8 Best Shared Hosting Services – Get Your Site Online Today

Before we delve into the nitty gritty of our top hosting providers in the world of shared plans, there’s a handy comparison chart to get a quick look at their features.

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BEST IN TEST
HostGator	Bluehost	DreamHost	iPage	Hostinger	InMotion	IONOS	GreenGeeks
Starting from $4.95	Starting from $2.95	Starting from $2.95	Starting from $1.99	Starting from $12.95 $1.95 + 2 months free (with the 48-month plan)	Starting from $3.49	Starting from $10 $1	Starting from $2.49
Uptime 99.99%	Uptime 99.98%	Uptime 100%	Uptime 99.94%	Uptime 99.99%	Uptime 99.98%	Uptime 99.99%	Uptime 99.98%
Money-back guarantee 45 days	Money-back guarantee 30 days	Money-back guarantee 97 days	Money-back guarantee 30 days	Money-back guarantee 30 days	Money-back guarantee 90 days	Money-back guarantee 30 days	Money-back guarantee 30 days
Free backups	Free backups	Free backups	Free backups	Free backups	Free backups	Free backups	Free backups
Free domain	Free domain	Free domain	Free domain	Free domain	Free domain	Free domain	Free domain
Storage space Unmetered	Storage space 10GB – Unlimited	Storage space 50GB – Unlimited	Storage space Unlimited	Storage space 100GB – 200GB	Storage space 75GB – Unlimited	Storage space 10GB – Unlimited	Storage space 50GB – Unlimited
Bandwidth Unmetered	Bandwidth Unmetered	Bandwidth Unmetered	Bandwidth Unmetered	Bandwidth Unlimited	Bandwidth Unlimited	Bandwidth Unmetered	Bandwidth Unmetered
RAM 700MB – 128GB	RAM 4GB – 16GB	RAM 1GB – 16GB	RAM 1GB – 8GB	RAM 4GB – 32GB	RAM 4GB – 64GB	RAM 1GB – 24GB	RAM 2GB – 8GB
Visit HostGator	Visit Bluehost	Visit DreamHost	Visit iPage	Visit Hostinger	Visit InMotion	Visit IONOS	View GreenGeeks
See our HostGator review	See our Bluehost review	See our DreamHost review	See our iPage review	See our Hostinger review	See our InMotion review	See our IONOS review	See our GreenGeeks review

In the table above, you can see the key features of each provider side by side. All prices shown are promotional offers for new users. Hosting companies almost always offer these deals for new customers, and they’re prices worth making the most of!

By the end of this article you’ll know which hosting provider is best for you, based on our in-depth expert research.

Further Information

• Want to compare hosting providers side by side? See our Web Hosting Services Comparison Chart for an in-depth look!
• Read our review of the Best Cheap Web Hosting Providers to see how these providers’ prices compare
• Is shared hosting really right for you? Find out in our comparison of Shared Hosting vs VPS Hosting

Best Overall Shared Hosting Provider

Editor's Choice

HostGator

Best Overall Shared Hosting Provider

Excellent

4.7

out of 5

• Best help and support
• 99.90% uptime
• Weekly automated backups

Paid Plans: $3.95 - $159.99 / month

Pros

• Unlimited domains
• Highest performance score
• 45 day money-back guarantee

Cons

• High renewal rates
• Poor server response time

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HostGator is a big name in the hosting world, and for good reason! It’s the best all-round shared hosting provider on the market, and this high quality service shows in its shared hosting plans. HostGator has an overall shared score of 4.7 out of 5, soaring above the competition. It also scores the best help and support rating of 4.8 out of 5 for its shared plans, due to its great knowledge base, community center, and 24/7 phone and live chat service.

All three of HostGator’s shared hosting plans provide you with top of the range features, including easy one-click installation, unmetered bandwidth, and a free SSL certificate. Add the decent uptime score of 99.9%, and this shared provider is looking like a solid choice!

HostGator’s Hatchling plan is the cheapest at $3.95 per month (paid annually), giving you basic tools and a free domain for the first year, and unlimited subdomains. The Baby plan is the next level up, costing $5.00 per month, and unlocks unlimited parked domains. The most advanced plan is the Business plan at $7.25 per month – this gives you more technical features, such as a free dedicated IP, CDN, and free search engine optimization (SEO) tools.

All HostGator plans also come with a 45 day money-back guarantee, so you can try it and see if it is the provider for you.

Further Information

• Find out more in our in-depth HostGator Review
• See how HostGator does in our detailed comparisons:
  • HostGator vs GoDaddy
  • SiteGround vs HostGator
  • Bluehost vs HostGator
• Discover if HostGator is the right choice for you in our review of the Best Web Hosting for Small Business

Most Trusted By Online Users

People's Choice

Bluehost

Most Trusted By Online Users

Excellent

4.5

out of 5

• Best market score
• 99.98% uptime
• Good prices

Paid Plans: $1.99 - $119.99 / month

Pros

• Free SSL
• Unmetered bandwidth
• 30 day money-back guarantee

Cons

• No backups
• On the more expensive side

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Visit Site

Bluehost offers a lot of handy features such as domain privacy, but it could offer better value for money compared to its competitors. Still, it’s right up there in terms of its popularity, with the highest 4.9 out of 5 score for the shared market analysis category – making Bluehost most trusted by online users. It is also snapping at HostGator’s heels with a respectable 99.98% uptime score.

Where Bluehost falls is its lack of extras. The cheapest plan doesn’t include regular backups, you need to pay an extra $149.99 for migrations, and it doesn’t have a help and support community center.

The Basic plan is at a great price of $2.95 per month, you will still get all the shared hosting features to support a basic site, including one domain, 10GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, and SSL security.

At $4.95 per month, the Plus plan is only $2 more, but it massively increases your limits. You get 20GB storage, as well as unlimited parked and sub domains, $200 in marketing offers, and a spam expert.

Bluehost recommends its Choice Plus plan. This costs $5.45 per month for a years payment,  and you get daily automatic backups, 40GB of storage, with the added bonus of domain privacy.

The Pro plan costs $13.95 per month, and is the perfect choice if your site needs a boost. It gives you more power than the three other plans, as it comes with advanced features, including a high performance server.

Bluehost is also the number one recommended hosting provider by WordPress, so if you’ve got a small WordPress site, this could be the shared hosting service for you.

Further Information

• Read our full Bluehost Review for more details
• Do you have a WordPress site? Read our review of the Best WordPress Hosting Providers 
• See why Bluehost is the number one Photography Website Hosting Provider
• Find out about costs in our Bluehost Pricing Review
• See how Bluehost compares to its competitors in our in-depth reviews:
  • InMotion vs Bluehost 
  • SiteGround vs Bluehost
  • Bluehost vs Hostgator
  • Bluehost vs GoDaddy Hosting

Best for Cheap Shared Plans

Best Value For Money

DreamHost

Cheapest Shared Plans

Excellent

4.5

out of 5

• Best for a budget
• 100% uptime
• Good for WordPress

Paid Plans: $2.95 - $379 / month

Pros

• Free SSL
• Unmetered bandwidth
• 97 day money-back guarantee!

Cons

• Not as scalable
• No phone support

Read Review

Visit Site

DreamHost offers a solid range of shared hosting features, including a huge 100% uptime, and is one of the hosting providers recommended by WordPress.

It’s not the strongest in terms of help and support, but with a 97-day money back guarantee and very affordable prices, you can’t argue with DreamHost’s value for money. Gaining a top score for it’s shared price, of 4.4 out of 5 – DreamHost is ideal for websites on a budget.

Compared to Bluehost, both start at $2.95 per month (for a year) but DreamHost’s renewal price is $6.99, which is fantastic compared to Bluehost’s $7.99 renewal rate.

DreamHost’s Shared Starter plan costs $2.95 per month. It gives you one website, a free domain, unlimited traffic, 50GB of storage, a free SSL certificate, and a whopping 100% uptime guarantee. WordPress also comes pre-installed, saving you time and effort.

The Shared Unlimited plan is an upgrade costing $2.95 per month. Yes, you read that right, the unlimited plan is also $2.95 per month for the year! This comes with everything from the Starter plan, and unlocks unlimited storage, unlimited websites, and unlimited emails tailored to your domain. The renewal rate does come in at $12.99 per month once the year is finished though.

The features you get for these prices mean that DreamHost wins the appealing title of ‘provider with best value for money’.

Best for Small Websites

iPage

Best for Small Websites On a Budget

Very Good

4.3

out of 5

• Simple provider
• 99.9% uptime
• Good help and support

Paid Plans: $2.99 / month

Pros

• Good performance
• Unmetered bandwidth & storage
• 30 day money-back guarantee!

Cons

• Not as scalable
• No VPS or dedicated plans
• No email support

Read Review

Visit Site

If you’re not a fan of lots of options, iPage offers just one shared plan – its Go Plan – that covers a lot of great bases. It’s good value, too, scoring 4.2 out of 5 in our price testing. For $2.99 per month (when paid yearly), you get 99.9% uptime, unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free SSL, and a free domain for the first year.

You’ll also get amazing customer service – iPage has a great score of 3.8 out of 5 for its shared hosting help and support. It also came in joint third place out of twelve providers for its performance!

Where iPage falls a bit short was for features, iPage doesn’t have VPS or dedicated plans, meaning if you decide you’d like to scale up your website to handle more traffic – you’ll need a different provider. But if you’re running a small website and want something quick and simple, iPage may be for you.

Further Information

• Learn more in our full iPage Review
• Compare it against the overall best provider Bluehost – see how it fairs in Bluehost vs iPage

Best for Backups

Hostinger

Best for Backups

Very Good

4

out of 5

• Good for backups
• 99.99% uptime
• Lacks help and support

Paid Plans: $2.99 - $109.99 / month

Pros

• Good data center locations
• Free SSL
• 30 day money-back guarantee!

Cons

• No phone support
• Low performance score
• No 24/7 help and support

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Hostinger’s main appeal is its automated backups. You get an automated weekly backup on Hostinger’s cheapest shared hosting plan. Automated backups mean it’s not on you to save versions of your site if something goes wrong, whereas Bluehost’s cheapest plan doesn’t provide backups.

You can pick up the cheapest shared hosting plan for $7.99/month (as a renewal rate). Hostinger also has a really nice spread of data centers across the world, which gives the best chance of global audiences getting good load speeds.

What you get on Hostinger’s cheapest plan is a free SSL, weekly automated backups, 100GB SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth. It also comes with a free migration, and excellent uptime of 99.99%.

Although Hostinger’s shared plans are a textbook example of ‘you get what you pay for’. Its features aren’t as generous – there are lower caps on storage, for example – and help and support is pretty sparse, with no phone support on offer. Hostinger also has the lowest performance of any provider on this list, which means your site is likely to be out of action for more time than with an alternative.

All in all, a good option if you’re after a low-budget option for a small site, but not one we’d recommend for businesses or high traffic sites.

Further Information

• Read our full Hostinger Review for details on plans, features, and more.

Best for Robust Security

InMotion

Best for Robust Security

Very Good

3.9

out of 5

• Unlimited bandwidth
• 99.98% uptime
• Expensive renewal rates

Paid Plans: $3.49 - $539.99 / month

Pros

• Free expert migration
• Free SSL and malware protection
• Good features

Cons

• Only cPanel
• No money-back guarantee on cheapest plan
• Poor site speed

Read Review

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InMotion scores 3.9 out of 5 overall for shared hosting. It offers some incredibly good security features including an SSL certificate and hack, malware, and DDoS protection. The cheapest shared plan also offers free expert migration with no downtime, 99.98% uptime, 100GB of storage, and unlimited bandwidth. This makes it ideal for photography websites – having come top of the competition in our photography website category.

InMotion offers three shared hosting plans: Core (exclusively for WBE users), Launch, Power, and Pro. All four plans provide marketing tools, a free security suite, and free SSL security. Despite this, it scores poorly for value for money, with a low 2.4 out of 5 rating – making it the lowest value option on this list!

Core plan is the cheapest but most basic at $3.29 per month, when paid yearly. The $6.99 per month Power plan is InMotion’s top seller, giving you six websites and double the performance. The Pro plan is the most advanced at $14.99 per month, providing unlimited websites, pro level support, and performance which is four times better than the Launch plan.

Further Information

• Find out more in our InMotion Hosting Review
• Discover how InMotion performs against the top competitor in our in-depth comparison: InMotion vs Bluehost

Best for Sitespeed

IONOS

Best for Sitespeed

Good

3.8

out of 5

• Fantastic features
• 99.99% uptime
• Good for larger websites

Paid Plans: $0.5 - $35 / month

Pros

• Expert plan optimized for high traffic
• Best sitespeed
• Good features

Cons

• Quoted migrations
• No live chat support

Read Review

Visit Site

Are you looking for fast site speeds, quick loading, and high uptime? IONOS has it all, and really great features as well – getting a whopping shared plan feature score of 4.6 out of 5.

IONOS has three shared hosting plans: Essential, Business, and Expert. The Essential plan starts at $4 per month (yearly), and then renews at $6 per month. On that plan you get one website, just 10GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, a free SSL, and free domain for a year.

IONOS recommend its Business plan that starts at an amazing $1 per month (12 month plan), but be aware that it does renew at a pricier $10 per month after your first year. But it does offer unlimited storage, and unlimited websites.

Then the Expert plan starts at $8.00 per month, which is optimized for website performance, allowing for up to 500 visitors per minute. Plus it comes with extra security features like malware protection, a CDN (content delivery network), and some extra analytics tools. Overall IONOS scores 4 out of 5 for value, so you get decent bang for your buck along with its cheap discounts.

Further Information

• Find out more in our detailed 1 & 1 Ionos Review

Most Eco-Friendly Hosting Provider

GreenGeeks

Most Eco-Friendly Hosting Provider

Good

3.7

out of 5

• Green hosting
• 99.9% uptime
• More expensive

Paid Plans: $2.95 - $109.95 / month

Pros

• Offsetting carbon footprint by 300%
• Free nightly backups
• Unlimited bandwidth

Cons

• No community center support
• Bottom 3 for price in most categories

Read Review

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The hosting industry is a surprisingly polluting one, and GreenGeeks is on a mission to put that right – one site at a time. By buying Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), GreenGeeks offsets its carbon footprint by 300% through investing in eco-friendly energy sources. It also offers entirely free site migration, without caveats.

GreenGeeks also has the highest shared plan feature score of 4.8 out of 5, offering free nightly backups, 24/7 network monitoring, a free SSL, and a free domain for the first year.

All in all, GreenGeeks is a good, reliable hosting provider, with features that match those of the providers higher in this ranking. There are, however, a few things that hold it back from taking the top spots.

First up, it’s a little pricey. Strip back the discounts, and you’re left with a price range of $10.95 – $25.95/month, meaning a more significant start price than the majority of providers on this list. The other major ‘con’ is only getting one free backup per month – others will cost you $25 a time, which isn’t ideal for any website with regularly-changing content.

Further Information

• Discover what experts think in this GreenGeeks Review
• See how GreenGeeks matches up against Bluehost in Bluehost vs GreenGeeks

In the graph below you can compare the lowest prices of the very best shared hosting providers. Although DreamHost, Bluehost and GreenGeeks have the cheapest starting prices, HostGator combines impressive performance with fairly good prices making it the best shared hosting provider.

If none of the hosting services in our list immediately jumped out at you, you might be wondering just how you’re meant to choose. It’s easy to be befuddled by all the free features being waved in front of your nose.

Your choice will totally depend on your specific needs, but here are our three top things to look for in a shared hosting provider:

• Uptime – it’s come up a lot so far, and for good reason! You want a hosting service with a high uptime percentage. Your website won’t flourish if the server is down all the time. You don’t paint a masterpiece, lock it in a dark room, and wonder why nobody is buying it!
• Value for money – how much are you paying, and how much will you be getting for your money? Shop around and compare different providers – start by looking at Bluehost – as it’s got the best overall hosting score of 4.8 out of 5!
• Disk space and bandwidth – disk space is how much data you can store on your web server, while bandwidth is how much data can be transferred between your server and your website. How much you need of these will depend on how large your website is (you’ll need more disk space for lots of content), and how much traffic your site gets (you’ll need more bandwidth to cope with more traffic).

Uptime, value for money, and disk space and bandwidth are important, no matter the purpose of your site or your technical ability.

Help and support is always worth looking into as well, but is more subjective – make sure there are help options in place which you’re happy and confident using if things ever did go wrong.

For those of you with a WordPress website, make sure you look at the provider’s WordPress integration. Bluehost and DreamHost are the best shared hosting services for WordPress users.

If you’re finding the amount of free add-ons confusing, narrow it down to the most important factors for you. Three major ones to look out for are free domains, free backups, and money back guarantees.

More Information

• Common Web Hosting Problems: Keep these common problems in mind when choosing your hosting provider

This article has dived into the eight best shared hosting services on the market. We’ve covered the hosting basics, and outlined our shared hosting winner, HostGator – thanks to its incredible help and support and reasonable prices. We hope we’ve helped you explore the pros, cons, and prices of each shared hosting provider, and passed on our top tips on how to choose the best one for you.

Remember to look out for the essentials – uptime, value for money, and disk space and bandwidth – as well as the features tailored to your specific needs, such as support options or a free domain.

Your shared plan is ready, and your virtual housemates are waiting – so sign up and get hosting today!