Best Web Hosting for Blogs and Small Businesses

• Tweet

• Tweet

Web hosting service can make or break a blog or small business. I didn’t fully appreciate this when I started the Dough Roller more than four years ago. Since then, however, having built many websites and used several different web hosting services, it’s clear that picking the right web hosting for a site is critical.

So I thought I’d share my experience with three hosting services that I think are the best web hosting for a blog or small business: Hosting Sesame, DreamHost, and Media Temple. Each serves a different but important niche, and it’s important that you pick the right one for your website.

In a nutshell:

Hosting Sesame: Low cost and excellent telephone support. Great for new bloggers or new website owners. Powered by GoDaddy, Hosting Sesame provides great tools to build sites, and customer support has answered every question I’ve ever thrown at them.

DreamHost: Low cost (although a little more expensive than BlueHost), excellent user interface, and the ability to expand as your site grows.

Media Temple: High cost, but also high performance. A great choice for developed sites with more traffic, and what I now use for Dough Roller.

So with that, let’s take a look at each web hosting option in more detail.

Hosting Sesame Web Hosting Service

There is one reason Hosting Sesame is popular for new sites and blogs–cost. With a two year commitment, the cost comes in at just a few dollars a month.

Hosting Sesame is also very easy to use, which was important to me because I knew absolutely NOTHING about how to start a blog or website when I launched the Dough Roller. I’ve written a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to set up a WordPress blog with Hosting Sesame, if you need some guidance.

Hosting Sesame even offers a special web hosting package designed specifically for WordPress. In addition to hosting, this package comes preloaded with hundreds of free plugins and WordPress themes you’ll need to get you blog up and running. And it makes installing WordPress a snap.

The other key feature Hosting Sesame offers is free telephone support (it’s an extra cost with Dreamhost). When I was starting out, Hosting Sesame’s telephone support was critical on several different occasions. Coupled with its low cost and ease of use, the telephone support is why Hosting Sesame is great for new bloggers and website administrators.

You can check out Hosting Sesame at www.hostingsesame.com.

DreamHost Web Hosting Service

Dreamhost is also a low cost web hosting service with an excellent user interface. While Dreamhost costs a bit more than Bluehost, it offers greater flexibility as your site grows. Dreamhost does this by offering what is called VPS, or a virtual private server. Rather than sharing server resources with other sites, you can obtain your own dedicated resources through VPS.

VPS is not necessary for most new sites with little traffic. As sites grow and start receiving thousands of visitors a day, however, VPS may become necessary. At Dreamhost, VPS adds at least $15 per month to the cost, and it can go up to an extra $400 per month depending on how much memory your site demands. This cost shouldn’t scare you away; only an extremely large site would ever need to spend $400 a month on VPS.

For shared hosting, Dreamhost costs $9.95 a month on a one year contract, or $8.95 a month for a two year contract. If you lock in for 10 years, the price drops to $5.95. These prices include one free domain registration.

Here’s a quick list of the features you get with Dreamhost:

• Unlimited domains
• Unlimited e-mail accounts
• Unlimited disc storage
• 1 free domain registration
• PHP5 Support

You can check out Dreamhost at www.dreamhost.com.

Media Temple Web Hoting Service

I now run Dough Roller on Media Temple. Unlike shared hosting at Bluehost or Dreamhost, Media Temple offers dedicated virtual hosting. That means that I’m not sharing server resources with other websites. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s a lot more expensive ($50 per month). Media Temple’s least expensive solution is $20 a month, so the cost is significantly higher than Bluehost or Dreamhost.

Media Temple also does not use cPanel. Instead, you access your servers through a progam called plesk. While it works just fine, it is a bit of a learning curve if you are coming from a shared hosting environment. On top of that, Media Temple’s documentation is not great. But they do have telephone support that is extremely helpful.

Here’s a quick list of the features you get with Media Temple:

• Unlimited domains
• Complete control of the server
• One-click software install
• Resell hosting
• Virtually unlimited scalability

If you want to check out Media Temple, you can do so at www.mediatemple.com.

If you are just starting out and no little or nothing about building websites or blogs, I’d recommend Bluehost. The free telephone support will come in handy and the cost can’t be beat. If you are more comfortable with building sites, Dreamhost is probably worth the small extra cost in exchange for the VPS option down the road. And if you know your site is going to need more than shared hosting right from the start, Media Temple can’t be beat.

If you have any questions or want some help getting started, just drop me a line.

Published or updated October 15, 2011.