Best Web Hosting for India
Web hosting reviews from a web agency’s perspective
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Author: Matthew Rogers
Last Updated on July 26, 2022As a digital agency with a LOT of web hosting accounts (to host our clients & side-projects), we have a very good grasp on how to analyse and compare web hosting services. For those that are short on time, check out our top picks for India below.
Best Web Hosting India
- Hostinger India – Best Value Web Hosting for India
- HostGator India – Runner-up Cheap Web Host in India
- A2 Hosting – Best Reseller Web Hosting for India
- SiteGround – Best WordPress Hosting
- InMotion Hosting – Great Small Business Hosting
- GreenGeeks – Best Green Web Host for Beginners
- CloudWays – Best Cloud Hosting
- DreamHost – Great Premium Host for Ecommerce
- BlueHost India – Great Web Host for Bloggers
About Our Web Hosting Reviews for India
While building this web hosting comparison for India, we looked at a LOT of factors, but the main ones were ? support and ⚡ speed.
We chose those 2 because if either of those is subpar, it would have a huge impact on the potential success of your website.
A few of the sites we’ve been featured on:
Best Web Hosting India
1. Hostinger – Best Indian Host Overall
Website: hostinger.in
Price: Rs. 59
Disk space: 10 GB
Support: Live Chat, Tickets
Global reach: Yes
When it comes to offering insane value at an incredibly low price, it’s impossible to beat Hostinger. The level at which it plays shows the success & their attractive offerings. Today, they have over 29 million users. Plus, they add one client every five seconds!
The majority of this success is because of their shared hosting plans (the ones we will be discussing and what most needs), but they also offer cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, email hosting, and VPS hosting.
The smooth road to your live website
The thing we really like about them is their setup process; it’s very well thought out! Each step is beautifully designed and flows into the next. Before you know it, you have your domain name registered, and website live. It’s impressive!
Custom-built hPanel
Whichever plan you buy, their custom-built control panel is a joy to work with. It’s clean, intuitive, and most importantly, doesn’t miss out on any needed functionality. You can create email accounts, add domains & subdomains, manage files & databases, install CMS, and do much more from hPanel.
Zyro by Hostinger
And it even comes with its own website builder! Though we would definitely recommend using WordPress (we LOVE WP) to build your site, it’s nice to know that they also have their own builder on offer in addition to the usual CMSs.
Zyro is a DIY website builder you can use to create websites or online stores. Either you can make from scratch or use one of their pre-built mobile-friendly templates & customise as per your liking.
24/7 quality support
As mentioned in our Hostinger review, their 24/7 customer support (only live chat, no phone support) is very responsive and helpful, which is pretty impressive as most budget hosts lack in support, but not Hostinger! A huge thumbs up from us in this area.
Hosting plans
When it comes to the hosting types, they offer the basic shared hosting (most people will need this type), cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, and VPS hosting.
The shared hosting plans are as follows:
- Single Hosting plan (Rs. 59/mo): Super cheap and perfect to get your feet wet, it has most of the features of the premium plans. You’re allowed one site with this plan.
- Premium Hosting plan (Rs. 119/mo): For those that want to scale, a free domain name, unlimited sites, and double the power for your sites.
- Business Hosting plan (Rs. 219/mo): If you want to get really serious. All of the above features + daily backups, and even more server resources to make your business website as fast as possible.
Well-thought-out features
We’ll let you in on a secret. Whenever any company offers something super-cheap, their primary goal is to cut unnecessary costs. And Hostinger has been smart with this process. For example, they only have live chat support because almost everything can be solved via chat & phone call is rarely used.
Similarly, the features kept are also essential only. They offer:
- Free SSL certificate to keep your visitors’ information secure. For instance, if they are registering to your site, they will insert their email or mobile number – that’s some information that can be stolen & misused if not for an SSL certificate.
- Free domain registration is available on all its plans except the most basic one.
- LiteSpeed Cache, a caching plugin that can give enormous performance-boost.
- A few other performance boosters like SSD storage, usage of PHP7 & HTTP/2, and data centres across the world (including Asia).
- Backups are also included on the Premium & Business plans.
- And a free business email account + 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Wrap-up
In addition, on all hosting plans, they have a 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s honestly a no-brainer in our book!
Pros
- Super cheap
- Quality support
- Global network of servers
- Easy to use
2. HostGator – Best for Beginners
Website: hostinger.in
Price: Rs. 59
Disk space: 10 GB
Support: Live Chat, Tickets
Global reach: Yes
When it comes to offering insane value at an incredibly low price, it’s impossible to beat Hostinger. The level at which it plays shows the success & their attractive offerings. Today, they have over 29 million users. Plus, they add one client every five seconds!
The majority of this success is because of their shared hosting plans (the ones we will be discussing and what most needs), but they also offer cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, email hosting, and VPS hosting.
Plans for plans
You get more out of HostGator when you upgrade your plan. Right now, their Baby package is their most popular plan as it’s a great starting point.
However, you can also start with a Hatchling plan, especially if you just want to start with one website. And of course, you can always upgrade to their Business plan should your needs demand more features.
99.9% uptime guarantee
HostGator guarantees 99.9% uptime. And this guarantee comes with a promise that they’ll reimburse you a month’s credit should they fail on this commitment. However, with HostGator’s track record of consistent uptime, we doubt that you’ll ever get any reimbursements from them at all (and again, this is a good thing as you want uptimes and not compensations).
It’s for all the reasons above (and more below) why we gave them the number 2 spot. They truly deserve it, in our opinion.
The ever-popular cPanel
Though we won’t consider it the best — for us, custom panels like Hostinger’s and Siteground’s are better — some people just love cPanel (of course, we like it too). And if you are one of those, HostGator is a perfect host for you.
cPanel is a widely-popular control panel that offers a graphical interface to perform activities ranging from adding email accounts to accessing databases. Moreover, HostGator also provides one-click script installs on popular apps such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, etc. — that, too, can be accessed & installed via cPanel.
Speed
Having fast and reliable servers is probably one of the reasons why HostGator is so popular. They use SSD storage, varnish cache, and Linux shared hosting servers to achieve it. Their servers, too, are top-notch — they are powered by Intel Xeon-E5 Dual Quad-Core Processors + HyperThreading; meaning, outstanding performance + great uptime.
Furthermore, HostGator’s servers are everywhere (thanks to its giant parent company, EIG) including India. Therefore, the best server response time is ensured.
Support
HostGator prides itself on providing 24/7/365 customer support to their customers. There will always be a HostGator expert to help you out with your problems and concerns via live chat, phone, and email. Their knowledge base of articles is also very helpful if you’re into troubleshooting.
Other features
Foundationally-needed features are unquestionably present in each of Hostgator’s plans. This includes:
- Free SSL certificate: HostGator has partnered with Let’s Encrypt to offer a free SSL certificate to all the users. It will encrypt the data transfer between your site’s server and the user. Plus, it’s also an essential SEO factor, so that’s sorted too.
- Unmetered bandwidth: The Starter plan comes with 100 GB bandwidth, which is unlimited in the sense that it’s meant for starters and they don’t need much bandwidth. Apart from that, the other plans offer unmetered bandwidth.
- Unlimited storage: Here also, it’s the same as the bandwidth section. Starter plan includes 10 GB disk space, which is more than needed for a beginner. The other plans let you use unlimited storage.
- Free email accounts: With the Starter plan, you can create five professional email accounts like yourname@yourdomainname.com. All other plans allow you to create as many as you want.
- There’s also a free .Net domain for users purchasing the Hatchling, Baby or Turbo plan.
Hosting packs
HostGator’s plans start at a mere Rs.99/mo. That’s the cost for the Starter plan when purchased for five years. Similarly, they have Hatchling (plan) costing Rs. 199/mo, Baby costing Rs. 249/mo, and Turbo at Rs. 599/mo.
Wrap-up
At the introductory price, all plans are worth it. The only problem is you’ll have to pre-pay for five years. If you can, you can’t go wrong with HostGator India.
Pros
- Value for money
- Great speed
3. A2 Hosting – Best for eCommerce
Website: www.a2hosting.com
Price: USD $3.92
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets
Global reach: Yes
You probably haven’t heard about A2 Hosting – but it has actually been around since 2001. And although they kept a low profile all these years (or their marketing budget didn’t allow), they actually have a good reputation among users. In fact, they almost always enter top 10 reviews on website hosting (yes, they’re that good).
The three shared plans.
A2 Hosting offers three shared hosting packages, as follows:
- Lite – For only $3.92 per month, this package will allow you to have one website, an email account, unlimited storage space, and unlimited bandwidth.
- Swift – For $4.90 per month, their Swift plan offers two times the resources on their cheapest plan. You can have an unlimited number of websites (with email accounts) with this plan and get unlimited storage space and unlimited bandwidth as well.
- Turbo – As A2 Hosting’s fastest plan, this package costs $9.31 per month. Aside from unlimited websites, unlimited storage space, and unlimited bandwidth, the plan also includes A2 Hosting’s site accelerator.
Looking at their hosting solutions, you can see that you’ll get more features and speed as your plan upgrades.
Here’s what we like best about A2 Hosting –
Anytime money-back guarantee.
They do have a standard 30-day money-back guarantee, but they also have the Anytime money-back guarantee for those who subscribe to their more extended plans.
So, if you decide to pay for three years to save on money (longer plans have the biggest discounts in hosting packages, you know) and then decide to cancel your plan after let’s say 1 year – they’ll give you a refund equivalent to the unused two years (prorated). There are some caveats to this, however – your domain registration fee and migration fee (if any) won’t be refunded. Still, their Anytime money-back guarantee is out of this world.
99.9% uptime guarantee
Talking about guarantees, they also give an uptime guarantee like all other top web hosts. They are committed to providing their customers 99.9% uptime. Realistically speaking though, they’re not perfect in this area – but still good.
Speed
Look at the name of their pricing plans, and you’ll notice that there’s one common theme – speed (Lite, Swift, Turbo). Well, you really are guaranteed to have a speedy site with A2 Hosting (that’s their best point). So, just think of their plans this way – one is fast, the other one is faster, and the last one is the fastest.
In fact, their tagline, “Our speed, your success” shows their confidence in the fast servers. And why not?
- They use some of the best SSD storage in the market,
- (Compared to market) more memory & other resources are assigned to all the sites on their server,
- All the plans come with Cloudflare CDN, which essentially means your site will load fast anywhere in the world, including India.
- Their Turbo plans apparently offer very very-low-density servers.
Support – 24/7/365
A2 Hosting’s support team is good. Their knowledge base is full of helpful articles that’ll prove to be beneficial if you’re troubleshooting stuff. And if you want to talk to someone, you can do so via email, phone, and live chat. They will help you in everything from free site migration & website set up to restore your site if it gets hacked.
Securely secure
Unless you are using some nulled theme/plugin or have kept an elementary access password (they have a two-factor authentication even for that), chances of your site facing any security issues are negligible.
Firstly, there’s a free SSL certificate to keep your visitors’ data safe. Then, A2 Hosting has a free & perpetual security tool- Hackscan, a Patchman enhanced security tool, regular kernel updates, DDoS protection, dual firewall, and much more to protect your site.
Wrap-up
A2 is a fantastic web hosting provider for Indian demographic – they are fast, secure, and offer so many features.
Pros
- Web servers in the US, Europe, and Singapore (SG is great for NZ sites)
- Unlimited disk space and bandwidth on all plans
- Anytime money back guarantee
Cons
- No servers in India
- The cheapest plan is limited and not very fast
- 99.9% uptime guarantee is not that reliable
4. SiteGround – Best WordPress Host
Website: www.siteground.com
Price: USD $3.99
Disk space: 10 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets
Global reach: Yes
Founded in 2004, SiteGround now hosts over a million websites all around the world. Their hosting options include shared, WordPress, dedicated servers, and cloud. Their powerful servers located all over the globe makes it possible to cater to the needs of their users. In fact, SiteGround is recommended by WordPress itself. But of course, it can host other Content Management Systems (CMS) as well.
SiteGround packages
SiteGround is most popular for its shared plans & managed WordPress plans (which are essentially the shared plans). They have three pricing systems for this, and we’ll tell you more about them in the list below.
- StartUp – This is their recommended plan for starting a web presence. With an introductory price of $3.99 per month, you’re allowed one website and given 10GB storage space. You can also have up to 10,000 visitors monthly.
- GrowBig – SiteGround recommends this package for growing sites. For $9.99 per month, you can have an unlimited number of websites along with 20GB storage space and 25,000 visitors monthly.
- GoGeek – If you want the best of SiteGround, they’re offering their top-tiered plan for an introductory price of $14.99. It comes with unlimited websites, 30GB storage space, and 100,000 visitors monthly.
SiteGround’s plan names give you an idea as to what you’re getting. If you’re just after their essential features, you can settle for (or start with) their StartUp package. However, if you want premium features with your package, choose their GrowBig plan. Go for their GoGeek plan if you want the best (geeky features) included in your package.
99.9% uptime promise
SiteGround is also one of the hosting providers that give 99.9% uptime guarantee – and some remuneration if they fail on this promise. Keep in mind, however, that we’re talking about 99.9% uptime average annually, not monthly.
So, here’s the deal. They’ll give you free hosting for one month when their annual uptime falls anywhere between 99.0 to 99.9%. And if it drops even lower than that, they’ll give you one month for every percentage. Wow. But then again, SiteGround has a really good uptime record – chances are slim that they’ll ever fall below their 99.9% annual uptime guarantee.
Speed
SiteGround’s data servers (found in the UK, Chicago, Netherlands, and Singapore) are very VERY reliable. They’re powerful enough for global reach, that’s for sure. What’s more, SiteGround also comes with free CDN (Cloudflare), which also contributes to its site speed.
Knowledgeable support team
There are lots of ways to connect with SiteGround specialists – they have phone, live chat, and email support available 24/7. Their support team is one of the best out there, especially for WordPress support. More than 90% of the queries are solved in one go. And over 97% of their customers report a positive support experience.
Free yet essential features
SiteGround offers perhaps the best set of freebies. This includes…
- Free SSL: Conveniently, any site you host on SiteGround’s server comes with an SSL certificate pre-installed. This is great considering the increased market of stealing, gathering, and selling data.
- Free CDN: SiteGround’s plans come with Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network), which will basically cache your website on all their global network of servers. Hence, when someone visits your site, they will get the cached image from the nearby node, making the response time lower.
- Free email: You can also create as many professional email accounts as you want. Simply go to SIteGround’s control panel, which is awesome BTW, and create.
- Free backups: SiteGround auto-saves backups daily and keeps it for a month so that you can quickly restore any of the versions from the past 30 days.
- Free migration: Transferring your website to SiteGround is free – either use their free plugin or ask their support team.
Wrap-up
SiteGround is as good as any in the value web hosting segment. It’s a bit expensive to be considered a low-cost host, but you definitely get what you pay for here. Plus, it’s maybe the best WordPress host in India.
Pros
- Great customer support
- Multiple data centres around the world
- Recommended by WordPress
- Great security setup to tackle malware and other attacks
Cons
- No servers in India
- High renewal rates
- No free domains
5. Inmotion Hosting – Best for Small Business
Website: www.inmotionhosting.com
Price: USD $6.39
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets
Global reach: No
InMotion has been building a good reputation since its first conception in 2001. Today, it powers around 300,000 websites with customers from all over the world. Their hosting options include shared, VPS, reseller, WordPress, and dedicated servers.
InMotion packages
Focusing on business-level hosting, InMotion has these three shared hosting plans:
- Launch – They’re offering an introductory price of $4.99 for this (regular price is $9.99). You can have up to 2 websites and get unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth.
- Power – Their mid-priced plan has an introductory price of $4.99 (regular price is $13.99). For this plan, you’re allowed up to 50 websites and get unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth as well. The introductory price is the same as the Launch plan, which makes it a no-brainer. However, once the plan time is exhausted (i.e., three years), you’ll have to pay more for this plan.
- Pro – Their highest-price plan now has an introductory price of $12.99 (regular price is $22.99). With this, you can have an unlimited number of sites and also get unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth.
Know that the Power plan is 2 times better than the Launch plan (their cheapest plan). However, their Pro plan is 2 times better in features and performance than the Power plan. Therefore, each plan gets better and better as you upgrade.
It’s reliable
As for InMotion’s uptime guarantee, they’re committed to providing their customers 99.95% uptime guarantee. And yes, they can more or less deliver on this – they’re reliable, that’s why they made it to this list.
Speed
SiteGround’s data servers (found in the UK, Chicago, Netherlands, and Singapore) are very VERY reliable. They’re powerful enough for global reach, that’s for sure. What’s more, SiteGround also comes with free CDN (Cloudflare), which also contributes to its site speed.
Support
InMotion has a lot of options for customer support from extensive documents (articles in their knowledge base) to email (ticketing system) to phone support to live chat to skype communication. However, note that they get mixed reviews when it comes to the quality of their support options. Most of the time they’re right – but there are also times when they’re not-so-good in this aspect of their business.
In short, if you are a beginner, better go with SiteGround, Hostinger, or likes.
Freeeeeeeeebiees
Just like the previous contender in the list, SiteGround, InMotion includes many essential features as freebies, including:
- Free SSL: All InMotion plans include free SSL. An SSL is pretty much mandatory on a business site because you are either collecting leads or selling stuff.
- Free domain: You can register a domain name at no cost. If you already own a domain, you will receive website transfer credits instead.
- Free migration: With some t&cs, InMotion offers free no-downtime website transfer. If you have more than three databases, they will charge you $10 per item.
- Free emails: On the base plan, you can create up to 10 email accounts for free. This limit increases with the bigger ones.
- Free one-click installer: Via the cPanel, you can install more than 400 free software almost instantly. You also have the option to pre-install WordPress, Joomla, or PrestaShop.
- BoldGrid builder: You can use BoldGrid website builder for free and get your site up and running in under an hour. It’s a WYSIWYG builder with hundreds of templates.
- Ad credits: You get $150 in ad credits with all the packages. Sadly, the credits aren’t for Google ads or Facebook ads.
The “not freebies”
You also have access to add-ons such as daily backups, Quickstarter- a service that will deliver a one-page professional-looking website in two days, custom website design, etc.
Wrap-up
InMotion qualifies for the top three business hosting solutions in the value hosting market. They are reliable, have high-quality servers, and offer unlimited disk space & bandwidth…pretty much all one needs!
Pros
- Generous money-back guarantees (30 days for shared, 90 days for VPS and reseller)
- Reliable uptime
- Unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth even on their lowest plan
Cons
- Servers are only in the US
- Expensive renewal plans
- Long verification process especially for people outside the US
6. GreenGeeks
Website: www.greengeeks.com
Price: USD $2.95
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets
GreenGeeks was founded in 2008, and it made it into our list of the best web hosting for a lot of reasons (as you’ll soon find out). They have a lot of hosting options, such as shared, reseller, WordPress, and VPS.
Data centers + CDN
And with their powerful data centres in Phoenix, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto, and Amsterdam, their worldwide customers are benefiting from their services. Sadly, however, they don’t have data centres in Asia, which makes it a not-so-ideal choice for Indian audiences.
Wait, wait, wait…their data centre isn’t in India, but the free CDN they offer does have a server in India. The free CDN comes from Cloudflare which has servers in Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Delhi. Meaning, you are sorted!
The “Green”Geeks
What sets GreenGeeks apart from its competitors (including those on this list) is their commitment to the environment. They’re an eco-friendly web host, and they put back three times (300%) the power they consume into renewable energy. Of course, they don’t create energy themselves; they do so by paying for RECs (Renewable Energy Certificate) — the (renewable energy generating) entity puts back 615k KWH/year on the grid on GreenGeeks’ behalf.
So, if you’re environment-conscious like us, you’ll be proud to be a part of GreenGeeks’ efforts in helping mother nature. You can even opt to use their green certification badge on your website to spread awareness further.
Performance
GreenGeeks uptime commitment is 99.9%, and we can tell you that they have a record of staying within this percentage.
Similarly, the website speed you receive on using GreenGeeks is also commendable. As already discussed, they provide free Cloudflare CDN, which solves the problem of server response time worldwide. Besides, they use SSD-based Raid-10 storage, Litespeed web servers with Litespeed Cache, MariaDB/MySQL database servers, and HTTP/2 & PHP7 support. Because of this combo, the only reason why your site might load slowly is the site build itself!
Weebly website builder
GreenGeeks does support top CMSs like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal, and all. Plus, they also partnered with Weebly last year and have started offering a free website builder with all the plans.
Weebly is a top name in the drag n’ drop website builder market. It has hundreds of responsive themes that are customisable & ready to use. You can choose any template and personalise as per your need. The best part about such builders is no technical knowledge is needed! A bit of design sense can help, of course.
In short, if you are a beginner, better go with SiteGround, Hostinger, or likes.
Support
GreenGeeks’ support team is a reliable bunch. They have a 24/7 ticketing system (e-mail), phone support, and chat. Their knowledge base includes helpful articles and tutorials on different categories (e.g. website, domain, hosting, etc.).
In our experience, prompt responses were common & the answers were concise. Plus, the support agents were ready to go above & beyond to help. So, a green signal for our side.
The essentials
Of course, GreenGeeks doesn’t lose on the essentials. You have everything, including the following:
- Unlimited storage & Unlimited bandwidth
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Free SSL certificate to encrypt users’ data so no one can see it.
- Free website transfer if you already own a site & is hosted on a comparatively terrible web host.
- Free professional email accounts such as support@domainname.com to accept clients’ queries/enquiries.
- Softaculous to get access to scripts and CMSs like WordPress, Drupal, etc.
- And a cPanel to manage all the features and the site altogether.
GreenGeeks shared plans
They have three shared web hosting plans.
- Lite: Costs $2.95/mo & allows one website only.
- Pro: Costs $5.95/mo & lets you host unlimited website
- Premium: $11.95/mo & comes with double the performance as Pro.
Wrap-up
Their commitment to environment-friendliness is very much appreciated. But of course, we can’t recommend it because of our subjectivity. So, let us tell you objectively: GreenGeeks is a great host with excellent performance, essential features, and a good support team!
Pros
- Environment-friendly setup (super green!)
- Unlimited storage space and unlimited bandwidth on all plans
- 30-day money back guarantee
Cons
- No servers in India
- Introductory prices are only good for 3-year payments.
7. Cloudways
Website: www.cloudways.com
Price: USD $10
Disk space: 25 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets
CloudWays, as its name suggests, is a cloud hosting provider. It’s been around since 2012 and is steadily growing throughout the years. It’s not for everyone given the base price is $10/mo, but for those who have the budget, the offering is an excellent value! Of course, you need to have comparable demands also because, for starter sites, it can be an overkill.
If you’re considering getting a cloud hosting provider, note that CloudWays is one of the best (if not the best – again, that’s why they made it to our list).
Unique plans
Acting as the bridge between customers and hosting providers, it makes everything easier for their users. The way it works is that you choose a content management system (e.g. WordPress) and then choose a server for your site. Your option can be any of the following:
- DigitalOcean
- Vultr
- GCE
- AWS
- Linode
Here’s what you’ll get with their starter plans:
- DigitalOcean Starter Plan ($10) – 20GB space, 1GB RAM, 1TB bandwidth.
- Vultr Starter Plan ($11) – 25GB space, 1GB RAM, 1TB bandwidth.
- GCE (Google cloud) Starter Plan ($33.30) – 20GB space, 1.7GB RAM, 2TB bandwidth.
- AWS (Amazon web services) Starter Plan ($36.51) – 4GB space, 1.75GB RAM, 2TB bandwidth.
- Linode Starter Plan (12) – 25GB space, 1GB RAM, 1TB bandwidth.
The best part about the pricing model is it’s fully transparent. You pay X amount monthly – that’s it. It’s not like other hosting providers that display a price, and on the checkout page, you come to know that you’ll need to pre-pay for three years to avail the sticker price!
Endless(not literally) data centres
Cloudways doesn’t own any servers — they kind of manage it only. Therefore, the servers or data centres you can choose from depends on the service you choose.
All the five names mentioned in the previous section are huge at what they do. You may have heard a couple of those, especially AWS & Google cloud. They all have a global network of servers, and you can choose any platform for a data centre location of your choice. For example, GCE has servers all over Asia, so you can select one nearby India and call it a day. That simple.
Speed
You’re guaranteed fast server speeds when you choose to go for a cloud hosting provider. The reason for this is that cloud hosting involves the use of clusters of servers located all around the world. Should a user need a lot of resources, other servers are always there as backups. Chances of shut down when overloaded are, therefore, slim to zero.
Moreover,
- All plans clearly mention the dedicated resources so that you can choose one depending on the requirement.
- All servers use SSD storage.
- There’s a CloudWays CDN to serve your website across the globe.
- And custom caching plugins for, well, caching. The one for WordPress is called Breeze.
A couple of collaboration features
With Cloudways, you can have a smooth collaborative workflow. The features for the job includes Git integration, SSH & SFTP access, staging environment, and team management to classify/assign team members to projects.
Support
CloudWays has a knowledge base of articles on their website. And of course, you can always get all the information you need on the internet (via documentation, video tutorials, forums, etc.).
If you want to talk to an expert, you can also contact Cloudways’ support team 24/7 via live chat, phone, and e-mail (ticketing system).
Wrap-up
We haven’t mentioned a few features so let’s wrap-up with that. Each plan comes with a free SSL, auto-healing, dedicated firewall, 24/7 real-time monitoring, and regular security patching for security. Furthermore, all plans include free migration, automated backups, and unlimited websites.
Overall, Cloudways is trustworthy in all aspects, from performance to security & from server locations to customer support.
Pros
- Host unlimited number of websites
- Highly scalable
- Multiple providers
Cons
- Plans are quite expensive
- Some technical knowledge needed
- No control panel
8. Dreamhost
Website: www.dreamhost.com
Price: $7.95 (USD)
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets
You’re probably familiar with DreamHost as it’s been around since 1996. It now hosts about 1.5 million sites, and the numbers are growing every day. Another reason why you might remember DreamHost is that WordPress.org recommends it — it’s one of the only three web hosts on that list, the other two being SiteGround & BlueHost.
Hosting options
Their hosting options include shared, dedicated, VPS, cloud, and WordPress. Their most popular one is shared hosting, and you can subscribe to a plan and pay monthly, yearly or triennially (every 3 years). More detailed descriptions of their hosting plans are listed below.
- Shared Starter – With an introductory price of only $2.59 a month, this plan allows you to have 1 website and a free domain for 1 year (if you pay upfront for 1 whole year). You’ll also get unlimited traffic, unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage, and free SSL certificate.
- Shared Unlimited – At $4.95 (introductory price), this plan allows for unlimited websites, free domain for 1 year (if paid yearly), unlimited traffic, unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage, and free SSL certificate.
As you can see, DreamHost only has 2 pricing plans for its shared hosting option. The Shared Starter package is great for startups while the Shared Unlimited is more intended for business sites. You can go for the cheapest plan just to test things out – with the knowledge that you can upgrade at any time.
For even more performance, you can look at the VPS plans starting from $10/month, cloud plans starting from $4.50, and for ultimate performance, dedicated servers costing from $149/mo.
Also, and you should definitely check it out, they have managed WordPress plans called DreamPress. The starting price is $16.95/month, and it’s some incredible value for high-performing WordPress sites.
The extraordinary guarantee
What impressed us the most with DreamHost is their uptime guarantee of 100%. It’s actually included in their terms of service – that their customers will be compensated should they fail to deliver on this promise.
So, here’s the deal. They’ll credit you a full day’s hosting for every hour of downtime on their part. There are exceptions to this, however, such as announced downtimes and service interruptions. Also, there’s a maximum customer compensation of 10% on the next renewal fee. All in all, it’s still a good deal.
Also, note that downtimes will be counted based on customer reports. You’ll have to submit a ticket and report the problem for the downtime to be counted. Still, it’s all good – as you know they’ll strive their best not to have downtimes to not lose money in the process.
Besides the 100% uptime guarantee, there’s also a 97-day money-back guarantee which is extremely rare in the market where the standard is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
All in all, both guarantees go to show their confidence in their services!
Speed
DreamHost’s speed is good – but not as good as the leading contenders in this report. Remember, the ideal page load time is 1 second or less. And DreamHost sometimes struggles in this area (but only a bit). This stat is for shared plans only — if you are thinking about DreamPress plans, that has a bright green signal from our side.
Support
As far as customer support is concerned, DreamHost sure can deliver. They have 24/7 live chat, which is great. You can also contact them via email and through their Twitter account. And of course, they also have a knowledge base of useful articles and forums for discussions.
Note that they don’t have phone support. However, they provide the option of subscribing to their callback feature. You’ll need to pay extra for this, though (it’s still a good option, in our opinion).
Wrap-up
DreamHost is a good option in general. However, it lacks servers in Asia, which might not be ideal for you. Anyway, if the server location is the only thing stopping you, let us tell you, you can connect it with Cloudflare CDN for free.
Pros
- 97-day money back guarantee for credit card payments (shared hosting only)
- Quality plans
- 100% uptime guarantee
Cons
- No money back guarantee on other plans
- No servers in India
- Expensive renewal fees
9. Bluehost
Website: www.bluehost.com
Price: $3.95 (USD)
Disk space: 50 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets
BlueHost is a gigantic hosting provider. Together with its sister Companies (HostMonster, iPage, and FastDomain), it’s now hosting over 2 million websites all around the globe. Their hosting options include shared, dedicated, VPS, and cloud – with their most popular hosting service being shared hosting.
Four popular shared plans
BlueHost’s shared hosting come with 4 pricing plans:
- Basic Plan – With an introductory price of Rs. 199/mo (regular price is Rs. 499), you can create 1 website while in this plan. It also comes with 50GB SSD storage space, unmetered bandwidth, a domain name, an email account, and free SSL certificate.
- Plus Plan – For only Rs. 299/mo as introductory price (regular price is Rs. 679), you can create an unlimited number of websites with this plan. You’ll also get unlimited SSD storage space, unmetered bandwidth, and free SSL certificate.
- Choice Plus – Also, with an introductory price of Rs. 399/mo (regular price is Rs. 919), you get unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage space, unmetered bandwidth, and free SSL certificate with this plan.
- Pro Plan – Their most expensive plan now has an introductory price of Rs. 859/mo (regular price is Rs. 1459/mo.). This comes with unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, and free SSL.
Needless to say, you’ll get more features, power, and speed as you upgrade your plan.
As for their uptime guarantee, BlueHost is committing to 99.99% uptime. And believe us when we say that they’re truly one of the most reliable companies when it comes to uptime.
Speed
You won’t have a problem with speed when you choose to go for BlueHost as your hosting provider. They come with free CDN (CloudFlare) and you simply need to activate this on your control panel to use it.
Support
BlueHost has a help center with helpful articles and guides for their customers. If you want to talk to their support team, you can reach them via email (ticketing system) or live chat (24/7).
SiteLock
SiteLock is among the best cybersecurity software in the commercial market, and Bluehost employs it to protect your site. It runs daily scans on your site to detect any kind of malware or threat, and notify.
CodeGuard
Two of the expensive shared plans include CodeGuard basic. It’s an add-on you can purchase with the cheaper packages.
CodeGuard is basically a site backup software. It will backup your website regularly and let you restore if the need be. Quite simple.
Microsoft Office Email
Aside from the Basic plan, all plans come with Microsoft 365 Business Plus license free for 30 days. Here’s some free advice: Unless you are ready to pay a renewal fee every month, do not use this feature because it’s hard to migrate the emails to any other platform.
Same price, fewer features
Bluehost.in is the Indian version of the original Bluehost.com. Since we test so many web hosts, we noticed that a couple of features are missing on the Indian version despite charging about the same amount (if converted).
The original site offers $200 in marketing credits & gets your business verified on Google My Business, which simply isn’t included on the .in version. Therefore, if you want to purchase BlueHost, better go with the .com version, which also happens to have a comparatively better support team.
Recommended by WordPress
As we mentioned in the DreamHost section, BlueHost is one of the only three web hosting companies WordPress.org has officially recommended. So, it’s without a doubt going to be a great performer for WordPress sites!
Wrap-up
BlueHost offers excellent security, affordable plans, and user-friendly controls. WordPress also recommends it. Sadly, it does miss out on a few features like free migration. Still, it’s a good choice for beginners, in our opinion — of course, the ones we discussed before are better; BlueHost is last on this list for a reason.
Pros
- Good security
- Competitive prices
- User-friendly
Cons
- High renewal rates
- No refund option for domain names
- Site migration services aren’t free
Table of Contents
How to choose a web hosting service in India!
With India being the second largest market when it comes to internet usage, making sure your website loads smoothly is a must! Which web hosting provider should I go with is one of the most common questions we get (and the one on how to actually build a website). While you can search the web endlessly, it’s easier to decide which one to go with when you have all the information at hand.
This section will help you in selecting your favorite hosting provider based on specific factors and the purpose of the site. Below you’ll find the most important features to review when searching for the best web hosting company! We used the same factors to rate and rank the web hosts in this comparison.
Are the servers located in India?
You’ll want to make sure the hosting service you use is based in or around India (Singapore is probably your best bet here). The reason for this is simple.
If you base your website in another country than it will result in issues with speed. You’ll experience delays, slower load times, and just general lag.
SSD Disk space: How much of it?
Storage matters because it determines how many files you can upload onto your website. For small businesses or maybe a blog, a simple website could do and will only require a few gigabytes. Unfortunately, if you’re a bigger company or just have a bigger project in mind than you’ll need as much storage space as you can get. You’ll want to take advantage of hosting services that offer SSD drivers that perform better than the standard drive used.
SSL Certificates: Are they free?
Having an SSL certificate is a must these days! It means having a secure site (https://) and Google likes it too, as they make it no secret that having an SSL certificate is one of the ranking factors to rank in their search results.
Luckily, SSL certificates are free these days, and most web hosting providers offer them. If you don’t have SSL enabled yet, you can get a free certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
Uptime: Do they publish the numbers? Is there a guarantee?
When looking for the best web hosting in India, you’ll want to search for a service that provides good server uptime. Basically, 99.9% of web hosts in India promise optimal uptime. The promises are not always to be trusted. Before dedicated yourself or your company to a service, be sure to research and read reviews of the web host you’re considering to get a general consensus on how good the uptime is.
Support: How responsive and knowledgeable are they?
A big feature to look out for is support, both service and customer. While many view them as the same type of support. Having good service and customer support is about being able to properly articulate how to fix problems and technical issues while making sure the customer feels valued and satisfied. Good support is a must! It’s a good idea to look up user reviews of the support services, as they’re not created equal.
Backups: How often and how reliable are they?
A feature not to be forgotten, but often is, is the backup system. Any person that has worked with a computer in any capacity knows that backing up your files and data is essential. When creating a website through a web hosting server, it’s extremely important that you backup your database, email files, and website on an almost daily basis. When choosing the best website hosting in India, be sure to check how often the service backups your database and if they charge a fee for back restore.
How many addon domains are you allowed?
For startups that are looking for the simplest web hosting plan, you’ll probably only need a single website. A web hosting service that offers only a single domain is also the cheapest options, but if you’re looking to add more websites and email accounts, you need to be sure your web hosting can support it. While most web hosting plans allow for as many subdomains as you like, you have to be sure they can support more domains if that’s what your business needs.
Indian Hosting Frequently Asked Questions
How much does web hosting cost in India?
The cost of web hosting in India depends on one’s requirements. Whether they need a shared plan or VPS, cloud hosting or dedicated server, 2 GB memory or 4GB, and so on and so forth.
Typically, most need a good value for money shared hosting. And that costs somewhere between 50 INR and 250 INR, if introductory pricing offers of quality companies are considered.
Which server location is best for India?
Ideally, a server as near as the target user is the best. So, for India, the best server location is in India. However, if there’s a hosting provider that offers overall better services but doesn’t have a server in India, it can still be chosen if
- It has a data center in Asia,
- Or it offers free CDN integration.
Can I host my own website?
If you want to host your own website on your personal computer, yes, you can! However, you need to be aware of two things:
- You must know to set up a server and install the platform/CMS you need.
- Neither your device nor your internet can go down. Both things mean your website is offline.
Overall, you can host your own website, but it will still cost you time and money.
Can you have a website without hosting?
Yes, you can have a website without hosting, but there’s no point in it. You can simply code a webpage with HTML on your local system, and it’s technically a website. But, no one except the ones with access to your PC can see it. For the world to see it, it needs to be hosted on a live server!
Where can I host my website for free?
If you want to host your domain for free, there are a few free hosting providers in the market. E.g., 000WebHost and Infinityfree. Remember, though- What you pay is what you get.
If you are okay with a subdomain, you can try Blogger, WordPress, Wix, etc.
Which domain is best?
Any domain that serves your website’s purpose is the best. Generally, .com, .net, and .org extensions are preferred. Apart from that, there are many different TLDs for different purposes. E.g., .edu, .biz, .live, .agency, etc.
How can I get a free domain?
The only way to get a free domain is to buy a service alongside which a free domain is offered. E.g., Hostinger offers a free domain with some of its plans.
Is Hostinger safe?
Hostinger is one of the most reliable hosting providers at a global stage. It practices top-notch security and privacy policies. Plus, Hostinger has a dedicated cybersecurity team.
Does Google host websites for free?
Google is a technology company and not a hosting company. If you are talking about making your site visible on its search engine, yes, it’s free. But, if you want to know if its hosting option — Google cloud — is free, then the answer is no. Google cloud does offer free credits for first time users, but it’s not free.
Can you code your own website for free?
If you have the appropriate knowledge — of HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, MySQL, and/or anything else you prefer — sure, you can code your website for free.