I have been through a few hosting providers in my time writing for my blog. I have used GoDaddy, InMotion, and now Hostinger. When I first started a blog I used just the wordpress.com site and created something quick and fast for a place to basically save “runbooks”. My three year hosting just ran out for InMotion hosting this last month and I was looking for something cheap, easy to use, and had a nice CMS.
InMotion hosting was a solid provider. I never had many issues with them and the package my site was on was not the top of the line, but it worked. I would have loved to renewed with them, but they just wanted way to much for a new three year plan. Knowing that was going to be the issue because they get you in on a cheap cost for the first three to four years then the price increases to stay with them. Well that was the case in my situation. It was time to look for something else.
BlueHost and HostGator
I started by looking at places like HostGator and Bluehost. Both providers were pretty close in cost with HostGator being about 20 cents cheaper. What is appealing to BlueHost right out of the gate is they say right on the hosting plan listing of services that your storage is SSD. I could not find that on HostGator, not saying it’s not the case, but it wasn’t easy to find clearly. Both providers offer a 36 month term for hosting contracts, which is what InMotion hosting was also. Choosing either provider would get you 3 years for around $150 not including extras like SEO tools, extra security add-ons, and SSL. This was not what I wanted to pay while in a tight spot to get my site migrated to a cheaper platform.
Hostinger
I was looking around the interwebs and seeing what cheap decent hosting there was out there. While searching I came across a site that was recommending and raving about hostinger.com. I decided to check it out and it was fairly decent for the cost. At an intro of $.99 a month with a FREE SSL cert and FREE cloudflare with your purchase and a 48 month hosting package. I was intrigued at this point. Sure its shared hosting and you don’t get abilities like SFTP access and GIT access, but really do I care when I am using WordPress for my site? You do not get a free domain name, that will cost you $1.99 a month for 48 months and I already have one through another provider. This package offers 1 website and 2 DBs and for wordpress that is perfectly functional.
Site Migration Bonus
The greatest part of this provider, at least I think so, is they will migrate your site for you, for FREE! You make a request and it takes about 2-3 days to complete, but I didn’t have to worry about it. I gave them the site name, where its hosted and the credentials to access my hosting provider cPanel and my WordPress site and wala. After the completion of the migration I was able to redirect my host record to the new IP and it started working. Time for SSL, which was so simple. You enable the option, pick the domain you are enabling for, then it creates it and installs it for you! No messing with certs in way, shape, or form.
They have what they call a hPanel, which is their CMS/cPanel. It is very easy to navigate and very nice looking. It as the ability to make some changes to your wordpress site without even going to wp-admin of your website. Plugins can be enabled/disabled, you can enforce HTTPS, which walks you through the SSL part. You can enable wordpress updates automagically, and do things like put your site in maintenance mode for when you need to take it offline for any reason. This package also gives you a free Cloudflare account with your purchase and also walks you through that process when you enable it.
After a few days of waiting for site migration, I can say that I am very pleased with this sites hosting package and CMS. I absolutely love the site migration option and the best part is; It’s FREE!
If you have a need for a small site or even a personal wordpress site, check them out at www.hostinger.com/web-hosting.
