If you are trying to create a side income or even enough passive income to quit your job – chances are high you’ll need your own website.
Finding a provider to host your website can be challenging, especially now when more and more hosters start being more restrictive and specific on what content is allowed. For example, most providers forbid content related to adult entertainment, alcohol, or gambling and forbid advertising for it or linking to it.
For ease of mind and probable later scope widening, there are three leading hosters that allow more content types and are proven to be reliable and trustworthy hosters over many years, just like any other professional hoster.
Content illegal by law is forbidden there as well, of course.
Nowadays there are not too many differences in offered features – the prices also are less different than some years ago. You can expect to pay roughly around $4 per month – depending on your chosen hosting plan; it is more.
The important differences between yearly and monthly plans
In general, we highly recommend choosing yearly plans instead of monthly ones – a yearly one typically comes with hefty discounts even if it already is a very low total price.
Saving even more, the monthly usually does not include a free domain name, which you would need to pay extra.
As with any website, it will take some time for your website to gain enough traffic which results in good affiliate income. You also want to keep it running to generate passive income.
| 1st place – Hostinger | 2nd place – Dreamhost | 3rd place – Hostgator | |
| WordPress included | yes | yes | yes |
| SEO tools included | yes | no | with business plan |
| Free domain included | yes, besides the basic plan | yes | yes |
| Domain privacy included | yes, besides the basic plan | yes | yes |
| Email accounts included | up to 100, 1 with the basic plan | unlimited, besides the basic plan | unlimited |
| Unlimited traffic | yes | yes | yes |
| CDN included | business plan and up | no | with business plan |
| SSL included | yes | yes | yes |
| Backup included | daily | daily | daily |
| Support included | 24/7 Chat | 24/7 Chat | Phone & 24/7 Chat, basic plan chat only |
| Special notes | Uncountable extra features. Especially great for techies – for example, to deploy via Git. Still the same price segment as the competition. | They give a lot back to the tech community and evolution with deep OpenStack involvement for a decade. | Includes Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising credits if your website topic allows redeeming them. |
| Coming in on the lower price segment but buzzing with features, we recommend the Hostinger Business plan if you are serious about building long-term earnings with great tech. | We recommend the Dreamhost Shared Unlimited plan if you want to support the community and already pay extra at 3rd parties for features like a CDN or SEO tools. | Being just a little cheaper but also a little less equipped technically, we recommend the Hostgator Business plan if your current priority is Phone support. |
What essentials should I look for in a good web host to evaluate the provider?
A CMS like WordPress has to be included.
WordPress has been the single standard in building websites for over a decade. What makes it unique is that you can create websites without programming knowledge. You can choose between thousands of looks and functionality and customize them to your needs.
Thanks to the market dominance, it offers everything the regular website owner can wish for out of the box – and there is an endless supply of plugins available to support every additional, specific need you probably can have.
A hoster that is not providing WordPress is a total no-go.
For additional background: WordPress comes in two flavors. You can install and run it on your own server – what these providers offer. Or you open an account at wordpress.com with a managed website. This, however, forbids some content.
Does it offer SEO tools to rank your website in search engines?
SEO means optimizing your rank on search engines like Google or Bing to drive potential customers to your website.
This is important; You should not consider hosting plans that do not include this.
While this provides good essential support, you definitely should additionally use the most powerful yet very affordable SEO tool RankMath. It is a killer tool when writing articles.
RankMath provides thorough support in improving your search engine ranking, helpful tips and guidelines, and even offers “Content AI” to score your content in real time for your desired focus terms.
It is such a helpful add-on that we use it for all our written content in combination with Grammarly.
Is a free domain important?
Purchasing a domain separately with registrars like Namecheap or Crazy Domains will not ruin your budget. But you will need technical knowledge to connect it to your website and have additional overhead to maintain another contract.
It is much easier to ensure the hoster you select includes a domain. This will also make sure any required tooling is provided.
Conclusion
There are three leading players when it comes to hosting a website and not having too much to worry about what content is allowed, as long as you are legal.
There are not too many differences on the surface, but the devil, as usual, is in the details. We dug through these and laid out the most essential points.
We recommend the Hostinger Business plan for three main reasons:
- It comes with any feature and tech you can probably look for. Judging from our decades-long experience building websites, there is nothing missing from their offer.
- You do not have to take care of these, but you can if you learn or grow to hire an expert. This plan already prepares for growth – your main goal.
- The price is still at the same level as the competition.