Wednesday, October 31, 2018

MarTech Landscape: What’s the difference between a data warehouse and a data lake?

For marketers, the difference is more than just the choice of metaphors. The post MarTech Landscape: What’s the difference between a data warehouse and a data lake? appeared first on Marketing Land.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.


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The Best E-Commerce Software

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So, you’re ready to build an online store and sell, ship, and manage your business. We’re here to help. We took a look at six of the biggest names in e-commerce software to find out which store is easiest to set up, customizable to your liking, and economical. There’s no stress needed here: all of our options offer at least 14-day free trial periods for you to set up your store and see if you like it and it has all the features you need.
    • Shopify
      Quicksprout pick: Easiest All-in-One
      14-day free trial
    • BigCommerce
      Quicksprout pick: Impressive Features
      Free
    • Wix
      Best Pre-Made Shops
      14-day free trial
    • Squarespace
      Best Free Templates
      14-day free trial (with one-week extension if requested)
    • Magento
      Best for Scaling
      Unlimited free trial
    • WooCommerce
      Best for Customization
      30-day free trial

What’s the Right E-Commerce Software for You?

There are two worlds in e-commerce software: hosted and self-hosted. With hosted platforms, like Shopify and BigCommerce, you’ll get ready-to-go drag-and-drop templates, but you’ll give up some customization ability and pay a subscription fee. For most merchants, Shopify and BigCommerce are going to be in a dead heat. Both companies offer products that provide the same thing: an all-in-one hosted e-commerce solution for online businesses. They both do it well and they both start with similar price points.

If you’re trying to decide between Shopify and BigCommerce, we recommend comparing both during their free trial periods and see which one is a better fit for your business. Both offer a couple of weeks to set up and explore your store, no credit card required.

It’s also possible to build a store with Squarespace or Wix site, monetize your existing site, or even build a non-store site and then convert it to a credit-card accepting store later on. This is a good option if you’re already using Squarespace or Wix, if not sure how much of your sales you’ll run through your site, or are just in the ideation phase. Wix will let you build you’re whole site for free; you’ll only need an e-commerce subscription when you’re ready to take that first credit card transaction. You can get up to 21 days free with Squarespace if you ask to extend the two-week free trial an extra week.

Want more customization power, or not ready to pony up a monthly fee? You want self-hosted software like Magento or WooCommerce — you’ll be nearly limitless in what you can do, and there are plenty of pre-made plugins you can pay for and install to avoid coding every little thing (think abandoned cart e-mails or related products carousels). If you go this route, we recommend brushing up on the best practices for running a successful e-commerce site, making a list of all the features you want and tallying up the add-on fees you’ll be paying before you commit to building your store.

The Top 6 E-Commerce Platforms

Shopify

  • Quicksprout pick: Easiest all-in-one
  • All-in-one hosted e-commerce platform
  • Free 256-bit SSL certificate
  • Unlimited products and bandwidth
  • Offers Shopify Payments, its own payment processor, as well as integrations with over 100+ other payment gateways
  • Integrates with Instagram, Facebook, MailChimp, Google Analytics
  • Shipping discounts with USPS, UPS, and DHL Express
  • Clients: Leesa, LeSportsac, Nestle, Zendesk, MVMT
  • Sign up

Shopify is one of the most recognizable out-of-the-box solutions for small business owners — by some measures, it’s the second most popular e-commerce platform in the world after WooCommerce, and continues to grow like crazy. We think it’s a good fit for e-commerce sites that don’t have a lot of in-house technical support and don’t crave a ton of complex customizations.

Shopify is a full-blown hosted e-commerce platform, which means that it takes care of everything you need to run an online business, from a website to website hosting to inventory management to accepting credit card information. It also offers point-of-sale hardware, and integrates into online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.

Shopify’s core product comes in a few different plans for different prices, ranging from $29/month to $299/month. More robust functionality (and more perks, like better credit card rates, more user accounts, and advanced reporting) come with the higher price tag. If you already have a website and are interested in adding some shoppable products and a shopping cart, we recommend skipping down to where we discuss Shopify Lite. Full-blown Shopify is probably more than you need.

Shopify makes it pretty straightforward for a small business to get up and running — like a lot of hosted e-commerce platforms (including BigCommerce), you have a 14-day free trial where you can actually build your entire store and try out the features and functionality without ever entering a credit card number. Shopify is template-based, which means you choose the basic look and layout of your store from 10 free or 57 for-purchase themes, and customize from there. Shopify claims that its templates are fully customizable, and it does give its merchants full access to the HTML and CSS of their stores, but heads-up: Shopify uses a Liquid setup, which will have a little bit of a learning curve for those who are more used to PHP.

Because it’s such a force in the industry, Shopify integrates with pretty much every other app, SaaS, and technology out there, be it live order tracking, automated up-selling bots, or finding dropship products to sell. Shopify has its own app store a la Apple and Google with built-for-Shopify (and often built-by-Shopify) technology that you can plug and play to make your store do everything you want. This is a double-edged sword for some merchants, who find that Shopify relies so much on third-party integrations that some of its built-in technology is lacking. A good rule of thumb: Make a list of all the functionality you want for your site and see if you’re satisfied with what you get for free during your 14-day trial. If not, explore what add-ons and plugins are available (there are over 2,400 in the Shopify app store) and see how much they’ll add to your bottom line.

Speaking of bottom lines: You’re going to have to do a lot of math to see which payment gateway makes the most sense for your business no matter which e-commerce platform you choose. But one of Shopify’s biggest standouts is that it’s built its own payment gateway, Shopify Payments. While you still can integrate with over 100 others (in fact, you’ll have to if you have customers outside of the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore), Shopify Payments potentially eliminates one more integration you’d have to do to get up and running. At 2.9% + $0.30, Shopify Payments’ rates are right in line with other leading payment gateways, including PayPal, stripe, and Authorize.net, but it does tack on an extra 2% transaction fee for any payment that isn’t processed through Shopify Payments. Check to make sure you qualify to sign up for Shopify Payments in its Terms of Service, then get out your calculators. Remember, accepting multiple payment options is one of the 11 best ways to boost online sales.

Outside of its core e-commerce hosting, Shopify offers a supercharged and highly customizable ShopifyPlus plan for high-volume merchants and enterprise businesses, and Shopify Lite, which is essentially just Shopify’s payment processing functionality. The Lite plan might be interesting to very small businesses just entering e-commerce. It acts a lot like PayPal: you can pop a Shopify Buy Button into your WordPress or Squarespace site, swipe credit cards with its app, and sell on Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Shopify Lite is $9/month.

Frontend features

  • Discounts
  • Gift cards
  • Digital products
  • Product reviews
  • Free shipping
  • Refunds
  • Customer accounts
  • Guest checkout
  • Abandoned checkout recovery
  • Automatic carrier shipping rates
  • Automatic taxes
  • Flexible shipping rates

Backend features

  • Blogging platform
  • Customer profiles and groups 
  • Order fulfillment
  • Synced mobile app
  • SEO optimization
  • Product variations
  • Inventory management
  • Reporting

Customer support, training, and resources

BigCommerce

  • Quicksprout pick: Impressive Features
  • Unlimited products and bandwidth
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Integrates with over 60 payment gateways with no transaction fees
  • Shipping discounts with USPS
  • Integrates with social media, Google Shopping, PayPal One Touch, ShipperHQ
  • Clients: Toyota, Ben & Jerry’s, Camelbak, Kodak, Paul Mitchell
  • Sign up

Like Shopify, BigCommerce’s core product is available at a few different functionality tiers, ranging from $30/month to $250/month; also like Shopify, higher tiers are more robust, including features like abandoned cart saver, product filtering, and customer loyalty programs. Unlike Shopify, though, BigCommerce has a sales cap on each of its plans. If you’re bringing in more than $50k/year, for example, you’ll no longer qualify for the Standard plan, and be automatically upgraded to Plus ($80/month with a sales cap of $150k per year).

Once you’re inside the product, you’ll see both are built to act similarly. BigCommerce is also theme-based, with 7 free mobile-friendly templates (plus 119 for purchase) for you to install and customize, be it through a drag-and-drop site editor or from the ground-up using the theme’s framework. Shopify and BigCommerce are so comparable we recommend comparing both during their free trial periods and see which one is a better fit for your business. BigCommerce offers 15 days to set up and explore your store, no credit card required.

One difference you’ll definitely notice is how many native features BigCommerce has installed right out of the box. It offers an outstanding number of technical integrations and marketing features that Shopify might only be able to provide if you buy and install a plugin or extension (for example, single-page checkout). For some, BigCommerce’s roster of pre-installed features is going to be annoying — kind of like how annoying it was for people who didn’t like U2 having its most recent album auto-downloaded on their iPhones. BigCommerce customers might roll their eyes as they scroll by an option to add gift wrapping already built into their control panel. But those who aren’t overwhelmed by the options may find that they don’t need to pay extra for the functionality they do want. We recommend making a list of the features your business needs requires and testing if you like how they perform during your free trial, and check out what’s available in BigCommerce’s app store. That store isn’t as massive as Shopify’s (600+ add-ons and integrations compared to 2,500+) but there’s a lot to choose from. You also have access to BigCommerce’s flexible API if you need to make a custom integration

BigCommerce doesn’t have its own payment processing technology, which means you’ll have to integrate with a payment gateway before you start taking orders. It gives you over 60 to choose from, including all the big hitters: Authorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, Square, Skrill. Like Shopify, the higher tier your plan, the lower your rates. Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t charge a transaction fee to work with these processors, so you’ll save a little there.  

In addition to its core e-comm platforms, BigCommerce is also available at the enterprise level and with products tailored to B2B wholesalers. In summer 2018, BigCommerce also announced its new Commerce-as-a-Service solution, which is geared to service content-first small businesses who already have an established web presence — namely, a WordPress website. Through an integrated plugin, WordPress users (and businesses using other content management software) will be able to work in their CMS while “centrally managing catalog, customer and order data through BigCommerce.” Prior, customers would have to port their entire websites over and rebuild it on BigCommerce’s hosted platform, or opt for a self-hosted solution like WooCommerce or Magento. Commerce-as-a-Service is really new to BigCommerce — there’s no pricing and interested customers need to request a demo — but we’re excited to see where this technology goes. It could be an exciting bridge between the robust functionality of a hosted e-commerce platform and the hands-on DIY integrations of self-hosted solutions.

Frontend features

  • Single-page checkout
  • Coupons
  • Discounts
  • Gift cards
  • Product ratings and reviews
  • Real-time shipping quotes
  • Abandoned cart saver
  • Free shipping
  • Faceted search
  • Wish lists

Backend features

  • Reporting
  • Blogging platform
  • Customer groups and segmentations
  • SEO optimization
  • Order fulfillment

Customer support, training, and resources

Wix

  • Best Pre-Made Shops
  • Free plan allows you to create your store
  • Upgrade to accept payments
  • Ready-made templates
  • Drag-n-drop store builder
  • Sign up

You might know Wix as a drag-and-drop website builder, but it’s also a drag-and-drop e-commerce shop builder, too. And the process is just as simple: create an account, choose your template (there are 60 e-commerce templates to choose from), load your inventory and product pages, set up payment information, and start selling. You can even get started picking your template, designing your store, and trying out the store manager where you’ll track orders, manage inventory, and send out customer newsletters with coupon codes or sales — all for free. Signing up is a simple a logging in with your Google or Facebook account.

It’s not until you want to accept payments that you’ll need to upgrade your account to a business / e-commerce account. Wix Business plans range from $20 to $35 per month  — but they’re billed in full yearly subscriptions at the time of purchase, so really you’ll be laying out $240 to $420. You’ll get 14-days to test drive the plan.

All business plans allow you to accept online payments without paying commissions, and get unlimited bandwidth (so any number of customers can visit your store). The more expensive plans grant you more storage, up to 100,000 emails a month and higher-priority support response. You’ll also get 30G of Google Drive and email storage, so once you connect your domain you can use Gmail as your email at your unique address.

With a business plan, you can take credit cards, PayPal, offline payments, and don’t have to pay any commissions to Wix. Not all businesses are the same, so neither are the Wix templates. Any Wix template can run a store, if you add the “Wix Stores” app, or you can get a head-start with a pre-made stores template. To do that, you’ll first choose your business-type.

Run a bookings-based business? You’ll start with a Wix Bookings template. Your customers will get auto-email reminders about the event. Sell sessions individually or as part of a membership plan. If you accept offline payments, it’s as simple as checking the “mark as fully paid” box on the bookings dashboard. There’s even a bookings template for restaurants.

We like that it’s super fluid to make sales and note when you’re busy: simply block off time you’re not available in your Wix schedule on the mobile app; sync your Wix Bookings with you Google calendar automatically. Customers can also book directly from their mobile phones, too — by creating a club and inviting your customers to it, they can chat you, book a service, RSVP to an event, or start a discussion from the app.

We haven’t seen anything like the Wix Music page includes a customizable music player and a way to sell your music directly from your page, without paying any commissions. Your reporting will include most-played, most-shared, most-purchased, and most-downloaded songs.

There’s also a pre-made template for ticketed events businesses. You can set the ticket price, manage the RSVP list, invite and add guests, and edit details.

From there, it’s all the drag-and-drop joy Wix is known for. You’ll want to design a “storefront” or homepage, product pages for each of the items you sell with images and product information. Want the menu in a different place, in a different font, with other elements? Drag it, change it, save it. If you’ve ever felt templates to be limiting — I can change that but only in those 3 predetermined ways?! — then you’ll love the new Wix Code. It’s a hybrid platform, with all of the ease of a drag-and-drop and the control of your own customization and scripting with a built-in database, JavaScript backend and integrated development environment. Simply turn on the Wix Code editor and you’re in. (We should note: it’s in beta.)

We like the clean lines and look of the Wix templates, the drag-and-drop ease of it all, and the head start the pre-made stores give you. Unlike self-hosted e-commerce plans, which require upgrades to access features like coupon codes, everything’s included with a Wix e-commerce plan.

Frontend features

  • Mobile optimized
  • Product galleries with unlimited images
  • Sale and featured product ribbons
  • Secure shopping cart
  • Confirmation emails
  • Coupons
  • Free shipping
  • Tax and shipping calculations

Courses and training videos

Squarespace

  • Best Free Templates
  • Unlimited products and bandwidth
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Stripe payment gateway with no transaction fees
  • Integrates with social media, ShipStation, PayPal, Apple Pay, MailChimp, Google Fonts & Typekit
  • Coming soon! Squarespace-powered email marketing
  • Clients: Taboocha, Rodarte, Halo Top, Baiser Beauty, Shhhowercap
  • Sign up

Squarespace is best known as a website builder, but its e-commerce solution is one of the most popular in the world. In large part that’s because e-commerce functionality is built straight into nearly all of its plans: Even if you start with just a basic website, you can sell products. That grow-into-it flexibility makes it an interesting option for businesses who aren’t quite sure of their future plans. With a platform like Shopify, you’re e-commerce or nothing. A business without a thriving online store would be never choose Shopify.

But that makes choosing the right Squarespace plan a little bit more complicated. It splits up its products into Websites (with Personal and Business plans) and Online Stores (with Basic and Advanced plans). You can make transactions on both the Online Store plans, as well as the Business Website plan. A good rule of thumb: if you’re primarily selling product through your site, definitely opt for an Online Store plan. If you’re website is primarily content, and you happen to sell a few things, a Business Website plan might be plenty. All plans come with a 14-day free trial to test out the features and functionality, with the option to request an additional trial week if necessary.

The Business Website plan has pared-down functionality — the reporting isn’t as robust; there are no customer accounts; there are fewer inventory, order, and tax features — plus it tacks on a 3% transaction fee to all purchases. But it’s also only $18/month,  which is one of the cheapest hosted options available.

Both of Squarespace’s Online Store plans comes with the full toolkit you’d expect from an e-commerce platform. Basic starts at $26/month, billed annually (or $30/month if you want to pay month-to-month), and Advanced ratchets up to $40/month billed annually (or $46/month-to-month). The Advanced plan gets you more — flexible discounts, gift cards, abandoned cart recover, access to the API.

If you do go with a Squarespace web store, it’s going to be beautiful. That’s not to say you can’t have a beautiful store with any other e-commerce platform, but with Squarespace, it’s basically a guarantee. They’re all built for mobile and aesthetically modern, albeit lots are heavy on imagery — you’re definitely going to want to have killer photography. It has over 20 template “families” to choose from (each family may have a few variations, but the same underlying structure), which can then be customized with Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor or by tinkering with the HTML and CSS. You can choose any, but some are better suited for web stores than websites, with features such as Quick View and Image Zoom, and advanced Product Page functionality. The best news: they’re all free. With a lot of other e-commerce platforms, the really covetable templates come with a price tag.

With Squarespace, what you get is what you get. Unlike pretty much every other e-commerce platform, it doesn’t integrate with endless apps and extensions. It comes with about 70 of the most popular and most useful built right in, and provides setup support, troubleshooting, and general questions for all of them. But there’s no app store or marketplace like you see with lots of other platforms. You can install third-party customization, but those will required some sort of code injection or “Code Block” — no one-click install. It’s really important to test out the functionality of your Squarespace site during your free trial and see if you like what you’re getting. If not, another platform with more integration capabilities might be a better option.  

Squarespace also doesn’t give you options with who you use to process payments. With Squarespace, you’re locked into Stripe and/or PayPal (there’s also options for Apple Pay and Venmo). This won’t be a problem if you’re store services customers in certain areas, but Stripe doesn’t support all countries — only 26. If that’s the case, PayPal will be your only option (which means your customers must have a PayPal account to make a purchase).  

Frontend features

  • Single-page checkout
  • Discounts
  • Coupons
  • Gift cards
  • Real-time shipping quotes
  • Abandoned cart saver
  • Free shipping
  • Related products
  • Donations

Backend features

  • Blogging platform
  • Customer profiles and groups
  • Order fulfillment
  • Synced mobile app
  • SEO optimization
  • Product variations
  • Inventory management
  • Reporting
  • Refunds

Customer support, training, and resources

Magento

  • Best for Scaling
  • Free for Magento Open Source
  • Fully customizable in every way
  • Hosting supported by Amazon Web Services
  • Integrates with CRM, CMS, ERP, PIM, AMS
  • Clients: Burger King, Nike, Rosetta Stone, Olympus, Ghirardelli
  • Sign up

Magento is open-source self-hosted software — you can change anything in the code that you need to, and you’ll need a web host of your own. There are quite a few pricing options: the community edition is totally free to download. WE recommend starting here for most small business owners choosing Magento. Depending on the host you choose, you’ll pay between $4 and $100 a month for hosting. (Want help picking out a web host? See our web host review here.)

Unlike Shopify, you have full control over your shop — “how you deliver your customer experience” — without any limitations. That’s why for large-scale stores in need of the ability to create complex customizations without limit, Magento beats Shopify handedly. (In 2016, 202 Magento customers were in the Internet Retailer Top 1000 list, compared to 12 Shopify customers — and 42 merchants in the Internet Retailer B2B E-Commerce 300.) Magento held the top spot on that list. Impressive, but if you’re you’re starting a small, simple shop, you’ll still likely be happier with Shopify or another hosted, out-of-the-box and less custom pick.

Magento claims its stores grow faster than Shopify stores — 3x on average. Magento cites the ability to build fully custom experiences as the reason for this difference. They say these stores stand out more. We’re not so sure: it might be a chicken-or-the-egg question: Magento is more customizable, so larger stores that know they’re going to be growing may sign up with Magento at a higher rate. With a higher percentage of these high-growth stores, all Magento stores have a higher growth rate. We do love that Magento loves high-performance and letting you do what you want to do.

With Magento, you have the option to build your own site from the ground up, or use Magento’s drag-and-drop visual editor. If you’ve used Mailchimp or Squarespace, you’ll find Magento’s super familiar and intuitive.

If you’re not a coder, or don’t have one on your team, the 5,000 extensions and add-ons are very important — using them you can still customize what you want to. Want to add an abandoned cart recovery to your site? There’s a pre-built one for $39. Custom coupon error codes? User logins with permission sets? There are pre-built ones waiting for you. Custom doesn’t need to be impossible even if you’re not a developer.

Frontend features

  • Coupon codes
  • Gift cards
  • Customer dashboards
  • Related products
  • Wishlists
  • Order status modules
  • Distraction-free checkout
  • One-click account creation
  • Two-step checkout
  • Automatic guest checkout

What’s in a name?

Magento recently changed some of its product names. Here’s a before/after: 

Old name New name
Magento Community Edition (CE) Magento Open Source
Magento Enterprise Edition (EE) Magento Commerce (On-premise)
Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition (MECE) Magento Commerce (Cloud)
Magento Commerce Order Management (MCOM) Magento Order Management

Courses and training videos

Magento enterprise licenses

Magento Open Source is free. Magento Commerce — an “all-in-one cloud solution that delivers the power of Magento at affordable prices for Small Business” — is not. Prices are relative to your gross sales revenue. But it’ll cost you ~$20,000 for up to $1M in annual revenue. Sell more, pay more. Though Magento is really open that their prices are negotiable — so schedule a demo and get negotiating!

To get a sense of where Magento’s pricing stake points are here are quotes Portland-based creative agency Graybox got from Magento in 2017:

Gross Sales Revenue Magento 2 Enterprise

Edition (EE)

 Magento 2 Enterprise Cloud

Edition (ECE)
Up to $1 million $22,000 $40,000
$5–10 million $32,000 $55,000
$10–25 million $49,000 $80,000
$25–50 million $125,000 $190,000

There’s no limit on store count, country count, language, or currency on your license. You can manage multiple stores, transact in multiple countries, in multiple languages and currencies, and use worldwide shipping all on your one subscription (instance). Go big, go global, launch more stores!

WooCommerce

  • Best for Customization
  • Free open-source software
  • Use the free template Storefront, or buy an upgrade
  • Integrate with Stripe, PayPal, USPS, MailChimp and more
  • 53,216,823 downloads and counting
  • Sign up

WooCommerce brags that it has 53,216,823 downloads, and as such is the most popular eCommerce platform for building an online store (stats from Builtwith). It’s a lot like the 100 Billion hamburgers McDonald’s has served. It doesn’t mean it’s the best hamburger, but they sure do sell well, so there’s something good enough about it. They power 30% of online stores — the most of any e-commerce software. The catch? If you want to do more advanced or powerful things in your store, like run a recommendation engine or sell recurring subscriptions, you’ll need to pay for extensions. Some extensions are free, but many aren’t, they’re $29, $79, sometimes $199 for a one-site subscription. When its integrated so well into a platform you’re probably already using, well, it’s no wonder that 53 million people have used it.

WooCommerce runs on any self-hosted WordPress.org site. You’ll need a theme. That’s the beautiful outer layer of your website. (If you’re already running a WordPress site, then installing Woo is as simple as activating any other plugin. You know the drill.)

WooCommerce has a free template called Storefront, which prioritizes speed, uptime, and theme/plugin simplicity. It’s the “official” theme, and it’s purposefully clean and simple. It is built and maintained by WooCommerce core developers, and promises “water-tight” integration between the theme, WooCommerce, and any extensions or plugins you add. (WooCommerce.com is running on a $39 Storefront child theme, which gives the Storefront theme a new look.) There are also plenty of templates for sale that aren’t created by WooCommerce or WordPress.

You’ll be able to sell physical and digital goods, instant downloads, or affiliate goods in online marketplaces. It also accounts for product variations and configurations. Shipping, including drop-shipping, “is highly configurable.” Want to calculate shipping prices per customer? Want to limit shipments to specific countries? Offer free shipping? It’s all possible.

If you upgrade, using any of the 300+ premium extensions, you can add on bookings, repeating subscriptions, and memberships. There are hundreds of extensions in the WooCommerce official marketplace. Popular ones include Stripe, PayPal, USPS, Amazon Payments, Authorize.Net, ShipStation, and MailChimp. For example, want to add reviews to your Storefront site? There’s a $19 extension for that. Want a pricing comparison table to show the difference between your Bronze, Silver, and Gold Memberships? There’s a $19 extension and you’ll get access to a shortcode generator to copy and paste into your layout how you’d like.

Notable extensions

At WooCommerce, the customer service team is manned by “Happiness Engineers.” These very same team behind WordPress.com, Simplenote, Jetpack, and Longreads. The motto? “We believe in making the web a better place.”

They work remotely from 69 countries, speak 84 languages, and strive to live by the Automattic Creed, which includes the line, “I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation.”

That customer loyalty and product-first mindset permeates the entire company. In fact, the first three weeks of any employees time are spend in customer service, and one week a year “forevermore” after that. Why? “We believe an early and ongoing connection with the people who use our products is irreplaceable.”

To get in touch with this support squad, the first stop is documentation. You’ll find extremely detailed step-by-step instructions, how tos, and ways to fix common issues like blurry images. Need more help than that? Woo also has a help desk where you can submit a ticket or start a live chat. There’s no phone, Facebook, or Twitter support.

Frontend features

  • Shipping calculator
  • Free shipping
  • Mobile responsive
  • Digital or physical goods
  • Instant downloads
  • One-page checkout (with $79 extension)
  • Social logins (with $79 extension)
  • Name-your-price (with $49 extension)
  • Recommendation engine (with $79 extension)

Courses and training videos

Recap: The Best E-Commerce Software

Make a list of all the features you want, decide how much hands-on customization you’re after, and give your first pick a spin. All of our top picks have at least 14 day trial periods for you to get your store up and test the software:



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3 things marketers should know about Facebook’s Q3 earnings

The company is investing heavily is shifting its monetization strategy from newsfeed to Stories, messaging and video. The post 3 things marketers should know about Facebook’s Q3 earnings appeared first on Marketing Land.

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Marketing Day:

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. The post Marketing Day: appeared first on Marketing Land.

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The Best Web Hosting Services

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Editor’s note: We compared six of the best web hosting services to see how they stack up. We think most people will be very satisfied hosting their websites with SiteGround, InMotion Hosting, or DreamHost.

There are tons of web hosts out there though — literally hundreds of them. So while we think our top picks are excellent options, we’ll walk you through how to find the best web hosting service for your website, using our six hosts as examples.

  SiteGround InMotion
 DreamHost Bluehost HostGator GoDaddy
Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up
Quicksprout Pick Quicksprout Pick Honorable Mention Popular Popular Don’t Recommend
Shared hosting plans Start at $4/month Start at $6/month Start at $3/month Start at $4/month Start at $3/month Start at $3/month
24/7 customer support Phone
Chat
Email		 Phone
Chat
Email		 Email Phone
Chat
Email		 Phone
Chat		 Phone
Free trial 30 days 90 days 97 days 30 days 45 days 30 days
SSD storage ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ On some plans
Free SSL certificate ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ On some plans
SSH Access ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Email hosting ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Operating system Linux Linux Linux Linux Linux
Windows		 Linux
Windows

Our 3 Favorite Web Hosting Providers

SiteGround

  • Quicksprout Pick
  • Best reputation
  • Most robust shared plans

SiteGround is a hugely well-regarded web host, with a rabid fan base and glowing reviews — something especially noticeable in an industry full of fed-up (and vocal) customers. Along with DreamHost and Bluehost, SiteGround is one of WordPress’s three recommended web hosts. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, managed WordPress hosting is built into all of its shared hosting plans — something InMotion considers an upgrade. If your site uses WordPress, this is absolutely a perk: automatic updates, streamlined security, and expert technical support that are all just part of the package.

SiteGround is widely considered to be a technology leader, particularly in the shared hosting space where all hosts are duking it out for business. Its servers are ultra fast and extra secure, and SiteGround is constantly deploying new updates and technology to keep them that way.

While all its shared hosting plans are powerful, SiteGround is especially well-known for its highest-tier shared plan, GoGeek, which is suped up with tools developers will find especially useful, including a staging server and Git repo creation. Lots of small business and personal websites will probably find this overkill, but if your needs are more complex than the basics, SiteGround has a lot to love.  

That said, once you blow through SiteGround’s introductory pricing (you choose contracts for one, two, or three years) your plan’s price triples: its lowest tier of shared hosting jumps from $4/month to $12 and its highest tier jumps from $12/month to $26. That doesn’t feel great. It also has the shortest trial period of all our top picks: only 30 days.

In addition to shared hosting, SiteGround offers upgrades to cloud hosting and dedicated servers.

InMotion Hosting

  • Quciksprout Pick
  • Best for beginners
  • Most impressive customer support

InMotion may not look flashy, but it’s a solid web host with truly excellent technology, a wide assortment of plans, and a legion of longtime customers. Its massive self-help knowledge base is the industry standard, and customer support is among the best. Don’t believe it? Try for yourself. InMotion’s 90-day free trial period for shared hosting is one of the longest around, second only to DreamHost’s 97-day trial.

There’s not a lot of hierarchy in InMotion’s plans. Upgrading from its lowest-tier shared plan, Launch, to Power or to Pro doesn’t unlock access to lots more slick tools or free add-ons. Upgrading is simply designed to accommodate websites that require more oomph — not to upsell. It’s a straightforward approach we like, especially for small businesses and websites that aren’t overly complex.

InMotion is one of the only web hosts that doesn’t offer some sort of special introductory pricing. With shared hosting starting at $6–$7/month, it’s a slightly higher price point to start out, but that price will remain pretty consistent every time you re-up your plan.

In addition to shared hosting, InMotion offers upgrades to managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers.

DreamHost

  • Honorable mention

Like SiteGround, DreamHost is one of WordPress’s three recommended hosts, and includes managed WordPress hosting in its basic shared plans (it also offers a managed plan with more bells and whistles called DreamPress). Like InMotion, it has an industry-leading free trial period — a full 97-day money-back guarantee — and transparent pricing that doesn’t increase after your initial contract. It’s the best of both worlds.

DreamHost is notable for being completely customized, skipping the customary cPanel that SiteGround, InMotion, and so many other web hosts use for a control panel it’s built and tailored in-house. Think of it a little like Apple versus Android: Dreamhost customers love it, but it’s not universally compatible should you ever migrate to or from a different host.

In addition to shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting, Dreamhost offers upgrades to VPS and cloud hosting, as well as dedicated servers.

Ratings and reputation don’t always match up

  SiteGround InMotion
 DreamHost Bluehost HostGator GoDaddy
Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up Sign Up
Money-back guarantee 30 days 90 days 97 days 30 days 45 days 30 days
Phone 24/7 24/7 ✘* 24/7 24/7 24/7
Chat 24/7 24/7 Only certain hours 24/7 24/7 Only certain hours
Email 24/7 24/7 24/7 24/7 ✘ ✘
Percentage of 5-star user reviews on
WhoIsHostingThis		 92%
(1954 total reviews)		 67%
(549 total reviews)		 54%
(251 total reviews)		 43%
(480 total reviews)		 37%
(572 total reviews)		 27%
(584 total reviews)
Trust Pilot ★★★★★
(1477 reviews)		 ★★★
(108 reviews)		 ★★★
(473 reviews)		 ★
(115 reviews)		 ★
(401 reviews)		 ★★
(3,113 reviews)
CNET 4.5 / 5 5 / 5 5 / 5 4 / 5 4.5 / 5 --
PC Mag 4 / 5 4 / 5 4.5 / 5 -- 4.5 / 5 4 / 5

 

Two other popular web hosts to consider

Bluehost and HostGator are both hugely popular web hosts that rank highly in tech publications like PCMag and CNET. There are good reasons why. HostGator has month-to-month contracts available on all its plans, the option to purchase a dedicated IP address, plus Windows-based servers — a little less common than Linux. Bluehost’s shared hosting plans all have some sort of built-in managed WordPress hosting features, and its offers contracts as long as five years, which will score you some really low prices. 

But user reviews for both providers don’t line up with those industry publication rankings. User reviews always need to be taken with a grain of salt (was someone just having a bad day?) but from a 30,000-foot view, we’re not convinced their customer service can compete. If you want to try them out anyway, both offer money-back guarantees — 45 days for HostGator’s and 30 days for Bluehost.

A hosting service we don’t recommend

We recommend avoiding GoDaddy. It has a nice variety of plans and price points, but truly abysmal user ratings. They make sense: Its support documentation is all over the place, and customer service verges on laughable —  phone wait times are long, chat is only available during certain hours, and it doesn’t offer any email support at all. You can absolutely do better.

How to Find the Best Web Hosting Provider for You

First, get a handle on what you actually need from your web host

The first thing to understand is how much web hosting your site or sites need to function well, without paying for what you don’t need. It starts with a game of Match the Specs.

Knowing your site’s stats (or what you predict your site’s stats will be) before you start comparing options and offers will help prevent that upsold-at-the-register feeling. Here are the basic ones to know:

    • Storage: How many gigabytes of space does your website need?
    • Number of sites: How many domains are you looking to host?
    • Bandwidth: How many visitors do you get in a month? Do you plan on any high-volume traffic surges (for example, from a viral blog post, a big PR push, Black Friday)
    • Supported technology: What programs, features, and apps does your site use (for example Perl, Joomla, a shopping cart)? What operating system is your website compatible with?

Match what you need with what each host offers, and try not to get too distracted by the stuff a host offers that you aren’t going to use — Bluehost isn’t a better host than DreamHost because it supports Drupal if you’re never going to use Drupal.

At the shared hosting level — the most common and where most websites start out — all six providers we looked at are fairly tit for tat: two or three tiers of plans with a variety of perks, functionality, and resources that increase with each tier. Unless there are specific conditions you’re trying to meet (you really do need that Drupal, for instances) at a pure specs point of view, we think you’ll be happy with any of them.

What stands out?

1. SiteGround’s plans appear quite a bit smaller than the competition, ranging from 10GB–30GB of storage and approximately 10K–100K monthly visitors, compared to 100GB of storage for GoDaddy’s lowest tier, and unlimited storage and bandwidth on most of the rest. Don’t let that dissuade you, especially if you like the rest of what SiteGround’s got going for it. For lots of websites, 10–30GB is plenty, especially sites that aren’t streaming or hosting gigantic media files.

What does unlimited and unmetered mean?

Many web hosts advertise “unlimited” or “unmetered” bandwidth and storage on their plans, which means there are no set thresholds for the amount of resources your website is allowed to use at any given time. But, as Hostgator puts it, “unlimited doesn’t mean infinite.”  If you’re negatively impacting the other sites on your server, every web host in the world will throttle your usage and/or suspend your account until you optimize your site or upgrade to a higher plan. Most let you know you’re exceeding your usage with an email a day or two before they take action.

Even though this sounds alarming, most websites will likely never experience this. (Bluehost claims that 99.95 percent of its 2 million websites stay within “normal” usage.)

2. SiteGround, DreamHost, and Bluehost all include some kind of managed WordPress hosting into their shared hosting plans, instead of considering it an upgrade. (SiteGround also includes managed Joomla hosting in its shared hosting packages.) It’s not all that surprising: These are the three web hosts WordPress recommends to its many millions of users, and it tracks that they would prioritize those users needs into their core offerings.

WordPress will absolutely work seamlessly on all shared web hosting plans, managed or not. With managed hosting, though, everything is designed with WordPress in mind: it comes pre-installed, core updates happen automatically, customer support has more specific expertise. If you like the sound of that, you may want to skip shared hosting altogether and shop for managed WordPress hosting instead.  

3. Most web hosts run Linux on their servers. If your website requires a Windows operating system, Hostgator and GoDaddy are your two options from these six.

Shared hosting comparison

  SiteGround InMotion DreamHost BlueHost HostGator GoDaddy
Lowest Tier StartUp Launch Shared Starter Basic Hatchling Economy
Initial price $4/month $6–7/month $3–5/month $4–6/month $3–11/month $3–8/month
Normal price $12/month $6–7/month $3–5/month $8–9/month $11/month $8/month
Bandwidth ~10K visitors/month* Unlimited Unlimited Unmetered ~7-8K visitors/day* Unmetered
Storage 10GB Unlimited 50GB 100GB Unmetered 100GB
Number of sites 1 2 1 1 1 1
SiteGround InMotion DreamHost BlueHost HostGator GoDaddy
Middle Tier GrowBig Power -- Plus Baby Deluxe
Initial price $6/month $8–10/month -- $6–8/month $4–12/month $5–11/month
Normal price $20/month $8–10/month -- $11–13/month $12/month $11/month
Bandwidth ~25K visitors/month* Unlimited -- Unmetered ~7-8K visitors/day* Unmetered
Storage 20GB Unlimited -- Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Number of sites Unlimited 6 -- Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
SiteGround InMotion DreamHost BlueHost HostGator GoDaddy
Highest Tier GoGeek Pro Unlimited Choice Plus Business Ultimate
Initial price $12/month $15–19/month $8–11/month $6–8/month $6–17/month $8–17/month
Normal price $35/month $15–19/month $8–11/month $15–17/month $17/month $17/month
Bandwidth ~100K visitors/month* Unlimited Unlimited Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Storage 30GB Unlimited Unlimited Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Number of sites Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Operating system Linux Linux Linux Linux Linux
Windows		 Linux
Windows

*SiteGround and Hostgator both offer unmetered bandwidth, but provide recommended traffic thresholds

Then, put customer service to the test

Beyond any basic “does my website have what it needs to function well,” customer support is the single most important thing a web host can offer. Think of it like health insurance. It doesn’t matter how robust the policy is. If the claims process is a nightmare, you’re going to switch providers.

Customer support can be split into live support — phone calls, help desk emails, and chat — and knowledge centers, which include everything from help articles to tutorials to community forums to blogs. Both live and self-help support are vital for when you’re having issues in set-up or performance.

When it comes to a knowledge center, you want a catalog that’s well-organized and easy to search, with a huge library of hyper-specific content. Bonus points for active moderators who are answering questions.

What stands out?

1. Out of our six hosts, InMotion’s support center is the one to beat. It has a gigantic database of detailed articles, tutorials, videos, and FAQs, plus a well-moderated community forum. If something doesn’t make sense, keep on scrolling: InMotion support staff is present in every comments section with advice, recommendations, and clarification — the only one of our six providers to do so.

InMotion WordPress support page

InMotion’s support center is through and easy to navigate.

2. SiteGround and DreamHost also have great resources that are complete, informative, and intuitively organized. Even though the quality of the content in HostGator’s support is rich, it looks looks like it was designed in the mid-90s and never updated.  

3. Bluehost’s and GoDaddy’s organization is particularly atrocious. Go straight to the search bar — better yet, Google what you’re looking for. Don’t even bother browsing.

As for live support, your priorities are fast access and nuanced, specific help from people who know what they’re talking about. That’s tricky to evaluate without being a long-term customer.

One way is to get a sense of a web host’s reputation, particularly over the past two years (all six of our web hosts have been around since at least the early 2000s — lots has happened since then).

What stands out?

1. SiteGround is overwhelmingly the crowd favorite out of the six hosts we looked at. It’s the de facto recommendation of Reddit users, and hugely well-regarded everywhere else: like we mentioned, it’s one of only three web hosts recommended by WordPress (DreamHost and Bluehost are the others), and has over twice as many five-star user reviews as any other provider on WhoIsHostingThis.

2. If you start reading user reviews, you’ll notice how many are focused on customer support. This is especially apparent with Bluehost, HostGator, and GoDaddy, whose products rank high with industry publications like CNET and PCMag, but who are ravaged by customers unhappy with the the support they’re provided.

Ratings and reputation don’t always match up

  SiteGround InMotion
 DreamHost Bluehost HostGator GoDaddy
Percentage of 5-star user reviews on
WhoIsHostingThis		 92%
(1954 total reviews)		 67%
(549 total reviews)		 54%
(251 total reviews)		 43%
(480 total reviews)		 37%
(572 total reviews)		 27%
(584 total reviews)
Trust Pilot ★★★★★
(1477 reviews)		 ★★★
(108 reviews)		 ★★★
(473 reviews)		 ★
(115 reviews)		 ★
(401 reviews)		 ★★
(3,113 reviews)
CNET 4.5 / 5 5 / 5 5 / 5 4 / 5 4.5 / 5 --
PC Mag 4 / 5 4 / 5 4.5 / 5 -- 4.5 / 5 4 / 5

But the true test of support quality is to experience it yourself, and that’s where free trials come in. All six hosts have some sort of money-back guarantee on their shared hosting plans, which means you can set up your website and see what you think of the service with relatively low stakes — just your time and any add-on fees you opt into, like paying for domain registration. We recommend going to town with customer support during that trial period. Get on live chat, open tickets, hop on the phone as much as possible to see if you like what you’re being served up.

What stands out?

1. DreamHost and InMotion are the real leaders of the money-back guarantee, with 97- and 90-day free trial periods respectively. These are the best you’re going to find from any web host, anywhere, and give you a lot of time to test out customer support, tools, and functionality. HostGator comes in second with a 45-day trial. Every other host offers a nice-to-have but swift 30 days.

2. SiteGround, InMotion, and Bluehost put a lot of resources into their support channels, with 24/7 access across phone, live chat, and email.

3. You have to pay money to speak on the phone with someone from DreamHost: $10 for one callback, or you can purchase packages of three callbacks for $15.

4. HostGator and GoDaddy both lack any email customer support.

Customer support comparison

  SiteGround InMotion
 DreamHost Bluehost HostGator GoDaddy
Money-back guarantee 30 days 90 days 97 days 30 days 45 days 30 days
Phone 24/7 24/7 ✘* 24/7 24/7 24/7
Chat 24/7 24/7 Only certain hours 24/7 24/7 Only certain hours
Email 24/7 24/7 24/7 24/7 ✘ ✘

* DreamHost customers can request a callback from technical support, but will be charged $10

Try not to worry about uptime too much

Beyond customer service, the most common complaint you’ll read from customer reviews is about uptime – or rather, lack thereof. Uptime is vital to your business: in 2013, Amazon.com famously went offline for 40 minutes and lost $4.8 million.

Every single web host in the world strives to have 100 percent server uptime, but there’s unfortunately no industry standard to evaluate how well they do. Lots of web hosting review sites do personal tests to try and gauge server performance, including WhoIsHostingThis and Web Hosting Facts, but since these tests only look at one site at a time, and often for short amounts of time, they are best used as indications, not gospel. That said, all six of our web host sites perform well in these micro tests, with reported uptimes over 99.9 percent.

To try to avoid the “just trust us” promise of near-perfect uptime, most hosts provide some sort of guarantee of at least 99.9 percent uptime. However, that guarantee isn’t much of a guarantee. It just means your bill can be discounted in the event of any unplanned downtime. There’s a lot of fine print on these guarantees, too, including not accepting self-reported or third-party uptime data, and not providing refunds for downtime that was out of the host’s control (for example, a hurricane).  

What stands out?

1. Bluehost is one of the only host to offer no uptime guarantee, and instead just says most of its downtime issues are resolved in 15 minutes.

Bluehost uptime agreement text

We’re not impressed by Bluehost’s no-promises uptime agreement. 

2. SiteGround zooms out to view uptime annually instead of monthly, like most everyone else. If your average annual uptime is below 99.9 percent, you get one month of free hosting. SiteGround is also the most transparent when it comes to its uptime, and lists both its cumulative 12-month uptime and the previous month’s uptime right on its site.

3. DreamHost zooms in to view uptime hourly. For every hour of service interruption below 100 percent uptime, you get a day of free hosting (capped at 10 percent of your bill). The caveat: money back is only eligible when you manually flag that you think your service is sub-par. DreamHost doesn’t track it automatically.

Uptime guarantees aren’t exactly guarantees

  SiteGround InMotion
 DreamHost Bluehost HostGator GoDaddy
Uptime guarantee 99.9% annually 99.999% monthly* 100% hourly -- 99.9% monthly 99.9% monthly
If it's below that: 1 month of free hosting 1 month of free hosting 1 day of free hosting -- 1 month of free hosting 5% off next month's bill

*Only available on InMotion’s highest-tier shared hosting plan

Migrations matter, especially if your website already exists

Frustrating support and downtime — particularly when they’re combined — are the most common reasons to abandon one host and join another.

It’s always possible (and free) to migrate your existing site manually to a new web host (another reason those knowledge bases are so critical). But it gets more challenging the bigger and more complicated your site is, which is why web hosts often provide some sort of “managed” migration to ensure it’s done right.

What stands out?

1. InMotion’s managed migration policy is the most generous: three are free, and then it’s just $10 per transfer after that.

2. The oddest policy is Bluehost’s, which requires you to purchase five managed migrations at a time for $150. The economics aren’t so bad if you have five sites to migrate — less so if you only have one or two.

3. DreamHost is also unique insomuch as it is the only host out of the these six that doesn’t use cPanel, but rather its own custom control panel. Transferring an existing site in and out of DreamHost is always going to be a manual process managed by you. The exception is WordPress sites, whose migration DreamHost will manage for a whopping $99 each.  

What’s cPanel?

Your control panel is the everything-in-one-place dashboard you use to manage your web hosting, whether its opening help tickets or installing a new app onto your site. cPanel is the most common “brand” of control panel and works with Linux operating systems. (The most common one you’ll see with Windows-based operating systems in Plesk.)

Every web host can customize its cPanel to look and act a certain way, but all cPanels are compatible with each other — think Android on your phone or tablet. DreamHost is more like Apple, in that it has built its own control panel that’s only compatible with itself.

Other web hosting specs to look for

Backups: It’s best practice to manually backup all your files and databases and store them on separate machines — we consider it one of the top 4 content areas you should worry about. But lots of web hosts advertise complementary backups to act as a kind of auto-save in case you corrupt a file, delete something vital, or otherwise break your website.

SiteGround’s backup policy is the beefiest and most integrated as a feature. It automatically backs everything up every day. For its mid- and highest-tiered plans, restoring those backups is free; the lowest-tiered plan is $20 per restore. GoDaddy offers a similar service, but for $2/month.

Everyone else treats automatic backups and restores as worst-case scenarios: Somehow you’ve wiped out your entire website and you forgot to make any manual copies.

  • Bluehost offers complementary daily backups and free restores across all its plans, but it caveats that it is at Bluehost’s discretion and in no way guaranteed. For more dependable website backups, it offers an add-on service called CodeGuard that provides daily backups and restores. CodeGuard is included for free in its highest-tier shared hosting plan.
  • With InMotion, only sites under 10GB are automatically backed up; you can restore a backup for free once every four months, or pay $40.
  • Likewise, HostGator only automatically backs up your site if it’s under 20GB. Getting a copy and support to restore will put you out $25.
  • DreamHost does a daily backup that’s kept for a week or two; support will help you restore your site for free if you somehow wipe everything out.

SSD storage: Solid State Drive technology is notably faster than regular “spinning” hard drives, which in turn means content is delivered to your website and your website’s visitors faster. It’s pretty common among well-known web hosts to include SSD storage in even lower-tier shared hosting plans. GoDaddy is the only one of the six hosts we looked at that doesn’t offer it on its basic shared hosting. You have to spring for its managed WordPress hosting to get SSD storage.  

SSL certificates: Certificates for Secure Sockets Layer encryption (SSL) are like internet passports that confirm your website is secure enough for your visitors to submit sensitive data, like credit card information and passwords. It’s considered best practice to have SSL certification — in fact, Google considers it as a factor in how your site will show up in search rankings.

Most web hosts include basic SSL certificates for free in their shared hosting plans (although GoDaddy only offers it with its highest-tier shared hosting plan). That basic SSL certificate should be enough for most websites. More advanced encryption is needed if your website is also connected with a physical presence, like a brick and mortar store. Those suped-up SSL certificates are available for purchase through all web hosts.

SSH access: Secure Shell access means you have a secure channel straight into your account to manage files and databases. It’s a feature that’s critical if you’re have a web developer or technically-inclined site administrator who wants to manage and troubleshoot everything themselves. All six web hosts provide SSH access.

Email hosting: If your web host includes email hosting, it means you’ll have access to a customized email address and room to store your emails. Lots of web hosts offer this, often for free. SiteGround, InMotion, BlueHost, and GoDaddy include unlimited email hosting on their lowest-tier shared plans; all six hosts include it on their highest-tier plans.

It’s worth keeping in mind that email isn’t stored in a separate place — it all pulls from the same server space as the rest of your site, which means it will impact how much room is “left over” for you to use. If that doesn’t sound ideal — maybe your website is already pretty weighty — your web host isn’t your only option for getting a custom email address. GSuite (aka GMail for businesses) and services like Hover also provide email, and often it’s a more robust, more intuitive solution, like what you’re used to with your personal email. Lots of small business owners prefer keeping their email and websites on separate hosts: if your web host is also your email host and it goes offline, you’ll be without access to email. Quelle horreur.

Look for room to grow long-term

A typical upgrade pattern for a new website is to start with shared hosting, max that out, and then jump to VPS, cloud, or dedicated. WordPress websites might take a pit stop in Managed WordPress hosting for awhile, too — which, depending on the host, could be on a VPS server (like Bluehost) or cloud server (like DreamHost and HostGator).

It’s time to upgrade when your site’s size and traffic over-burden your current plan. Sometimes, the host will let you know it’s time to upgrade — that will happen if you’re, say, overwhelming a server and making everyone else’s sites on that server slow down. Another reason to upgrade is if you’re ready for more functionality, customizability, and autonomy: upgrading usually gets you access to a more robust toolkit.

What stands out?

1.  SiteGround is unique in that it leaps from shared hosting straight to cloud, without the traditional VPS onramp.

2. InMotion is a little less modern than its competition by not offering some sort of cloud hosting solution.

3. GoDaddy has created another stepping stone between shared hosting and full-blown VPS with something called “business hosting” — basically the power of VPS with the straight-forward cPanel interface of shared hosting.  

No web host wants to put a ceiling on your website’s growth

  SiteGround InMotion DreamHost BlueHost HostGator GoDaddy
Shared ✔* ✔ ✔* ✔* ✔ ✔
Managed WordPress ✔ ✔ ✔ (cloud) ✔ (VPS) ✔ (cloud) ✔
VPS ✘ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Cloud ✔ ✘ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Dedicated ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
*Includes managed WordPress hosting in shared hosting plan

Not sure what all the different types of web hosting are? Here’s a breakdown:

An easy analogy is homes – GoDaddy has a nice little illustration of this. Shared hosting is like an apartment complex. One big building (the server) hosts lots of different residents (websites), who share the building’s resources (storage, bandwidth, often an IP address). This is an excellent solution for a lot of small and midsize websites, but the downside is if someone on the server hogs too much of the resources, it impacts everyone – imagine sharing the basement laundry with another resident who wants to wash all their sheets and towels and clothes every day. Web hosts offer a range of shared hosting plans. The higher the tier, the “nicer” the apartment building: fewer residents, more washing machines.  

A virtual private server (VPS) is more comparable to a townhouse — you’re still sharing a building with other residents, but far fewer than in a shared hosting apartment building. Plus you get more flexibility and control over your space. That’s because the server makes virtual copies of itself, and each resident gets its own copy: you get your own IP address, private access, your own washing machine.

Dedicated hosting is like a house and there’s only one resident: your website. A dedicated server is designed to accommodate huge traffic — you can do all the laundry you want! — and requires a fair amount of upkeep that you or your webmaster is on the hook for. That lawn isn’t going to mow itself.

Not every web hosting service offers cloud hosting — it’s the newest form — but think of it as owning multiple residences. If there’s a problem at one of your servers, your website will instantly go stay at one of the others. In theory, your website will never go offline.

Lastly: WordPress hosting. WordPress is the most common CMS available. As such, most web hosting providers offer managed WordPress hosting, where the plan is designed with WordPress as its primary consideration: WordPress comes pre-installed, WordPress core updates are automatically applied, your server’s security might be more specifically tailored to what WordPress prefers.

This isn’t to say other hosting plans aren’t good for WordPress. They are all designed to be seamlessly compatible. But think of managed WordPress hosting like a yard service: it’s going to water your lawn and trim the hedges automatically.

Always pay for domain privacy

If you’re creating a new website, you’ll need to register a domain. All six web hosts allow you to register with them (sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee) even though it’s not required — you can register a domain with Namecheap or GoDaddy and still be hosted by SiteGround or InMotion.

When you’re purchasing that domain, always opt into domain privacy, which means proxy contact information from the domain administrator will be submitted to the WHOIS registry. If you don’t opt in, you will be spammed. A lot. Domain privacy usually runs $1–2/month and is billed annually.

Example of WHOIS contact information before and after Bluehost domain privacy

Always, always, always get domain privacy. Or you’ll be sharing lots of personal info. 

DreamHost includes domain privacy for free with all its shared plans; Bluehost offers it for free on its highest-tier shared plan.

Recap: The Best Web Hosting Services



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