Shopify Review

Shopify Review 2022

by with No Comment Review

If ecommerce is your main source of revenue, you need a serious online store with top-notch customer support behind you 24 hours a day, a comprehensive set of ecommerce features that grow as your store grows, and an intuitive drag-and-drop website creator in one.

Shopify does all of this and more—simply put, the company knows ecommerce. Keep reading to learn what we love (and don’t love) about Shopify to see if it’s right for your next ecommerce adventure.

Compare Shopify to The Best Ecommerce Website Builders

Shopify is deemed the gold standard by many. Thousands of ecommerce businesses swear by it, and we’re no different. After testing and researching a dozen ecommerce builders, we found it best for users that want peace of mind knowing there’s a 24/7 support team ready to jump in at a moment’s notice.

Are there cheaper options out there? Yes. Are there simpler, more beginner-friendly tools? Absolutely. But Shopify’s customer service is second to none—with four ways to get in touch and the most in-depth guides, tutorials, and free resources we’ve seen, you won’t find this level of support anywhere else.

Shopify : The Good and The Bad

The Good

Discounts: To create stronger customer relationships and improve ecommerce marketing, Shopify users can offer their customers discounts. Users can promote sales on products, set up automatic discounts, and make discount codes. 

When a specific product has been added to a customer’s shopping cart, users can set up an automatic discount trigger without needing a code. Users can set up specific sales on products, showing customers the original price of the product. This ensures them that they are getting a good deal and helps with customer conversion.

Shopify

When creating a manual discount, users can set it up as a percentage of a product’s price or as a fixed amount. A discount code can be modified to go into effect depending on variables like a customer’s minimum order amount, the number of times the code can be used, what product collections the discount applies to, and the date range for which it is valid.

Sales Channels : Shopify is not the only platform that can be used to sell products. Shopify’s Sales Channels feature lets users download outside sales channels. Third-party channels like Instagram, Amazon, Facebook, Messenger, and Handshake can be used to sell products. These channels can be integrated through Shopify’s app store. 

Shopify Point-of-Sale uses physical hardware and computer software to merge storefront locations with online stores. If a business is selling to another business, Shopify Plus’s wholesale channel is a great option. For third-party websites, users can implement the “Buy Button” to instantly turn the site into an online store.

Experts Marketplace : Shopify lets users hire third-party agencies and freelancers to help them operate their business. The Expert Marketplace is there for any user who needs help with store setup, troubleshooting, branding, content writing, sales, or marketing. This helps new business owners relieve stress by outsourcing activities they would prefer not to do. 

Extra Support : Helpful customer support is essential when running an online store. If a store is broken, it may be unable to sell products until it’s fixed. If a user needs help with support, Shopify gives him or her four contact options. Shopify’s agents are available 24/7 via phone, chat, email, or Twitter. This ensures user issues are resolved quickly and effectively. 

Shopify

In addition to excellent customer support, Shopify provides users with a knowledge base, FAQ page, and help forum. The help forum allows users to interact and create creative solutions to common problems. Shopify’s help center educates users through video tutorials, descriptions, and ecommerce definitions.

Different Product Types : Shopify has different features and settings depending on if a user is selling a physical product or a digital one. Users can set up drop shipping stores, manage shipping, and fulfill orders when selling physical products. Users can distribute products with a downloadable link or by sending an email when selling digitally. 

Multiple Payment Options : Shopify customers can send money in a variety of ways including credit cards, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, and cryptocurrencies. For a more efficient check-out process, Shop Pay allows customers to input their shipping and payment information to decrease the number of steps needed to make another purchase. 

Shopify users can select one of the countless third-party payment providers available. Customers will be redirected to an outside website when using an external payment provider. However, they will be able to pay directly on a user’s website if he or she is using a direct payment provider. To bypass fees, Shopify Payments can be used instead.

Reporting and Analytics : Shopify reports allow users to see important sales, marketing, and customer information. Its analytical tools help users determine critical insights about their customers and track recent business activity. Shopify users can have a full understanding of how their business is performing with data on total business growth and daily website traffic.

Abandoned Cart Recovery : Abandoned cart recovery is a highly effective way to drip on customers who procrastinate or get distracted while shopping on a site. If a customer leaves anything in his or her shopping cart, this feature can be used to retarget them via email. This can be set up automatically and scheduled to be sent at strategic times. 

The Bad

Total Monthly Price : While its plans’ pricing competes with some ecommerce leaders, Shopify is far from the most inexpensive platform. More importantly, Shopify’s monthly subscription is not the only thing a user will pay for. If users choose a third-party payment processor instead of Shopify Payments, they will be charged additional fees. Monthly costs for apps and plugins add up as well. 

Transition Difficulty : If a Shopify user is ready to move their online store to a new platform, they are in for an inconvenient transition. Shopify permanently removes online store data when an account is closed. Instead of helping users transition to a new platform, it locks them in by making it hard to switch. This is common with ecommerce platforms but something to consider. 

Poor Blogging Capabilities : Shopify does not value content marketing as much as some users would like. Content marketing is important because it boosts organic traffic, educates customers, enhances social proof, and grows brands. While Shopify has a blogging feature, it is extremely basic. This is something we would like to see Shopify improve going forward. 

Shopify Pricing and Options

Shopify

Shopify is separated into five different pricing plans. Its starter plan is called Basic Shopify, and it costs $29 per month. Shopify’s regular plan meant for growing businesses with one store costs $79 per month. Advanced Shopify is intended for growing businesses with more than one store, and it costs $299 per month.

Shopify

Shopify Plus was built for large businesses, and it starts at $2,000 per month. Finally, Shopify Lite is only $9 per month. Shopify’s plans also charge a small fee when using third-party processing. Before signing up for Shopify, you can try it free of charge for 14 days.

Shopify is one of the top products in its space, and it charges accordingly. While it’s more expensive than Wix and Squarespace, it has similar pricing to BigCommerce and Shift4Shop. Overall, Shopify has competitive pricing for a high-quality ecommerce website builder.

Basic Shopify

If you’re new to ecommerce, Basic Shopify is the best plan to start with. It gives each account two staff members with Shopify admin privileges. It gives users an ecommerce website and blog and lets them sell unlimited products.

Shopify’s sales channels allow users to sell on social media and online marketplaces. Its Locations feature lets users assign inventory to up to four warehouses, retail stores, or pop-ups. It includes discounted shipping rates of up to 77% from USPS, UPS, or DHL Express.

Other features include discount codes, manual order creation, free SSL certificates, gift cards, and abandoned cart recovery. It also includes fraud analysis and lets users print shipping labels. It’s important to note there is a 2% fee when using a third-party payment provider.

For global business, users can sell in 133 different currencies. To ensure pricing consistency, users can round prices up or down. With Basic Shopify, users can sell in up to five different languages.

Basic Shopify is a great starting point for ecommerce newbies. It has all the essential features including an ecommerce website, unlimited products, and sales channels.

Shopify

Shopify’s next plan is simply named “Shopify.” It’s intended for growing businesses that only have one retail store. It has everything included in Basic Shopify plus professional reports and USPS Priority Mail cubic pricing.

It allows five admins instead of two, and it lets users assign inventory to up to five locations instead of four. It has up to 88% discounted shipping with USPS, UPS, and DHL Express. Fees for third-party payment providers drop to 1%.

For global business, Shopify lets users create country-specific domains so international SEO is optimized. It also lets users raise or lower product prices in different countries by customizing its overall percentage change.

Shopify costs more than double the amount of Basic Shopify. Besides a few additional features and lowered third-party payment fees, it is not considerably different. We think Shopify could do a better job of making its second plan more unique than Basic Shopify.

Advanced Shopify

Advanced Shopify is for growing businesses with more than two retail stores. It includes everything from Shopify plus advanced report building, third-party calculated shipping rates, and customizable international pricing per product. 

Its third-party payment processing fees drop to 0.5% and its limit on available Shopify admins raises to 15 users. It allows inventory assignment for up to eight locations. 

Advanced Shopify is considerably higher priced than Shopify and Basic Shopify. It does allow way more available admins, and customizable pricing of each international product is a bonus.  It’s important to evaluate your business needs before you decide if it’s worth paying the steeper price for the advanced plan. 

Shopify Plus

If you have a large business needing enterprise-level solutions, Shopify Plus could be right for you. More than 10,000 leading brands including Heinz, Staples, and Allbirds use Shopify Plus. While some ecommerce platforms can take up to a year to transition to, switching to Shopify Plus takes less than four months. 

Shopify Plus’s Shop Pay provides up to 60% faster check-out times and up to 18% higher conversion rates. It uses modern technology like video, 3D media, and built-in AR when customers land on the product pages. Shopify Plus includes powerful automation and integration tools to create a smoother ecommerce experience. 

Shopify Plus is a great platform that can be managed by a much smaller team compared to competitor platforms of this size. Users report high satisfaction and ease of use, and the platform sets itself apart from Shopify’s other plans. 

Shopify Lite

Shopify Lite is for those who already have a website or for merchants wanting to sell in-person. Like Shopify’s other plans, it comes with free marketing tips and podcasts, 24/7 customer support, and automatic syncing across sales channels. Unlike Shopify’s other plans, it does not allow users to build an online store. 

With Shopify Lite, users can immediately turn an existing website into an online store. This can be done by adding a Shopify Buy Button to website items with a few clicks. It includes a Point-of-Sale (POS) app that lets in-person merchants accept payments from Android and iOS devices. It lets users send invoices directly to customers and create custom, phone, and wholesale orders. 

Other features include financial reporting, order management, customer profiles, email carts, gift cards, split-bill, in-store inventory, and custom discounts. For only $9 per month, this plan is a great way to benefit from Shopify’s capabilities if you don’t need to build an online store. Most competitors don’t even have a comparable plan, and this makes Shopify Lite stand out. 

Shopify POS

Shopify’s Point-of-Sale (POS) system is not one of its primary plans, but it’s worth mentioning. It is perfect for ecommerce businesses with a physical storefront. With Shopify POS, store owners receive a card reader, mobile barcode scanner, cash drawers, and a receipt printer. It includes a mobile app and lets users connect their physical location to their online store.

Shopify

Shopify POS Lite is included for free with all Shopify plans. It includes a one-year warranty on hardware and accepts popular payment methods including American Express, Visa, and Mastercard. Shopify POS Pro can be purchased by adding $89 per month per location to an existing plan. It includes a two-year hardware warranty and omnichannel selling features.

How Shopify Ranks

Shopify specializes in ecommerce and has most of the features and benefits needed for any online store owner. Its added support is what makes it stand out specifically.

Final Talk

When choosing the right ecommerce platform for your online store, you must know what you’re looking for. Shopify’s Sales Channels, Experts Marketplace, and Discount features are excellent additions to its platform. Avoid Shopify if you place extreme importance on content marketing. If you need extra support, Shopify has the agents and resources to solve your ecommerce issues.

Try Shopify

( free for 14 days, no credit card required)

WP Engine Review

WP Engine Review 2022

by with No Comment Review

WP Engine is a top choice when it comes to WordPress web hosting services. It lets you manage your site hassle-free, so you can spend more energy keeping your business running.

The platform is easy to use, has excellent page loading speed and performance, and even has the customer support you need if you have a problem. WP Engine makes a great option for managed hosting services and lets you focus on giving customers the best possible experience.

Compare WP Engine to the Best Premium WordPress Hosting Services

WP Engine rises above the rest with its speedy page loading and superior performance. It works well for high-traffic sites and growing businesses because it won’t break down if you have a ton of visitors, even with its cheaper packages.

It’s even better than Nexcess, which is designed to be an optimal ecommerce hosting service for its speed and capacity. WP Engine gives you extra speed, storage, and security by creating a more specialized platform than hosting giants like Bluehost and DreamHost.

WP Engine : The Good and the Bad

The Good

Page Loading Speed : WP Engine loads in three seconds or less no matter where you use it. That includes Australia, where many web hosts take five seconds or longer to load pages. 

WP Engine uses a combination of SSD technology, CDN, and NGINX web extensions to boost your site to its optimal speed. The host differentiates between people visiting your site and bot requests.

It then prioritizes the human ones so that your visitors always get the best experience when using your site. CDN works according to the visitor’s location, so it gives them the right content based on where they currently are.

Performance : WP Engine has a 99.95% uptime guarantee, which goes up to 99.99% when you get enhanced SLA. That’s less than one hour of downtime per year. This host comes with a page performance tool that runs tests and gives you suggestions for making site improvements if it finds that performance has gone down. The GeoTarget add-on further optimizes your site based on the visitor’s location.

Plus, WP Engine has server locations across four continents—North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Compare that to Bluehost and DreamHost, which only have servers in the United States.

Security Features : WP Engine includes a free SSL certificate, instead of making you buy it like many other hosting services. It also has a firewall and does malware scans daily to block threats. It’s especially useful for ecommerce sites, since you’re handling customers’ sensitive information, like credit card details. 

WP Engine security detects threats in real time with its enterprise-level firewalls and trained experts who perform free hacking remediation. The host’s security is more advanced than most other web hosting services, and many of its free services are things you normally have to pay to get.

Customer Support : With 24/7 support, WP Engine lets you contact customer support through the user panel by enabling the chat support system. First, it connects you with a support bot that gives you suggestions for solutions. If those don’t work, you can talk to an expert who will work with you to resolve the issue. Agents usually answer quickly, and you can use the ticket tracking system while you wait. All plans come with 24/7 live chat support and the higher tiers also include 24/7 phone support.

Staging Environment : A staging environment lets you make a copy of your site, so you can make changes and test them out without having them go live before you know how they’ll work. It lets you test site changes to make sure your website still functions properly before customers use the new version. When you’re working on these changes, it doesn’t affect the public site’s function, and you can publish the changes when you’re ready.

Ease of Use : WP Engine makes starting a new site simple. It shows you three areas to set up—Production, Staging, and Development—which gives you more advanced options and a better site without complicating the process.

It also reduces disruptions to your site as you maintain it and grow your business. WP Engine’s platform has lots of sidebar options to make the service work for professionals. Pros will find it intuitive and easy to use. However, it could be overwhelming for some beginner users. That said, once you get past the learning curve, it’s not too hard to work with.

The Bad

Only Hosts WordPress : WordPress is a popular website builder, but it’s not the only CMS out there. If you think you’ll ever want to switch away from WordPress, WP Engine might not be the best choice for you because you’ll end up paying for a whole new web hosting service. At the same time, WP Engine offers superior hosting specifically for WordPress, even though it does exclude a large market of people who don’t use WordPress.

No Email Hosting : If you want email hosting or domain registration, WP Engine doesn’t sell domains or allow for email registration through the host. You’ll have to go through a third party or choose another host if you want your email and domain through your host.

Banned Plugins : Here, you’ll find the downside of having super speed and excellent performance. WP Engine bans some plugins that slow the host down. Some of these banned plugins also compromise security, so WP Engine is only trying to keep your site as secure and high-performing as possible.

Some of the banned plugins include caching, backup, related posts, email plugins, and duplicate behavior plugins. You might also download a plugin that isn’t banned only to find that WP Engine doesn’t allow specific functions or modules that impede the host’s optimal function.

WP Engine Pricing and Options

WP Engine Pricing

WP Engine offers four packages for hosting:

  • Startup: $22.50/mo
  • Growth: $86.25/mo
  • Scale: $217.50
  • Dedicated Hosting: Custom pricing

Each tier gives you access to over 30 premium themes, plus free automated migrations and daily backups. They all come with advanced security and free SSL and SSH, plus one-click staging when you want to make changes to your site.

The differences between the packages come with the number of sites, bandwidth, and storage. Startup allows you one site with 25,000 visits per month. You also get 10GB local storage and 50GB bandwidth per month.

Growth bumps you up to 10 sites with 100,000 visitors a month and 20GB local storage. It drastically increases your bandwidth to 200GB per month. That bandwidth and storage more than double to 500GB per month and 50GB, respectively, with the Scale package.

Dedicated Hosting offers a little extra, and it gives you the option of 99.99% uptime SLA. With this tier, you get more advanced security, scale resources, and white-glove onboarding. It also has available enhancements like application performance monitoring, a dedicated developer, and Premium Plus service if you want to add these features to your custom package.

WP Engine Managed Hosting

WP Engine

With managed hosting, you don’t need to manage your site on a structural or administrative level. Instead, WP Engine has experts who do that for you and keep your site functioning the best it can.

WP Engine offers managed dedicated and cloud hosting. This service makes it easier for you to manage other aspects of your site, like its appearance and how customers interact with it.

If something goes wrong on the performance side, WP Engine handles it for you. With unmanaged hosting, you would have to figure that part out yourself. Having a managed hosting service works better for beginners, as well as for people who aren’t as tech-savvy with the deeper parts of managing a website.

WP Engine Local Development Environment

WP Engine

Once you download Local, it makes your website setup simpler and eliminates some of the hassles of creating a website. It integrates seamlessly with WP Engine and makes your team more productive with tools like MailHog and Xdebug for testing and debugging. You can also access files for NGINX, PHP, and MySQL.

Local’s one-click WordPress installation means you don’t have to set up your whole site from scratch, saving you time and letting you get back to business sooner. You can work in any environment you want, whether you prefer PHP or MySQL, and it won’t negatively affect your site’s function.

WP Engine Auto Migration

WP Engine

You can get a plugin to migrate your site to WP Engine. Even beginners can do it, since you don’t have to go through all the technical migration steps. All you have to do is select Site Migration from the menu and make sure Automatic Migration is enabled.

Automatic Migration includes domain value replacement and any database imports. BlogVault migrates your site to the WP Engine platform. It even brings you to a status page where you can see the progress of the migration.

WP Engine Git and SFTP Connections

WP Engine

Git and SFTP connection potential lets you use the development tools that your team already knows and loves. That means your team can maintain its usual productivity, and even improve it.

If you’re used to using FTP with another host, SFTP works the same but with more security. It has an encryption layer and only works with a secured port. That comes in handy if you need to migrate your site, partially restore it, or access a file. Git also gives you version control and allows developers to move code from a local area to WP Engine.

WP Engine PHP 7.4 and HTTP/2 Enabled

PHP 7.4 and HTTP/2 create a more efficient site and allow you to improve site metrics. PHP improves your SEO, creates more conversions, and retains more visitors. It increases your site’s performance with features like preloading, which speeds up page loading, making it less likely for visitors to navigate away from your site.

These features also lower memory usage, so you have space for what matters on your site. Having these features can triple your visitor requests, which also boosts conversions.

WP Engine EverCache

WP Engine

EverCache speeds up visitor request fulfillment by identifying which requests are made by people and which are made by bots. Once it identifies the humans, it prioritizes them and rejects the others.

This feature caches static content on your webpages, so it doesn’t clutter the site or detract from the user experience. Catching this content helps your website stay fast no matter how many people visit it.

You can change your preferences with EverCache so that it catches items you don’t want and leaves what you do while creating the optimal experience for visitors. It works well if you want to scale your site. Plus, it makes it easy to adjust to more traffic and reduces server strain.

WP Engine Plugins

You can choose from about 55,000 plugins with WP Engine. While it bans some that you can use with other hosts, you’ve still got a great selection, and the ones it does block are only banned to avoid lowering site performance.

You can find plenty of free plugins, including many with custom functions that improve the user experience. Some of them include WPForms, Yoast SEO Premium, HubSpot, and MonsterInsights.

WP Engine Application and Page Performance

WP Engine

Application Performance, powered by New Relic, offers code-level insights that show you which apps slow your site down. This feature can find the root cause when it comes to app performance problems and fix them before they create a noticeable issue.

Page Performance shows you which pages receive more visitors and which ones need some changes to bring them up to speed. It recommends how to fix problems and gives real-time data on performance. It also shows you key metrics, history, and KPI impact while integrating into your current workflow system.

WP Engine Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds security to your site by requiring more than just password protection when you log in. It notices if you access your site from another device and notifies you to make sure only authorized users get in.

MFA requires at least two steps to access your account and make changes. The process makes it less likely for someone to hack your site and reduces the likelihood of data breaches. In other words, it makes visitors feel even safer using your site.

WP Engine Managed Core Updates and Patches

In keeping with the hands-off approach to website management, core updates and patches make it easy for you to update your site and keep it functioning at peak performance. This feature will automatically update minor things while it checks major updates to ensure they’ll benefit your site. It tests these major updates first, so you can decide whether you want them.

Managed core updates and patches include security and maintenance updates that you can’t defer for your website’s safety. WP Engine also performs smoke tests before and after updating to ensure top quality updates and continued performance.

Final Talk

WP Engine has what you need for optimal website speed and performance. It offers more security features than many web hosting services and keeps your site updated and managed for a reasonable price. And it can’t be beat if you’re looking to get multiple WordPress sites live on one plan.

Try WP Engine
Hostinger Review

Hostinger Review 2022

by with No Comment Review

Hostinger has come a long way since it first launched as a free web hosting service 15+ years ago. Today, it’s one of the best web hosting providers on the market—offering affordable plans, high-quality hosting, and other perks for website owners.

Whether you’re launching a new site from scratch or switching providers, you can use this in-depth review to see if Hostinger is right for you.

Compare Hostinger to The Best Cheap Web Hosting Services

Choosing a quality web hosting service is crucial. Your web host has a direct impact on things like uptime, page loading speed, and other performance metrics that are important for success.

Our team here at w3zoo did some extensive research, testing, and analysis on dozens of web hosting services on the market. Then we narrowed down our list of top recommendations.

Based on our research, we can confidently say that Hostinger is the best cheap web hosting service for most people. It accommodates a wide range of use cases for both beginners and scaling websites alike.

With plans starting at just $1.99 per month, it’s one of the most affordable options you’ll find from a hosting service so reputable. But don’t let that price fool you. The service competes with other web hosts that come in at higher price points.

Hostinger : The Good and The Bad

Like any product on the market, there are pros and cons to choosing Hostinger as your websites’ web host. We want to call out a few of the key elements that work in Hostinger’s favor and a couple potential drawbacks, so you get the full story on whether they’re the best choice for you.

The Good

Fast Load Times : It’s no secret that the loading time for your site is very important. If a visitor comes to your website and has to wait for things to load, they won’t stick around. In fact, many people aren’t willing to wait for more than a couple of seconds for a site to load.

That’s why we love that Hostinger provides quick hosting speeds. And we’re not just going off of what they tell everyone on their webpage copy, we’ve tested them out for shared hosting, VPS hosting, and WordPress hosting.

And Hostinger delivers. For each of those hosting types, we put a test site through FreshPing for a full month. Each one averaged well under one-second load times, with Hostinger’s VPS and WordPress hosting averaging right around 470 milliseconds. That’s wonderfully fast and better than just about every other hosting provider we tested in those categories.

Hostinger has servers not just in the United States, but also in Asia and the UK, so that helps keep the overall loading times quick no matter where you or your visitors are located.

Fantastically Affordable: Not only do you get blazing fast site speeds on a Hostinger plan, but those plans come at some of the most competitive price points around.

Hostinger Pricing

Shared hosting starts as low as $1.99 per month for a single site, with plans that support multiple sites or allot more resources starting at $2.99 per month. WordPress and VPS hosting don’t require much more of an investment, either, starting at $1.99 and $3.95 per month, respectively.

Now, keep in mind these attractive rates are for a long-term commitment up front of 48 months. That can be a bit of a sticking point if you’re not ready to commit to four years right away.

. On the flip side, though, it means you lock in that attractive rate for a good while. And, since it’s such an affordable monthly rate, you’re only looking at a payment of $96 for 48 months of shared or WordPress hosting.

However, if you don’t want to commit to four years right off the bat, Hostinger has generously extended it’s best pricing for the Premium Shared Hosting plan to one-year commitments as well. That means you can pay just $41.88 today and snag Hostinger’s most popular shared hosting package for a full year, one which also comes with a free custom domain.

With all that in mind, the next few positives that follow should further put your mind at ease about committing to Hostinger and the value you’re getting.

Money-Back Guarantee : Not happy with your Hostinger purchase? No problem. You have 30 days to try it out and get your money back if your experience is not all you were hoping for.

However, be sure to note that redemption fees, domain name renewals, and privacy protection are the only things not part of the 30-day money-back guarantee, so keep that in the back of your head. 

Otherwise, the hosting, domain transfers, and SSL certificates are all refundable within 30 days of purchase. 

Free Domain : You need a domain to go along with your hosting, and while you can buy your domain and your hosting from separate companies, it’s nice when you can do everything in one place.

It’s even nicer when you can get the domain for free. That’s an option for those who opt for any of Hostinger’s web hosting plans above the single-site tier.

Free Website Builder : Hostinger’s partnership with Zyro gives you access to one of the better website builders for free with your plan.

Zyro’s easy-to-use builder is great for whipping up a company website, but you can also build out a fully functional online store with it, too. Start from one of over 100 templates or drag-and-drop your way to a beautiful home on the web from scratch.

Either way, you get a site builder for free with Hostinger that doesn’t make you sacrifice any customization capability.

Simple to Get Started : What we love about Hostinger when testing their hosting products out is how easy it is on users. With a clean interface, guided setup, and a dashboard it makes it easy for first-timers you don’t need to take a whole class in order to use it.

And even though it’s simple, they didn’t skimp on powerful tools and reliable servers.

The effortless use continues when building a site right after you’ve finished signing up for Hostinger and setting up your hosting plan.

Website Builder

Let Hostinger’s wizard walk you through each step. You’ll be amazed by how quickly it results in a fully functional website for you.

The Bad 

No Phone Support : Sometimes you need a real human on the phone to get help with a problem, and unfortunately Hostinger does not offer that option. The only way to get in touch with customer support is via a live chat, which is good, but isn’t the same as a phone call to walk you through things that are likely frustrating.

Spotty Uptime on Shared and WordPress Hosting: Speed and uptime are the two sides of the web hosting quality coin. Whereas speed relates to how quickly your pages load for visitors, uptime is a measurement of server reliability. Hosting servers can go down for any number of reasons, from planned maintenance to unforeseen errors.

Hostinger’s lower-octane plans haven’t performed too well compared to their peers. With their shared hosting and WordPress hosting, we’ve seen a lot of downtime, in the ballpark of one to two hours per month. That’s almost a full day per year that your website wouldn’t be available to visitors.

Fortunately, we’ve seen vast improvements when testing their burlier hosting offerings. Hostinger’s VPS hosting turned in only 17 seconds of total downtime when we tested it in late 2021.

Missing Features on Budget Plans : While not a dealbreaker for everyone, there are some helpful features missing from Hostinger’s entry-level plans that we’ve seen on comparable ones from their competitors. The most notable case is with their WordPress hosting, which doesn’t include a content delivery network (CDN) and automatic daily backups on the two cheaper plans (Single and Starter).

Make sure you look over the full feature set for the hosting plan you’re considering. You may have to pay for a higher tier to ensure you’re getting all the features and tools you need.

Hostinger Pricing and Options

Hostinger has a number of different packages for you to choose from. Each one offers unique things that are suited for specific needs.

There is no free plan available with Hostinger, but the Single Shared Hosting plan is so affordable it almost feels free. This is a great place to start.

Hostinger Single

Hostinger’s most basic plan is part of the shared web hosting offerings, which means that your website exists on a server with other websites. This is great for those who don’t have a budget for expensive web hosting, as the cost of the server is split between numerous others.

However, the bad thing about this is site speed could be compromised because there are so many other people using the same server.

However, if you are just starting out with a website, the Single plan gives you what you need to get the ball rolling.

The Single plan pricing starts at $1.99/month with a 48-month commitment, and that price jumps all the way up to $9.99/month if you sign up for a monthly commitment.

Shared Hosting

This plan gets you 1 website, 30 GB of SSD storage, 100 GB bandwidth, 10 GB solid-state storage, a free SSL certificate, 1 email account, and much more.

Hostinger Premium

Hostinger’s next level, the Premium, offers everything the Single does as well as some added bonuses, including free domain registration (for the first year only), unlimited bandwidth, up to 100 websites, 100 GB of SSD storage, up to 100 email accounts, and more.

Pricing for this starts at $2.99/month with a 48-month commitment, all the way up to $11.99/month for a monthly commitment.

Premium Hosting

Hostinger Business

If you’re looking to level up your plan, then Hostinger’s Business option may be right for you. With this plan you get everything included in the Premium plan, plus daily backups, 4 times the processing power, 200 GB SSD storage, and much more.

Pricing for the Business plan starts at $4.99/month for 48 months and goes up to $16.99/month for a monthly commitment.

Business Hosting

Cloud Hosting

If you’re considering cloud hosting vs. traditional shared hosting, take a look at Hostinger’s offerings. Not sure what cloud hosting is? We’ve got you covered. How cloud hosting differs is that rather than your site being hosted on a single server, it is hosted in the cloud, which allows for more flexibility and easier scalability.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting plans begin with the Startup at $9.99/month for 48 months. This is a great starting place. If you are looking for something more, Hostinger’s recommended cloud plan is the Professional, which starts at $18.99/month for 48 months. And if you need more than this still, the Global plan may be just what you’re looking for, and that will cost you $69.99/month for 48 months.

The massive jump in price from the Professional to Global plan is due to a few features including 4 times the speed boost of the Startup Plan, 16 GB RAM, 8 CPU cores, and much more.

VPS Hosting

If you are looking to make waves with your business’ website, then VPS hosting may be right for you. VPS stands for virtual private server, and it means that you have your own server as opposed to sharing one with other users.

Hostinger offers six different VPS hosting plans, starting at $3.95/month for 48 months. That price point gets you 3 GB RAM, 60 GB storage, and 3 TB bandwidth. The plans offer a few more features than the ones prior and take you up to the VPS 6 plan which includes 8 GB RAM, 160 GB storage, and 8 TB bandwidth. That will set you back $38.99/month for 48 months. 

Minecraft Hosting

Hostinger offers a unique hosting service that many of its competitors don’t: a Minecraft hosting that is geared towards gamers. This hosting starts at $8.95/month for 48 months and offers plans that go up to $29.95/month for 48 months.

With this service, you can install your own game mods, along with many other things.

Minecraft Hosting

When it comes to hosting, there is no shortage of options with Hostinger. They also offer WordPress hosting, which is a top choice for many people building websites.

There is hosting for everyone at Hostinger, so do some more reading to see which one is the ideal plan for your needs.

Final Talk

We can confidently recommend Hostinger for a wide range of use cases. It’s a great option for new websites that want a quality hosting service at an affordable price. Hostinger is also an excellent option for higher traffic sites that want to scale without switching providers.

For those of you who want an all-in-one solution for creating a website and getting your web hosting needs under one roof, Hostinger even has a website builder plan bundled with its hosting services. While its uptime rates and speed aren’t leading the industry, Hostinger is still a reputable provider that can accommodate the needs of most websites.

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Bluehost Review

Bluehost Review 2022

by with No Comment Review

Bluehost powers more than two million websites. It does a great job of demystifying the process of setting up a website for beginners. Especially if you want to use WordPress.

All plans include a free domain for the first year, great uptime (based on real-life data), a free CDN, an easy website builder, and a free SSL certificate. Everything you need is one place. Is it right for your next website? Let’s find out.

Bluehost Compared to The Best Web Hosting Services

After two weeks of rigorous testing, which included signing up, building a website, talking to customer support, and 30 days’ worth of uptime and speed testing, Bluehost came in at #1

Although other hosts outperformed Bluehost, it’s still an excellent choice and our top pick if you’re looking for a free, beginner-friendly WordPress drag-and-drop site builder.

Bluehost : The Good and The Bad

Every web hosting service has its flaws, even the most exclusive. Here’s an in-depth look into Bluehost’s top good and bad features.

The Good

Great Security : Bluehost has one of the best security measures on the market. All Bluehost security features are efficient and will help you cut back hours of tweaking your website. It will also give you peace of mind, which is especially needed for absolute beginners. 

All Bluehost plans come with resource protection, and CodeGuard Backup Basic can be added for an additional $2.99 per month fee. CodeGuard will help you with daily backups and monitoring while notifying you of any changes.

The most basic version of this security feature comes with 1GB storage space, daily backup and monitoring, and three restorations per month. However, for the more expensive plans like Choice Plus and Pro, you can expect free automatic backups for one year and 24/7 network monitoring.

Extensive and Fast Customer Support : Another excellent feature of Bluehost is its extensive and fast customer support base. Customer support is paramount for any web hosting service to have, but finding a service that has fast and efficient support can be a dime a dozen. 

Luckily, Bluehost offers just that, and most users have said the customer support is very helpful when needing immediate support. In fact, there’s a high chance you will connect to Bluehost’s Live Chat system within five minutes of waiting

All of its support-base is available 24/7, so you don’t need to worry about figuring out time zones. Bluehost also offers phone and email support, but the waiting times vary. However, you always have the option to pass the time by browsing its extensive knowledge base support forum for multiple FAQs, videos, in-depth articles, and support resources on everything web hosting related.

Easy to Use : Not only is Bluehost the most popular web hosting service on the market for its outstanding features and products, but it’s also because it’s so incredibly easy to use. Ease of use is an important feature to have because web hosting can already be confusing to some, so there’s no need for the onboarding process to be difficult, too. 

Fear not though, as Bluehost has an easy onboarding process that takes a few minutes to complete, to get your website up and running. With an intuitive interface, it will ask you to fill out a form that includes your website goals, what you want to add to your site, and what you want your name and the tagline of your site to be.

After answering these questions, you get to choose a theme of your choice from the Bluehost Marketplace, and then it automatically installs WordPress for your ultimate convenience. All you have to worry about is customization, while Bluehost takes care of the backend and the technical nitty-gritty.

High-Performance Servers : The last thing that’s great about Bluehost is that it offers very high-performance servers to all users purchasing the Pro plan. Although it’s not always ideal for every user to fork out more money, we think you get what you pay for. For $14.95 per month, you get access to Dual Quad Processor Performance Servers that will keep large ecommerce websites functioning effectively. 

This server is an excellent option for larger websites because Bluehost makes sure there are fewer users per server—with an individual file count of 300,000—so there are no slowdowns for anyone involved.

However, if you don’t want to pay the price for these servers, we still think regular Bluehost servers that come with the other plans are great and work just fine.

The Bad

No Free Site Migration: Now here’s where the downsides come into play. Currently, Bluehost does not offer free site migration, which can be an issue for users transferring from a different web hosting service. 

You can expect to pay a hefty $149.99 for Bluehost to migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts. Although this service comes with 24/7 support, a complete review, and an uninterrupted transition, it’s still quite expensive for most users—especially when many other web hosting services will transfer your website for free.

What’s also not great is that this migration service does not cover reseller, VPS, or dedicated server accounts, nor does it include domain registrations.

No Guaranteed Uptime: Unlike most web hosting services, Bluehost doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee on any of its plans. This is concerning because downtime can be quite detrimental for website owners, as you can lose potential customers if your website is experiencing this. 

An uptime guarantee gives users that extra peace of mind and shows them that the provider will keep your website up and running in the most efficient way possible—and is serious about the customer service experience while putting its customers’ needs first.

However, even though this may be an issue for some, many users have still applauded Bluehost for its uptime, regardless of guarantee, as the data shows it has an uptime of 99.99% efficiency.

Bluehost Pricing and Options 

Bluehost offers quite a few pricing plans for individual website goals and needs. Let’s break it down into each level.

Bluehost Pricing 

The great thing about Bluehost is that it has a wide variety of options at an affordable price. It offers three main business niches, with different pricing plans according to said niches. These include shared hosting, online stores, and managed WordPress.

Bluehost Pricing

Shared Hosting Plan

The shared hosting plan offers the most flexibility and is most popular with Bluehost users. The thing about Bluehost pricing is that it’s much cheaper on a 36-month plan, instead of a 12-month plan, so let’s compare these two. This plan has four pricing options, including:

  • Basic: $4.95/month on a 12-month term; $2.95/month on a 36-month term
  • Plus: $7.45/month on a 12-month term; $5.45/month on a 36-month term 
  • Choice Plus: $7.45/month on a 12-month term; $5.45/month on a 36-month term
  • Pro: $18.95/month on a 12-month term; $13.95/month on a 36-month term

As you can see, the pricing for 36-month terms is much cheaper than 12-month terms. Bluehost also offers a 24-month term, but that’s only a tad cheaper than the 12-month option.

With that said, all pricing plans include a free domain for one year, free CDN, free SSL certificate, custom themes, and 24/7 support.

The Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro plans have unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage, and free Office 365 for 30 days.

Online Store Plan

The Bluehost online store plan feels a lot less complicated than its shared hosting plans. These specific plans are best for ecommerce stores, where you can build, promote, and start selling through your store that’s packed with WooCommerce tools.

This plan has two pricing options for 12-month and 36-month terms, including:

  • Standard: $15.95/month on a 12-month term; $12.95/month on a 36-month term
  • Premium: $32.95/month on a 12-month term; $24.95/month on a 36-month term

Both plans come with unlimited products, WooCommerce installed, 24/7 customer support, payment processing, discount codes, and CodeGuard Backup Basic.

Managed WordPress Plan

This powerful plan focuses on users who are building their website through WordPress. It allows you to purchase a plan that offers scalability, security, speed, and support for your professional WordPress website.

This plan has three pricing options, all on 36-month terms, including:

  • Build: $9.95/month 
  • Grow: $14.95/month
  • Scale: $27.95/month 

All plans include top features like one WordPress website, 200+ global edge servers, free SSL, built-in high availability, staging environment, and best for up to 50,000 visitors per month.

You can also expect daily scheduled backups, malware detection and removal, and domain privacy and protection.

Bluehost Offerings 

Bluehost offers quite a few web hosting-related products that cater to most users. Here’s an in-depth look at some different products from Bluehost: 

WordPress Hosting

Bluehost and WordPress go hand-in-hand, and there’s no better way to run your website than with its official WordPress hosting. Bluehost crafted this specific hosting package to boost your website, with resources and tools that seamlessly integrate with WordPress.

Wordpress Hosting

With maximum compatibility with any WordPress website, this hosting plan will work best for blogs, websites, or online stores. Bluehost offers features like automatic WordPress installation, automatic WordPress updates, and Google My Business verification.

Not only that, but you get to choose from a unique range of themes and templates from the Bluehost Marketplace, that is specifically tailored to WordPress. You get full design freedom with customization features and easy-to-install plugins.

Some other features of WordPress hosting include:

  • Microsoft Office 365
  • Free domain for one year
  • Secure login setup 
  • 24/7 WordPress hosting support 

This hosting package has different pricing plans to the Managed WordPress plans. You can get specific WordPress hosting under three plans on 36-month terms, including:

  • Basic: $2.95/month
  • Plus: $5.45/month 
  • Choice Plus: $5.45/month 

Shared Hosting

Just like we discussed earlier, the shared hosting package is the most popular among Bluehost users because it’s the easiest way to get your website up and running at an affordable price.

Shared Hosting

To put it simply, shared hosting allows multiple users to run their website on one server. This specific package is best for blogging, hobbies, or small business websites.

The best feature about the shared hosting package is that Bluehost manages and monitors the server, so users don’t need to worry about server management or platform patches.

Some features of the shared hosting package include:

  • Domain manager 
  • Resource protection 
  • SSL certificates 
  • Google Ads 

Small businesses would reap most of the benefits of a shared hosting plan because it’s more simple and affordable. Because shared hosting doesn’t guarantee RAM or CPU, small businesses aren’t as affected as larger businesses that need the extra space.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is an excellent package for larger-scale businesses that need an increase in storage, power, and control. This package is on the high-end side of web hosting, so it focuses on performance and security.

Dedicated Hosting

Unlike shared hosting, a dedicated hosting server provides the highest level of protection, security, and control to its users. These servers are separate from one another, so each user gets full access to the server without being affected or affecting another user’s experience.

With Bluehost dedicated hosting, it guarantees every user stable and predictable website performance, with full control and privacy.

This package is best for users that have high traffic websites, as you will need the full spectrum of RAM and CPU to run your website efficiently—which is exactly what dedicated hosting does.

Some supportive features for dedicated hosting include:

  • Extreme speed 
  • Fast provisioning 
  • RAID storage 
  • Root access
  • Dedicated support
  • Storage upgrades
  • Free domain for one year

However, Bluehost’s dedicated hosting does not go for cheap. It offers three pricing plans, including:

  • Standard: $79.99 per month with 500GB storage and 4GB RAM
  • Enhanced: $99.99 per month with 1TB storage and 8GB RAM
  • Premium: $119.99 per month with 1TB storage and 16GB RAM
  • All pricing plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

Final Talk

Overall, Bluehost is an excellent choice for beginners since it comes with everything you need to get started with WordPress, from a free domain name and automatic WordPress installation to a free drag-and-drop page builder and thorough step-by-step instructions for every step of the way.

With extensive product offerings like WordPress hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and multi-tiered pricing plans, we think most users will enjoy the Bluehost experience.

The good outweighs the bad, and it’s definitely a web hosting service worth looking into—especially for WordPress users.

 

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