The best web hosting services provide you with a secure and high-performance infrastructure for your website. But which one should you choose for your online course website? Here’s a quick look at some of our top choices.
Hostinger
Nexcess
BlueHost
WP Engine
A2Hosting
These are just a few of our recommendations for web hosting services, but read more to find out about some other excellent options for comparison.
The best web hosting services provide you with a secure and high-performance infrastructure for your website and directly impact your site’s performance, user experience, and search engine rankings – all of which play an important role in growing your brand and business.
But the biggest challenge in choosing a website hosting company is knowing what to look for since there are so many different types of hosting. For example, some services are cheaper and designed for beginners, some are optimized for high-speed but cost a lot more, while others are fully-managed by dedicated hosting professionals.
So, which one should you choose for your home base website?
In this article, we’ll share some of the best web hosting services and describe their strengths and weaknesses to help you make the right choice.
Let’s dive in.
Do Course Creators Need A Web Hosting Service?
We focus a lot on creating and selling online courses here on Learning Revolution because it’s a big part of what many creators and expertise-based businesses do. But, of course, most online course platforms provide you with a website builder, a custom domain name, and cloud hosting.
So, why do you need a separate web hosting service for your website? Good question.
It’s true that the best online course platforms provide you with web hosting and website building features. However, most of them offer shared hosting with traffic and content limits.
Plus, they lack the flexibility and features (plugins, themes, integrations, etc.) that you can get with a WordPress website.
Why do you need higher usage limits and more features?
Because if you’re serious about growing your business, you’ll need to invest heavily in content marketing. But a well-integrated content strategy requires tools for SEO, lead generation, conversion optimization, email marketing, and more.
Even the best online course platforms still lack many of those features.
Just as importantly, hosting your main web site on an online course platform will make it much harder to leave that platform if you become dissatisfied with the experience it provides. You are better off building your website on a platform that is really meant for websites and relying on a web hosting provider that really specializes in customer support for web hosting.
If you produce a lot of video or heavy a strong social media following, it may also be tempting to rely on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok as your home base on the web. Resist that temptation. You don’t own your presence on these platforms – the companies that run them do – and their rules and algorithms can change at any time for reasons you may not be able to do anything about. Controlling your own website and web hosting with a good web hosting provider give you much more control.
These are key reasons why (as covered in Leading the Learning Revolution) you need a dedicated home base website and why getting a self-hosted WordPress website is the safest option for building and growing your brand’s website.
To do that, you need a high-performance web hosting service.
What are the Best Web Hosting Companies For Creators?
1. Hostinger
Hostinger has been around since 2004 but reinvented itself as one of the best web hosting services for beginners only a few years ago.
It offers multiple hosting types such as shared hosting, dedicated servers, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, agency hosting, etc.
However, WordPress hosting is its biggest strength making it one of the industry leaders in the shared web hosting space.
With Hostinger, you get affordable hosting plans that offer 100+ websites, 100GB SSD storage, highly secure servers, CDN integration, one-click installations, and free website domains.
However, it stands out because of its lightning-fast server speeds even in its shared hosting plans, a major attraction since website speed directly impacts search engine rankings.
According to Pingdom, a web-server performance monitoring tool, Hostinger’s average server response times (server speed) for April 2022 are:
Hostinger offers a neat and user-friendly backend interface where you can manage your domains, web hosting space, files, email accounts, FTP accounts, and lots of other options.
They have also recently launched a new website builder that’s secure, easy to use, and totally customizable (no coding required).
Overall, if you’re looking for high-performance but affordable shared hosting services, Hostinger is definitely worth considering.
Hostinger Key Features
- All-inclusive WordPress hosting
- Lightening fast server speed
- 99.9% uptime
- Multiple security layers
- SSD storage for faster speeds
Hostinger WordPress Hosting Plans And Pricing
- Premium – $2.99/month (most suitable for beginners)
- Business – $3.99/month
- Cloud Starter– $8.99/month
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Use the code LEARNREV when checking out at Hostinger and you will get 7% off all hosting plans for 12, 24, and 48 months.
Hostinger Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Impressive server speed for shared hosting | Low traffic limits for the beginner plan |
| Affordable hosting plans | Frequent complaints about its customer support |
| CDN integration | |
| Free email, domain, and SSL |
Read our detailed Hostinger review to learn more.
2. BlueHost
BlueHost is among the most popular web hosting services used by thousands of beginners and experienced webmasters worldwide. It is also among the few web hosting companies officially endorsed by WordPress.
BlueHost is mainly popular because of its shared hosting plans that offer unlimited website storage, bandwidth, one-click WordPress installation, email accounts, SSL certificate, and a free website domain.
In addition, BlueHost recently launched its WordPress website builder, which allows users to create eye-catching and fully-responsive websites using a drag & drop interface.
BlueHost guarantees 99.9% server uptime and provides impressive server load speeds even on its shared servers. However, its server speeds dramatically slow down in Asian countries.
This is why its average server response times aren’t as impressive as other modern web hosting services.
Here’s a quick snapshot of BlueHost’s average server response times over 12 months.
As you can see, the speeds aren’t impressive. But you can counter this by using BlueHost’s integration with Cloudflare, a leading content delivery network (CDN) that improves website performance and security.
BlueHost is ideal for beginners because of its affordable pricing and easy-to-use backend interface, specifically designed for non-technical users.
This is probably why most bloggers, content creators, freelancers, and beginner marketers choose BlueHost as their first web hosting service.
BlueHost Key Features
- Shared hosting server
- Unlimited website hosting
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited domains
- Unlimited emails
- 99.9% uptime
- Free SSL certificate
- One-click WordPress installation
- Website backup
- Domain privacy
BlueHost Shared Hosting Plans And Pricing
- Basic – $2.95/month (3-year plan)
- Plus – $5.45/month
- Choice Plus – $5.45/month
- Pro – $13.95/month
BlueHost Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Affordable and beginner-friendly | Not ideal for high traffic websites |
| Excellent customer service with live chat support | Renewal pricing is quite expensive |
| Robust drag & drop website builder | |
| Reliable and secure servers with 99.9% uptime |
3. Hostgator
Hostgator is among the most established players in the website hosting industry. It’s generally considered a cheap web hosting service designed for beginners with low-traffic websites. However, it also offers advanced plans and dedicated hosting for sites that require more server resources.
But you don’t need to worry about these things if you’re starting your first website and looking to grow your online business since your site won’t need a lot of resources in the first few months.
Hostgator guarantees 99.9% server uptime, but its shared hosting plans’ server response times aren’t the most impressive.
Here’s Hostgator’s recent server performance, according to Pingdom.
With Hostgator, you get unlimited website storage, bandwidth, domains, and emails. Plus, you get a free domain name for the first year, along with several handy add-ons like Google Ad coupons, a site builder, and a free website transfer service.
Hostgator’s backend is a little outdated and not as user-friendly as some of the other services on this list. However, it comes packed with the necessary hosting and data management options for first-time website owners.
Overall, Hostgator is a pretty good option if you’re looking for a cheap hosting service without compromising on website performance.
Hostgator Key Features
- Secure and reliable shared hosting
- Free website migration service
- One-click WordPress installation
- Free domain for one year.
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
Hostgator Pricing And MoneyBack Guarantee
- Hatchling Plan – $3.75/month
- Baby Plan – $4.50/month (most suitable for growing a new site)
- Business Plan – $6.25/month
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Hostgator Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Cheap and affordable hosting service ideal for beginners | Not suitable for high-traffic sites |
| Reliable server uptime and security | Slow customer support |
| One-click WordPress installation | Outdated backend user interface |
4. A2Hosting
If you’re looking for a high-performance web hosting service with lightning server speed and world-class security, A2Hosting is an excellent option.
Among the world’s fastest web hosting companies, it uses turbo servers to provide up to 20x faster load times than regular services.
According to Pingdom, A2Hosting’s servers respond in less than 300ms, the gold standard in website performance.
In addition, it offers 100% server up times even on its shared plans which is a big plus for smaller websites.
A2Hosting is specifically designed for high-traffic websites looking to sustain their performance during peak hours. However, as a web host, it is equally attractive to beginners and low-traffic site owners because of its affordable pricing plans.
A2Hosting offers shared, dedicated, and managed web hosting services with diverse plans for different end-users. All plans include one-click WordPress installation, the highest security standards, free site migration, and a money-back guarantee.
A2Hosting Key Features
- Unlimited bandwidth
- SSD storage
- Free domain name
- SSL Certificate
- Free site migration
- Linux and Windows support
A2Hosting Pricing
- Startup – $2.99/month
- Drive – $5.99/month
- Turbo Boost – $6.99/month
- Turbo Max – $12.99/month
These prices apply to 36-month plans and come with a money-back guarantee.
A2Hosting Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Lightening server response time | Although the pricing plans are justified for higher-tier sites, the beginner plans are a bit expensive |
| Excellent data security features | |
| Timely customer support |
5. WP Engine
If you’re an established online business looking to scale by driving more traffic to your WordPress website, WPEngine might just be the web host you need.
WPEngine is regarded as one of the best WordPress hosting companies in the world. It not only offers world-class web hosting services but also fully manages your site’s back-end maintenance and security through a dedicated team of WordPress professionals.
With WPEngine, you get lightning server speeds, daily site backups, WordPress site building tools, hands-off site maintenance, etc.
WPEngine is ideal web hosting for websites that are growing in traffic and brand authority. It strengthens website SEO and lowers bounce rates by providing optimal server speeds, SSL certificates, and world-class customer support. (For these reasons, it is what Learning Revolution uses, and we consider among the very best web hosting services.)
However, if you’re starting your first site with a limited budget, WPEngine probably isn’t the right option.
WPEngine Key Features
- Fully managed WordPress hosting
- Premium WordPress themes
- One-click staging
- Automated website migration
- WordPress server management
- 99.9% server uptime
- Website caching
WP Engine Pricing
- Startup Plan – $24/month
- Professional Plan – $47/month
- Growth Plan – $92/month
- Scale Plan – $232/month
All plans come with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
WP Engine Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Best in class WordPress managed hosting | Expensive for beginners and small websites |
| Lots of useful add-ons, plugins, and themes | Low traffic, storage, and bandwidth limits |
| Unpenetrable security | Only chat support for the basic plan |
| Dedicated customer support |
Read the complete WP Engine review here.
6. Kinsta
Kinsta is another established name in the WordPress web hosting industry. It is known for its lightning server speeds that can improve website performance and server response times from 20% to 200%.
It is powered by Google’s Cloud Platform, allowing you to choose from 29 different data centers worldwide to store your data closer to your physical location.
All Kinsta plans come with a free Cloudflare Enterprise account which means you get access to the world’s best CDN present in 200+ locations worldwide. This significantly impacts website performance and security and improves your site’s SEO, user experience, and engagement.
Kinsta is an advanced web hosting service designed for websites with growing traffic numbers. So, if you’re looking to up your content marketing game to drive more traffic, Kinsta is an excellent choice.
However, if you’re on a tight budget or have a low-traffic site, you don’t need to invest in Kinsta yet.
Kinsta Key Features
- Up to 25K visitors and 10GB SSD storage for one website in the lowest tier plan
- Up to 50GB CDN
- Free Cloudflare Enterprise account
- Daily backups
- Malware and virus protection
- Staging area
- Free SSL certificates
Kinsta Pricing
- Starter – $30/month
- Pro – $60/month
- Business – $100/month
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Kinsta Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Ideal WordPress hosting for established high-traffic sites | Expensive for beginners and small businesses |
| Google Cloud Platform and Cloudflare CDN support significantly improves server speeds. | Low storage limits |
| Multiple security layers to ensure data protection | The pricing plans and tiers need to be more flexible to accommodate client needs. |
| Dedicated customer support |
7. DreamHost
DreamHost is among the most popular webs hosting services in the world, with more than 1.5 million customers. It also consistently makes it to the recommended hosting companies list in the world’s most prestigious publications such as PCMag, TechCrunch, etc.
DreamHost’s WordPress hosting plans include preinstalled WordPress, free SSL certificates, free domain, privacy protection, automated updates, and regular backups.
Its advanced SSD storage ensures that your website, database queries, and caching times are faster, providing an excellent user experience to your website visitors.
However, the server response times for its shared hosting plans have increased significantly over the last few years.
This is a significant drawback due to which DreamHost has lost considerable market share in the shared hosting space. DreamHost also guarantees 100% uptime for all its hosting plans. However, Pingdom monitoring shows that their claim isn’t always right.
DreamHost Key Features
- WordPress optimized servers
- 100% in-house customer service
- Free email hosting
- Automated backups
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage
DreamHost Pricing
Their Shared Hosting plans are great for those who are just getting started with their website and are looking to stay within on a budget.
- Starter – $2.99/month
- Drive – $4.99/month
- Turbo Boost – $5.99
- Turbo Max – $12.99/month
All plans come with a generous 97-day money-back guarantee.
DreamHost Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Affordable hosting plans for beginners | Longer than usual downtimes in shared plans |
| Excellent customer service | Slow server response times for shared plans |
8. SiteGround
SiteGround is another top-class web hosting service that provides premium performance at affordable rates. In addition, it is among the few web hosting companies officially endorsed by WordPress, which adds to its credibility.
SiteGround’s premium WordPress hosting provides excellent server response times thanks to its advanced performance optimization technology. Every SiteGround website gets static and dynamic caching by default, increasing an average site’s speed by 500%.
SiteGround preinstalls a performance optimization plugin for WordPress websites which gives you out-of-the-box media, front-end optimizations, and environmental control for more performance.
In addition, SiteGround offers free CDN integration, regular backups, and multiple server-end optimizations to ensure your site’s performance and security.
Overall, if you’re looking for a web host with the perfect mix of performance and value, SiteGround should be on the top of your list.
SiteGround Features
- Unlimited traffic
- Free website migration
- Free WordPress installation and backups
- SSL certificates
- SSD Storage
- eCommerce enabled
SiteGround Pricing
- Startup – $3.99/month
- GrowBig – $4.99/month (best value for money)
- GoGeek – $7.99/month
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee
SiteGround Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Robust hosting features and affordable pricing provides excellent value for money | Not ideal for advanced users with higher traffic requirements |
| Fast server response time | The renewal pricing is a bit expensive |
| 100% uptime | |
| 24/7 customer support |
9. Scala Hosting
ScalaHosting is a cloud-based VPS that provides world-class data security and excellent server performance making it an attractive choice for beginners and advanced users alike.
It is among the most popular cloud-based web hosting services, with data centers across the US and EU hosting 700K+ websites and 55K+ customers worldwide.
ScalaHosting’s next-generation SPanel control panel is designed specifically for cloud VPS users and provides easy access to all account management tools and features. However, you can opt for the traditional cPanel for an additional price.
Its lowest tier plan offers up to 50GB SSD storage, 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, and unlimited bandwidth. These resources provide you impressive server response speed of under 500ms and 100% uptime.
ScalaHosting’s pricing plans are more expensive than shared hosting services, but they allow you to adjust the pricing according to your site’s needs.
ScalaHosting Key Features
- Fully managed cloud storage
- One-click WordPress installation
- Free site migration
- Flexible pricing plans
- One free site backup
ScalaHosting Web Hosting Pricing
- Mini – $2.95/month for 1 year
- Start – $5.95/month for 1 year
- Advanced – $9.95/month for 1 year
- Entry Cloud – $19.95/month for 1 year
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
ScalaHosting Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Extremely secure shared and managed cloud hosting | Expensive plans for beginners |
| High-performance servers well-positioned to handle high-traffic sites | Not suitable for low traffic sites |
| 24/7/365 professional customer support | Only one website in its lowest tier plan |
| 100% server uptime |
10. Ionos
Ionos is another popular shared web hosting service you can use to build a WordPress site for your online course business.
It stands out because of its affordable pricing plans and beginner-friendly features. For example, you can start your WordPress site with unlimited storage for just $1/month for the first 12 months. You also get unlimited bandwidth, uncapped traffic, email accounts, cPanel, and other standard web hosting tools you’d expect from a legit company.
However, the response times of Ionos’s shared servers aren’t very impressive. According to Pingdom, its servers take more than 700 ms to respond.
Still, if you’re on a tight budget and looking to start a new website that doesn’t have any traffic, Ionos can still be a good option to consider.
Ionos Key Features
- Shared WordPress web hosting
- One-click WordPress installation
- Site backups
- 99.99% uptime
- Free domain name for the first 12 months
Ionos Pricing
- Grow – $1/month for the first six months, then $10/month
- Start – $3/month for first six months, then $6/month
- Boost Essential – $7/month for first months, then $15/month
- Starter – $6/month for the first year, then $8/month
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee
Ionos Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Cheap and affordable hosting for beginners | Slow server response times compared to other shared hosting services |
| One-click WordPress installation | Significantly higher renewal prices |
| Unlimited storage, traffic, bandwidth, and emails | The customer support is slow and unresponsive |
| 100% server uptime |
11. Nexcess
Nexcess is a leading provider of managed WordPress web hosting services to over 500K websites worldwide. It specializes in eCommerce hosting but also works perfectly for regular WordPress sites.
Nexcess is owned by Liquid Web, a leading web hosting services company known for its high server speeds. This is why Nexcess provides under 300ms server response times which are among the best in the industry.
With Nexcess, you get a completely hands-off hosting solution where a dedicated team of professionals handles your website’s admin and server management tasks.
You also get one-click WordPress installation, daily site backups, free domain, email accounts, eCommerce integrations, and many other valuable features.
However, it’s an expensive option, and using it only makes sense if you have a high-traffic site that needs better hosting infrastructure.
Nexcess Key Features
- Premium WordPress plugins and themes with every installation
- Daily backups
- Visual regression testing
- Free SSL certificates
- iThemes Security Pro
- Nexcess CDN
Nexcess Pricing
- Spark – $8.40 for 3 months and then $19/month
- Spark+ – $17.20 for 3 months
- Maker – $34.80 for 3 months and then $79/month
- Designer – $48 for 3 months and then $109/month
- Builder – $65.60 for 3 months and then $149/month
- Producer – $131.20 for 3 months
- Executive – $240.80 for 3 months
- Enterprise – $438 for 3 months
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Nexcess Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Fully managed WordPress hosting | Expensive for beginners and low traffic sites |
| Multiple advanced security layers | |
| Lightening fast server response time | |
| 24/7 dedicated customer support |
Read our detailed Nexcess review to learn more.
Which Web Hosting Company Is Best For You?
We’ve shared some of the best web hosting services that you can use to host, manage, and grow your online course website. However, singling out a company as the best choice isn’t possible without fully understanding your business needs.
So, we’ll share my recommendations for the best web hosting companies for different scenarios.
- Hostinger – The best value for money in shared hosting
- Nexcess – Best for high-traffic sites
- BlueHost – The most beginner-friendly
- WPEngine – Best for businesses focused on growth
- A2 Hosting – Fastest with lightning server speed
Hopefully, this will make your choice easier.
Let us know if you have any questions about this article in the comments section.
Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution
Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.