Studies 
Studies
Our studies cover a range of trending topics and deliver original, reliable data you can't get anywhere else on the web.
By: Laura Bernheim
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Cristian Lopez
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★★★★★
It's hard to imagine something intangible, like a website, contributing to climate change. In fact, with millions of servers and thousands of datacenters drawing massive amounts of electricity, the web hosting industry is on pace to surpass air travel as one of the world's worst polluters. With that in mind, CEO Trey Gardner — an avid surfer, hiker, and skier, in addition to helping build seven other hosting companies — established GreenGeeks in 2008 to leave a positive energy footprint. The company purchases wind energy credits to restore more than three times the energy that the company consumes. The honorable quest is impressive enough, but GreenGeeks provides superb hosting packages that stand on their own. Powered by modern SSD storage and name-brand hardware, the company has grown to serve more than 55,000 customers and host more than 600,000 websites in 15 years of business. After putting the company's shared, VPS, and dedicated services through the wringer, in addition to testing the managed WordPress and site builder options, we were impressed by the multitude of tech-savvy features that ensure hosting happiness for both first-time site owners and experienced developers. We're suckers for SSD storage, and GreenGeeks up the ante with RAID-10 configurations and nightly backups. Around-the-clock knowledgeable support, coupled with free migrations and rapid provisioning, makes growing through the VPS and dedicated hosting ranks a breeze.
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★★★★★
HostGator has been around for more than a decade and is well-respected for its large number of servers and consistent reliability. Known mostly as a shared hosting provider, HostGator still supplies decent dedicated and VPS options if you need your site to scale. HostGator costs slightly more than some of the other budget-minded shared hosts, but that echoes the brand's reputation for strong infrastructure and helpful support. HostGator offers decent features in its basic shared hosting offerings, such as unlimited disk space, a nice control panel, and free website templates. Plus, you get the flexibility to add numerous add-ons for privacy, security, and productivity as you see fit. Aimed primarily at the semi-technical user, HostGator's flexibility is its strong suit. Dedicated, VPS, and Windows hosting is available if that fits your needs, as well. Root access, SSH, and support for Ruby, Perl, Python, and other languages are available on all plans. HostGator has nearly limitless options and control available for their servers, with the support and beginner-friendly tools that will appeal to the full range of customers.
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★★★★★
Perfect for small business owners, bloggers, or web developers, GreenGeeks offers an impressive blend of features that appeal to all types of site owners. More experienced customers will appreciate the unlimited domain names, SSD RAID-10 storage, and unmetered data transfers, along with nightly backups and built-in caching programs. First-timers, however, will enjoy the free website builder, marketing and SEO tools, and hands-free migration service. Additionally, GreenGeeks offers an array of components at prices very competitive with other top hosts relying on SSD-powered infrastructure. Plans powered by newer, more-performant solid-state drives tend to be a few dollars per month more expensive than the most affordable hosting plans that utilize traditional hard-disk drives. Instead of simply touting the SSD upgrade, however, GreenGeeks includes a comprehensive suite of services that combine cutting-edge technology with sheer usability. Customers can manage their GreenGeeks hosting account using the company's intuitive and recently updated online interface, which provides simple paths to requesting domain or site transfers, registering a domain, or changing billing information. From there, users can access hosting resources using the most recent version of cPanel, the industry's leading control panel. Backed by the industry's standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7/365 responsive support, and 30-day money-back guarantee, GreenGeeks hosting plans are a worthwhile hosting investment long before the environmental benefits kick in.
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★★★★★
HostGator is a great compromise between performance and price. The company offers unlimited emails, MySQL databases, disk space, and bandwidth, plus one-click installs of popular open-source projects, in addition to a 99.9% uptime guarantee on its shared hosting plan. HostGator’s price-to-performance perks also apply to its vast array of other hosting options, such as VPS, dedicated servers, and even reseller hosting. The company's many hosting options make HostGator a great choice for sites on the rise, in need of options for the future. For those just getting started and looking for a good, cheap host, HostGator bundles some nice features that hosting newbies can appreciate. The Hatchling Plan is perfect for users who just want to create one website, while upgrading to the HostGator Baby Plan unlocks unlimited bandwidth, domains, and email inboxes. The web hosting company’s custom website builder comes with more than 4,500 drag-and-drop, mobile-friendly templates to help users launch their website, blog, or ecommerce store, while the familiar HostGator cPanel interface helps customers seamlessly manage domains, email, databases, and one-click software installations. If you are looking for a solid web host, with a ton of flexibility, plenty of power, and great price points, you should consider making HostGator your web host of choice. Be sure to use a HostGator coupon to make sure you score the best deal!
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★★★★★
The free site migrations offered by GreenGeeks makes sticking with the company a worthwhile venture as your website or application grows to new levels of hosting. The company's elastic platform allows for easy resource upgrades to make sure your growth is supported. All of the GreenGeeks dedicated server hosting plans come with five IP addresses, up to 10TB of data transfer, and server-grade Intel processors. DDR3 memory ranges from 2GB to 16GB across the four dedicated hosting options. Disk space ranges from 500GB to 1TB, which is pretty standard for the industry. Interestingly, however, dedicated servers are the only GreenGeeks hosting plans that don't include SSDs. The strange decision, coupled with the lack of upfront information about features, add-ons, and support, gives us pause when considering GreenGeeks for dedicated hosting. The company's prices outpace many mainstream competitors, placing them among luxury boutique hosts, without clear justification. The company's excellent offerings in the shared and VPS tiers give us confidence in the dedicated servers, but we'd recommend some more research instead of blindly signing up for service. GreenGeeks connects hosting infrastructure with Gigabit speeds, using Juniper and Cisco for network switching and routing. Customers can choose in which of the company's four datacenters their data is provisioned: Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, or Amsterdam. In addition to the name-brand and energy-efficient hardware, GreenGeeks houses its equipment in datacenters designed to be environmentally friendly.
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★★★★★
#7 out of 8 in Dedicated Hosting reviews Founded in 2002, HostGator is one of the largest web hosts with a long lineage of dedicated server hosting. With updated hardware, including Intel Xeon Quad-core processors and a boatload of RAM, HostGator balances performance, quality web hosting service, and competitive pricing. As one of the few hosts to offer managed support and a Windows-based operating system, HostGator is an excellent fit for those seeking hassle-free ASP.NET support. HostGator boasts a top-of-the-line, fully redundant network and datacenter, which dedicated hosting users should appreciate. The company also offers several dedicated IP addresses per HostGator server hosting account. Finally, HostGator has a fantastic support team and 24/7 customer service available via phone, chat, or email. Combining that HostGator support with plenty of power, HostGator is a very respectable choice for a dedicated server host.
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★★★★★
Geared for rapidly growing businesses and enterprise-level companies, GreenGeeks VPS plans provide the computing resources and scalability required to support and adapt to your growing traffic. Virtual servers are deployed in less than 60 seconds, and we appreciate the included cPanel and WHM licenses, root access, and site migration. The GreenGeeks storage capacity range of 50GB to 150GB is on the lower end of the spectrum, especially given the company's relatively high prices, but GreenGeeks goes above and beyond with the combination of super-speedy SSDs and RAID-10 configurations that provide added redundancy and performance boosts. GreenGeeks VPS containers come with ConfigServer Security and Firewall, along with Login Failure Daemon and added protection from ModSecurity and well-tailored Apache configurations. The company backs up customers' files every night and stores backups for 48 hours. Unlike many hosts that tout free backups, GreenGeeks will restore a site for free once a month. Additional restorations, if needed, are very reasonably priced. Reseller plans are fully loaded with the impressive GreenGeeks features, including site transfers and a free website builder, that you can pass along to your customers. The 100% white-label platform allows for a custom logo and private nameservers. VPS and reseller customers will receive a free eNom domain reseller account, and resellers enjoy unlimited cPanel accounts along with a free ClientExec license to automate customer invoicing, support, and provisioning.
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★★★★★
#7 out of 9 in VPS Hosting reviews HostGator has built a great reputation in the industry for its shared web hosting options. The company's VPS hosting solution, with optional cPanel support, provide a nice and easy introduction to those who are new to VPS hosting and know their needs require more than a typical shared plan. Starting at low price points and boasting tons of support, HostGator makes transitioning to a VPS plan reasonable and doable. Each plan comes with two IP addresses and a bunch of storage, and recently expanded CPU and RAM offerings lend a ton of computing power. If you're not sure a VPS hosting package is a good fit, take a look at the revamped HostGator cloud offerings, which offer additional scalability and redundancy at remarkable price points. For those managing multiple hosting accounts, be sure to consider a HostGator reseller hosting plan, as well. HostGator’s strongest point comes from its state-of-the-art datacenter. Featuring a fully redundant network with no single point of failure and multiple bandwidth providers, uptime should almost never be a concern. Founded in 2002, HostGator is one of the largest online web hosts. The company has more than 12,000 servers under management and award-winning support. If you are looking for a small VPS server or value the strength of a great network, give HostGator a shot.
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★★★★★
The GreenGeeks comprehensive suite of added features resonates particularly well with the company's managed WordPress hosting plan. Modeled after the GreenGeeks shared hosting package, the managed WordPress services will resonate with a wide cross-section of the ultra-popular content management system's enthusiasts. Effectively hosting WordPress can be challenging for lower-tier hosting providers, but GreenGeeks has both the technical know-how and high-powered infrastructure to optimize the experience for both customers and their site visitors. In addition to the unlimited storage and data transfers, the company's SSD RAID-10 storage configurations are perfect for hosting the resource-heavy CMS. GreenGeeks utilizes the one-click Softaculous installer for WordPress, but plans come pre-installed with Git and WP-CLI. Customers have SSH access to their hosting account and can select which version of PHP to use. On the security front, GreenGeeks isolates each managed WordPress hosting account and automatically updates WordPress core files. The company actively scans for vulnerabilities and blocks attacks, even including built-in DDoS protection. GreenGeeks maximizes WordPress performance with server-grade, name-brand hardware, and optimized HTTP and MySQL. Customers can add the Cloudflare CDN with just one click while they sit back and enjoy server-side software and hardware caching to accelerate page loads.
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★★★★★
#6 out of 9 in WordPress Hosting reviews HostGator is great for all things shared hosting, and application-specific services — such as the classic one-click-install WordPress hosting — are no exception. The team recently updated its already clean and intuitive HostGator cPanel dashboard, wherein users can find a myriad of free apps and scripts to install, including WordPress. You could quite realistically have a WP-powered site up and running in as little as an afternoon. As is the case with many of our favorite shared WordPress hosting providers, including sister company Bluehost, HostGator offers unlimited emails, databases, disk storage, and bandwidth. The one downfall is the lack of the popular free domain perk, but domain names are easy to obtain for around $10 to $15 bucks with any registrar. You can also select, register, and pay for a domain directly from the HostGator signup page. If you're serious about your WordPress hosting, we recommend HostGator's new(er) managed WordPress platform, which is optimized for performance with cloud resources, multiple layers of caching tools, and a complimentary CDN. Managed WordPress plan subscribers enjoy up to 2.5x faster page load speeds for their HostGator website or blog. If you're running a business WordPress site, this is an excellent investment. Once your site is designed and ready for promotion, HostGator helps you kickstart your online marketing efforts with $100 in paid advertising credits. Attract blog readers, potential clients, or online shoppers browsing Google search results. We wish you the best of luck in your blog or online business hosting endeavors. WordPress is a known favorite in the space, and HostGator has established itself as a trusted partner well worthy of your consideration.
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★★★★★
Shared hosting customers can easily request access to the GreenGeeks website builder through the account management portal. Our site builder installation was ready to go within 40 minutes, and we appreciated the clear instructions on how to get started. Users can choose from among 16 responsive templates or hundreds of free and premium options. We have a soft spot for site builders that let users switch to a different template without losing content, like the GreenGeeks platform does, but we wish the themes were easier to sift through when looking for a particular feature or design conducive to a particular industry or project. The drag-and-drop interface will seem very familiar and comfortable to customers. While intuitive enough for the earliest of beginners, the GreenGeeks site builder also enables more experienced developers to adjust and tweak the HTML and CSS code. In addition to the standard color adjustments, image uploads, and navigation settings that come with most website builders, customers can add functionality through the use of widgets that cover a variety of tasks, such as embedding forms, YouTube videos, and maps. Adding an ecommerce component seems easy, until clicking on the button to upgrade redirects you to the GreenGeeks homepage. When you're ready to go live, the site builder will let you preview your designs on desktop and mobile. All in all, GreenGeeks offers a solid, if not exciting, site builder option — great for beginners, perhaps a little clunky for developers.
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★★★★★
#5 out of 9 in Website Builder Hosting reviews Setting itself apart from the scores of competitors that rely on white-labeled website builder solutions, HostGator spent the time to painstakingly craft its own platform. Gator provides a frustration-free experience that pairs the simplicity of drag-and-drop design with the company’s powerful and respected web hosting services. Signing up is a breeze, and HostGator gives customers an option to add a suite of social media marketing tools. Users are quickly ushered into a gallery of more than 200 modern, mobile-responsive, and visually impressive templates that can be sorted by categories like beauty and fashion, music and entertainment, real estate, business consultant, portfolios, and others. Gator covers blogs and ecommerce stores, even coming with a free domain name and SSL certificate. Once you choose your basic look, Gator ushers you through a 15-second tour to show you the basic features of the editor — and it’s all you need. Clicking on any element opens a menu that gives you options to change styles, whether it’s a section’s complete design or something simple like font or color. We especially appreciate how Gator’s drag-and-drop interface gives users pixel-perfect control while still suggesting guides and grids for appropriate spacing. Throughout the customization and design phase, users can seamlessly switch between desktop and mobile views to understand how your site will appear to all visitors. Adding a blog or ecommerce store takes just a click. We wish Gator would suggest a select few designs that matched the current site’s template instead of the dozen or so options that reflect a wide range of categories, but we were impressed that the in-depth previews covered both the blog page and individual posts, for instance. All in all, HostGator can be incredibly proud of its proprietary site builder — and customers can sit back and enjoy the confidence in having such a well-rounded tool at their design disposal.
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