Best Web Hosting Coupons

Criteria for Good Web Hosting

I consider a web host to be “good”, only if it satisfies three essential criteria. It’s not about disk space, or free domains. Rather, it’s about the following:

1. Free backups and restores
2. Server-side caching availability
3. Free security scanning and firewall

And of course, it must be reasonably priced as well! Here’s a report on the latest web hosting market share of the most prominent web hosts.

Best Web Hosting Promo: Hostgator

This is the lowest “non-gimmick” hosting you can get. There are others whose prices are lower, but there’s always some catch. Either no free SSL or limited storage. Hostgator has solid, affordable hosting.

Web Host	Hostgator
Price	$2.57/m
Number of Websites	1
Best Feature	Unlimited storage

Coupon Code:

Here’s a list of all the Hostgator coupons.

Best Value: NameHero – Lots of Features

NameHero is a new web host that provides the best value for money. It’s more expensive than Hostgator, but in return, you get the following:

1. Automated offsite backups
2. A LiteSpeed web server (What is LiteSpeed?)
3. Malware scanning
4. Server caching

For these features, NameHero’s price kills it.

Web Host	NameHero
Starting Price	$1.34/m
Discount (%)	85%
Features	Free backups Free server-side caching Free malware scanning Free LiteSpeed web server
More Details	NameHero Review

NameHero is a smaller web hosting company, with fantastic customer support. It’s more personal, and the management is much closer to the end-user than with other hosting providers. Here’s the best NameHero coupon you can get today.

Web Hosting Coupons Comparison

There’s a lot more to choosing hosting than just the price. Each web host has its own set of unique features. Also, you may have specific needs like obtaining a free domain. Here are the complete pricing details for all plans:

The low prices you see on the homepages of hosting providers might be misleading because many of them show you prices for 36-month subscriptions. Make sure you do an “Apples to apples” comparison before choosing! This is the only way to truly find the cheapest web hosting.

Summary of Hosting Provider Deals

Here’s a quick overview of the major hosting providers and what they bring to the table.

Hostgator Coupons

Hostgator has the widest range of coupons. They have offers for different periods, different plans, and upgrade options.

If you’re looking for the best deal, I recommend the 12-month hosting plan which gives the highest savings percentage. But if you’re looking for the maximum absolute savings, then the 3-year plan is your best bet.

The disadvantage of Hostgator is that they don’t have SSD drives. Now there’s some debate on how useful SSD drives are. But there’s no doubt that all things being equal, they win out over traditional hard drives – especially on database-intensive applications like WordPress.

They also provide a free domain with basic web hosting. This makes them the single cheapest plan compared to its competitors like Bluehost.

Hostgator’s plans are also pretty “basic” – with none of the bells and whistles of a provider like SiteGround. But if you just want cheap and reliable web hosting, they’re a solid bet.

GoDaddy Promo Codes

I wouldn’t recommend GoDaddy hosting to anyone, for the simple reason that they don’t provide free SSL. Enough said. And in today’s world, that should be a crime. They can’t expect anyone to take them seriously when they won’t provide even the most basic functionality offered by every other hosting provider.

Other than that, they have the famous 12-month plan for $1/month. Though if you’re going to run a website without SSL, good luck with people taking you seriously!

Bluehost Offers

If you manage to score the cheap $2.95/m deal, Bluehost can be the cheapest hosting you can get for a minimum of 3-years. They offer a free domain with all new hosting plans that have a minimum billing cycle of 1-year.

However, the $2.95/m deal isn’t always available and without that, their prices are a bit more expensive than Hostgator. Bluehost offers automatic discounts, unlike Hostgator which has a wide selection of coupon codes. So if you’re looking for just the right deal, Bluehost might not be the right one for you.

SiteGround Pricing: Expensive!

I’ve stopped recommending SiteGround because of their increased prices and the elimination of cPanel. However, they do have nice features like:

1. Dynamic caching (no need for cache plugins)
2. Staging
3. Free backups and restores
4. Excellent customer support
5. Isolation of accounts with “Hive” technology

Instead of SiteGround, I recommend NameHero instead. NameHero is cheaper, has the same features as SiteGround, and even stores your backups offsite, which is pretty amazing. Here’s a complete review of NameHero along with the best coupon to use.

Why I Don’t Recommend GoDaddy

You might think that GoDaddy is the best deal with its $1/m plan. However, this is deceptive. Unlike other providers, GoDaddy does not provide free SSL. Google has made it clear that it penalizes sites that don’t have “HTTPS”. So with GoDaddy, you need to purchase SSL separately – and that is much more expensive.

Instead, I Recommend Hostgator for Cheap Hosting

Right now, I would recommend Hostgator starting at $2.57/m, because of the free SSL and massive 73% discount for the Business plan.

Duration: 12 Months
Hostgator Coupon Code (Click to copy):

Also, keep in mind that there are a whole bunch of Hostgator coupon codes that overlap with each other. These discounts are the ones that give the best savings. While GoDaddy is indeed the cheapest on the surface, here’s what $1/m hosting will get you.

This is how the discounts of the various hosting plans compare with each other graphically:

Two Best Web Hosts for Blogging

If you’re thinking of starting a blog, you have the choice between a free blogging service like WordPress.com, Blogger, Medium, or one of the many other platforms out there that will happily host your content for free. However, if you want to create a long-term property that’s attached to your brand name and has your unique look, then you need to purchase web hosting and create your blog.

Here are 2 of the best web hosts to start with if you’re blogging – and why.

1. Hostgator – The Best Web Hosting Coupons without Cutting Corners

If you’re just starting, I suggest you begin with something cheap, and which doesn’t commit you too much. In the beginning, you won’t receive too many visitors anyway, and it’s best if you keep your investment small.

You can buy Hostgator web hosting for a measly $2.57 per month if you sign up for 3 years, or $2.57/m if you sign up for 12-months. Here’s the complete Hostgator coupon code list if you want to look at more of their deals.

Why Not Cheaper Hosts Like GoDaddy?

If we’re looking at price, then you might wonder why I’m not recommending other cheap web hosts like GoDaddy. The reason for this is that while you can find ultra-cheap web hosting for even less, they all have some “catch” that makes them unsuitable.

For example, GoDaddy doesn’t provide you with free SSL and they make you pay $59 for a single certificate! Exabytes provides you with only 1 GB of storage. There are even those who promise to host your site for free like 000webhost, but they all have serious limitations which will kill your site.

In all, I think Hostgator has the best value for money when it comes to web hosting. Yes, they’re cheap, but they don’t cut corners. You get plenty of disk space, a full cPanel dashboard, free SSL, and all the usual web hosting utilities that we’ve come to expect. That’s why I recommend them instead of the other ultra-cheap hosting providers.

2. NameHero for Europe Hosting – Or for Extra Power

The second web host that I’ve come to recommend these days, is NameHero. While they’re not quite as cheap as Hostgator, I like them for several reasons. Their prices start at $1.34/m. Here’s a list of NameHero coupon codes that you can use during the checkout process.

LiteSpeed Web Server for Caching

NameHero uses something known as a “LiteSpeed” web server, instead of the more common Apache. The biggest advantage of this is the in-built server caching, and this is particularly useful for blogging.

While blogging, your server generates web pages on the fly for each visitor. This is inefficient. Server caching saves a copy of the page after the first visit and sends the copy for all future requests. This dramatically increases the page speed of your blog. While you can implement caching manually with 3rd party plugins, it’s never as fast as when your server does it for you. Here’s a list of web hosts that implement server caching. You can see that NameHero is at the top of the list.

Servers in Europe

Unlike Hostgator, NameHero has a data center in Europe in the Netherlands. This makes it perfect if you intend to primarily target a European audience. A lot of big web hosts like to consolidate their properties into their fully-owned datacenters, and as a result, don’t have great coverage.

NameHero follows a different approach and can offer servers around the world. The next step is for them to open a data center in Asia!

NameHero also has plenty of little perks that are useful for blogging like free malware scanning, Cloudflare Railgun integration, and daily backups. For example, here’s their “Imunify360” service that they offer for free:

They’re so feature-rich that I frequently compare NameHero to SiteGround, with the difference that NameHero is much cheaper.

Personalized Customer Service

If you’re just starting your blog, you’ll appreciate NameHero’s personalized customer service. I’m not saying that Hostgator’s customer service is bad – but it’s what you would expect from a faceless corporation. NameHero’s CEO Ryan Gray takes a much more hands-on approach to web hosting and frequently interacts with customers on his blog and his Youtube channel.

For a beginner to blogging, you might appreciate this level of personalized attention!

Holiday Web Hosting Coupons

Shopping for web hosting sometimes means waiting for the right time of the year. And that time is November! Particularly these three days:

1. Black Friday Web Hosting Deals

Along with the rest of the world, web hosting providers give some of their best discounts on this day. Here’s the full list of web hosting Black Friday deals. Some hosts like SiteGround give discounts very rarely, and their Black Friday weekend is worth waiting for as seen here:

Their discounts during this time of the year beat out other holiday sales like Labor day.

Hostgator in particular has a spectacular collection of Black Friday coupon codes. This isn’t surprising since Hostgator has more coupons than any other hosting provider on the market. It’s their specialty!

2. Small Business Saturday Promo Codes

The day following Black Friday is called “Small Business Saturday”, and many web hosts extend their Black Friday deals to the next day. Other providers don’t make a distinction between these two days, and others like Hostgator have a completely different set of coupons!

3. Cyber Monday Web Hosting Coupons

As if the above two weren’t enough, providers like Bluehost and Hostgator have a different set of deals for the Monday following Black Friday, called “Cyber Monday”.

As usual, Hostgator has the largest selection of discounts for Cyber Monday, but other web hosts like SiteGround also extend their special discounts at this time of the year.

Free Web Hosting: Is it a Good Idea?

If you’re looking for the cheapest web hosting coupons, you must have surely considered free web hosting. There are a few web hosts that offer this kind of service, but unsurprisingly, they come with a lot of caveats. For example:

1. Site is unavailable at specific times
2. Terrible uptime
3. VERY slow
4. No SSL certificate

Here’s a complete guide to free web hosting, along with all the providers who offer it and their limitations. If you’re starting a business that you want taken seriously, I don’t recommend you choose free web hosting at all. It’s only for hobbies and for someone who just wants to play around. Not serious stuff!

Don’t Forget SSL!

One way for hosting providers to make money is by selling SSL certificates. They fool you into thinking that they have low hosting prices and then smack you with huge SSL bills. Don’t fall for this common trap!

As mentioned above, GoDaddy is a particularly egregious violator. Among the modern web hosts, they’re the only ones who still don’t have free SSL. Right now, only their “Ultimate” hosting plan gives you free SSL as shown here:

But only for one year, after which you need to buy an expensive SSL at $80 a year! That’s outrageous, and pretty much disqualifies GoDaddy in my eyes.

Deciding on the Best Hosting

The web hosting market is more crowded than ever, and choosing the right plan can be very confusing if you’re new to hosting. Web hosting plans come in five broad flavors:

1. Shared Hosting
2. Virtual Private Servers – VPS
3. Dedicated Servers
4. Managed Dedicated Servers
5. WordPress Hosting

You can compare all these hosting types from different providers using the links below:

1. Compare WordPress hosting prices across providers
2. VPS plans Price Comparisons amongst all providers
3. Compare Cloud Hosting Plans across Providers

Here are a series of questions to help you choose the best web hosting deal for your site.

How much Traffic are you Expecting?

All vendors oversell their servers. Even if you’re looking to find the cheapest web hosting per year, you have to take into consideration the traffic you expect to receive. Web hosts typically restrict the following resources on their shared hosting plans:

1. CPU usage
2. Script executions
3. Bandwidth
4. Disk usage

Some providers like Hostgator claim to have “Unlimited” disk space and “Unmetered” bandwidth. While this may be technically true, they all have hidden limitations on how many resources your website can suck up at once.

WordPress for example can be a hungry CMS and if you’re expecting a lot of traffic, you need to find a hosting plan that can easily handle what you throw at it. Here are some broad ranges in terms of visitors per day:

1. < 5,000 visitors per day – Shared Hosting
2. 5,000- 20,000 visitors per day – VPS Hosting
3. >20,000 visitors per day – Dedicated Hosting

Keep in mind that there’s a wide range of tiers for each type of hosting. For example, you can opt for SiteGround’s high-end GoGeek plan, and still technically be called “shared hosting”. Even though SiteGround’s offering is much closer to a VPS in terms of resources.

A lot will depend on the actual load on your site. If you’re just serving static HTML files, for example, a shared hosting plan can handle tens of thousands of visits a day! A CMS like WordPress or Joomla will require a lot more CPU and database resources.

So the above range is only a guide – some sites will need to move to dedicated hosting much more quickly compared to others, while some can get away with shared hosting for a lot longer. The best web hosting plan is one that takes into account the actual load that your site places on the server resources.

Here’s a list of web hosting limits for SiteGround, InMotion, and Bluehost.

What’s your Budget?

Regardless of other factors, this can be an immediate indicator of what kind of web hosting is right for you. Here are the price ranges for the different types of hosting:

1. $7 – $30 per month – Shared Hosting
2. $13-$150 per month – VPS
3. >$100 per month – Dedicated Servers

The last two options can be flexible depending on the hosting provider. Some providers like Dreamhost even offer VPS plans starting at only $10.00! But in general, if you’re looking for really cheap web hosting, then shared hosting is your best bet.

Bluehost also offers one of the cheapest web hosting plans with a free domain. Here are the best Bluehost deals right now. Then, of course, there is the famous $1 web hosting from GoDaddy.

How much Technical Experience do you Have?

VPS and dedicated server hosting are not only powerful, but they’re also more difficult to manage. You have to do all the maintenance yourself, update the Operating System (OS), take care of security, IP blacklists, module management, database backups, server backups, etc, etc. It can be a full-time job and a headache even for someone who’s experienced.

To overcome these restrictions, hosting companies provide “managed” solutions – managed VPS, and managed dedicated servers. These plans include the day-to-day operations and maintenance of the servers so you don’t have to do them. If you’re inexperienced with server technicalities, a managed solution is probably the best web hosting plan for you. You can pick up the knowledge as you go along.

The criteria looks like this:

1. No Server Mangement Experience: Shared Hosting, Managed VPS Hosting, Managed Dedicated Server
2. Enough Technical Experience: VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting

Just remember – these are not cheap web hosting plans! VPS servers are for large sites and get progressively expensive.

Are you Using WordPress Exclusively?

Today, WordPress powers over a quarter of all websites on the web. It’s easily the most popular CMS. Some of the cheapest web hosting per year packages have sprung up that cater specifically to WordPress. They not only host your site, but they also take care of many of the day-to-day activities of maintaining WordPress for you, such as plugin and theme updates, caching, optimization of the backend, etc.

If you’re an experienced WordPress administrator, you will have no problems performing these jobs yourself and in fact, might prefer to do so. After all, who knows your site better than you? But even for experienced administrators, WordPress hosting might remove some of the burdens of mundane tasks – especially if they manage multiple sites at the same time.

But if you’re looking for the cheapest web hosting year, WordPress plans might not always fit the bill. While some providers have low prices, others are quite high. Here’s a price comparison of WordPress hosting plans.

So if you only plan to use WordPress and want someone else to handle the maintenance, security, backups, and speed tweaks on your behalf, WordPress web hosting is the right choice! Here’s a comparison of WordPress hosting deals from various vendors.

What About Customer Support?

Unfortunately, great customer service and “cheap” don’t go together. Out of the shared hosting options on this page, only SiteGround qualifies for what I would call “great” support. It’s one of my top three web hosts in addition to Liquid Web and RoseHosting for quality customer care.

What About Amazon AWS?

At first glance, Amazon AWS seems like a nice idea. You build your own web hosting using components that you want. And it’s cheap too! Unfortunately, if you’re running a business, this doesn’t work out. AWS introduces unnecessary complexity into your site that will come back to bite you in the future.

What you need is something with decent customer support. With an easy interface, and without too many moving parts. Amazon AWS and other cloud solutions like Google Cloud Compute just don’t offer that yet.

Customizing your Plans

Each type of hosting can be customized to become more or less powerful. For example, a high-end VPS can easily compete with a low-end dedicated server depending on the options you choose and the provider. This can allow you to string out your existing solution with an upgrade without having to migrate to a new kind of hosting. It’s impossible to give specifics without knowing more details but ask around to see how much flexibility your future provider is willing to offer you.

What About Cloud Hosting?

But wait! What about cloud hosting? The thing is, it’s difficult to find information about when exactly a “cloud hosting” solution would be preferable to any of the regular services described above. Here’s a beginner’s explanation of the differences between cloud and shared hosting.

The cloud has many promises – automatic provisioning, failovers, burst provisioning, etc. If you listen to the market jargon and the way some companies promote the cloud, you’ll think it’s the second coming of Christ.

And it just might be! But probably not for web hosting. So far, I haven’t come across a clear-cut use case scenario when someone has said “I chose cloud hosting because shared/VPS/dedicated hosting wasn’t good enough for me.” As of, it just seems like a lot of jargon and wild promises. So until I have something more concrete to go on, I’m not recommending cloud hosting to anyone.

Summary

As you can see, choosing the cheapest web hosting per year requires you to evaluate a combination of various criteria. Pricing, traffic, technical expertise, and platform all play a role. Not to mention that many providers offer different versions of each, so it might be difficult to even draw clear lines between them.