When we work on websites for clients, half the time they have hosting companies, half the time they don’t. Sometimes they have preferred hosting companies, more often they don’t even know what a hosting company is. The worst, however, is when clients are paying an arm and a leg because they are unaware of how competitively web-hosts are priced these days!

It is with this in mind that I wanted to post about the web hosts that we at Tridea recommend:

SiteGround:
Our site is hosted on SiteGround. Prior to starting Tridea, I had refered clients to Siteground. So when it came time for us to purchase hosting I made the pitch for Siteground. Key features:

• free domain
• 750gb hosting space
• 7500gb monthly traffic
• unlimited email accounts
• $5.95/month (w/ 2 year contract)

GoDaddy:
GoDaddy is one of the hosts we recommend most to folks who are not terribly web savvy. We do this because in our experience, over the past 4 years, we’ve had a great experience with their technical support specialist. They are very helpful and a pleasure to deal with over the phone.

They have numerous plans but we usually recommend their Deluxe plan:

• $25 Google AdWords, $50 Microsoft adCenter credits
• 150gb hosting space
• 1500gb monthly traffic
• 500 email accounts
• $6.29/month (w/ 2 year contract)

Compared to SiteGround they come up short on features and lack a free domain, but really, their phone support is outstanding.

We’ve also used BlueHost and MediaTemple before with good results, although MediaTemple is a little more expensive then SiteGround and GoDaddy, they invest heavily in their servers and up-time, so sticklers for technology might prefer that.

One final note, in reviewing hosting packages for this post, I came across a name I hadn’t heard of before:

HostMonster:

• $50 Google, $50 Yahoo credits
• Unlimited hosting space
• Unlimited monthly traffic
• Unlimited email accounts
• Free domain
• $4.95/month (w/ 2 year contract)

They are an unknown to Tridea and people we’ve worked with…but with those features and that price, maybe it’s worth a gamble?