

IONOS offers two of the main features in the web hosting realm: free domain name and free email for all of its plans. A domain name is free for one year with Essential, Business, and Expert shared hosting packages. 

You’ll also get a professional email account with a 2GB mailbox in addition to already included storage. The email comes with state-of-the-art anti-spam protection.

Control Panel 

Screenshot of Ionos control panel
Source: IONOS

One of the most important features for beginners is how beginner-friendly a web hosting interface could be. We considered how quickly you can access it and how easy it is to use. IONOS has developed its own control panel and made its user’s navigation more effortless. 

Unlike the standard (and confusing) cPanel most web hosts offer, this control panel is intuitive. You can easily find all the tools you need: website design, security solutions, email access, and domain management.

Security

IONOS takes its users’ security very seriously. Besides the standard SSL certificate most web hosting sites provide, IONOS takes it a step further to make its customers feel safe. The company offers HTTP/2, PHP 8.1, a Wildcard SSL certificate, DDoS protection, and geo-redundancy included in all packages.

Speed

Low speed doesn’t only annoy customers, but it compromises SEO scores. Despite a good overall performance, IONOS still falls short on page loading speed. The company delivered an average page loading speed of 776 milliseconds in 2022. 

Screenshot of IONOS website setup page
Source: IONOS

Customer Support

Screenshot of IONOS customer support page
Source: IONOS

In case you run into a problem, having responsive and quick problem solving customer support is crucial to resolving the issue as soon as possible. We found IONOS customer support limited. Despite the 24/7 availability, the live chat support is restricted to registered users only. Non-registered user support is available only via phone or customer support page. 

Alternatives to IONOS

If you’ve finished reading this IONOS review and you’re still not sure whether it’s the right web host for you, there may be a better fit for you elsewhere. Most web host providers offer similar pricing tiers and functionalities, but they may vary in features, performance, interface, and support. Some examples include:

Hostinger logo

Hostinger

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Hostinger is perfomance-focused and it offers one of the fastest page load speed on the market and it’s the best bang for the buck for small business. The company offers relatively low-cost pricing for premium services—plans starting at $1.99 per month. 

Hostinger uses LiteSpeed servers for all of its plans, which provides a great response time over regular servers, Google Cloud as part of its infrastructure, and uses SSD storage. It also offers quite intutive and easy to use control panel (hPanel) for everyone—from beginners to experts. However, just like IONOS, Hostinger’s customer support could be better. 

Pricing: Starts at $1.99/month

  • Performance-driven 
  • Affordable
  • Beginner-friendly
  • No free daily backup
  • Customer support could be better
Bluehost logo

Bluehost

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Bluehost’s websites can handle stress quite well without compromising stability or speed, especially for website with low traffic. But, if compared to its competitors, the company works with slower servers—that means your website will load a bit slower. Pricing might be confusing, though. The plans are actually yearly (available for one year, two, or three years) and you’ll need to pay the total amount upfront.

Other than that, Bluehost is beginner-friendly, and it offers efficient customer service – the support offers three 24/7 live chat lines, email and phone support. Read the Bluehost review to learn more about its features.

Pricing: Start at $2.95/month

  • Beginner-friendly
  • Efficient customer support
  • Featured-focused
  • Pricing is confusing
  • Slower servers if compared with its main competitors
iPage logo

iPage

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iPage offers a single and straightforward plan for all its users with many unlimited free features such as unlimited storage, unlimited websites, and a free domain for a year. Pricing is affordable and since it offers a single plan, it’s considered a great option for freelancers, bloggers, and small business owners who need plenty of storage and don’t have much budget to invest in web hosting.

If you plan to turn your website into an online store, iPage allows you to shift it into an ecommerce shop too and this functionality is free of charge. 

Pricing: Starts at $1.99 per month

  • One straight to the point single plan
  • Many unlimited features
  • Free online store
  • Lack of variety in plans
  • No cloud-based hosting options
Namecheap logo

Namecheap

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Namecheap offers affordable plans with minimal renewal rates, and it’s user-friendly. You get a free domain name and the ability to host three websites in the low-entry level plan with as little as $1.58 monthly. The downside, however, is that Namecheap’s servers aren’t nearly as fast as its competitors. Also, customer support is limited – the company offers 24/7 live chat only but no phone support.

Pricing: Starts at $1.58/month

  • Most affordable 
  • Three websites and free domain in the cheapest shared hosting tier
  • Website builder tools
  • Poor performance
  • Customer support is limited

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for IONOS Review

We’ve listed the most asked questions about IONOS.

Bottom Line on IONOS Review 

IONOS offers affordable web hosting plans that include helpful features for small businesses, such as unlimited storage in most plans, professional email included, and free website domain for a year. But, the downsides are customer support isn’t the best compared with some competitors, and website transfer is paid.

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Best 5 ADP Payroll Alternatives – 2023

Payroll documents on the desk

Running payroll might look simple, but it’s considered one of an organization’s most complex administrative functions. Using the right payroll software can streamline the whole accounting process. ADP is a popular payroll solution, but there may be an ADP payroll alternative that better suits your company. 

ADP has a strong history of providing solutions for human resource challenges by offering HR and payroll software and services for decades. The company has been on the market for over 70 years, and it’s one of the most popular options for payroll services for small organizations. However, the market isn’t the same, and other companies are here to prove they can do as great a job as ADP.

Best ADP Alternatives 

Product

Pricing

Ease of Use

Tax Filing & Payments

Mobile-friendly

HR Management & Features

Integrations

Gusto logo

Gusto

Starts at $39 per month, plus $6 per month per person + free trial for small business

Excellent user experience

Included in all plan tiers, calculated and paid automatically; no multiple state filing fees

Good. No mobile app but the website is responsive

Excellent. It includes many features and employee benefits

Great. It integrates with any third-party software

Paychex logo

Paychex Flex

Starts at $39 per month, plus $5 per employee, per month

Easy to use, solid UI but inferior to most competitors

Great. The only payroll software allows users to custom fields and stay ahead of extra payments

Good, however, it has some interface issues

HR and benefits admin features are excellent. Benefits managements portal available

Integrations are limited and it can be cumbersome

QuickBooks payroll logo

Quickbooks

Starts at $45 per month plus $4 per employee per month and up + free trial for 30 days

User-friendly and intuitive interface

Included in all plan tiers, calculated and paid automatically

Good. Mobile app missing some desktop features

Limited HR features for numerous employees

Limited integrations without QuickBooks Online

Onpay logo

OnPay

Starts at $36 per month plus $4 per month per person + free month trial

Easy set-up and good UX but not as intuitive as others

Includes all tax filings & risk-free payroll compliance

Good. No mobile app but the website is responsive

Excellent. Includes employee self-onboarding and automated employee management

Limited if compared to competitors

Rippling logo

Rippling

Starts at $35 per month, plus $5 per employee, per month

Excellent. Intuitive interface

Tax filing & payment automated

Excellent. App available for Android and iOS and lets you run payroll from your mobile device

Dedicated HR & IT services and functionalities

Great. Integrates IT, HR, finance and other third-party software

Gusto logo

Gusto: Best Overall Alternative to ADP

Pricing: Starts at $39 per month, plus $6 per month per person + free trial for small businesses.

4.8

★★★★★

Visit

Gusto is the best overall alternative to ADP, particularly for small businesses. Gusto offers excellent UX, easy payroll processing, and benefits for numerous employees. It’s quick to set up and run, and it’s mobile-friendly. 

It seems that Gusto understood the problems business owners were having when running their payrolls, such as inaccurate payments, staying in the loop with payroll laws, hiring, and data management reports, and decided to solve all of them. Gusto’s all-in-one HR platform solves those issues with tools you need to hire, pay, and manage your team at your fingertips – automated time tools, management onboarding, employees’ performance tools, compliance checklists, law, and regulation alerts.

Gusto’s integrated, easy-to-use system that offers an intuitive navigation system and interface, pleasant design, and plenty of support options. The company has worked over the years to improve the system, adding new features to some areas such as hiring and onboarding, payroll run, and employee paycheck management.

If you run a small company and this is your first time dealing with payroll management systems, Gusto is a good choice due to its smart all-in-one platform that grants small companies everything they need to run and manage their business – from hiring to onboarding to payroll.

When you compare Gusto vs ADP, you’ll see Gusto offers the best bang for the buck with guided payroll set-up, additional HR features included (even in the lowest tier plan), and automatically generated 1099s for contractors at no extra cost.

Why we chose it: Gusto is an all-in-one HR platform that offers outstanding customer support and various features for different business needs. You’ll get auto payroll tools, direct deposits, tax filings, onboarding management, and unlimited payroll runs at no extra cost.

  • No extra cost for running multiple payrolls
  • Excellent customer service 
  • Quick and easy setup
  • No international payroll 
  • No household employee expenses
  • No mobile payroll app

Pricing: Gusto offers four different plans: Core, Complete, Concierge, and Select

Gusto Core: Starts at $39 per month, plus $6 per employee, per month. What’s included:

  • Full-service payroll including W-2s and 1099s with digital copies for employees and contractors
  • Unlimited payrolls without extra costs
  • Accounting and time-tracking integrations
  • Employee health and financial benefits as well as onboarding and hiring tools
  • Integrations for accounting, time tracking, and more

Gusto Complete: Starts at $39 per month, plus $12 per employee, per month. What’s included:

  • All Gusto Core features
  • PTO management
  • Next-day direct deposit
  • Project tracking and workforce cost reports
  • Team management tools
  • Performance reviews and employee survey

Gusto Concierge: Starts at $149 per month, plus $12 per employee, per month. What’s included:

  • All Gusto Complete features
  • HR resource center
  • Compliance alerts
  • Certified HR pros
  • Dedicated support team

Gusto Select: No monthly based price (contact sales rep for pricing). What’s included:

  • All Gusto Concierge features
  • Full-service payroll migration
  • Health insurance broker integration
  • Direct access to a dedicated customer success manager
  • Waived fees and exclusive pricing
Paychex logo

Paychex Flex: Best for Mid-to-Large Businesses 

Pricing: Starts at $39 per month, plus $5 per employee, per month

4.0

★★★★★

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Paychex Flex has been on the payroll market for decades, similar to ADP. Paychex Flex is the best fit for mid-to-large companies or fast-growing businesses, because it’s robust, scalable, and it has a high level of customization – though they also provide services to small-size firms. 

The dashboard is easy to use and navigate, with a customizable interface, and pretty clean. Paychex Flex offers a variety of price points, plans, and additional services such as HR consulting to guide pressing and timely HR issues, compliance services, customizable reports, and e-learning services to employees. Employees can have access to their pay stubs and tax documentation on the software’s dashboard.

The downside of Paychex Flex is that pricing isn’t really transparent, so you might get surprised with extra fees if you run a biweekly payroll schedule, or when you issue W-2 forms and 1099 filing. 

Why we chose it: The well-established company offers a number of helpful features and customizable services essential for growing businesses while combining digital and human-based services. Read the Paychex flex review if this software sounds like the best fit for your business.

  • A mix of automated and human-powered solutions
  • High level of customization and extra features
  • Established in 1971 – Market experience
  • Charge per payroll period 
  • Pricing isn’t really clear 
  • Lowest-tier plan limits features

Pricing: Paychex Flex offers three plans: Essential, Select, and Pro. 

Paychex Flex Essential: Starts at $39 per month, plus $5 per employee, per month. What’s included:

  • Payroll taxes are calculated, paid, and filed
  • Free integration with employee’s compensation insurance
  • Payment can be done via check, deposit, or prepaid paycard
  • Employees have access to the payroll dashboard
  • Import timesheet data from Paychex Flex Time
  • Mostly recommended for companies with 1-9 employees

Paychex Flex Select: Custom Pricing. What’s included:

  • All features from Essential plan
  • Payroll specialist
  • Submit payroll on the go – mobile app for both employer and employees
  • Offers a range of standard reports, including new hire reporting and general ledger report
  • Employee training, and financial wellness program

Paychex Flex Pro: Custom Pricing. What’s included:

  • All Select features
  • Automatic deduction and emit garnishment wages
  • Creation of customized reports and data visualization 
  • Paycheck integration and HR services, and employee handbook
QuickBooks payroll logo

Quickbooks: Best ADP Alternative for Self-Employed

Pricing: Starts at $45 per month plus $4 per employee per month and up.

4.0

★★★★★

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Intuit Quickbooks offers a plan tailored to independent contractors, freelancers, and sole proprietors. It combines accounting and payroll to simplify your finances. However, it also works perfectly well as a stand-alone tool. 

When it comes to features, Quickbooks is quite similar to most payroll software – it also offers payroll tax calculation, time-tracking, and expert support. Quickbooks often runs promotions, so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on its prices. If you want to give Quickbooks a try, it offers a 30-day free trial. 

Besides the native integration with Quickbooks’ accounting system, another highlight worth mentioning about Quickbooks’ payroll system is the tax penalty protection. This means if you get fined by the IRS for any reason, Quickbooks will cover the cost of your penalty until a certain amount; besides, the Tax Resolution team will help you make sure mistakes won’t happen again. The user experience is smooth as most of the data and tools you need are found in the dashboard. 

Why we chose it: For smaller businesses or self-employed people, Quickbooks offers an intuitive interface, accuracy guarantee in the Elite plan, and next-day direct deposit in the lowest-tier plan.

  • Supports projects, payroll, and many add-ons and integrations
  • Special service tailored to freelancers and self-employed people
  • Tax penalty protection and Tax Resolution team support
  • More expensive when compared to others
  • Some features are available only on higher-tier plans
  • Limited integration

Pricing: Quickbooks offers three plans: Core, Premium and Elite. 

Quickbooks Core: Pricing starts at $45 per month plus $4 per employee monthly. What’s included:

  • Full-service payroll including automated taxes and forms
  • Automatic payroll
  • Option to offer 401(k) plans and employee health benefits
  • Next-day direct deposit
  • Unlimited 1099 e-filing

Quickbooks Premium. $75 per month plus $8 per employee per month. What’s included:

  • Same-day direct deposit
  • HR customer support
  • Workers’ compensation administration
  • Tax penalty protection and Tax Resolution team support
  • Mobile time tracking

Quickbooks Elite. $125 per month plus $10 per employee per month. What’s included:

  • Pay out-of-state employees with no extra cost
  • QuickBooks Payroll provides an expert to set up the software for you
  • Personal HR advisor
  • Call back support
  • Tax penalty protection up to $25,000 per year
Onpay logo

OnPay: Best Alternative to ADP for Usability

Pricing:  $36 per month plus $4 per person per month

4.6

★★★★★

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Two main advantages to choosing OnPay are running unlimited payroll without paying any extra fee, not even for corrections or cancelations, and its flat-rate pricing of $36 per month plus $4 per person monthly. That means no hidden costs for extra features. 

OnPay has integration with other platforms too – you can sync up with other software like time tracking, 401(k), and retirement software you might already be using to run your business. The downside is that OnPay doesn’t offer an auto-payroll option, which means you’ll have to do it manually every payday. This could become time-consuming if you have a large team for which you need to run payroll. 

Why we chose it: OnPay makes running payroll an easy task – from an effortless setup to a fully automated payroll process, including taxes. It is also one of the most affordable payroll software on the list. Read our review on OnPay for more details on its pricing and features.

  • Affordable 
  • Run unlimited payrolls with no extra fee
  • Transparent pricing
  • No auto-payroll option
  • Limited integration
  • Mobile version missing some functions

Pricing: OnPay offers flat pricing of $36 monthly plus $4 per person per month. What’s included:

  • Unlimited monthly pay runs
  • All tax filings and payments
  • W-2 and 1099 workers
  • Pay by direct deposit, debit card, or check
  • Multiple pay rates and schedules
  • Garnishments
  • Unemployment insurance withholding
  • Report designer with custom reporting
  • Accounting and time tracking integrations
  • Multi-state payroll
  • Available in all 50 states
Rippling logo

Rippling: Best ADP Payroll Alternative for Customization

Pricing: Starts at $35 per month, plus $5 per employee, per month

4.8

★★★★★

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Advertised as a tool to magically simplify IT and HR, Rippling is considered one of the best alternatives to ADP due to its affordability, good setup tools, in-depth reports, and customization. Despite being relatively affordable for small businesses, the software can be quite complex and overwhelming for first-time users. So, it’s recommended for those already used to running their payroll using a platform but wish to get an upgrade.

If you’re an advanced user and are looking to migrate to a more robust system, Rippling lets you import your employee’s data from your current payroll website – no competitor from this list offers this feature. Also, Rippling’s dashboard is so intuitive and simplified that it looks like an app menu from a mobile device. 

Rippling is an excellent unified platform for companies of any size but is not a good choice for micro-sized businesses. This software comes with several admin benefits – Rippling easily integrates HR, finance, and IT, all in one place; but it also lets you integrate any third-party software you might be using. It generates various in-depth reports and is effortlessly customizable with an intuitive interface. 

Why we chose it: Affordable for small businesses offering midrange payroll features – Rippling is a robust payroll software with an exceptional dashboard, detailed set-up, and unified analytics.

  • Superior user interface
  • Pay international employees and contractors without hustle
  • Smooth transition from another payroll provider
  • It can be pretty complex for small businesses
  • Mixed reviews about customer support

Pricing: Rippling pricing works differently from its competitors. It generally starts at $35 per month plus $8 per employee per month for payroll services, but each module costs extra. 

  • Core Rippling Unity platform: $10 per employee monthly ($8 per employee if billed annually).
  • Full-service payroll: $8 per employee/ month
  • Employee benefits: $6 per employee/ month
  • Flex HSA/FSA and commuter benefits: $6 per employee/ month
  • HR help desk: $100/ month
  • App management: $8 per employee/ month
  • Device management: $8 per employee/ month

Methodology for the Best ADP Payroll Alternatives

We know how overwhelming payroll can be, especially for small business owners who are new to it. It takes a lot of time, effort, specific knowledge, and accounting skills to do it right. But with the right tool, running payroll doesn’t have to be a chore.

Choosing the right payroll system can make or break success. Therefore, we’ve used the following criteria to choose the best options for you – we considered pricing, ease of use, and features of these alternatives to ADP. We gave more weight to those that offer affordable plans but room for growth. 

  • Pricing: We’ve evaluated the cost of the main payroll platform for small businesses and what is the best bang for the buck for small companies. 
  • Ease of use: We’ve analyzed how user-friendly, intuitive, and automated software can be, granting your business bandwidth to handle payroll. 
  • Management and features: Employee management can be daunting, particularly for remote workers and independent contractors. Having the right features and management tools working in your favor can save you time and money.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for ADP Alternatives

We’ve listed some of the most common questions about payroll and about ADP payroll alternatives here.

Bottom Line on ADP Alternatives

When comparing ADP with all the alternatives listed here, there are several factors to consider. Most payroll systems reviewed here offer similar options and are functional; before you choose which one is the best fit for your business, it’s important to consider your business needs. Gusto tops our list of the best alternatives to ADP, as it offers exceptional features, such as easy setup, excellent customer interface, unlimited payroll, and numerous innovative tools.

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5 Best Web Hosting Sites in 2023

Illustration on how the best web hosting sites work

The best web hosting site offers quick loading speeds, affordable hosting plans, and SSD storage for your site. Hostinger is the best overall web host provider on our list, but there are others we suggest for tight budgets, beginners, or advanced users. 

Best Web Hosting Site

Product

Performance

Customer Support

Pricing

Storage

Hosting Plans

Hostinger logo

Hostinger

Hostinger is performance-focused and it uses LiteSpeed servers

Only live chat and email support

Starts at $1.99/month

From 30GB SSD Storage to up to 300GB SSD on cloud hosting

Shared, cloud, and VPS plans

Bluehost logo

Bluehost

Slower servers if compared to its competitors

Three 24/7 live chat lines, email and phone support

Start at $2.95/month

Starts at 50GB SSD storage to up to 120GB

Shared, dedicated, and VPS plans

Namecheap logo

Namecheap

Poor performance

24/7 live chat with no phone support

Starts at $1.58/month

Starts at 20GB SSD to 120GB SSD

Shared, WordPress, reseller, and VPS plans

HostGator logo

Hostgator

Overall stable hosting experience and a fast server

Phone and live chat, 24/7

Starts at $2.75/month

It can go up to 240GB SSD

Shared, dedicated, reseller, and VPS plans

Ionos logo

Ionos

Average website load speed is lower

Dedicated customer service page, 24/7 phone support, and live chat

Starts at $4/month

Starts at 10GB and it can go up to 240GB

Shared, dedicated, and VPS plans

Hostinger logo

Hostinger: Best Overall Web Hosting Site 

Pricing: Starts at $1.99/month

4.9

★★★★★

Visit

Cheap doesn’t always mean good but Hostinger is here to prove otherwise. Hostinger is the best bang for the buck for web hosting services for small businesses. The company offers relatively low-cost pricing for premium services—plans starting at $1.99 per month. Plus, this web host service provider invests heavily in innovation, performance, and UX. 

Pricing isn’t the only reason we consider Hostinger the best web hosting site. It’s also one of the fastest web hosts out there, with an average page load speed of 143 milliseconds—the cheapest plan can load in under one second. The company is performance-focused: It uses LiteSpeed servers for all of its plans, which provides a great response time over regular servers, Google Cloud as part of its infrastructure, and uses SSD storage. On average, Hostinger offers the fastest performance among its competitors. 

The performance-driven approach goes into user experience too. The control panel (hPanel) is intuitive and easy to navigate for everyone—from beginners to experts. It displays the most needed features like file and database management, email accounts, mail server control, and domain access. The company offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee; however, the shared plan isn’t reliable enough to handle many users simultaneously, which might compromise the website load speed.

Customer support, however, could be better. Hostinger offers only live chat and email support, which means no free phone support unless you pay $2 per month extra. Tech-savvy users who don’t need much support can resort to their customer support page with guides and articles. 

Another one of Hostinger’s hang-ups is that it doesn’t offer free daily backup—a standard procedure among its competitors. The option is only available in the business plan. 

Why we chose it: Hostinger uses fast servers, the control panel is intuitive and beginner-friendly, and the base plan is affordable. Read our full Hostinger review to learn more about its services.

  • Performance-driven 
  • Affordable
  • Beginner-friendly
  • No free daily backup
  • Customer support could be better

Pricing: Starts at $1.99/month 

Shared hosting plans: Single costs $1.99/month and can go up to $4.99/month for the business plan. All storage is SSD (starting with 30GB), a bandwidth of 100GB for single plan and it turns to unlimited above that, free SSL certificates for all plans, one email account for single, 100 for business and premium, multiple PHP versions and PHP configuration for all plans.

Cloud hosting plans: Recommended for small to mid-size enterprises. Prices start at $9.99 monthly and go up to $69.99 to the most premium tier. You can host 300 websites in all plans, memory RAM of 3GB for startup plan, up to 12GB for enterprise plan, SSD storage starting at 200 GB, bandwidth unlimited for all, as well as free dedicated IP, free domain registration, free SSL certificate, 100 email accounts and 1-click app installer. 

VPS Hosting: Offers eight different plans, starting at $3.95/month. The CPU power starts at 1 core to VPS 1 plan and goes to 8 cores above VPS 6 plan, memory RAM starts at 1GB and up until 16 GB in the highest plan, SSD storage starts at 20 GB, bandwidth at 1TB. They all offer dedicated IP, full root access, 100 Mb/s Network, IPV4 & IPV6 support, and 24/7/365 support included.

Bluehost logo

Bluehost: Best Web Hosting Site for Beginners

Pricing: Start at $2.95/month

4.5

★★★★★

Visit

Bluehost is a website host that belongs to EIG Group, the same group that owns Hostgator and many other web hosts. The difference between Bluehost and its counterpart is that Bluehost is feature-focused and offers every tool a first-time user needs to build their first website from scratch.

Creating websites with Bluehost website builder is pretty straightforward and you can create one ready to run in just 15 minutes if using a WordPress website (the WP feature is free). However, the downside is that Bluehost works with slower servers if compared to its competitors—that means your website will load a bit slower. But that doesn’t mean a bad thing because if you’re a beginner and don’t have many visitors, this shouldn’t compromise your website’s performance that much. Furthermore, Bluehost’s websites can handle stress quite well without compromising stability or speed. 

Bluehost also offers a free staging tool, which allows you to create a copy of your website to make changes on the copy while the original site is live and won’t be affected. Users won’t come across any error messages or instability. Despite that, migration is paid if you need to migrate to another plan. 

When it comes to pricing, Bluehost’s plans aren’t actually paid monthly, even though the company advertises as such. The plans are actually yearly (available for one year, two, or three years) and you’ll need to pay the total amount upfront. The longer the period, the lower the monthly cost will be. 

Customer support is essential, especially for beginners, and Bluehost does not disappoint its users. The support offers three 24/7 live chat lines, email and phone support. 

Why we chose it: Bluehost is one of the best web hosting sites because it provides fast and efficient 24/7 customer service, all its plans come with plenty of freebies and extra features, and it’s user-friendly, especially for first-time users. Read the Bluehost review to learn more about its features and pricing.

  • Beginner-friendly
  • Freebies and extra features in all plans
  • Free staging tool
  • Pricing is confusing
  • Paid migration

Pricing: Bluehost offers three different plans: Shared hosting, VPS and dedicated hosting.

Shared hosting: Starts at $2.95/month, and it’s divided into four sub plans, Basic, Plus, Choice Plus and Pro. Basic comes with one WordPress website install while others are unlimited, with 50 GB SSD storage for Basic, and unlimited SSD storage as of Plus, custom themes for all plans, as well as free WordPress integration, free domain for one year, drag-and-drop functionality, free CDN included, and free SSL Certificate. Learn more on how to register a domain name here.

Dedicated Hosting: It comes with three options, Standard, Enhanced, and Premium. Pricing starts at $79.99 per month and can go up to $119.90 for the Premium plan. The top features are CPU—2.3GHz in Basic, CPU—2.5GHz in Enhanced and CPU—3.3GHz in Premium. CPU 4 Cores for all three plans, as well as one free domain. Memory RAM starting at 4GB, network bandwidth at 5TB, and three dedicated IPs. All plans use cPanel as the control panel & WHM with Root.

VPS Hosting: It comes with three options, Standard, Enhanced, and Ultimate. The top features are: storage starts at 30GB SSD Storage in Basic and can go up to 120GB with Ultimate package, memory starts at 2GB RAM, bandwidth of 1TB, and one IP Address. All plans use cPanel as the control panel & WHM with Root.

Namecheap logo

Namecheap: Best for Affordability

Pricing: Starts at $1.58/month

4.0

★★★★★

Visit

Namecheap is mostly known for selling domain names, but now it offers web hosting services. The company can say it lives up to its name as it provides the most affordable web hosting service on the list—pricing starts at $1.58 per month for up to three websites and a free domain. Also, there’s a minimal increase in renewal prices, which is just twice as high as the original price. 

The downside, however, is that Namecheap’s servers aren’t nearly as fast as its competitors. Despite the company guaranteeing 100% uptime, this isn’t always the case, according to users. In fact, users reported that this number could go way lower than the industry standard of 99.99% uptime. 

Namecheap offers a website builder tool with drag-and-drop capabilities which makes things easier for those building a website from scratch and on their own. The shared hosting plan doesn’t support more than 100GB of file upload, so if you need to upload several high-quality photos and videos, you might as well choose another host such as Hostinger, which is performance-focused. The customer support is 24/7 live chat with no phone support. 

Why we chose it: Namecheap, as the name suggests, is the most affordable option, with pricing starting at $1.88 per month for up to three websites and a free domain. To learn more, read our complete Namecheap review for an in-depth look.

  • Most affordable 
  • Three websites and free domain in the cheapest shared hosting tier
  • Website builder tools
  • Poor performance
  • Customer support is limited

Pricing: Namecheap offers four types of hosting plans: Shared hosting, WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, and VPS hosting.

Shared hosting: This plan offers three sub plans: Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar Business. Stellar comes with a free domain name and three websites included, while Stellar Plus and Stellar Business have unlimited websites. Storage at Stellar starts at 20GB SSD and all three plans come with free CDN.

WordPress hosting: WP hosting has three options: Easy WP Starter, Easy WP Turbo, and Easy WP Supersonic. Pricing starts at $24.88 per month and goes up to $54.88 monthly in the highest tier. Storage is SSD and starts at 10GB and Easy WP Starter supports 50,000 visitors per month while WP Turbo 200,000 visitors and Supersonic 500,000. The second and third tier come with free SSL and free CDN.

Reseller hosting: Three tiers are available: Nebula, Galaxy Expert, and Universe Pro. Nebula costs $19.98 per month, Galaxy Expert $39.98 monthly, and Universo Pro costs $58.88 monthly. The starting plan offers 25 cPanel accounts and 30GB SSD of storage but the number of accounts can go up to 150 in the most expensive plan. All plans include unmetered bandwidth, free cPanel/WHM, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

VPS hosting: VPS hosting offers two options: Pulsar and Quasar. Pulsar is $9.98 monthly with 2 CPU Cores, 2GB RAM of memory, 40GB SSD, RAID 10, and 1TB Bandwidth. Quasar costs $17.88 and it comes with 4 CPU Cores, 6GB RAM, 120GB SSD, RAID 10, and 3TB Bandwidth. Both plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee and full root access.

HostGator logo

Hostgator: Best Web Hosting Site for Advanced Users

Pricing: Starts at $2.75/month

4.4

★★★★★

Visit

Hostgator is one of the most known website hosts out there. The company has been around for 20 years, and it offers different types of hosting services to website builders. Hostgator offers an overall stable hosting experience and a fast server when it comes to performance. The average full-page loading speed is around 2.5 seconds, which is considered good. Both uptime and downtime are generally pretty reliable—the company has a 99.99% uptime guarantee. 

Despite being a good option for beginners, Hostgator is the best choice for advanced users as its customer support is designed for experienced DIY customers, offering video tutorials, guides and articles, apart from email, phone, and live chat, 24/7.

Another aspect that makes Hostgator best for tech-heavy businesses is that Hostgator’s control panel is the popular cPanel. cPanel looks confusing and might be hard to navigate for first-time users. HostGator also offers more introductory-level hosting options, similar to other providers in terms of pricing and services.

Why we chose it: HostGator has 20 years of market experience and it offers good website performance, a dedicated server for tech-heavy business, and helpful 24/7 customer service. Read our full HostGator review for an in-depth look.

  • Great customer support
  • 99.99% uptime guarantee
  • 20 years of market experience
  • Control panel is confusing
  • Free security tools are limited

Pricing: HostGator offers four types of hosting plans. Shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS and reseller. 

Shared hosting: The shared hosting option has three sub plans: Hatching Plan, Baby Plan, and Business Plan. Pricing starts at $2.75 monthly and all plans offer pretty much the same features: One-click WordPress installs, free WordPress/cPanel website transfer, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certificate, and free domain. The difference is that the Hatching plan comes with a single website, whereas the other two are unlimited. 

Dedicated hosting: This plan also comes with three options: Value Server, Power Server, and Enterprise Server. They all include unmetered bandwidth, HDD or SDD hard drives and memory starts at 8GB RAM. Starting price is $89.98 per month and costs can go up to $139.99 monthly in the Enterprise Server tier. 

VPS hosting: This plan also comes with three options: Snappy 2000, Snappy 4000, and Snappy 8000. Memory starts at 2GB RAM for Snappy 2000, 2 core CPU, and storage of 120GB SSD, and it can get to 240GB SSD in Snappy 8000. All plans have unmetered bandwidth. Pricing starts at $23.95 per month.

Reseller hosting: Three sub plans available: Aluminum Plan, Copper Plan, and Silver Plan. The cost for the cheaper option is $19.95/month and it has 60GB disk space and 600GB bandwidth. All three tiers include unlimited websites and a free SSL certificate.

Ionos logo

Ionos: Best Web Hosting Site for Customer Support 

Pricing: Starts at $4/month

4.5

★★★★★

Visit

Suitable for small businesses and enterprise-class customers, Ionos offers all available hosting options for reasonable pricing. What separates Ionos from the pack is its outstanding customer support. Its dedicated customer service page has a 24/7 phone support line, online chat with fast response, and a help center. 

Ionos’ performance is good but not excellent. The average website load speed is lower if compared with higher performance web hosting such as Hostinger at 797 millisecond versus 143 milliseconds.

The website builder is intuitive and easy for first-time users with drag-and-drop options and manual entries. The company offers a free domain for a year for the cheapest tier as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee and unlimited storage. 

The downside of Ionos, however, is that pricing isn’t transparent. Pricing starts at $4 (sometimes it can go down to $0.50 per month), but it goes over $10 monthly when renewed. 

Why we chose it: Ionos offers fast and efficient customer support, free domain for a year, and intuitive website builder tools. Read the Ionos review to learn more about its pricing and features.

  • Easy website builder option
  • Free domain 
  • Excellent customer support
  • Average speed lower if compared to its competitors
  • No free website transfer
  • Pricing isn’t transparent

Pricing: Ionos offers three main types of hosting plans: shared hosting, dedicated hosting and VPS.

Shared hosting: There are three options within shared hosting: Essential, Business, and Expert.  The Essential plan starts at $4 per month and prices can go up to $16 monthly for the Expert tier. Essential plan is good for one website, while others for unlimited websites. Storage starts at 10GB and all plans include professional email and domain for a year. 

Dedicated hosting: Four options for dedicated hosting: A8i SSD, L-16 SSD, XL-32 SSD, and XL-64 SSD. The entry-level plan starts at $5/month for 6 months, then goes to $65/month. All plans offer unlimited traffic capabilities, site scans, and a free domain. 

VPS hosting: VPS hosting sub plans are four: VPS S, VPS M, VPS L, and VPS XL. VPS S starts at $2 monthly, with 512 MB RAM, and storage of 10GB SSD. They come with dedicated resources and unlimited traffic.

Methodology for the Best Web Hosting Sites

To help you choose the best web hosting site for your small business, we’ve used five different criteria:

  • Performance: Average website load speed, uptime, downtime, stress, and overall website performance.   
  • Customer Support: It’s essential, especially for beginners, to have responsive and efficient customer support in many forms, such as phone support, live chat, and email. 
  • Pricing: Depending on the web hosting type, pricing can vary. Cheap web hosting providers aren’t always the best, or they may offer slower performance.   
  • Storage: Whether you’re a freelancer or run an ecommerce shop, it’s crucial to know how much room you’ll have to upload important files, videos, and images.
  • Hosting plans: All companies we’ve analyzed offer entry-level plans but vary in features, capabilities, and pricing. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Best Web Hosting Sites

We’ve listed some of the most common questions about web hosting alternatives here. 

Bottom Line on the Best Web Hosting Sites

Choosing the best web hosting site for your website can be daunting, especially if this is your first time building your website. Hostinger is our top pick out of all the web hosting sites because it’s easy to use, it’s affordable and it provides a high performance website to its users, even on entry-level plans. 

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What is Web Hosting? A Beginner’s Guide 

Web hosting illustration

The three main components to owning a website on the internet includes web hosting, domain name, and website. If you already have a domain name or are looking to buy one, the second step is to choose a web host for your website. Learn what you need to know about hosting a website and what to consider when picking your web hosting provider. 

What is Web Hosting? 

Just like renting an apartment or a house, hosting a website means that you are renting space on a server. A web host is a service provider responsible for maintaining, securing, configuring, and running physical servers that host websites. Servers are literally physical computers that house websites. When someone accesses your URL, the server will run and transfer all data such as text, videos, audio, photos, and other files to the visitor’s browser. 

What’s the Difference Between Web Hosting & Domain?

Let’s use the same analogy of renting a house. Think of the land as the web hosting, the house you want to build as your website and the street address as your domain name. 

A domain name is your website’s address. It is what gives your website a name, an identity. Some examples of domains are Google.com, Amazon.com, BBC.uk, and ManagementHelp.org. 

Why You Need One

To run a website, you’ll need these three keys: a website, a domain address, and a web host. It is possible to self-host your own website, but that requires advanced technical skills and tools such as the right pieces of equipment, infrastructure, software, and hardware. Outsourcing this complex process to a web hosting company is the best choice, especially for beginners. 

Types of Web Hosting

Now that you know what web hosting and a domain are, the next step is to understand the different types of web hosting to choose the best option for your business. 

Many web hosts offer various hosting packages for different customers – from e-commerce to personal blog creators to enterprises. Ideally, for small businesses to get their first website up and running efficiently, we recommend starting with the simplest hosting option. Later, as your company scales and your website gathers more traffic, you can upgrade to another plan. We’ve wrapped up the main types of web hosting. 

Shared Hosting

  • Cost: $
  • Technical expertise: Low
  • Server admin: Low
  • Performance: Good
  • Best option for: Beginners, freelancers, and small businesses

As the name suggests, shared hosting is the solution in which several websites share the same server, including storage space, memory, and bandwidth. Shared hosting is the cheapest option being the perfect one for first-time users with little to no technical expertise. Small businesses and personal websites that require a more straightforward configuration and setup would do well with this option.

However, the downside is that if something happens to your “neighbor” (another website on the shared server), your website might feel the effects. For instance, higher traffic on other websites might decrease your website speed and performance.  

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

  • Cost: $$
  • Technical expertise: Advanced
  • Server admin: Root access to the server
  • Performance: Great
  • Best option for: Medium-size companies, large e-commerce stores, or websites and blogs with large numbers of visitors 

Using a VPS hosting solution, you still get to share server space with other websites, but in this case, the host offers a partition for each user and dedicated server space. VPS can be an upgrade option from the shared plan, as it provides more robust performance and autonomy over your website. 

However, it requires advanced technical knowledge to manage it, and you may have to hire a developer to maintain the virtual server. VPS hosting plans are a good option for businesses growing and scaling fast, websites with high traffic, and e-commerce shops. 

Cloud Hosting

  • Cost: $$$
  • Technical expertise: Advanced
  • Server admin: Root access not always provided
  • Performance: Excellent
  • Best option for: Large e-commerce and enterprises

Cloud hosting uses a variety of virtual servers to host websites. Also, it works in a way so that if one server gets a spike in traffic or experiences a problem, the remaining ones will take over and maintain the website operating, so your website shouldn’t experience any downtime. 

This is considered one of the most secure options for large enterprises and big e-commerce shops that need ample storage and high-performance capacities. Like VPS, cloud hosting requires advanced technical skills, but it’s more expensive than the previous options.

Dedicated Hosting

  • Cost: $$$$
  • Technical expertise: Advanced
  • Server admin: Full root access 
  • Performance: Excellent
  • Best option for: Large digital businesses with heavy traffic

A dedicated hosting solution is the best option for companies that need complete server control and a dedicated physical server. This type of hosting lets you choose your operating system, configure and manage the server, and all the specifications within the hosting environment. 

The whole website performance and optimization have to be done by you (or your team), so it’s highly recommended to have a dedicated team of professionals working on it. Costs are also high, so large enterprises with heavy traffic will benefit from this solution. 

WordPress Hosting

  • Cost: $
  • Technical expertise: Low
  • Server admin: Low 
  • Performance: Good
  • Best option for: Small-size companies and beginners

Optimized to run WordPress websites, WordPress hosting plan comes with many tools and services dedicated to WordPress sites, such as automatic software updates, customer support specialized in WP, plugins, and themes. WordPress hosting plans are low cost, easy to manage, and beginner-friendly. 

How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for your Business?

Suppose you are an entrepreneur, freelancer, independent contractor, or run a small-size company, and this is your first time building a website for your business. In that case, you should consider beginner-friendly options such as shared hosting or WordPress hosting if you have a WP website.

As your website or business scales, and there’s a need for extra storage, speed, or bandwidth, you may consider upgrading to a more advanced hosting plan such as VPS or cloud hosting.  Nonetheless, we recommend you choose a web host that offers different types of web hosting plans so you can migrate at any time you need. 

However, there are a few essential factors to bear in mind before you choose the best web hosting provider. We’ve wrapped up the main ones:

Control Panel

In a nutshell, a control panel is a dashboard where you can access and manage all things related to your website, such as installing applications, creating and purchasing domain names, and managing email accounts. 

Some of the most popular control panels are cPanel, Plesk, hPanel, Direct Admin, Webmin, and ISP manager. They all have different designs, features and tools, and it’s provided by the web hosting server – some hosts may even have proprietary control panels. 

However, not all control panels are the same – every host provides its own, and at times they can be a bit complicated to navigate. So, it’s best to go with a web host that offers a user-friendly dashboard that’s easily manageable by all types of users.

Website Performance – Uptime/downtime

More than choosing the right web hosting provider or the best website builder for your website, it’s crucial to opt for the service provider with a fairly good uptime rate. Unstable web servers and excessive downtime can negatively impact your business, and you might lose sales if your website is too slow to load or if it suddenly crashes. 

Security

It’s essential to consider a web host provider that guarantees security measures against attacks, at least, for its physical servers if you wish to keep your account and website safe. A step further in security measures will offer protection against cyber-attacks and malware. So, for instance, web hosts often provide SSL certificates (mostly included in web hosting plans), network monitoring, SSH access and backups. In addition, some web hosting plans even provide CDNs at no cost, which can be helpful in case there’s a DDoS attack. 

Customer Support

This is the most important thing about deciding which web hosting you’re picking. You’ll need exceptional customer service support, preferably 24/7, if your website experiences a crash or any other technical issue and you need to solve it as quickly as possible.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Web Hosting

Sometimes technical terms in digital technology can be confusing. So, some people might mix up a domain name and web hosting, for example. We’ve listed some of the most common questions about web hosting. 

Bottom Line on Web Hosting

Having a website involves a lot of decision making and some basic knowledge about a few terms if you wish to start your online business or simply have an online presence. Website hosting is the service provider that allows your website to be available for visitors on the internet.

Whether you’re a small business owner or a large enterprise manager, after choosing a domain name, the second step to setting up a website is to find a web host. There are several web hosts out there, so knowing a few things about the types of web hosting and what type of service is the best fit for your business will help you make the right decision.