GoDaddy, Siteground, A2Hosting: Features of Leading Hosts in 2017

We are living in the Golden Age of Entrepreneurship where more and more people launch businesses online. Through the Internet we can connect with people anywhere in the world. It’s an exciting time to live! But with every online venture that appears, a new web site has to be hosted somewhere.

According to HostingAdvice.com—a recognized authority on web hosting—GoDaddy, A2Hosting and SiteGround are among the best and most well-known web hosting providers that every webmaster should consider. In this article, we are going to take a closer look at these 3 web hosting providers, and see the hosting features they offer so that you decide which one of them may be the right one to host your site.

GoDaddy is among the largest domain name registrars on the planet. They offer featured-packed web hosting and an incredibly knowledgeable customer service. The company offers everything you might need over the web from website builder, domain name, SSL certificates, web hosting, marketing tools, email software, online book keeping system and server packages. Their web site builder allows you to build a site quickly and easily, which is why the company's motto is: "Build a better website in under an hour".

Founded in the year 1997, GoDaddy has grown to become a leader in the industry. The company provides various hosting services including; Drupal hosting, WordPress hosting, eCommerce hosting, Joomla hosting and more.

What really sets GoDaddy apart from its competitors is their advertising and marketing. They were among the first companies to actively market their brand. In the year 2005, they were the first hosting company to actually pay for one of the world’s most expensive TV ads during the Super Bowl. Since then, Godaddy’s commercials air every year during the Super Bowl, and have become known for their controversy and intentional sexual provocation. It's these ads that made Godaddy dominate the domain name market, boasting now a 50% share.

• Security is a very crucial feature for any web hosting service. Regardless of what the website is for, you'll want it to be secure and safe from attacks; GoDaddy provides 24/7 security monitoring along with DDoS protection.
• GoDaddy provides users a free backup and site restore, and also provides sender ID services that show who sent the email.
• Just like SiteGround, GoDaddy has a drag and drop site builder with lots of themes to choose from. The company also offers one click installations of popular applications via the free marketplace.
  Just like SiteGround, GoDaddy features the easy to use, industry standard cPanel, and also offers SSH access.
• GoDaddy provides its customers with 24/7 email, ticket and phone call support.
• GoDaddy has a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
• There are Godaddy hosting coupons available throughout the year. With the coupon code CJC1hos5 the price for shared hosting drops to only $1 per month. And with the coupon code CJC50hst you get a 50% discount in any hosting plan.

Founded in the year 2001, A2Hosting is among of the best hosting companies. With the motto "Our Speed, Your Success", A2Hosting provides various web hosting services and quality products. With more than 15 years in the industry, A2Hosting has built a solid reputation in terms of excellent hosting products, quality support and reliability. A2Hosting is a very innovative web hosting provider and utilizes the latest technologies to support various popular applications such as Drupal. The company offers numerous hosting services including; upgradable Shared hosting, Cloud hosting, VPS hosting, Reseller hosting and Dedicated hosting to meet different levels of demand.

As one of the top Drupal hosting providers in the industry, A2Hosting offers 24/7 support via email, live chat and phone call. In addition to this, they have highly trained and award winning Guru Crew support team who are always available to give the customers effective and timely assistance.

With A2Hosting, you will have access to a powerful website builder, which will enable you to set up your site in a fast and simple manner. Moreover, the company provides an easy Google App setup, easy web based file manager, $50 Yahoo/Bing advertising credits, and free Attracta SEO tools to help customers create the optimal online presence.

Other benefits:

• Hosts unlimited sites and you can enjoy a free website transfer.
• Offers A2 optimized plugins along with one click installs for WordPress.
• Offers A2 optimized caching with Memcached and OPcache.
• Offers free hack scan with a restore option.

SiteGround is a well-known web hosting provider that was established in the year 2004, and it provides users with cloud hosting, shared hosting, and dedicated servers. The company offers a wide range of hosting features including, but not limited to: cPanel with SSH access, a free Cloudflare CDN, and unlimited bandwidth and MySQL databases. What makes SiteGround stand out from the rest is that they offer free Lets Encrypt SSL certificates for all their customers.

• SiteGround has an uptime of 99.99% which is well above their 99.9% guarantee. The company also averages about 459ms in page load speeds which makes them twice as fast as the average hosting company.
• SiteGround offers a monthly backup for their most affordable plan, and a weekly backup for the other plans.
• Just like GoDaddy, they have a drag and drop website builder with a wide range of themes. They also offer one click installations of the most popular/common applications.
• SiteGround guarantees 100% Drupal compatibility by simply installing multiple versions of MySQL, PHP, and PostgreSQL on the servers, using the Apache web server, and allocating enough PHP memory to every account.
• SiteGround offers exceptional 24/7 customer support via live chat or phone.
• The company is recommended by WordPress as among the best WordPress host.

When it comes to web hosting services, there are 4 basic options to pick from. All 3 hosts mentioned above make available these 4 hosting choices. Understanding the key differences between these 4 platforms can enable you to make an informed decision for your particular needs. That said, lets now look at the 4 types of hosting.

This type of hosting involves the use of one physical server to host numerous different hosting accounts with the resources getting shared dynamically between all of the accounts. On a shared hosting platform, every client has his/her own limit on particular services such as FTP accounts, disk space, RAM Memory, databases, monthly traffic, and email accounts. That said, it's important to note that shared web hosting is the most affordable and economical way of hosting a site because the expenditure per a machine is covered by multiple users.

• It's more affordable as compared to a dedicated server.
• Maintenance is usually handled by the hosting provider.
• It's a great option for newbies and less tech savvy users.
• Most shared hosts usually offer various add on tools and programs which help users optimize their sites.
• Shared hosting usually comes with superior customer support.

• You'll have to share space with the other websites on the same physical server which makes your website less secure, and vulnerable to malicious attacks.
• You might encounter certain restrictions in terms of file types allowed or software languages supported.
• Eventually, you might outgrow the shared hosting environment because of increased traffic, and you'll need to move.
• It has slower load times and is less responsive as compared to VPS and Dedicated hosting options.

Virtual Private Server (abbreviated as VPS) involves a setup of different web hosting accounts on one server. The difference between shared hosting and VPS is that hosting accounts of the latter are usually set up using a virtualization software, with every account serving as a virtual server that's independent of other accounts hosted on that server. In addition to this, the resource allocation is usually done statically, and the resources aren't shared between the accounts on an “as needed” basis like with shared hosting. With this type of web hosting, every server is its very own self-contained unit, and it is allocated its own guaranteed resources, like disk space, CPU and RAM memory. VPS hosting is recommended for the more advanced users and webmasters who need to install specific software or packages that aren't provided by the shared hosting.

• You enjoy the services of a Dedicated server but without the high cost associated with it.
• You can set up the VPS in a couple of minutes.
• It's more reliable than shared hosting, since your website cannot be affected by another resource hogging user.
• It gives you more access to a server's configuration, which means you can get to control the settings.
• You can remove and create websites from your own VPS at will.
• Each website can have its' own cPanel.
• Software can be easily installed and modified
• It's more secure that shared hosting.

• It's a lot more expensive than Shared hosting.

Dedicated hosting is when a user rents out the whole server for their site. Dedicated hosting provides the highest levels of resources to host even the highest traffic websites. This is the ideal option if your site will be receiving a lot of web traffic, or if you intend to use a special software. This option is actually best suited for large companies and high traffic commercial sites. A dedicated server will provide robust features, unlimited use of applications and software, and full administrative access. Just like with VPS, a dedicated server gives you complete control, but in this instance, you do not share the physical hardware with anybody else.

• Dedicated hosting offers a high level of security since you aren't sharing the physical server.
• Dedicated hosting allows for a high level of stability and performance which ensures that your site functions virtually 100% of the time.
• Offers faster connection speeds and a much greater accessibility for the site visitors.
• Offers complete control of the server.
• Dedicated hosting has an increased ability to accommodate high amounts of traffic without compromising on speed.

• It's more expensive as compared to Shared and VPS hosting.
• You are responsible for server maintenance which can be a hassle.
• Might require a greater level of technical expertise to enjoy the full benefits.

Cloud hosting involves hosting sites on virtual servers that pull their computing resources from the extensive underlying networks of the physical web servers. The cloud hosting option reduces the costs of purchasing hardware, and paying the IT staff, and it allows the smaller businesses to share the advanced IT resources. With the possibility of easily increasing the cloud server resources, cloud hosting allows companies/businesses to keep up with their client demands without having to break the bank.

• It's reliable since your site is hosted on the virtual partition that draws its' resources from an extensive network of the underlying physical servers.
• It has a high level of physical security since the underlying physical servers are housed within the data centers.
• It offers more flexibility and scalability since resource is available on demand, in real time and isn't limited to the physical constraints or capacity of a single physical server.
• Involves utility style costing which means that the users only pay for what they have actually used.

• You cannot always control where in the world your website is getting served from.

The type of hosting you choose will mainly depend on the size of your business or company. If you are just starting out with a single website, you should consider choosing shared hosting. If you are expanding and you need to increase your overall freedom, then VPS offers a great balance. For multiple, high traffic websites, you should consider choosing dedicated hosting. The 3 top hosts we mentioned at the beginning of the article (Godaddy, Siteground, and A2Hosting) offer very reliable hosting plans—shared, VPS and dedicated.