Choosing a monthly hosting plan is like choosing a bride! There is a reason why I say it.
You always feel that the person sitting next to you is lucky and has made a better choice!
Choosing a monthly web hosting plan is more of a headache rather than an annual one.
This is because if you opt for an annual plan you are committed for one year, wherein a monthly web hosting plan you keep on searching for new alternatives every month and keep jumping from one plan to another.
Monthly web hosting plans are similar to annual plans except for the fact that monthly plans are a bit costly than the annual plan.
However, the plus point is that you can opt-out of it anytime.
The only point you need to take into consideration is to look for the same functionality as the annual plans. You need not surf far for the best web hosting companies.
After thorough research we present the best monthly web hosting plans for bloggers using shared hosting, Linux based.
Best monthly web hosting plans for bloggers
- Bluehost
- HostGator
- Dreamhost
- A2 Hosting
- Site Ground
- WP Engine
- Hostinger
- Inmotion
- GoDaddy
- Cloudways
1. Bluehost
Bluehost is the most preferred hosting service and recommended by WordPress itself. Over 2 million sites are hosted by Bluehost which itself indicates why it is a market leader.
It has a wide variety of hosting plans to suit every business requirement starting from shared hosting to dedicated hosting.
Well, installing WordPress on Bluehost is a child’s play.
It provides a guaranteed Uptime of 99.99% which means that in a month your site will be down only for 4 minutes and 19 seconds.
However, if you are wondering, I calculated the exact time my site will go down in a month using the Hostingpill uptime calculator.
It offers pocket-friendly plans along with various security features like SSL certificates, domain privacy, site locks, etc.
Code guard is another safety feature that provides daily backup.
It is easy to install CMS like Drupal or Joomla on Bluehost.
It can easily access CDN to quickly load images.
Besides, it has a user-friendly C-panel and website builder tool to aid you in the process of development.
The only problem with Bluehost is that they have a high renewal fee and site migration is not free.
Nevertheless, they do provide excellent support for site migration and other things.
2. HostGator
It is the best hosting company to grow with and it offers the best scalability for the price with excellent support.
It supports 75 apps and has an uptime of 99.98%. This means that in a month your site will be down for 8 minutes and 38 seconds.
Well, it has a money-back guarantee of 45 days. You can be assured of the services and the long period of guarantee indicates their good service.
Even if any issue pops up after a month, you can get a full refund.
They do have safety features which include site lock and they’re all chargeable.
The best part is they allow site migration, unlike Bluehost who charges $150 for moving 5 sites at a time.
With the website builder tools and ready-made templates, it is easy to create a website on your own.
The only problem that it has is low page loading speed. Their average page loading time in the last 24 months has been 1191ms average.
When it comes to their prices, they give you a package for 5 years at $89 per month.
If you aren’t smart enough, you can end up getting locked up with this hosting service provider for 5 years.
Besides, every feature is termed “ available” by them, which actually means “chargeable”. So it’s certainly more costly.
Also, the renewal plan will cost almost double.
So, if you are a beginner then you can go for Hostgator but if you are really looking for a long term relationship then it’s costly.
3. Dream Host
It is probably the only hosting company that offers a 97-day money-back guarantee.
The monthly hosting plan of Dream host costs just $ 2.59 per month if you purchase it for 3 years, or else it can be a bit tough on the pocket and cost you $ 3.95 per month.
It has a plan wherein you can just subscribe for a month if you wish and the monthly charge is $4.95. But there is no commitment from both sides to continue further.
Dream Host has the transparency in operations. It has clear rules for refund, for inclusion or exclusion of certain add on features, for rules regarding transferability. This makes people trust it.
Also, it does not charge a hefty price at the time of renewal generally most of the hosting service providers do.
It has an uptime of about 99.94% which means that in a month your site will be down for 25 minutes and 55 seconds.
The best part about it is that WordPress is pre-installed in it. Making it very easy for beginners.
Besides, you can customize your website using website builder tools without having to bother about coding.
E-commerce integration is also possible with Dream Host.
It has got all safety features embedded in it and comes with a whole lot of other exciting features.
4. A2 Hosting
If speed, performance, and support all are equally important to you then you surely need to look to A2 hosting.
It was started in 2003 and was the first hosting company to provide PHP5 support.
When it comes to performance, it offers an uptime of 99.93% which translates to 30 minutes and 14 seconds of downtime per month.
No doubt they are constantly improving in it and in Jan 2020 their average uptime was 99.99%.
It is evident that they charge $289 per month only if you opt for a yearly package.
In case you want to opt for a monthly hosting plan then the cost would shoot up to $361 per month.
Looking to the support side, they provide excellent support on emails, phone calls or simply by raising a ticket.
One more plus point about A2 is that it is a nature lover. They have partnered with Carbonfund.org to help support renewable energies and reforestation.
It feels great to stay connected to a company that cares for the environment.
A2 hosting offers ‘ ANYTIME’ money-back guarantee. Of course, they will refund you the amount after deducting the money towards domain and other add on features which you have opted for.
On the flip side, just like other hosting companies, they too have high renewals. Almost double.
Web site builder tools need to be purchased separately and they are not bundled with the hosting plan.
Overall it is good to go with A2 hosting.
5. SiteGround
SiteGround offers great speed in loading pages and that’s why it is recommended by experts in the field.
I decided to dig a bit deeper and analyze.
I found that in shared hosting they offer 10GB space. This is sufficient for bloggers but if you have a big website then it is better to opt for a bigger plan.
Anyways you can upgrade to the plan later too.
It offers free SSL certificates and CDN. CDN’s can help in improving the page speed and thereby improve website performance.
It has an uptime of 99.99% which is best in the industry and also supports nearly 500 applications.
They have excellent support via phone and offer free site migration for one site.
The best part is they have a plugin for transferring a website called ‘Free WordPress migration plugin’. You just need to install this plugin, raise a ticket and rest tasks can be managed with the help of the plugin.
On the other hand, they have high renewal fees, almost double the initial payment and they do not provide domain name free of charge.
They offer a monthly subscription for a nominal amount of $3.95 but charge a one-time fee of $14.95 with that which proves costly in the long run.
6. WP Engine
The loading time of the web is a crucial factor for SEO. We try optimizing images, video clips to optimize them and always feel a need if they could load quickly.
One option for this is CDN. wherein all images are stored on a CDN instead of a server.
As soon as the desired web page is requested for a view by the user, different things like texts, images are assembled from different places and presented to the user.
But all this happens in fractions of the second improving the customer experience.
WP Engine offers a free CDN. Yes! You heard it right. That is why the page loads fast.
Apart from that, it includes page performance tools and sites to test your sites as a part of the package itself. This way you can optimize it for SEO.
Cost-wise, WP Engine is not cheap and if you go for a yearly plan the monthly rental comes to $25 but if you opt for a monthly premium paying mode then cost is $30 per month.
To conclude, it is a bit costly and won’t easily fit everyone’s budget.
7. Hostinger
If you are new to hosting and blogging career then probably you will like Hostinger.
There is a reason why I say it. The reason is that they have their own customized C-panel.
It is more user-friendly than the regular one but the dashboard looks different.
It has a good uptime of 99.95% and supports WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, OpenCart, and Drupal.
When it comes to support, it is available 24*7 via chat option. You can also chat without login in your account via the ‘contact’ tab at the bottom of the page.
It has a 30-day refund policy and offers multilingual support. This can be a boon for someone who does not know English.
The basic plan comes at just Rs 45 per month.
With a good uptime of 99.95% and 24 hours support, you can think of this hosting service provider.
The only thing is you need to pay for additional domains and they aren’t free.
8. Inmotion
Inmotion was started in 2001 and has almost 3 lakh domains registered in its name.
It has got data centers in Los Angeles and Virginia Beach and is rated number 1 in customer support by the users.
The uptime is really good 99.95% but the average page loading time is 824ms which is not quite impressive.
Well, you can speed up WordPress using a few tips from your end but then speed and uptime are the factors beyond your control which affect a lot on your overall website performance.
The monthly plan costs $6.39 per month. The only catch is that you need to subscribe for 24 months, else if you opt for 12 months the cost will be higher.
Yes! The plus point is you get 90 days money-back guarantee. This is probably the biggest benefit. You can try multiple things and if it does not work out then you can quit.
They have all popular CMS and E-Commerce integrations. But a novel thing about them is the security concern.
Security concern not only for the website but also to know the person who owns the website.
They provide Sucuri plugin for WordPress users and secondly when you opt for them as a hosting company, they give you a call to confirm your details. Sometimes they even ask for your identity card.
It also has ‘Smartwall Threat Defense System’ which provides the site.
When it comes to transferring the sites, they do it for free but the only thing is that the site goes down while transfer.
This thing matters the most if you are having an e-commerce site, the downtime can cost you many $.
They back up data up to 10 GB and if you want more then you need to pay for it.
So when we recapitulate all things, it is a clear indication to go for Inmotion specifically in light of the fact of 90 days money-back guarantee.
9. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is not just a popular name for domains, slowly and steadily it has made its mark as a hosting company too.
It has a good uptime of 99.97% and supports CMS and E-Commerce sites and stupendous page loading speed of 554ms.
They have very good support via chats and mails but this company is famous for upsells.
Every now and then they will prompt you with additional benefits and tempt you to opt for it.
Also, their basic plan does not come with SSL certificates, backup, security or site migration.
There is a 30 days money-back guarantee but if you opt for a monthly plan then you get 48 hours to decide about it.
Their terms about refund are not clear.
Maybe just an attempt to set your own WordPress site can act as a violation of the terms and conditions.
Cost-wise too renewals are hefty and you end up paying almost double just like other hosting providers.
10. Cloudways
Well, last but not the least I would like to mention about Cloudways.
Even the basic plan comes with all necessary features like CDN, CMS, SSL etc.
It offers a Free Cloud CDN and HTTPS support and a staging area for testing websites before they go live.
They also offer a folder-like structure for multiple projects and support multiple PHP versions.
Cloudways is famous for WordPress hosting. So if you are going to host a site on WordPress then Cloudways will definitely be a better choice.
This is so because all things common to WordPress like SSL installations, HTTPS redirects, backups etc are taken care off automatically.
If you need to upgrade your server, you can increase your server resources in just a few clicks through Vertical Scaling.
Cloudways is not a shared hosting; it uses its own technologies like Cloudways CDN for managing speed and site performance.
So you can be rest assured about it. The only thing which I disliked about it is that it does not have proper support, domain name registration and email hosting.
Conclusion
I hope by now you must have decided which monthly web hosting plan you want to opt for.
If not, check one of the detailed web hosting reviews on Hostozilla.
While cost is definitely one of the factors while comparing but you need to pay special attention to additional features, their changeability and the renewal costs.
This is so because hosting companies generally offer you lowest possible price, make all additional features chargeable and later have more than double rate for renewal.
Ultimately, we end up paying more and the headache of transferring the site to a new hosting service provider follows.
This can be avoided if we compare all parameters from all hosting providers and I sincerely hope that this article has helped you to do that.
Kindly let me know in the comments section, which hosting service provider do you use?
