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Part 2 - Review 9 Premium Web Hosting Services to take a Joomla! Site Live

Previously, 9 free web hosting providers were introduced to you. Now it's time to look at premium web hosting services for your Joomla site.

Premium web hosting services for Joomla

Premium hosting for Joomla

Why should you choose premium web hosting services?

There are 3 main reasons: many more features, great support, and speed. Premium hosting services offers a huge range of features which are not provided in free web hosting accounts. Support is mostly available 24/7, even on holidays. With this type of hosting, you can be assured of reliable service. Besides, if you want to enjoy excellent speed, you should consider premium hosting. Visitors like websites which load quickly. According to research about the best websites, an average user spends less than five seconds before hitting the "back" button. If a visitor has to wait longer than that, you will lose him or her to another site. To make money with your Joomla site, you should pay attention to the speed.

Common types of premium hosting

There are many different types of premium web hosting services out there, but in my opinion, there are five main types:

  • Shared hosting: Shared hosting is the most common type. With shared hosting your website is placed on a server with hundreds of other websites, lowering the cost. Plans are inexpensive and the service is generally good.
  • Business hosting: Business Class Hosting is a step up from shared hosting. Business Hosting is suitable for those who need more reliable performance from their web site and have a few more dollars to spend.
  • Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS): Using server virtualization software hosting companies are able to run many "Virtual" servers using one physical server. You will be the only one using your virtual sever. With a VPS server you have the ability to make changes to the operating system and web server that you are not allowed to do with shared hosting.
  • Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting refers to a fairly new hosting technology that lets hundreds of individual servers work together so that it looks like one giant server. The idea is that as the need grows, the hosting company can just add more commodity hardware to make an ever larger cloud.
  • Dedicated hosting service: The user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (Administrative access); however, the user typically does not own the server. The user has full administrative access to the server, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated server.

Criteria

For premium web hosting services, if you don't want to waste your money, I think you should consider these criteria:

  • Price: you should know if a good premium hosting could meet your financial conditions.
  • Refund: can you get your money back if there are any problems with your website or you are not satisfied with the hosting.
  • Disk space and bandwidth: as much as possible; most premium accounts offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth, but there are some providers with limitations.
  • Technical support: Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year round?
  • User reviews: reading reviews from other customers, you can be reassured that your money is put in the right place. You can visit Top cheap web hosting or Joomla hosting reviews for references.

Feature Comparison

Premium web hosting services

Type

Price per month

Full money back guarantee

Disk space - Bandwidth

Technical Support

WebHostingHub

- shared hosting

$4.95

90 days

Unlimited - Unlimited

24/7

Rackspace

- cloud hosting

$150

Based on agreement

50 GB - 500 GB

24/7/365

HostGator

- shared hosting

- VPS hosting

- dedicated servers

$3.96 - $139.00

45 days

Unlimited - Unlimited

24/7/365

Bluehost

- shared hosting

$4.95

Anytime

Unlimited - Unlimited

24/7

InMotion

- shared hosting

- VPS hosting

- dedicated servers

$3.00 - $199.95

30 - 90 days

Unlimited - Unlimited

24/7

Hostt

- shared hosting

- VPS hosting

$ Free - $19.95

90 days

Unlimited - Unlimited

24/7/365

Arvixe

- shared hosting

- business hosting

- VPS hosting

- dedicated hosting

$4.00 - $105.00

60 days

Unlimited - Unlimited

24/7

Rochen

- shared hosting

- business hosting

- VPS hosting

- dedicated hosting

$8.95 - $149.95

15 days

1 GB - 50 GB

24/7

Siteground

- shared hosting

- cloud VPS hosting

- dedicated hosting

$6.95 - $169.00

30 days

Unlimited - Unlimited

24/7

Detailed reviews

1. WebHostingHub

Premium web hosting provider | Webhostinghub's screenshot

WebHostingHub hosting

Customer scenarios: personal sites, small businesses

WebHostingHub is the best cost effective all-in-one web hosting plan, which includes all the features for personal and small-business demands. At $4.95/month only, WebHostingHub hosting plan offers one free domain name or transfer, unlimited parked domains, the richly-featured cPanel, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, over 50 application quick installation scripts integrated with the control panel, unlimited and secure email services, 24/7 toll-free US in-house technical support and live chat. Furthermore, WebHostingHub provides a 90-day FULL money-back guarantee, without any hidden terms, so your purchase is risk-free, worry-free, and totally guaranteed.

2. Rackspace

Premium web hosting provider | Rackspace's screenshot

Rackspace hosting

Customer scenarios:large sites, enterprise sites

Rackspace delivers high-quality and scalable cloud computing hosting services to meet customers' dynamic web hosting needs. This premium web hosting services offers a variety of hosting products including: on-demand computing power via Cloud Servers, robust web hosting on Cloud Sites, and unlimited online file storage with the assistance of Cloud Files. Rackspace has over 170,000 cloud customers and is still growing. We are also using Rackspace hosting; it works amazingly well. Although renowned for services and customer support provided, this provider is pretty expensive when compared to competitors. However, I highly recommend this premium web hosting provider due to its professional support and great features.

3. HostGator

Premium web hosting provider | Hostgator's screenshot

HostGator hosting

Customer scenarios:personal sites, small and medium sized businesses

HostGator provides unlimited disk space, monthly data transfer, email accounts and MySQL databases. Under the guarantee for 99.9% web hosting service uptime and a 45-day FULL money back period, your purchase is complete guaranteed. HostGator has a wide range of plans including Hatchling ($3.96/month), Baby ($6.36/month) and Business ($10.36/month), allowing you start small and grow into larger plans as your need. Moreover, the support can be trusted. Their technical support can be reached through toll-free telephone, email and online chat all available 24/7. Your account is administered on HostGator using the cPanel control panel. From here, Joomla site runs very well.

4. Bluehost

Premium web hosting provider | Bluehost's screenshot

Bluehost hosing

Customer scenarios: personal sites, small businesses

BlueHost professional hosting is the best all-in-one hosting package considering BlueHost's reputation in the market and its rich features. BlueHost has accumulated millions of customers from scratch in the past 16 years.

BlueHost focuses on shared hosting at fair prices, $4.95/month, while providing excellent technical and customer support. Highly qualified full-time system administrators are available to help with any technical issues. Support is available via phone, email or chat 24 hours a day. The hosting plan comes with a free domain name, unlimited disk space and monthly bandwidth (data transfer). Besides these, Joomla site runs very well in the Bluehost Environment. It can be installed using Simplescripts or Fantastico; these are 2 services which can help to automatically install web applications including Joomla to a website with one click.

5. InMotion

Premium web hosting provider | Inmotion's screenshot

Inmotion hosting

Customer scenarios: personal sites, small, medium and large sized businesses

InMotion premium web hosting has an outstanding reputation in the industry, because of their strong reliability, powerful servers, experienced technical support, and high customer satisfaction.

InMotion provides two plans: One for personal hosting and one for business class. The personal hosting service is vastly inferior to business class hosting, despite being cheaper. You have to pay for two years in advance and have a 30-day money back guarantee, so it is not a great option for most people. If you just want personal hosting for a blog or small site, InMotion does not provide the best service for the best price. The Business Class plan is often faster than personal hosting plans, provides more spam protection, and performs daily backups. You also have a 90-day guaranteed money back refund if you are not satisfied, and you can pay month to month. So, the business class plan is a smart choice for you.

6. Hostt

hostt free website hosting

Hostt Hosting

Customer scenarios: small and medium businesses

Hostt is well known as the "Free Hosting Option".  Their customers love them.  They have an unlimited free Joomla Hosting option.  They have been doing business for 6 years. I think that choosing this free premium web hosting service is also a good way to get your online business off the ground, right?

The Free Hosting Plan by Hostt for only $0.00 per month offers customers just about everything they need to get their web site online. You can be sure to receive unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, e-mail addresses, MySQL databases, free Joomla site builder and hundreds more features. Hostt comes with 24/7 technical support via e-mail helpdesk and live chat. They require a $13.95/year domain registration to get their free hosting option.

7. Arvixe

Premium web hosting provider | Arvixe's screenshot

Arvixe web hosting

Customer scenarios: personal, small businesses

Arvixe, since 2003, is a great web hosting provider that offers both Windows and Linux hosting options. It's priced at only $4/month with 1 free domain for life, and supports 6 parked domains. Arvixe web hosts support the latest cutting-edge web technology including PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, Perl, MySQL and PostgreSQL. The control panel cPanel integrates with more than 50 application scripts that you can easily use to start your business, blog, e-commerce, album, forum or social network. They're known for being very reliable and having friendly and helpful technical support. Arvixe gives you a 60-day full money back guarantee, which is long enough to test them out how good they are.

8. Rochen

Premium web hosting provider | Rochenhost's screenshot

Rochen Hosting

Customer scenarios: small businesses, large sites, enterprise sites

Rochen is a specialist in "performance hosting" with a focus on Joomla! site and other dynamic scripts. It provides excellent service when it comes to Joomla and other Open Source website hosting. Rochen hosts thousands of Joomla! powered websites including the Joomla project website, Joomla.org. When you host your Joomla site with them, you are able to take advantage of all this experience. So I highly recommend Rochen hosting for Joomla site, in the case that you're looking for a fast, reliable shared web host with full "out of box" compatibility for Joomla! and popular third party extensions such as JomSocial, K2, DocMan, etcc.

9. Siteground

Premium web hosting provider | Siteground's screenshot

SiteGround hosting

Customer scenarios: personal sites, small - medium businesses, large sites, enterprise sites.

SiteGround was established in August of 2003 in New York by a group of IT professionals. Almost 10 years later, they have over 1100 servers spread out in four different locations around the US. At $6.95 per month, SiteGround's yearly hosting plan brings you very attractive and rich features including unlimited storage and bandwidth, and a free domain. Having received the "Best Joomla Host" award 2010, they are widely acclaimed for its Joomla-specific features. They provide a large free Joomla templates gallery with new Joomla 2.5 templates and extensions, extensive Joomla tutorials, free one-click Joomla installation and more. Besides this, they offer outstanding uptime and reliability to Joomla hosting users.

 

In conclusion

Honestly, choosing good web hosting service, whether it's free or premium, is difficult but important; you need to think carefully. I hope that you can find a suitable Joomla web hosting provider for your own site after reading these two blog posts. Also, don't hesitate to share with us any web hosting services that you know of by leaving your comments!

Some articles published on the Joomla Community Magazine represent the personal opinion or experience of the Author on the specific topic and might not be aligned to the official position of the Joomla Project

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