My deal with A2 is up for renewal early next year an considering my next move.
My sites don’t generate much money so managed VPS is out and I lack the relevant technical skills for unmanaged VPS, so looking to remain on a shared host, but a better plan than I had with A2.
My websites don’t generate much ad revenue so not need to find a balance between good and not too expensive.
Who are the good shared hosts?
Edit to add, I run about 12 websites over six toplevel domains; the most popular site gets about 10,000 visits a month.
I’m with LightningBase. Have been for years. They are outstanding. In reviewsignal.com’s annual tests, they are the only host to have been rated in the top category in every type of classification in every year! Very affordable too, and excellent customer support. I could provide an affiliate link, but then you might have doubts, so I won’t!
It’s a DIY webhost for experienced webmasters, running on FreeBSD servers, and offering full SSH and SFTP access. Paid support is optional, but they do have an extensive FAQ and a members forum.
It’s a great option if you’re writing controversial content (and so worth the learning curve), since their only restriction is that everything you do should be legal.
Another reason why you might want to consider them is their model: Pay as you go (prepaid) in terms of resources used, and they charge by the penny, so you can deposit as little as $2 dollars. The base cost for a production site is $0.05/day. Extra charges depends on how active/popular your site is and on the additional features you use, like DNS and email forwarding. They also give you the choice of server for each site: PHP/CGI, Static, Custom, and Generic.
Another reason is enhanced security. Because they host controversial content, they are used to attacks on their members’ website, and so they have strong security measures in place. But the downside of this is that they restrictive files and directories permissions, and they disapprove (and maybe prevent) installing/upgrading CMSs using the web interface. They do have a custom control panel, but most administrative tasks (like plugin updates) are done using SSH and SFTP.
In regards to installing ClassicPress, they have detailed instructions on how to install and initially setup WordPress, and you can easily adapt that. For other CMSs, you’re on your own.
After a look at their FAQs, that nearlyfreespeech hosting sounds flaky. For those writing controversial content that nobody else will host, it might be an option, but, I’d avoid it in every other case.
Well, NFSN is not for everyone. They know it, and they expect only to cater to those who share their philosophy and values. You can read more about this in their About pages.
You might be surprised though that NFSN is much more than just about hosting controversial content. They claim that many people choose them for the freedom and power they provide to webmasters. And having just scratched the surface of what their service has to offer (I’m still a novice), I agree with them. Like I said, it’s DIY. Though it’s shared hosting, you can do a lot, provided that you have the necessary skills.
I also haven’t found a shared hosting service that I am really happy with.
I came across About 1984 Hosting Company recently which looks interesting and reasonably priced. Haven’t tried them out though.
Another very interesting option for people who are comfortable working hands-on with their servers. I might use this service for custom-coded sites with efficient and minimal code. Unfortunately (with a typical amount of plugins in the mix) WP and CP sites are often not very efficient, and paying directly for CPU and memory usage for something like a Classic Commerce site would quickly get out of hand.
The main trouble with shared hosting is that it’s extremely oversold and sites don’t end up sharing resources, they end up fighting for resources. I think anywhere you go, it will be similar. I’ve used DreamHost for a long time with good results, moving from shared plan in the early days to a VPS later.
NFSN uses a clustered network. I don’t really know what that is, but from what I can understand, sites are being moved among servers, and so no single server is overburdened.
VPS does not have to be out
It can be cheaper than shared hosting, and 100% better, if you choose the right provider hehe.
I recommend Webdock: https://webdock.io
If you use TukuToi as a coupon you get 5 bucks credit, which can be enough for a month subscription.
It is a pay what you use service. If you decide to drop your server tomorrow you will only pay what you used.
If you decide to drop it in 3 months, you pay only 3 months, etc. No lock in, no “long term BS”, no throttling of resources, fully customisable stacks, quite flexible pricing plan (you can literally get a server for 2.5 Euro monthly and then stack it up with dedicated ram or bandwidth, no need to buy a full blown server just to get a bit more bandwidth, etc.)
Downside? Almost none. The only downside I found is that you need to deal with mails a bit differently (no inbuilt service) and you need an external DNS (I use Cloudflare, which is free).
Maybe it helps
I run the websites all there, and after 10 years headache I finally got peace of mind. Sounds like a publicity slogan but is true (I was on SiteGround, Bluehost, private hosts from Canada which where quite good but suddenly dropped service…) So I can recommend it.
I’m biased, but, as some folks pointed out, shared hosting have more problems, than Gutenberg. Just they are better hidden.
To support ClassicPress’ contributors, we ready to provide some elitist (read: LiteSpeed, Docker, no long-term commitment) managed VPS for the shared price. Please, write here or PM me your disk space requirements. More info here: About | PressHill
There are good shared hosts out there. The trick is to find them.
I’m very happy with my host but they are in Australia, so probably not ideal for Northern Hemisphere usage. It’s a wholesale reseller service. You pay per individual account (so you are only paying for what you need) and you can build your own plans - anything from 1 CPU, 1GB RAM and 500MB up to 4 CPU, 8GB RAM and 100GB. Not oversold and great support. The other nice thing is that my sites have ended up spread over a lot of different servers. So if there is ever an issue it only affects one or two sites.
Been there. I don’t recommend it. When it crashed and every site went down it was not a happy time.
I know shared hosts aren’t the best, but the other options seem to require technical skills I don’t have.
The one mentioned by @anon66243189 is only partially managed which suggests I’d need to be doing stuff to it and, as @ozfiddler rightly said, problems would lead to a nightmare for me to resolve.
I’ve been reasonably happy with a2, but either need to upgrade to a better package with them or move elsewhere to a better package as my traffic across sites is growing.
There is ~4GB of files, ~1.3GB MySQL and ~110GB of bandwidth per month.
I’m saying I want to find a balance between price/performance as the sites are a cost rather than revenue generating.
I know Hetzner and artfiles both have subsidiaries in the US (and the German ones are solid), but I cannot say anything about them, as my primary focus is on Europe.
In 22 years of web development, RunCloud control panel with UpCloud VPS is the only platform I’ve been truly happy with (and I’ve used a lot of hosts including SiteGround, Liquid Web, Cloudways, etc).
