Hello and welcome back to this blog. Today we are going to do A Review Of Which Hosting Is Best For Your Blog? Starting a blog and choosing a hosting platform can get pretty confusing with so much choice around.
I have had my fair share of bad hosting that crashed my site lots of times when traffic volume was high.
What a nightmare that experience was!
After reading lots of reviews about hosting suppliers I was very lucky to find a brilliant solution!
This post may contain affiliate links which means if you click a link and make a purchase that I may receive a small commission. The price you pay will not be affected.
P.s.I only recommend products and services that I actually use.
Let’s dive in and talk about different hosting solutions and why it’s imperative you get this right:
Free Blog Hosting Is A Fat NO
whatever you do, don’t choose FREE blog hosting.
There is a great saying ” you get exactly what you pay for ” and that is a very true statement!
Is there anything in life that is truly free? or is it a premise to get money from you at a later point in time?
How can any business survive if everything is free? there has to be money made from somewhere right?
Reasons Not To Choose Free Hosting:
- Limited use of features: on the free version of Generate Press which I started out with you could only use the 6 standard colours, on the pro version you have a whole Rainbow to choose from.
- Ads Popping Up: like when you are trying to watch a video on Youtube you get those irritating ads getting in the way of the video. This can happen on your website with free hosting options.
- Having To Pay To Move Your Website: getting a sudden burst of traffic and the website crashes and to add insult to injury I get told I will have to pay to move to site to other hosting!
- Limited Speed: The speed of your website will affect your Google rankings if it’s very slow. Not good for traffic as visitors won’t wait for your site to load.
- Domain Name: you don’t get to choose a personalized domain name instead you will get one that contains makingmoney@blogspot.com, how can you build trust with that?
- Not Much Customer Support: When you have a problem with your website you really need help from customer support, on free hosting it is as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
For you to have a chance at blogging you will need:
- Paid Hosting
- A Super-Fast Loading Speed
- Experienced Customer Service Support
- A Domain Name Of Your Choosing that associates with your chosen niche
- Control Of Your Blog Design
- As Much Traffic As Google and Social Media send your way
- No Ads Popping Up
Free domains are great for bloggers that do it for fun as a hobby, but they are a terrible idea if you want to blog full-time and earn money from it.
Why WordPress Is The Best Choice
75 million people use WordPress for their blogs and so should you!
Why you should host your blog on WordPress:
The Most Powerful Platform Around
When your blog starts to grow there will be many features that will be necessary to support the growth.
WordPress sites have everything a new blogger will need, free and paid plugins, tools, as well as software that can help with the loading speed of your pages, helping you to monetize and help with your Traffic flow.
Many of my friends and I started with other blogging platforms and quickly changed to WordPress when things started to go wrong.
There are certain plugins that only work with WordPress that you need for your blog site as Wix users often tell me.
Quick Fix Plugins
Because WordPress is so widely used they have their own tutorials for using the platform as well as hundreds of YouTube videos to watch if you get stuck.
When you have an issue with your website such as:
Slow Page loading speed
Social media traffic issues
Optimization of images
Managing Your comments
SEO issues
Problems with contact forms
I know for sure there are a ton of plugins that are available to sort out the issues quickly to get you on your way again.
Everything is updated efficiently and you are notified when an update needs doing, it only takes a few seconds to do.
Simple To Use Content Editor
Have you used the Gutenberg block editor?
I love using this page builder, the blocks are so customizable.
Extremely easy to use and constantly being updated.
Great piece of kit!
There is also another plugin that will give you more blocks to use now. it’s called ultimate addons for Gutenberg and it’s free.
WordPress Is What I Use
After disasters with other blogging platforms, I switched over to WordPress.
Speaking from personal experience with my own blogs it is the best platform around, If you check out other successful bloggers who are 6 figure earners the majority of them will also be using WordPress.
The vast majority of the total internet users use it, Which in itself speaks volumes.
It’s time now to get to Blog Hosting.
The Top 4 Blog Hosting Sites
Having used these 4 blog hosting platforms I can give you an insight into which worked out the best for me.
#1 Recommendation. Hosting at Wealthy Affiliate is fast, Has never let me down no matter how much traffic has come in one day, has excellent support staff that is available 24/7, 365 days a year.
So much more than just a hosting platform, they are also a university for learning blogging and affiliate marketing, a training platform and you can also buy your own domain from there as well having use of a free keyword research tool.
Wealthy Affiliates are who I currently use and I can’t see that ever-changing!
#2 Recommendation. WP. Engine Is a little complicated to use if you are just getting started with a blog, it’s okay for experienced bloggers. Great customer service and the site speed was not too bad.
#3. Host Gator this is who I started out with and it seemed okay, in the beginning, no real problems until there were a few blog posts on the site then it was a really slow load speed.
#4.Site Ground This is who I turned to after using Host Gator and everything was all good until the traffic started to flood in and when it was peaking the site kept crashing and then they hit me with an email to boost my bandwidth that was going to cost 100’s more a month each and every month.
No way Hose!
I had to find alternative hosting and fast!
When I joined Wealthy Affiliate my whole year’s membership fee only cost less than 2 months of what they wanted to charge me and once I upgraded to the premium membership they transferred my site across for me for free.
It was a total no-brainer and the best decision I have ever made!
Wealthy Affiliate Is Super Affordable
If you are on a budget you can pay monthly and for what you get in return it is super affordable.
Where possible it is better to pay for a yearly membership because you will save money that way!
Can you get a hosting platform with a free keyword research tool to use, training, excellent support staff, live chat where you can get any questions answered 24 hours a day, 16 years worth of training plus live training every Friday for $49. a month anywhere else?
It is so easy to get started and if you just want to get a feel for the platform you can join for free, and set up a Siterubix website in 30 seconds flat.
You can have your own personal domain email address, as well as 10, hosted websites all included in the price.
Even if you decide to only stay a free member and you refer someone who upgrades to the premium membership you will still get paid a commission.
Wealthy Affiliate has its own affiliate program and there are other ways you can earn money on the platform.
Getting Started Today With Wealthy Affiliate
Step 1. Click the link and go to the Wealthy Affiliate page and set-up your profile it’s totally Free to join.
Step 2. check out my post on how to get started with blogging which will take you through the process from start to finish, the links on this post all open in new pages.
If you have enjoyed this post then please share it using the social sharing buttons!
Have any questions then feel free to ask them in the comments. I will always answer you within 24 hours.
What a great tip not to ever use free website hosting as you get what you pay for. I have been using WordPress for my blog and find it very easy to use and with thousands of plugins that are easy to install.
I fully agree with you that Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best hosting platforms. They are very affordable and provide you with affiliate marketing training, and much more than just web hosting.
Oh, goodness how I wish i would have found this years ago. I did the free blog thing and for five years I got no where. Dashboard destinations was something I put so much work into and nothing happened. no traffic, no comments. I finally caved and signed up for wealthy affiliate and within a month my site was making money. This is so so so true and it could have saved me years.
Happy that you didn’t give up and got there eventually. Well done!
I was inclined to go with free hosting. When we’re starting out, we don’t have much money. But I have learnt here on your post that above all the things related to internet marketing, we need to set some money apart for hosting. Yeah, I get it, free hosting is slow and of bad quality. And that affects our rakings and traffic. And without traffic, our business will never grow.
You nailed it Ann!