Here’s our rankings for the the best web hosting companies of 2023! This has definitely been a year of change for hosting companies, with several new companies making it into our top ten.
Who’s our #1 Pick this year?
What has provoked these drastic changes? Well, there are two reasons:
- Improvements in Cloud Hosting – Cloud hosting was all the rage a couple years ago, but it was also expensive and unreliable. Thankfully the price and reliability have improved to a point where most hosting companies offer at least some kind of cloud-hybrid hosting plan.
- VPS Improvements – This is not unrelated to the improved popularity of cloud hosting. VPS hosting (or ‘virtual private server’) has grown from a cheap imitation of dedicated hosting to a flexible, reliable hosting solution that bridges the gap between small traffic personal blogs and gigantic company websites.
| #: | Name: | Customer Rating: | Uptime: | Ease: |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | A Small Orange | 5.0/5.0 | 5.0/5.0 | 4.9/4.9 |
| 2. | Godaddy | 4.75/5.0 | 5.0/5.0 | 5.0/5.0 |
| 3. | Hostmetro | 4.9/5.0 | 4.9/5.0 | 4.9/5.0 |
| 4. | DigitalOcean | 5.0/5.0 | 4.75/5.0 | 4.8/.5.0 |
| 5. | Dreamhost | 4.8/5.0 | 4.8/5.0 | 4.9/5.0 |
| 6. | Bluehost | 4.75/5.0 | 4.9/5.0 | 4.8/5.0 |
| 7. | Fatcow | 4.7/5.0 | 4.75/5.0 | 4.95/5.0 |
| 8. | Hostgator | 4.65/5.0 | 4.75/5.0 | 4.75/5.0 |
| 9. | 1and1 | 4.5/5.0 | 4.8/5.0 | 4.5/5.0 |
Surprises from our Rankings:
While ‘A Small Orange’ topping our rankings isn’t that surprising (it frequently tops lists ranking hosting companies), the second place finish of Godaddy is very surprising. The polarizing company has a lot of detractors. However in the past couple of years Godaddy has attempted to reinvent its public image. Gone are the risque ‘banned’ superbowl commercials and instead Godaddy is focusing on the small business owner. Reliability and ease of use are the new Godaddy goals.
What’s interesting is that our up-time monitoring tools found Godaddy to be the most reliable web host of them all. While our sample size of a few websites is too small to be a truly scientific measurement, it does indicate that Godaddy has vastly improved their hosting services. That, and you can they also have plenty of discounts and sales to make it more affordable (Click here to make sure you get a valid coupon code that works for you).