Choosing the right web hosting package is crucial in ensuring that your website performs properly, and can handle the visitors.
Shared hosting is one of the most common and popular hosting packages. In such a setup, the resources of a single server are split across multiple users. The obvious advantage of such a setup is low cost, but this is at the expense of performance of your own website. The large demand on the resources of the server means more downtime and other problems as well. This is why shared hosting is only preferred for personal websites.
At the other end of the spectrum are Virtual Private Servers (VPS) and dedicated server hosting. A VPS server is also home to many different clients, but it utilises hypervisor technology to simulate an environment where each client appears to be on a uniquely dedicated machine. The hypervisor technology also permits VPS clients to borrow resources from one another, such that clients which need more resources are allotted resources from other clients that aren’t using their assigned allocation of resources. In this manner, a VPS hosting guarantees availability of resources, and thus performance, which isn’t possible with a shared hosting server.
Even after you’ve decided on the type of hosting that would best serve your needs, you still need to decide on a hosting provider, which itself will depend on a number of different factors including the bundled features, pricing, reliability, and more. After all, you don’t want to deploy a website that is inaccessible by visitors or frustratingly slow.
This is why we’ve narrowed down five of the best hosting providers in India.
Even though Hostinger doesn’t operate any data centres in India, it has quickly established itself as a leading contender. This is thanks in part to its global standing, where the provider caters to more than 2.5 million users across 200 countries. It currently has data centres in the UK, US, Brazil, Netherlands, Singapore, Indonesia and Lithuania.
As with most hosting providers, Hostinger offers a wide range of hosting solutions such as various shared hosting, VPS and cloud hosting plans. For more discerning users, the hosting provider also offers cPanel hosting, as well as dedicated plans for WordPress and Joomla hosting, however the offerings are only tailored for WordPress with no special features to cater to Joomla.
The cheapest Single Hosting plan starts at Rs. 79/month (about $1.08), but only offers 256MB RAM. You’ll also have to separately purchase a domain name, CDN and daily backups, which aren’t included in the basic plan. If you want all these features and more, you should consider the Business Web Hosting plan, priced at Rs. 279/month (about $3.82) which comes with 200GB SSD storage, and lets you create a 100 websites, upto a 100 email accounts, daily backups, GIT and SSH access, Cloudflare protection and more.
The VPS plans start as low as Rs. 285/month (about $3.90) and go up to Rs. 2999/month ($41.08). Hostinger offers a choice of six VPS plans in all, with incremental rise in configuration, be it RAM, storage or bandwidth.
Read the full review: Hostinger
With HostPapa, you can opt for either shared hosting, VPS hosting, reseller or WordPress hosting. The provider also offers Linux hosting, and all plans come with a 30-day full-money back guarantee.
You may balk at the pricing of the different plans at first glance, but spend a little time scrolling through the myriad offerings and the pricing starts to make sense.
The shared hosting plans start at Rs. 199/month (about $2.73), but include a number of useful features such as unmetered bandwidth, cPanel, 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7/265 phone and chat support. Website builder (only two pages), and more. Of course, The Starter plan lets you deploy two websites on the 100GB SSD storage space, along with 100 email addresses, and a one-click installer that can be used to easily install hundreds of additional applications.
The Business plan is priced at Rs. 299/month (about $4.10) and additionally promises 2x more CPU and MySQL resources to ensure faster performance and page loads. Many useful features, such as automated daily backups, and security tools such as proactive monitoring, real-time alerts of vulnerabilities, etc., are sold as premium add-ons, which will further increase the total subscription cost.
VPS services do not disappoint either. With five plans on offer with flexibility in contract term period one can select VPS services starting at Rs. 2699/month (about $37).
Read the full review: HostPapa
Apart from shared hosting, you can also opt for dedicated, VPS or cloud hosting with BigRock. You can also explore their WordPress hosting plans, and even deploy Joomla, Drupal, etc. with a single. The hosting provider promises 99.9% uptime with dedicated CMS technical support.
For all the hosting plans, you can choose the location of your data centre, whether India or USA. By its own admission, the latency of the Indian server is 30x lower than the USA based counterpart, which explains the stark price difference between the two.
The Starter shared hosting plan can be used to host a single website and includes free SSL certificate, five email accounts, 20 GB disk space and 100GB transfer is priced at Rs. 139/month (about $1.90) if you opt for the five-year subscription. You can opt for a lesser duration of the contract, but the prices get steeper. On the other hand, if you opt for the US based server, you’ll have to shell out Rs. 99/month (about $1.35) for the five-year contract with the same specs.
The Pro shared hosting plan, which allows hosting unlimited websites, is priced at Rs. 389/month (about $5.30) and includes unmetered disk space and bandwidth. You should note however that BigRock will throttle your bandwidth if your usage exceeds more than 25% of the server resources for more than 90 seconds and you ignore the warning messages from the hosting provider.
If you want malware protection, or daily backups, you’ll have to purchase these as separate add-ons, and there are different plans for each. The cheapest malware scan plan only covers 25 pages, and will cost you Rs. 99/month (about $1.35). The cheapest Codeguard plan only offers 1GB disk space, and is priced at Rs. 119/month (about $1.60).
Along with BigRock and HostGator, Bluehost too is part of the Endurance International Group (EIG). These three companies have made great inroads in the Indian hosting space, which was dominated by GoDaddy.
The services on offer are shared, VPS and dedicated hosting. On offer are four shared hosting plans, with the Basic plan priced at Rs. 175/month for a 3yr contract (about $2.40). Although expensive, the plan includes 50GB SSD storage, 25 sub-domains, automatic daily malware scanner, free BlueHost SEO tools, and a free SSL certificate.
The more expensive shared hosting plans come with additional freebies such as domain privacy, unmetered storage and bandwidth. Free daily website backups are only offered as part of the ChoicePlus and the Pro plans, which are priced at Rs. 299/month (about $4.10) and Rs. 859/month (about $11.76) respectively. Even apart from that, you will have to purchase CDN as a premium add-on separately. All shared hosting plans include a drag-n-drop website builder, although it’s unclear if it limits the number of pages, as is the case with most hosting providers.
Bluehost also offers a choice of three VPS and completely self-managed dedicated hosting plans. You can optionally purchase managed support for Rs. 7000/month ($95.90) which covers setup, configuration, security, expert technicians, 3rd party installations and more.
Read the full review: Bluehost
Both GoDaddy and HostGator started operations in India in 2012, but we’ll focus on the former as we’ve already covered BigRock and Bluehost, which like HostGator are part of the Endurance International Group. In fact, HostGator offers almost identical plans as BigRock, but is slightly more expensive, which is another reason why we wish to focus on an alternative.
GoDaddy offers a number of shared hosting plans, and tosses in a free domain name if you sign up for a 12 month contract. You can also opt for WordPress hosting, or the e-commerce hosting plan, which utilizes WooCommerce and includes 75 premium extensions to help you make the most of your online store. All the expensive plans, such as WooCommerce, or the top-tier shared hosting plans also include free professional email for the first year.
The shared hosting plan starts at Rs. 99/month but only provides 512MB RAM and lets you deploy a single website. The other two plans, priced at Rs. 199/month and Rs. 299/month don’t mention the amount of RAM. If you want increased processing power, which is not defined by GoDaddy, you can opt for the Ultimate plan which is aimed at high-traffic websites. Priced at Rs. 449/month, this plan lets you deploy 25 websites and offers 75GB storage space. Unlike most other hosting providers, GoDaddy doesn’t explicitly mention if it utilizes SSD or HDD drives.
The lack of data centres in India might keep off some customers, especially when BigRock, Bluehost and HostGator all offer competitive prices and data centres in Mumbai.
Read the full review: GoDaddy
