Which web hosting service is the best? Reviews of 24 web hosting providers.

Whether you search on Google or Facebook, you’ll find numerous articles titled “XX Best Web Hosting Reviews, Recommendations, and Comparisons.” These articles list several hosting providers, briefly introduce them, and then uniformly present their pros and cons, leaving you to make the choice. It seems like every host is great and the best.

Such articles can’t really help those comparing and selecting web hosting services because they offer too many options and lack specific advice. Additionally, many reviews are not objective. Many authors of these articles have never actually used the products; they design the content for traffic and other purposes. Moreover, many poor-quality hosts are constantly promoted online. Those familiar with website building understand the reasons behind this, so there’s no need to elaborate.

In this article, I will provide simple evaluations of various foreign web hosting providers based on my personal experiences and subjective impressions, and finally offer some advice on choosing a host for foreign trade websites.

Please excuse the subjectivity in this article.

There is no perfect web hosting service in this world. In my opinion, shared hosting is a low-end category of web hosting, a heavily restricted product. There are significant differences in products and services between different providers.
For example, regarding the storage devices used by hosting products, many shared hosts use SSDs, but they are still SATA SSDs; many new shared hosting providers have started using NVMe.Other differences come from user control panels, data center locations, network routes, pricing, sales strategies, technical support, and customer service levels. Don’t expect too much from the performance of shared hosting; after all, it’s just shared hosting. However, if you are just setting up a basic company website for showcasing purposes, shared hosting will suffice.After all, in the early years of my startup, I also used shared hosting for my English website. My thinking was simple: the traffic to my site was small, only a few dozen visitors per day, much less than any well-known blog abroad. Those famous blog sites still use shared hosting, so why should I spend more money on something better? Why use a sledgehammer to crack a nut?
It should be noted that even hosting providers with a good overall reputation now may experience dynamic changes over time. The market is changing, competition is intensifying, and the sales targets, pricing strategies, organizational structures, real profit performance, product development efforts, and customer support and service capabilities of providers may all change. Therefore, a provider that currently has a good reputation may not always maintain it.

I hope everyone can view this rationally.

Don’t just look at speed tests when choosing shared hosting. If you choose shared hosting based solely on speed tests, you are likely to encounter pitfalls.For beginners building a website with shared hosting, there’s no need to consider purchasing a dedicated IP. For more details, see this article: Do You Still Need a Dedicated IP for Shared Hosting? (In-depth Analysis and Differences Between Dedicated and Shared IPs)A reminder for choosing hosting for cross-border e-commerce B2C sites: If you are building a cross-border e-commerce B2C independent site (WordPress + WooCommerce), or a B2B company website with a retail store (i.e., B2B + B2C), I suggest you avoid shared hosting and opt for managed cloud VPS. This recommendation is based on three considerations: performance, the need for a dedicated IP for online payment gateways, and price.

Note: If you are building an online B2C store using Shopify or Wix, these belong to platform-based tools, and you don’t need to consider these points.But if you are using WordPress + WooCommerce to build an online retail B2C site, I advise you not to consider shared hosting. WooCommerce is quite bloated, and if you consider using a feature-rich WordPress theme or page builder, either option will consume significant resources.Putting all these together, if you want shared hosting to run quickly and stably, you need at least a high-tier package. However, the price of a high-tier shared hosting package is almost the same as that of a VPS or managed cloud VPS, which offers better performance. Shared hosting is, after all, a shared resource, not sufficient for heavy use.Additionally, payment gateways usually require a dedicated IP because they involve transactions and sensitive user data. Shared IPs on shared hosting typically cannot configure the payment gateway for an online store. Furthermore, if you purchase a dedicated IP for shared hosting, the cost may exceed that of a cloud VPS, approaching that of a managed cloud VPS. Therefore, it’s better to choose managed cloud VPS directly. A suitable choice is Cloudways. For more details, see this article: Introduction and Tutorial of Cloudways for Foreign Trade Websites (with Discount Code)

Many shared hosting packages include a year of free domain registration, but subsequent renewal prices are expensive, often costing ten to twenty dollars a year. Cost is not the main issue; the main issue is that if you stop using the host’s service in the future, you will need to transfer the domain out, which can be inconvenient and cumbersome. Therefore, it is not recommended to use the free domain registration service provided by the host. For domain registration, I recommend Namesilo.When purchasing foreign shared hosting or cloud servers, you typically need at least a dual-currency credit card (credit cards are the primary payment method for various foreign online services) or PayPal.

For dual-currency credit cards, I recommend applying for a Visa dual-currency credit card from US Merchants Bank, which automatically converts bills to USD. A PayPal account can be linked to a regular UnionPay debit card or credit card for payment. Some providers may only support credit card payments on their websites. If you don’t have a dual-currency credit card, you can contact customer support to ask if PayPal is an option. Some providers may provide a PayPal payment link.

The term “web hosting” in this article is a general term, including shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting (dedicated), unmanaged and managed cloud VPS servers, and even dedicated servers.

Number of Websites Included in Shared Hosting Plans

For the most basic plans, the number of websites displayed is usually “1 website.” For slightly more expensive plans, the number of websites is often shown as “unlimited websites,” and some providers might display “100 websites.”

In reality, these claims are somewhat misleading and are designed to appeal to potential customers’ purchasing psychology. The actual hosting resources allocated to a single user account on a shared hosting plan are very limited, making it difficult to ensure that multiple websites can all run smoothly at the same time. The “100 websites” or “unlimited websites” displayed in the plans are essentially of no practical value.

Even if you are only building one website, it is advisable not to choose the most basic plan. The memory is usually tight since it is shared. This is just to remind everyone that if you purchase shared hosting, do not overestimate its performance. Regardless of how the hosting provider advertises and boasts, shared hosting has its limitations. When multiple websites handle visits simultaneously, activities like page loading, using the editor for CPU rendering, memory usage, and database I/O reads all consume server resources.

A Guide to Different Types of Web Hosting Servers

Web hosting providers with good reputation and performance:

SiteGround
ChemiCloud
FastComet
Cloudways (Managed Cloud VPS Hosting)
Kinsta (Managed WordPress Hosting)
WP Engine (Managed WordPress Hosting)
Flywheel (Managed WordPress Hosting)
Linode (Cloud VPS Hosting)

Performance of Hosting Providers with Mediocre Services:

ScalaHosting
GreenGeeks (poor backup functionality experience)

Hosting Providers with Discrepancies between Reputation and Actual Performance, or Overall Poor Performance:

Hostinger
NameHero
DreamHost
Bluehost
HostGator
iPage
Arvixe
JustHost
A2 Hosting
GoDaddy
NameCheap
InMotion Hosting
LiquidWeb (Nexcess)
IONOS

SiteGround

The Best Virtual Host for New Website Builders with Top-Notch Customer Service Reputation in the Hosting Industry

I’ve used many virtual hosts, but the one with the best quality assurance is still SiteGround. SiteGround supports daily backups, website migration, free SSL certificates (including wildcard support), staging environments, and more.

The downside is the high renewal price, and the initial purchase discount period is relatively short. The total cost of buying two years at once is the same as buying one year and renewing for another year, so buying one year is the most cost-effective.

So, buying one year is also fine. Use a year to familiarize yourself with the website building process and WordPress backend operations, and the website will be up and running.

Once the site is established and if it won’t undergo frequent changes, when it’s time for full-price renewal, there are several options:

Renew at full price and pay for peace of mind
- Disadvantage: It costs significantly more than before, and many people can’t get over this psychological barrier. However, if you can accept that the main hosting expense for your primary English foreign trade website is around $1,000 to $2,000 per year, then there’s no problem.
- That said, the annual website expense includes more than just hosting fees. Besides the hosting, you may also need to budget for paid themes or necessary paid functional plugins, so it ultimately depends on your budget.
Switch to other quality virtual hosts and migrate the website
- Options like ChemiCloud or FastComet, which offer three-year initial purchase discounts, outstanding performance, and prices below $4 per month, will be specifically introduced below.
- You’ll also need to migrate your site from SiteGround to the new hosting space. Using a site migration plugin, of which there are many for WordPress, can be quite convenient.
Switch to a managed cloud server and migrate the website
- Options like Cloudways. The advantage of managed cloud servers (Managed Cloud VPS Hosting) is that users without much technical background can build sites through a familiar user panel, with many pre-configured features. Suitable for those seeking a high-performance experience or those already familiar with virtual hosting and looking to enhance website performance.
Use fully managed WordPress hosting
- Options like Kinsta. The best choice for users who want peace of mind and have a good budget. The service also includes website migration assistance.

Of course, SiteGround virtual hosting also has some disadvantages. For example, some foreign users have mentioned online:

Slow server TTFB. TTFB represents the time to first byte response from the server.
- Many worry about slow site speed, but TTFB is just one aspect of webpage loading. While SiteGround’s TTFB may be slower than other mainstream virtual hosts, SiteGround’s overall webpage loading speed is faster than others. Lagging in one aspect doesn’t mean the overall result is behind.
- Moreover, according to my recent tests, SiteGround has significantly improved the slow TTFB issue.
CPU usage limitations. I truly understand the service provider’s stance here. Since it is a virtual host, resources are shared. If you use high CPU-consuming software every day, how would other users cope?
- If you really need higher CPU configuration and performance, virtual hosting isn’t suitable. Instead, choose a cloud VPS server or managed cloud server.
- The same applies to virtual hosting. If your site gets hacked with a mining Trojan continuously consuming server resources to mine cryptocurrencies, or if there’s a security loophole on your site being exploited and attacked by hackers, potentially compromising the security and stability of other users’ sites, would the hosting provider sit idly by?
- I’ve encountered many attacks, with the worst involving brute force attacks through dedicated tools using high-frequency search requests, pushing CPU usage to 100% and crashing the site. Normally, CPU usage wouldn’t exceed 20%, so I implemented some technical precautions and set an alert for 70% CPU usage. When under attack, I’d get an SMS alert and immediately enable frequency limits, solving the attack issue.
- While the hosting provider didn’t limit site access at 100% CPU usage, it is a cloud VPS after all, and most issues are user-managed with technical support tickets for resolution. Virtual hosting doing such limitations is completely understandable. It’s shared hosting, and non-intervention in abnormal situations could severely impact other users. Interventions also come with customer support and technical staff assistance to troubleshoot and solve user issues, so personally, I see no problem with this.
Price increases and high renewal fees. In 2018 and 2020, SiteGround raised prices twice. Previously offering up to three years of initial purchase discounts, now it’s only one year with special discounts, and you can buy a maximum of two years at a time.
- However, buying two years at once isn’t the most cost-effective. The total cost is the same as buying one year and renewing at full price for another year. This clear reduction in discounts is a bit too obvious, right?
- After the first year, renewal is at full price, increasing by 4-5 times, which is quite a hike. Many long-term users consider looking for other replacement virtual hosts or upgrading to managed cloud VPS at renewal.
- Previously, they offered free professional manual website migration service (somewhat borrowing from managed WordPress service ideas). Now, SiteGround offers a free WordPress migration plugin, discontinuing the free professional manual migration service. If needed, you can request migration through a support ticket for $30 per instance. Honestly, there are many free WordPress site migration plugins now, so from this point, it seems the virtual hosting package service has shrunk.
Abandonment of users from certain countries/regions. For example, users from India, New Zealand, Singapore, the Philippines, etc.
SG Optimizer not living up to the hype.
- I’ve repeatedly mentioned in the article “WordPress Site Speed Optimization: WP Speed Up Tutorial” that many functions of SiteGround’s self-developed SG Optimizer website cache acceleration tool overlap with WP Rocket. Many cache acceleration plugins have similar functions, such as WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, WP Fastest Cache, etc.
- The most valuable features of SG Optimizer are dynamic caching and Memcached caching, but it doesn’t do much for Core Web Vitals optimization. Core Web Vitals are a set of webpage factors proposed by Google in 2021 to improve user experience and benefit SEO. SG Optimizer hasn’t deeply optimized in this area, whereas professional cache plugins like WP Rocket do have these optimization features.
- Overall, it’s best to use WP Rocket to speed up the site on any virtual host. When using SiteGround virtual hosting, you can enable SG Optimizer’s caching features (dynamic caching and Memcached caching), disable other functions, and let WP Rocket handle the rest, significantly boosting site speed.

In short: In terms of product alone, SiteGround is merely mid-to-upper tier among virtual hosts, but it excels with outstanding customer support and service.

DreamHost

DreamHost is also a long-established hosting provider, like SiteGround and Bluehost, and is one of the hosting providers officially recommended by WordPress (these three hosting providers received recommendations for their donations and contributions to the WP community). However, compared to the other two hosts, DreamHost has a much weaker presence.

In terms of price, DreamHost is significantly cheaper than other virtual hosting brands. Their virtual hosting plans are also very simple, with only two plans to choose from, so users don’t face difficult choices. DreamHost is also currently one of the few hosting providers that still offer a three-year initial purchase discount period. Their WordPress Unlimited virtual hosting plan is priced at $3.95 per month for three years, making it very attractive. They also offer free domain registration and SSL certificates. They promise 100% uptime guarantee and a long refund policy of “full refund if not satisfied within 97 days.”

However, when you submit your order in the shopping cart, you’ll find that the hosting provider will recommend additional services, which are quite expensive and somewhat hidden. For instance, DreamHost has the DreamShield Protection service pre-selected at $3.00 per month, adding only $3 to your total hosting price. But upon closer inspection, this service is automatically renewed monthly, which means while the hosting is only $3.95 per month, a single website protection service costs $3 per month.

There is also the DreamHost SEO Toolkit at $4.99 per site per month, which seems aimed at encouraging less knowledgeable users to spend more. Typically, we would use professional SEO WordPress plugins, like SEOPress or Rank Math.

The actual experience with DreamHost falls short of expectations. In terms of speed and customer support, it lags behind SiteGround. In recent years, the reputation of their customer service has declined significantly, with quality concerns that even lag behind Bluehost. It has become common for support tickets to take several days to receive a response.

Stability is also lacking. I had an English website hosted on DreamHost that crashed two or three times (apart from one instance where it did not automatically recover and had to be resolved via a support ticket, the others recovered automatically within 2-3 minutes).

Even after following various optimization suggestions from their official guide, the quality of DreamHost’s virtual hosting plans remains unsatisfactory. This may also be one of the reasons why their sales are not as strong as SiteGround and Bluehost.

Another drawback of DreamHost is that they only have server data centers in the United States. If your visitors are concentrated in a specific market, you might prefer a data center closer to your target market.

DreamHost also tends to have a strict review process for new account registrations. Opening an account often involves several back-and-forth emails and providing some materials for review, which is not a great experience.

In short: Famous but lacks strength, and the service doesn’t keep up!

Hostinger

Hostinger is a hosting provider based in Lithuania, known for its low-cost virtual hosting and aggressive promotion, similar to Bluehost in its early days through extensive marketing partnerships, but with a less favorable reputation.

Hostinger’s virtual hosting products come with four pricing plans. I advise you not to consider the Single WordPress plan and the WordPress Starter plan (sharing 1GB of memory among many sites is challenging, and weekly backups are not as secure as the daily backups in the Business plan). This doesn’t mean I’m recommending the higher-tier Business plan. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend any Hostinger plan to my friends.

Hostinger offers Free Email business email service, allowing you to use your domain name as the email domain for free business email. However, what Hostinger doesn’t mention is that each email account has only 1GB of space. Their customer service believes this is sufficient for daily use. But in places like China, free email accounts are abundant, each offering 5GB/10GB of free space.

Hostinger even supports purchasing four years at the initial discount price. Most hosting providers used to lock in new customer discounts for three years, but Hostinger allows a maximum of four years. Only by purchasing four years at once can you get the lowest advertised price for each plan on their website.

As a company needing to quickly capture market share, a four-year lock-in period is better than one, two, or three years, making it easier to secure users. However, if you’re not familiar with Hostinger, I advise against purchasing four years at once.

Many foreign trade users have reported that Hostinger is slow, websites are frequently down, customer support response is slow, and their attitude is dismissive. Their customer support is terrible, with many complaints about their poor experiences and dissatisfaction with Hostinger’s products and services in various hosting-related Facebook groups. To control public opinion, Hostinger has over 200 employees posing as customers to post positive reviews on TrustPilot.

To truly experience Hostinger’s hosting, I also purchased a one-year Business WordPress plan and tried it with a new product website. Hostinger’s user panel, hPanel, is simple and elegant, and easy to use. This is better than many virtual hosts that only use the outdated Cpanel. LiteSpeed is indeed faster than Nginx, and PHP is updated to the latest versions, which are commendable aspects.

However, what I find most unacceptable is that Hostinger has too many regular maintenance, performance degradation, and service interruptions.

Hostinger’s hosting service agreement clearly states that “the uptime guarantee does not apply to service interruptions caused by regular maintenance.” Although hosting providers generally exclude server maintenance downtime from uptime guarantees, Hostinger’s frequent maintenance causing service interruptions is very frustrating. Additionally, Hostinger’s site speed stability is less than ideal, at least I think it doesn’t live up to the claimed 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Hostinger has even had serious security issues, with a 2019 incident that led to the exposure of account information for 14 million users. For more evaluations of Hostinger, please refer to this article: “Be Cautious When Using Hostinger for Web Hosting and Titan Business Email.”

In terms of customer service, Hostinger falls far behind other virtual hosting providers and cannot compare to SiteGround. SiteGround has set a very high standard in customer service, very friendly and helpful to new site builders. For any issue, SiteGround’s support will try to explain the cause, how to avoid it, and list specific steps to solve the problem with reference articles or videos. They also assure that if you still can’t resolve it, you don’t need to worry too much; just let them know in time, and their engineers will try to help solve it.

And Hostinger? I sent an email with a question, and got a brief reply two days later, just with a link to a help article.

In short: In my eyes, this is just low-end virtual hosting. Buy four years at once? Being locked in for so long is not worth it.

ChemiCloud

Founded in 2018, ChemiCloud is a rising star in the hosting industry. Personally, I feel that it performs well in all aspects, offering a great experience with powerful configurations.

ChemiCloud’s virtual hosting is built on Linode cloud services, and all virtual hosting plans use LiteSpeed, which I appreciate. I hosted a new product site on ChemiCloud and found it very stable and fast. The configurations are also relatively higher compared to other hosting providers, with larger memory making Elementor Pro and various plugins run smoothly.

Compared to Hostinger or DreamHost, ChemiCloud is a bit more expensive, but it is definitely cheaper than SiteGround.

Another plus is that ChemiCloud offers discounted renewal prices (not full price). This year’s Black Friday discount included a 35% off renewal discount. This is very considerate! As far as I know, almost no other hosting provider offers any additional discounts on renewals. The web server also uses LiteSpeed, which is fast and has a very good reputation. It uses the Cpanel control panel and offers a 45-day money-back guarantee. It’s a great choice for beginners to practice building websites!

ChemiCloud has deployed seven data centers worldwide, located in New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Bucharest (Romania), Mumbai (India), London, and Singapore.

The actual website speed test results are also very ideal, making it one of the faster hosts with high cost performance. Additionally, all virtual hosting plans offer the option to purchase a dedicated IP for $3 per month (although virtual hosting may not necessarily need a dedicated IP, it’s available if needed).

ChemiCloud also performs well in payment processing. The young customer service team is quite good, at least unlike NameHero (which I’ll mention later) that seems like outsourced customer service.

Note: There is no need to select the Rapid SSL certificate service at checkout because the plan already includes a free Let’s Encrypt certificate. If you are running a cross-border e-commerce online store or building a brand site and need a branded image, you might consider a paid Rapid SSL certificate. But usually, in the early stages of website building, there is no need for this unless you are very particular about using a higher-end SSL certificate to avoid being seen as using a low-level free SSL certificate.

There’s no need to buy the scanning service and SEO tools either. In my opinion, these additional paid services usually cost more than the hosting itself and are not worth it. The total cost of all these add-on services can be as much as buying a managed WordPress host like Kinsta. So why not just buy Kinsta directly? If you want security, take security precautions; if you want SEO, use popular and powerful WP plugins.

TrustPilot rating is 4.9/5 (from 440 user reviews).

In short: It can be one of the alternatives to SiteGround hosting. If you want to save costs, it’s cheaper than SiteGround and offers a three-year initial purchase discount period, making it suitable for those looking to switch from SiteGround due to high renewal costs.

FastComet

To find an alternative to SiteGround virtual hosting, I tried FastComet for over four months.

FastComet virtual hosting is inexpensive, with three plans priced at $1.99/month, $2.99/month, and $3.99/month. Naturally, I chose the highest FastCloud Extra plan. At $3.99/month, it’s reminiscent of BlueHost’s aggressive low-price expansion strategy from years ago. You can purchase up to three years at once, and the $3.99/month price remains unchanged regardless of the purchase term, which is nice.

In terms of configuration, FastComet and ChemiCloud are significantly better than SiteGround and Hostinger, primarily in terms of memory. For example, the entry-level FastCloud plan offers 2 CPU cores and 2 GB of memory, while the higher-tier FastCloud Extra provides 6 CPU cores and 6 GB of memory. Frequent website builders know how important memory is for virtual hosting and site building.

FastComet is the most transparent hosting provider I’ve seen regarding the hardware included in each plan, specifying configurations clearly, unlike other providers that simply claim “fast, large” without clarity.

If you are an IT professional, the Resource Quotas section has detailed computing power limits, including Concurrent connections, Number of processes, Script Executions, CPU Utilization, and more. Among the virtual hosting plans, the mid-tier FastCloud Plus and the high-tier FastCloud Extra offer great value for money. Comparatively, the $3.99/month FastCloud Extra is the best choice as it’s the only plan that supports LiteSpeed caching.

LiteSpeed is significantly more efficient and faster than Nginx and Apache when handling web services. Given the reasonable price, there’s no reason not to choose LiteSpeed.

FastComet includes common hosting services, uses the Cpanel control panel, includes Softaculous (one of the most popular auto-install tools), and installs WordPress automatically in 10 seconds. The Cpanel panel is a classic, long-lasting user interface. Its advantage is versatility with many functions, although it’s less user-friendly than some custom-developed panels by other hosts (which often lack Cpanel’s comprehensive features).

But consider that SiteGround also used Cpanel for a long time, so there’s nothing much to complain about. Moreover, FastComet provides the native Cpanel control panel. Cpanel is the pioneer of web hosting operating systems, akin to a remote operating system. However, with hosting providers cutting costs, fewer offer the native Cpanel control interface.

Why is the native Cpanel panel better? Because it offers many controllable features, even if you don’t use all of them, you can learn more about remote host operations and customize more details through Cpanel. Hosting providers need to pay licensing fees for using Cpanel, and enabling all features increases the server’s overall computing load, so many hosting providers trim down Cpanel significantly. It’s commendable that FastComet still offers the native panel to users in this environment.

Overall, it has a high rating and is a very cost-effective virtual host.

Do not select other additional services when submitting your order, as they are not very practical and are optional extras that increase costs unnecessarily. FastComet has 11 data centers globally, ensuring user access speed and reliability. They are located in Dallas, Fremont, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Singapore, Toronto, Mumbai, Sydney, Tokyo.

All FastComet virtual hosting plans do not offer a dedicated IP; it is only available with VPS plans and dedicated servers, which is a bit disappointing. At least many virtual hosts provide a free dedicated IP with the highest-priced virtual hosting or offer the option to purchase it separately.

While a dedicated IP is not a necessity for virtual hosting, at least SiteGround and ChemiCloud’s virtual hosting users have the option to purchase one if needed (though not cheap). FastComet does not offer this to virtual hosting plan users.

However, if your site does not include an online store (no sensitive online transaction data), a shared IP is completely fine. It can be used as a hosting solution for practice.

ScalaHosting

I’m not particularly familiar with ScalaHosting, but a friend from Soho is using their virtual hosting WP Start plan. It’s priced at $5.95/month and can be locked in for three years. It uses Cpanel by default, which is nothing special.

The highest plan, Entry WP Cloud, supports Open LiteSpeed + LiteSpeed caching and uses Spanel, an optimized user panel, but the price is too high.

I haven’t used or tested it extensively, but a brief speed test showed that it’s not among the fastest virtual hosts. Those comparing virtual hosts might want to consider this.

In short: Overall, the cost performance is not high, and there is no particular reason to recommend it; it’s quite ordinary.

GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks, founded in 2008, is an established hosting provider that focuses on the green and eco-friendly concept. GreenGeeks specializes in renewable energy, replacing over 615,000 kilowatt-hours of energy annually with green energy.

Possibly because they focus on their hosting server products, their website design and construction level, honestly, is on par with A2 Hosting, which isn’t very professional-looking. Other well-known hosting providers have much more aesthetically pleasing and grand website designs. This might indeed be the geek style, focusing on practicality.

However, their hosting products are decent, reasonably priced, and well-configured. The user panel uses the traditional Cpanel virtual hosting panel, and features like manual website backup and database management are all available. GreenGeeks provides a LiteSpeed Cache plugin. The web server is LiteSpeed, and using the LiteSpeed Cache plugin with default settings can significantly boost website speed.

GreenGeeks has only three data centers, which is a bit limited: Chicago, Montreal, and Amsterdam.

Website speed tests also showed decent performance. However, their backup functionality has some noticeable drawbacks:

No daily auto backup
Although all virtual hosting plans come with free nightly backups, users cannot manually control the backups or restore them themselves; they need to contact customer support to restore the site or access the backups

Additionally, account registration requires approval. If you want to cancel the hosting plan renewal, you need to send a cancellation request for approval seven days in advance.

Customer support is relatively average. Given their long tenure and focus on green and eco-friendly services, customer support should be fast and appropriately address issues. However, the actual customer support service is not ideal. GreenGeeks claimed they would respond to my inquiry within 24 hours, but after seven days, I still hadn’t received a reply. I even checked my spam folder, which was frustrating. Meanwhile, other hosting providers had normal email exchanges within the same period.

In short: There are advantages, but the drawbacks are significant: 1) Poor backup experience, quite inconvenient. 2) Unsatisfactory customer support service.

NameHero

Founded in 2015, NameHero is a hosting provider that also offers a three-year initial purchase discount on their virtual hosting plans. Their virtual hosting is reasonably priced, uses LiteSpeed, and has decent speed.

However, I took a quick look at their Managed Cloud products (Managed Cloud VPS). The pricing for managed VPS, especially the initial plan at $15/month, doesn’t seem expensive, but there are additional charges for default options like system images, backup quotas, and LiteSpeed Web Server, which are not cheap. When added together, the total cost is quite steep.

For example, the cheapest Managed Cloud VPS plan is priced at $15.18/month with 2 CPU cores and 2GB RAM. But when added to the cart, you’ll find that the system image is a mandatory minimum of $10/month, backup quota is either not backed up or starts at a minimum of 100GB for $15/year. Using LiteSpeed adds another $45/month. With annual payment discounts, the total comes to $40/month. Without LiteSpeed, the annual payment discount totals $25/month.

The virtual hosting might be okay, as I’ve only tested it for a few days, so I can’t say for sure. However, their managed cloud VPS is not good. There are too few services and the pricing is high. The so-called value of “Managed” is not apparent. With this amount of money and some technical skills, why not buy Linode? If you don’t have technical skills, why not buy Cloudways? Why would anyone choose this relatively unknown provider at this price point for managed cloud VPS?

The downsides are also evident, with poor customer support services that seem outsourced. Even basic promises like handling refunds within a certain number of days are not well-managed. If you don’t mind poor customer service, you can use it.

In short: Nothing worth recommending, and the customer support service is concerning.

Bluehost, HostGator, and Other EIG Hosting

Bluehost, acquired by EIG (Endurance International Group, Inc.) in 2010, along with HostGator, has become a major representative of EIG’s web hosting products over the past decade.

EIG doesn’t have a great reputation in the hosting industry and online community. They have numerous hosting and web service products, mostly acquired through acquisitions. They hardly innovate or conduct R&D, investing every penny in marketing and advertising. They are still doing what they have done for the past 20 years—selling shared virtual hosting and related products like domain names, while leveraging their capital advantage to continuously acquire and expand. In 2021, EIG rebranded to Newfold Digital.

Many users view EIG as a greedy corporation that treats users harshly and provides subpar service quality. The biggest issue with EIG hosting products is the prevalent problem of “overselling.”

Simply put, it’s like a bus meant for 50 people being crammed with 100—how can the experience be good?

Here are brief evaluations of some other EIG hosting products:

Bluehost – Heavily promoted with big discounts, but honestly just an average virtual host. Possibly due to overselling, stability is lacking.
HostGator – Heavily promoted but actually quite disappointing.
iPage – Cheap hosting with a terrible reputation.
Arvixe – Small user base with average quality.
JustHost – Same as above.

In the early years, virtual hosting products were divided into two categories: EIG hosts and non-EIG hosts. To many seasoned virtual hosting users, EIG hosts are pretty much the same. What’s the substantial difference between Bluehost, HostGator, and JustHost?

In short: Bluehost has many promoters, but looking back after many years, has the real reputation stood up to user scrutiny?

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting has a poor reputation for technical support and customer service, making it a risky choice for buyers. Additionally, there was a ransomware attack that lasted up to two weeks, causing users’ hosting services to be unstable.

As always, don’t just look at speed tests when choosing a virtual host. If you select a virtual host based solely on speed tests, you’ll likely fall into a trap.

In short: If you see someone recommending A2 Hosting, steer clear.

GoDaddy and NameCheap

Let’s review these two together.

GoDaddy – Commonly known as “Dog Daddy.” It’s long been famous for domain-related services, but its hosting is really subpar.

NameCheap – Known for cheap domain registration, but its virtual hosting is not worth it. Although it’s inexpensive, all their servers are self-built, resulting in average performance and stability. Compared to many other virtual hosting providers that use well-known cloud server hosts, NameCheap is indeed a bit behind.

Similarly, the domain registrar Namesilo also offers virtual hosting, but very few people use it. As a domain registrar, its domain services are great, convenient, and cheap, but no one wants to try their hosting. The internet thrives on the long tail effect, where providers become known for their strongest product or service.

In short: Virtual hosting from domain registrars tends to be disappointing.

Cloudways

Cloudways is a well-known Managed Cloud VPS Hosting provider, which essentially means it is a managed cloud VPS service provider.

Unmanaged Cloud VPS Hosting providers include Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, etc. These cloud VPS options can be extremely challenging for beginners without technical and server management experience. If you lack a technical background, using a cloud VPS can be extremely difficult.

This is where Cloudways comes in. It sets up a server for you and provides an easy-to-use cloud VPS control panel. You can choose from the aforementioned famous cloud VPS providers, pay a higher price than their direct cloud VPS products, and use a cloud VPS for building websites without much technical knowledge (the extra cost is the value Cloudways provides). This allows you to enjoy the high performance and reliability of cloud VPS servers.

In simple terms, Cloudways rents cloud VPS servers from well-known cloud providers, pre-configures them for WordPress site building, and sells them to you at a markup while providing various value-added services. It also has its own user control panel (not the outdated virtual hosting panel cPanel), saving you a lot of effort in installation, configuration, maintenance, and security measures.

Cloudways’ plan prices are fixed and do not have new customer initial purchase discount periods or hidden fees. The lowest price plan starts at $12/month, with 1xCPU and 1GB RAM, suitable for beginners in foreign trade site building.

Who is it suitable for?

If you want to experience the high performance of VPS but lack technical skills and have a sufficient budget, go for it!
If you have previous experience with virtual hosting, are familiar with WordPress, and are dissatisfied with virtual hosting performance, go for it!
Pure beginners can start with virtual hosting to practice. Once familiar with WordPress site building, if you need higher performance, consider upgrading to Cloudways. Cloudways also offers free website migration services.

However, if you want to spend a bit more for better performance and avoid later switching hosts and migrating websites, starting directly with Cloudways for site building is also very suitable.

In short: If you lack technical skills but are willing to spend a bit more to experience high-performance VPS site building, this is the one.

Kinsta

Kinsta is renowned for its professional Managed WordPress Hosting services. Similar providers in this niche include WP Engine.

If you have an important website that consistently generates valuable inquiries and stable income, and you don’t want to spend time on daily maintenance, and your budget allows for it, then managed WordPress hosting is indeed worth the investment. You can benefit from professional WP technical support and a wide range of managed services.

Kinsta’s managed services include automatic backups, website auto-migration, regular scans for malicious activity, post-hack repair, suspicious access monitoring, WordPress optimization, core component upgrades, and crash recovery.

The starting plan for a single site is $30/month. Considering Kinsta’s reputation and professionalism in the managed WordPress hosting industry, this price is not high. Most small to medium-sized business owners can afford it.

However, if you choose additional services, those can be quite expensive. If your budget is sufficient, you can consider these add-ons. It’s the best choice for users who want peace of mind and have no budget constraints.

In short: The best choice for users who want peace of mind and have no budget constraints: Kinsta fully managed WordPress hosting.

WP Engine

WP Engine, known for its expertise in WP technology, is a managed WordPress hosting provider like Kinsta. It is very professional and has been in the industry for many years, generally enjoying a good reputation in the WP community.

Overall, Kinsta performs slightly better in terms of panel usability and pricing for additional services.

In short: As a professional managed WordPress hosting provider with many years of experience, WP Engine has a guaranteed reputation.

Flywheel

Flywheel, like WP Engine, provides managed WordPress hosting. It has a fairly good market reputation and was acquired by WP Engine in 2019.

In short: If you can’t beat them, join them!

LiquidWeb

LiquidWeb offers a wide range of server products with a comprehensive product line and very high prices, nearing the level of service providers like RackSpace.

The cheapest hosting plan is the Managed WordPress Hosting operated by their sub-brand Nexcess, which is also quite expensive.

Only the most basic plan at $19/month is somewhat lower priced, but there are many options at this price point, so it’s not necessarily the best choice.

In short: It’s unlikely that many people would use this hosting provider for website building, right?

Linode

Linode is not a virtual hosting provider; they do not offer virtual hosting products. Instead, they are a Cloud VPS Hosting provider and have been a favorite of Sam’s for many years.

However, since this is a self-managed cloud VPS, it’s essentially a bare VPS that requires you to install all the environments and application packages yourself and configure them correctly. This necessitates technical background and basic Linux server management experience, making it not very user-friendly for beginners.

If beginners want to try using a (cloud) VPS for building websites, it’s better to choose a managed cloud VPS like Cloudways. Many installations and configurations are integrated into the user panel, allowing you to complete corresponding operations with one click. After a short period of familiarization and understanding, it’s easy to get started quickly.

In short: It’s a great product that I’d love to recommend to everyone, but unfortunately, the usage barrier is a bit high. So, I won’t!

InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is a long-established hosting provider. They offer a variety of products, including virtual hosting, VPS, and managed hosting. However, their virtual hosting servers are only available in U.S. data centers.

The user experience feels quite ordinary. Some specific configuration details of the virtual hosting are unclear, the UI is rather outdated and even ugly, and the user panel is somewhat confusing. The speed is moderately slow, not belonging to the fast category.

The quality of customer service is rather average. However, you can trust that a long-established hosting provider will have a better overall reputation than A2 Hosting and Hostinger mentioned above.

In short: Among virtual hosts, it’s too mediocre and lacks presence. Additionally, the website and user interface seem like they’re from a decade ago, so I probably wouldn’t choose it, given there are many other options available.

IONOS

IONOS is a European hosting provider established in 2018, a brand under 1&1 (www.1and1.co.uk). They primarily offer VPS hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, enterprise cloud, virtual hosting, domain registration, SSL certificates, and more. 1&1 is an old hosting and domain service provider with a 30-year history. After acquiring ProfitBricks’ cloud infrastructure in 2018, they established 1&1 IONOS.

IONOS offers incredibly low prices for the first year! Their virtual hosting Business Plan costs $1/month, with unlimited websites. All virtual hosting plans include free SSL wildcard certificates, daily automatic backups, malware scanning, and DDoS protection.

While the advantages seem plentiful, the drawbacks are equally significant:

Users from certain countries cannot register. Although 1&1 is based in Europe, it is not friendly to some European users. Restricted countries include Iran, Egypt, Morocco, Myanmar, and European countries (Poland, Romania, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Czech Republic).
After the first-year discount period, the price returns to the regular rate, which is 10 times higher. The Business Plan renews at $10/month after the first year.
Customer service is very inconvenient, with the online chat (Start chatting) often unavailable. The response attitude and service quality of the customer support are subpar.

In short: Poor hosting. Who would want to use it?

Summary and Recommendations

When it comes to web hosting and server options for website building, here are the main types:

Shared Hosting
Managed Cloud (VPS) Hosting
Fully Managed WordPress Hosting

1) Shared Hosting: Suitable for Beginners in Foreign Trade Website Building

Best Choice: SiteGround
Alternative Choices: ChemiCloud or FastComet

SiteGround: Ideal for those who value brand recognition, ease of use, comprehensive performance, and a large user base.
ChemiCloud or FastComet: Perfect for those who value lower prices (with longer usage periods), robust configurations (multi-core, large memory), and newer technologies (using LiteSpeed).
Independent IP Needs: Choose SiteGround or ChemiCloud (FastComet does not offer the option to purchase independent IPs for shared hosting plans).

2) Managed Cloud (VPS) Hosting: Suitable for Users with Limited Technical Background but Willing to Spend More for High Performance

Best Choice: Cloudways
Quick Start Guide: Foreign Trade Website Hosting with Cloudways

This option is for those who:

Want to experience VPS’s high performance but lack technical skills, with a sufficient budget.
Have previously built websites with shared hosting, are familiar with WordPress, and are dissatisfied with shared hosting performance, looking to upgrade to VPS performance.

3) Fully Managed WordPress Hosting: Suitable for Websites Bringing in Consistent Inquiries and Revenue

Best Choice: Kinsta

This option is for those who:

Do not want to handle daily maintenance and prefer to pay for professional WP technical support and a wide range of managed services.
Should be cautious about the high cost of additional services, which are often unnecessary.

Key Considerations

If you plan to build multiple websites, opt for higher-configured shared hosting plans or managed cloud (VPS) servers. Modern page builders and WooCommerce plugins are resource-intensive. Low configurations can lead to lag when building multiple sites.

Final Thoughts

If you are new to WordPress website building, start with shared hosting to familiarize and practice. SiteGround is a safe choice, while ChemiCloud and FastComet are good alternatives. By the time the one-year discount period ends with SiteGround, your website should be built. You can then migrate to ChemiCloud or FastComet if you want to continue using shared hosting.

Once you’ve mastered website building and WordPress, and site migration (many providers offer free migration services), you can switch to managed cloud servers like Cloudways for better performance.

For me personally, if I were building a foreign trade website:

For small, static resource websites (e.g., personal projects with HTML+CSS+JS) or simple WordPress personal blogs (without using heavy multipurpose WP themes and powerful page builders), I would use shared hosting.
For corporate websites built with WordPress + multipurpose themes (e.g., Avada) or WordPress + Page Builder (e.g., Elementor Pro), I would consider cloud (VPS) servers. Shared hosting is okay but I would avoid the basic plans.
For foreign trade websites with online stores built with WordPress + WooCommerce, I would directly use cloud servers, either self-managed (Linode) or managed cloud VPS (Cloudways). The former requires technical skills, the latter does not.

If you want to build a site yourself, have a limited budget but plenty of time, and are willing to handle daily maintenance and optimization after the site is built, you may not consider fully managed WordPress hosting like Kinsta initially. If budget is not an issue and you want to avoid time-consuming maintenance and optimization, Kinsta is a good option.

Most of the time, I prefer using cloud VPS servers like Linode for site building. Once you’ve learned a lot about site building and server technology, it’s hard to go back to shared hosting. It’s like getting used to a large knife after years of battle, you wouldn’t want to switch to an iron rod.

In summary, Linode’s unmanaged VPS might be challenging for many beginners, even with newbie-friendly VPS panels. Domestic webmasters who don’t understand technology often face problems when using control panels like Baota, encountering bugs and issues. If I were to forget most of my technical knowledge now, my first choice would still be managed cloud VPS (like Cloudways), not shared hosting.

Especially now, building foreign trade B2B websites with WordPress requires either powerful multipurpose WP themes or Page Builder + lightweight themes, both of which are resource-intensive. Quality cloud VPS servers provide better performance and stability. Managed cloud VPS like Cloudways can meet the needs of more website builders.