What is Hosting?
The very first thing you will need to start a blog is a hosting account. As explained on the home page, a hosting account is required for any website to officially “exist” and be seen by others.
While not free, hosting accounts don’t have to be expensive. Some only offer full year purchases at a time, which can make a blog more of an investment than expected at first. Most others offer a monthly option, paying a little bit each month to keep your blog’s “real estate” up and running.
The Options
I have personally used 3 different web hosts in my web lifetime, and they are all quite different in their prices and what they offer. Some try to sell you on unnecessary features to justify their increased price, while other’s are extremely cheap, selling you the bare bones – usually not enough for a single blog.
1) GoDaddy
This was my very first “web” experience purchasing a domain name and a hosting account. I used GoDaddy because it was the most publicized and familiar web entity for acquiring such things.
I thought they would be fair priced and offer reasonable services, and at first I thought they did. I had no idea what I was doing or what I needed to start a blog, so I ended up buying more than I needed (sound familiar to anyone?).
GoDaddy is the king of upselling you on all sorts of crap that is a complete waste of money. Website development programs, hosting information security, extended domain plans, differing levels of hosting, web editors, ftp services, and all other sorts of nonsense.
I highly recommend you do not use GoDaddy for web hosting, as they seem to be purely a marketing circus and not a legitimate customer-focused hosting company. Their prices aren’t at all competitive as well.
2) GDI
Global Domains International is a multi-level marketing hosting company. They offer their hosting services at $10 a month, but force you to chose a .ws website when registering.
By “MLM”, I mean to say they are best heavily on affiliate recruitment and “sales” of more hosting packages more so than providing a good service to customers. I used their hosting to try out their product for several months, but realized I was getting mediocre service and constantly pitched to promote GDI to other people.
If you are wanting a blog and need a hosting account to do it, GDI is a waste of time and effort. To make it worse, canceling your account requires you to call their customer service department – there is no online cancellation you can perform. It might not seem like a big deal, but their hours are overseas – about a 12 hour difference.
3) Host Gator
You might have seen this hosting company from fliers or banners around the web. They are a very reliable and cost-effective alternative to our lesser hosting companies listed above.
They offer more than enough hosting features and allow you to have multiple websites on your account, so you won’t need to purchase anymore hosting space in the event you want more blogs.
While their customer support isn’t as quick and fantastic of our last hosting company, going with Host Gator is something you won’t regret.
4) Host Monster
What I would consider the king of all hosting companies, Host Monster has shown me their true colors of the years. They provide practically unlimited resources which quick customer service to any large-scale web developer.
For the sake of a simple blog or two, a Host Monster account would be overkill. If you are like me and plan on having 33 websites on your single hosting account, this company is the way to go : )
Their pricing isn’t as good as Host Gator, but with good reason. I’m not sure the current account limitations on Host Gator, but I don’t think you can have more than 10 websites on a single hosting account, so they can afford to sell their hosting cheaper.
The “done for you” option
If you would like to avoid the choices and get setup with a premium themed blog immediately, let us do it for you.
You can get a free, premium-themed professional wordpress blog AND be taught how to use it at the Free Blog Factory with the link below:
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