
Shared hosting is a lot like 19-year-old me as a college sophomore deciding that sharing an apartment made a lot of sense. It saved me a ton on rent and bills, and I still got access to all of the accommodations I needed. I figured I would get my own place once my lifestyle demanded it — and once it made more financial sense.
Shared hosting is no different and just means your website will share space on the same server as other sites. This tends to mean lower prices, as you’re essentially splitting the resources and associated costs you would be monopolizing on a dedicated server. Though great for beginners, a shared host can meet the needs of even very popular websites.
We took the top shared hosting providers for a spin — evaluating price, ease of setup, support, site builders, eCommerce features, and more. Below we cover the best of the best, by category.
1. Best Overall Shared Host
When shopping for a shared host, you should compare the cost against the number of amenities included (e.g., free domain, drag-and-drop site builder, unlimited email, and 24/7 support). A contender that truly deserves to top the list of shared hosts in any given category is one that is going to offer the most usable features for the lowest cost — yielding the greatest value.
Bluehost.com
- Known for high-performance, low-cost hosting
- FREE website builder with 1,000s of templates
- Endorsed by the WordPress.org team as a top host
- FREE SSL certificate and CDN acceleration
- Usually $7.99/mo, but our visitors pay $2.95/mo
- Get started on Bluehost now.
SHARED
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD - 100 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
2. Cheapest Shared Host
Naturally, cost is probably a deciding factor in your web host shopping endeavors. They often say, “You get what you pay for,” but that doesn’t mean “cheap host” is synonymous with “crap host.” We’ve compared the most affordable shared hosts on the market to present to you the lowest-cost option that doesn’t cut corners on functionality, features, or support. That’s why our #1 recommendation is a host that is both affordable and reliable:
iPage.com
- Easy setup and superb reliability since 1998
- FREE domain and Google marketing included
- Unlimited bandwidth, storage, and emails
- FREE site builder and shopping cart
- Get more than 75% off today (was $7.99/month)
- Get started on iPage now.
CHEAP
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
3. Best Shared Host for Email
Email hosting is a crucial business need for SMBs to enterprises, and a shared web host can be your cheapest bet to get that need met quickly and cost-consciously. Some key features we look for in an email hosting provider are spam filtering, virus protection, auto-forwarding options, and of course, free unlimited email accounts — and our #1 pick offers it all:
Bluehost.com
- FREE domain and unlimited emails
- Secure email with 3 webmail solutions
- $200 in advertising credits with Google and Bing
- Google app integration available
- FREE Office 365 mailbox for your first 30 days
- Get started on Bluehost now.
EMAIL
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD - 100 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
4. Best Shared Host for Blogging
Every blogger needs a platform for their voice to be heard, and they don’t want to wait forever in the wings for their words to take center stage. That’s why features like one-click Drupal install or pre-installed WordPress carry weight when we evaluate the best blog hosts. We compared blog offerings, cost, security, and support, and now give you the best shared host for blogging:
A2Hosting.com
- Easy setup for WordPress, Ghost, and other tools
- Turbo Servers make your posts load up to 20x faster
- A2-optimized WP plugins for performance and security
- FREE SSL certificates included
- Expert assistance available 24/7
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
BLOG
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 50 GB NVMe SSD - Unlimited NVMe SSD | New or Transfer | 4 minutes |
5. Best Shared Host with Free Website Builder
Once you’re signed up for hosting, you’ll realize you actually have to build your site. Gulp. This is easy though, as many of the top shared hosts also offer a free drag-and-drop site builder among their offerings, so you can point and click to add text, images, and videos to your new site. Build your dream website from scratch, without touching code, with our favorite site builder host:
Wix.com
- No coding skills needed with drag-and-drop builder
- 100s of templates with niche-specific designs
- Add features via the App Market and Wix Events
- Easily create ecommerce functionality easily
- Great way to build small sites on a budget
- Get started on Wix now.
WEBSITE BUILDER
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
14-day FREE trial | 2 GB - Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
6. Best Shared Host for eCommerce Sites
As brick-and-mortars continue to move to the web and selling online as a second form of income continues trending, eCommerce hosting is on the rise. For those looking to launch an online store, we’ve compiled the hosts with the features that matter most to you: Single-click installations for Magento or PrestaShop, and free ad credits to get your brand noticed, as examples. Here’s our #1 choice:
SiteGround.com
- Low-cost managed WooCommerce stores
- FREE payment processing and adjustable shipping
- Test changes to your online store in a staging area
- Pre-installed SSL security and auto daily backups
- 100% renewable energy match
- Get started on SiteGround now.
ECOMMERCE
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 6 minutes |
7. Best Linux Shared Hosting
Linux is a well-known operating system that’s widely supported by many of the best hosts out there, and rightfully so. It’s intuitive, it’s flexible, it’s a comfortable fit for mid- to senior-level users. After testing out the interfaces and comparing the hardware, security, uptime, support, and cost of the top Linux shared hosts, we present our recommendation below:
A2Hosting.com
- Supercharged CloudLinux operating system
- Support for CenOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora
- Go beyond LAMP with PostgreSQL and NGINX
- Daily, automatic OS updates via KernelCare
- All-SSD storage in RAID-10 arrays
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
LINUX
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD | New or Transfer | 4 minutes |
8. Best cPanel Shared Hosting
A beloved web panel among shared hosting users, cPanel is one of the most popular and powerful interfaces used to manage your hosting and databases. A great many of the top hosts include cPanel in their packages (many in branded forms) due to its intuitiveness and wide array of readily available features. Find one-click installations of your favorite content management platforms, unlimited domains and emails, and 24/7 support with our #1 cPanel shared host:
Bluehost.com
- Secure logins for cPanel and WebMail
- 1-click WordPress installation and ad credits
- FREE domain and FREE site-building tools
- Expert support available 24/7
- Easy access to email tools and site statistics
- Get started on Bluehost now.
CPANEL
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD - 100 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
9. Best SSD Shared Hosting
If the fastest shared hosting provider is what you’re looking for, SSD speed is what you need. Solid-state drives (SSDs) help your webpages load quickly, and a trustworthy shared host will make sure your site is online as often as possible (uptime!). We compared it all — uptime rates, performance, security, and speed — and now present our top-rated choice in SSD shared hosting:
InMotionHosting.com
- FREE SSD drives included with all hosting plans
- Zero-downtime website transfers and migrations
- FREE data backups, SSL certificate, and DDoS protection
- Choice of East Coast or West Coast datacenter
- Multi-language support, including PHP, Ruby, and Perl
- Get started on InMotion now.
BEST OVERALL
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
90 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
Good News: Shared Hosts Offer Fast Setup
Shared hosting is ideal for those whose websites are not quite ready to live in a space without a few roommates — and it can take as little as four minutes to get started. Even better, there are tons of hosts that promote instant account setup and activation, making sure you can get online as fast as possible.
The cost is hard to beat, the support is there for those who need it, and you tend to get as many free amenities as you need for as long as you need — but don’t be afraid to upgrade when you do start to outgrow that shared apartment. The best hosting providers will be there to help you grow, and your HostingAdvice family can’t wait to see you succeed!
See Our Full Review of Bluehost
Whatever type of hosting plan you’re looking for, Bluehost is a solid choice no matter the scale. Our reviewer Ryan Frankel recently took Bluehost for a spin, and rated the popular host a 5.0 in the Shared Hosting category out of a perfect score of 5.0. Here’s what Ryan had to say about Bluehost:
Bluehost has a rock-solid reputation in the shared and WordPress hosting communities, and the host is a long-time favorite of mine. Today, Bluehost powers more than 2 million websites, and the team touts years of experience. With well-maintained servers, competitive pricing, and excellent customer support, Bluehost is hardly a pick you’ll regret.
Before signing up for Bluehost, it’s a good idea to read through Ryan‘s full review to learn about all the features Bluehost offers. You can also compare it to other web hosts to ensure you’re getting the best deal possible:
If you decide Bluehost is the right choice, keep in mind that it takes just minutes to deploy your Bluehost server space. And at $2.95 per month, it’s a bargain considering the many great features that come in any Bluehost plan.
HostingAdvice.com is a free online resource that offers valuable content and comparison services to users. To keep this resource 100% free, we receive compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). HostingAdvice.com does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.
Our site is committed to publishing independent, accurate content guided by strict editorial guidelines. Before articles and reviews are published on our site, they undergo a thorough review process performed by a team of independent editors and subject-matter experts to ensure the content’s accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. Our editorial team is separate and independent of our site’s advertisers, and the opinions they express on our site are their own. To read more about our team members and their editorial backgrounds, please visit our site’s About page.