Category: WordPress

Web Hosting Today: How Much Should I Pay for Web Hosting?
If I’m new to the blogging industry, my first thought would be how much should I pay for web hosting before going through other questions such as how much can I make from blogging and how to find relevant keywords to rank on Google.

In this article, I’ll share with you some simple guidelines in terms of web hosting pricing, so that you won’t get cheated or disappointed.

The different types of web hosting (and pricing)

Web hosting comes in many forms and here are the most common ones that you will come across.
- Shared hosting
- Semi-dedicated hosting
- Managed hosting
- Virtual Private Server (VPS)
- Dedicated hosting
- Cloud hosting
Let’s go deep into each of them, and how much you should be paying for them monthly.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting or shared web hosting is the most common and cheapest hosting package you can find in the market.

Shared hosting is best for beginners who are just starting out in the blogging industry and doesn’t require much server performance.

Question: How much should I pay for shared hosting?

On average, you will be paying anywhere between $2 to $15 per month. Major web hosting companies such as BlueHost offers shared hosting as low as $2.99 per month.

As shared hosting is the lowest tier in the hosting world, you can easily start a blog on a shared web hosting without burning a hole in your wallet.

Question: How to choose the best shared hosting service?

Do not be tempted with the super low price for shared web hosting services. Low prices often results in overselling the server (cramping 10x more customers into a server than what the server can take) which leads to massive performance issues such as server uptime.

Only bad web hosting companies will oversell the servers to maximize the profit. Paying a few dollars extra every month for shared web hosting could easily give you peaceful sleep at night and close to zero downtime. And if you are looking for a good web hosting service, I recommend using my own shared hosting service here, Host With Me with 60 days money back guarantee (no questions asked).

Semi-dedicated hosting

Only a handful of web hosting companies like this one offer semi-dedicated package. Semi-dedicated hosting is very popular especially for website owners who are not entirely newbie/beginner and would prefer a stronger server to manage the traffic.

Semi-dedicated web hosting is best for website owners who doesn’t want a sardine-packed server which will affects the website performance (loading speed).

Question: How much should I pay for semi-dedicated web hosting?

Semi-dedicated web hosting will costs you around $15 to $25 per month. You are still using a shared web hosting environment but you will be in an environment where there is lesser accounts which helps a lot in terms of website security and server performance.

Question: How to choose the best semi-dedicated web hosting?

For me, it is all about the reviews and performance. If you are looking for a good semi-dedicated web hosting, HostWithLove (starts at only $14.93 per month) is the best in the market in terms of performance, pricing and stellar support.

Do you really need a semi-dedicated web hosting?

Probably not. If you are using a good shared web hosting, it is much cheaper (affordable) and much similar to other performance metrics such as uptime and support.

Not sure where to start? Try this web hosting service for only $6.99 per month and with 60-days money back guarantee!

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is popular, and I mean P-O-P-U-L-A-R especially for enterprise and medium/big websites.

Managed hosting is often the best option for you if you are geeky, dead serious about website performance and security matters.

Examples of managed hosting are managed WordPress hosting and managed Magento hosting.

Managed hosting (for example managed WordPress hosting) comes with WordPress optimized environment (shared) and virtual private servers (VPS or dedicated servers).

Question: How much should I pay for managed hosting services?

Managed hosting services are often priced at a higher range and you should be expecting to pay around $15 to $30 per month for a small to medium website.

Question: How to choose the best managed hosting service?

WPEngine is often regarded as one of the best managed hosting service for both small and enterprise websites. WPEngine pricing is often priced higher than most of the managed WordPress hosting in the market but they guarantee excellent performance, great support and security features. WPEngine pricing starts at $30 per month and comes with inbuilt cache plugin and integration with MaxCDN (click here to see how you can get 2 months free web hosting with WPEngine).

FlyWheel is another great option when it comes to managed hosting services. FlyWheel pricing is much affordable at only $15 per month and they provide pretty much similar features as WPEngine except for the Content Delivery Network (CDN) services which is an addon feature. You can register a free account with FlyWheel using this link.

Editor’s Note

Looking for a managed hosting that works on Google Cloud Platform? Try Kinsta highly optimized servers for super fast website loading speed and performance.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

VPS is a great web hosting solution for both small and big websites. VPS allows you to have 100% control over the server and you will enjoy 100% of the server performance.

While VPS is a powerful web hosting solution, it is also one of the most expensive solutions as you have the server all to yourself.

Question: How much should I pay for a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

VPS costs as low as $5 per month for unmanaged VPS and above $10 for managed VPS.

What is the differences between unmanaged and managed VPS?

Unmanaged VPS means that you need to do all the coding works. As VPS doesn’t come with cPanel or WHM by default, you would need to install everything through coding. Unmanaged VPS is often considered messy because you need to have the expertise to maintain and manage your VPS. Unmanaged VPS starts around $5 per month on Digital Ocean.

Managed VPS is a web hosting option where everything is managed by a third party (in this case, it is the web hosting company). You don’t have to install anything, including maintenance and security features. Cloudways is a best option for affordability and performance for managed VPS. Cloudways pricing starts at $10 per month.

“While VPS is a powerful web hosting solution, it is also one of the most expensive solutions as you have the server all to yourself. Meaning, that you must do a proper research on VPS hosting providers before buying anything.”

Question: What is the best Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

There are a few answers to this question and here goes.
- Digital Ocean if you know coding and server maintenance
- Cloudways if you are looking for affordable managed VPS service
- SiteGround offers decent pricing and performance managed VPS service
- FlyWheel offers value-for-money managed VPS services for WordPress
- WPEngine if you are looking VPS solution for enterprise
Dedicated Hosting

If you are looking for massive server performance and high traffic website, dedicated hosting is right for you.

Dedicated hosting works like a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and the only differences are the performance and pricing structure.

With a higher price tag, dedicated hosting offers the best server uptime and performance beyond most of the competitors.

Question: How much should I pay for dedicated hosting?

On average, you should be expecting to pay at least $100 a month for a dedicated web hosting service.

The good side about dedicated web hosting is that everything is unmetered. From bandwidth or visits, you don’t have to worry about being overcharged.

Question: What is the best dedicated hosting service?

Most dedicated hosting in the market today are pretty much on par. If I have to choose, it would be the following:
- BlueHost offers the cheapest dedicated web hosting with serves around the world
- SiteGround offers decent dedicated web hosting with live chat support and databases around the world
- FlyWheel offers cheaper dedicated hosting solution for high traffic WordPress websites
- WPEngine if you are running on WordPress and cares a lot about server performance
Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is something new and rather than being hosted on one single instances of a physical server, hosting is delivered on a virtual partition which draws its resource, such as disk space, from an extensive network of underlying physical servers.

Cloud hosting is a great option especially when dedicated hosting pricing is too expensive for you.

Question: How much should I pay for cloud hosting?

The cheapest cloud hosting service is BlueHost at $9.99 $6.95 per month. There are also higher range cloud hosting which is around the $100 per month mark.

Question: Which is the best cloud hosting service?

The answer is simple. If you are looking for super cheap cloud hosting service, BlueHost is definitely a great option. At $6.95 per month, there is no denial that it is going to be really easy on your wallet.

If you are looking for more server firepower, Kinsta is a great option as it runs on Google Cloud Platform. You can try Kinsta for free here (limited time only).

Alternatively, SiteGround also offers affordable cloud hosting which starts at $80 per month.

Summary: How much should I pay for web hosting?

The answer to this depends heavily on your needs. For example, shared web hosting is a great choice for bloggers and beginners who don’t want to spend a whole lot of money. VPS and managed hosting on the other hand are better fit for bigger websites and enterprises who run their business online.

Not sure where to start? Start with shared web hosting and scale from there on!
May 4, 2024
How To Manage A Blog To Success

Are you ready to manage a blog to success?

Starting a blog is more than just talking out your credit card, installing WordPress and publishing blog posts on a regular basis. It requires a lot of work especially in managing the blog and making it a huge success.

How to start a blog fast?

Starting a blog is always the first step and it is often the step which is overlooked by many beginners.

Most of them start with free blogging site such as Blogspot only to discover that their blogs are deleted without notice after 6 months of hardwork.

If you want to manage a blog like a professional, then here’s what you need to do.

The last step involves installing WordPress, a good WordPress theme like this one and essential plugins for SEO and email list building.

The process of starting a blog is very short and it doesn’t take long. With this guide, you can easily start a blog under 5 minutes.

Manage a blog: Traffic versus conversion

In blogging, I am a huge believer that conversion matters the most. You may have 10,000 visitors a day but if you are not converting them into sales, you are not getting any richer (anytime soon).

When it comes to managing a blog, focus on conversion because conversion is going to help you make money and fast.

When you manage a blog and aims for success, always focus on conversion as this will help you drive more sales and help you grow your blogging business.

What type of content should I be publishing?

I love to answer this (even though I had answered this probably thousands of times). There must be a healthy mix of self-promotional, knowledge/information and comparison posts.

Self-promotional blog posts can be considered as sales posts. These content are focused heavily in closing sales and selling the benefits of a single product. Here’s a sample of a self-promotional blog post: Thrive Themes Review

A knowledge and information blog post is slightly different where it is meant to share information and provide education. Affiliate links are located within the blog posts to encourage readers to click on and with the hope of getting some commission generated from the sales. Here’s a sample of a knowledge and information blog post: How To Start A Web Design Business With No Experience (And From Home)

Comparison posts involve comparing two or more products of the same nature. As buyers, we are often making comparison before making a purchase. Thus, publishing comparison posts allow you to have a better chance of converting website visitors into paying customers. Here’s a sample of a comparison blog post: Beaver Builder vs Divi vs Thrive Architect: Which is the best site builder for you?

Are you ready to manage a blog to success?

As a recap, managing a blog to success is simple and comes with these several steps.

Always remember that the success of a blog is measured through the revenue generated from it and not through the traffic alone.

May 4, 2024
How To Create A WordPress Page In 5 Minutes (Or Less)
Yes, you read it right. You can create a WordPress page in 5 minutes or less. In this article, you will discover simple methods on how you can create a WordPress page fast and minus the hassle.

Before that, what is a WordPress page? Let’s take a moment to see what WPBeginner has to say about a WordPress page.

A WordPress page can be used for many reasons including creating landing pages and custom homepage. However, creating a WordPress page without the help of any tools would mean one thing — coding works.

So, how do you create a WordPress page under 5 minutes even when you are a complete beginner?

Option 1: Use a WordPress page builder

A WordPress page builder is a WordPress plugin that allows you to create pages in just a few clicks.

Most WordPress page builders come with drag and drop builder which helps a lot especially when it comes to building a webpage from scratch.

Top WordPress builders like these ones allow you to create landing pages fast without using any coding skills.

If you are looking for quick ways to create a WordPress page, using a good WordPress page builder will serve you well.

Option 2: Use a premium WordPress theme

Most premium WordPress themes comes with drag and drop builder or a pre-made templates for you to create WordPress pages easily.

For example, all StudioPress themes comes with landing page designs that you can easily 1-click import and install. This saves time and more importantly, no coding is required at all. Here are some StudioPress themes demos for viewing.

Alternatively, you can also use all-in-one WordPress theme builder such as Thrive Themes (review) and Divi (review). These WordPress themes come with inbuilt drag and drop builder which you can easily create WordPress pages in a few clicks.

The GIF below shows how you can use Divi to build your custom WordPress page without using a single line of code.

Undecided? Here are some resources for you!
Are you ready to create WordPress page in 5 minutes or less?

How do you create a WordPress page fast? Do you use a WordPress visual builder like I do?

Leave a comment below and tell me what you think!
May 4, 2024
Bad Web Host: The What, Why and How
How do you know if your web host sucks? How do you check if you are using a bad web host for your website? Or even worst, are you struggling to keep your server uptime on a positive side?

In today’s web hosting market, there are just too many web hosting services that are under performing. Searching for the term “cheap WordPress hosting” on Google will gives you an approximately 1,010,000 search results.

The truth is, there are many (and I mean M-A-N-Y) web hosting companies that offer super cheap hosting services but comes with subpar performance. Downtimes, inaccessible websites and above all, unsecured ports that leads to website hacks are just a few to name.

I’m sure you get the point and even heard about them!

How do you determine a web host is bad?

The million dollar question, if you ask me.

I used a fair share of shared web hosting services and this often comes lingerring in my head.

How do I know the web host I’m using is a bad web host?

How do I determine if the web hosting service I use is not ideal?

Carry on reading below on some of the ways you can determine if the website is good (or bad) for your website.

1. Bad web host makes your website slow (slow website loading speed)

How fast does your website loads? Does it takes over 5 seconds to load or under 1.5 seconds?

Here’s what Google says.

2 seconds or less — that’s how fast your website should load if you want to retain the happiness of your website visitors and getting love from Google.

And here’s a BIG, BIG fact to take note.

You don’t need to use premium WordPress hosting like WP Engine (click here to see its latest pricing review) to make your website loads under 1.5 seconds. You can achieve that simply by using a shared web hosting like I do in the test below.

As you can see above, my homepage is massively 2 MB and it takes 1.37 seconds to load completely. So, how do I achieve such results?
- checkI used an optimized web hosting build specially for me and my tribe (click here for more information)
- checkServers are based on LiteSpeed servers for better speed
- checkLiteSpeed Cache plugin (that works extremely well with the server)
- checkAutoptimize plugin
- checkOptimized images
- checkRemoval of unwanted plugins (I use Thrive plugins heavily as they are 100% optimized for speed)
- checkStudioPress theme which offers super fast website loading and inbuilt SEO features
It is important to understand that the above combination is required to achieve the fastest loading speed for your website. Of course, a good web host will outdo the bad web host at anytime of the day!

If you want to dive more into website loading speed, here’s a quick video for you.

How to check for website loading speed?

My favorite go to tool would be Pingdom Website Speed Test. It is free to use and works like charm. It also comes with a good reporting feature that allows you to understand which part is slowing down your website and how you can solve the issue for a faster website.

Diving through the reports will give you an idea especially if you are using a bad web host. The response time (in milliseconds or ms) will help you to easily weed out the bad web hosting services.

2. Bad web host gives you a lot of errors on Google Search Console

Another way to check if you are using a bad web host is through Google Search Console.

Head over to Google Search Console and select your account/website of choice.

This is what you will see on the dashboard.

A bad website hosting company will often lead to many errors including server errors and 404’s. At some cases, you will also get server connectivity issues which means website visitors will have problem trying to access your site.

If you are a freelance website developer, freelance writer or affiliate marketer who uses website to generate leads, you are going to literally cry because you are not getting sales!

I’m using a bad web host! What should I do now?

You are at the cross road and I totally get it. We all make mistakes and the pain is real. You might also feel sad and disappointed with the current web host because they are making you lose business.

If you are looking for a good web hosting service that doesn’t burn a hole in your wallet, Host With me (web hosting for beginners) is a great option to start with. At only $6.99 per month, you are going to get a way much better shared web hosting performance and experience — and I can guarantee you that or 60 days money back guarantee no matter what your reason!

If you are looking for an enterprise web hosting or web hosting for high traffic sites, WP Engine is an excellent choice. The performance, security and support levels provided by WP Engine is best to none that I have tested.
May 4, 2024
WPEngine Hosting Pricing: Is WPEngine worth the money?

May 4, 2024
Server Uptime & Website Availability: How To Avoid Website Going Down?
Do you know that server uptime is important?

A website that is down will lead to many issues, from losing revenue generation stream (if you are selling anything on your site) to losing readers.

As a blogger and affiliate marketer, no one wants to have an inaccessible website. However, do you know that you need to pay attention to your server uptime?

Must Read: The Ultimate Guide in Finding The Best Web Hosting for Small Business

What is server uptime?

Server uptime is considered the time the server is running. When the server is up, your website is accessible and all the good things happen.

Uptime is a computer industry term for the time during which a computer is operational. Downtime is the time when it isn’t operational. Source.

You get website visitors, chance of selling your products online and more importantly, opportunity to make more money online.

Now, let me ask you. Do you know what happens when your website is experiencing downtime?
- No accessible
- Zero or low count in web traffic
- No chance of solving unless someone notices it
- Loss of potential income
More importantly, the feeling of having a website downtime is bad. You are angry, feeling miserable and it certainly felt like having the world crashing down on you (when your primary income generates directly from blogging).

Take a look at the image below.

See the traffic drop (red arrows) which happened to one of my niche site in the month of April 2018.

Few days back, I was trying to understand the reasons for my low earning from this specific site. After going through Google Analytics, I was shocked and angry.

My cheap VPS service failed me big time.

As you can see in the images, there are several downtime experienced which leads to the overall server uptime. In this case, my website was not loading properly and visitors are getting errors.

How to check website availability?

One of the best way to monitor website availability is through ManageWP.

What is ManageWP and What Does It Do?

ManageWP is a WordPress management console (or dashboard) which comes in very handy to those who need to manage more than one WordPress site at a time.

ManageWP is a free to use, website monitoring tool that allows you to monitor not only the server’s uptime but as well as the overall health of your website.

You can easily customize your dashboard setting and it works well with Google Analytics too (which is a huge plus).

While ManageWP is a free tool to check on your server uptime, there are additional options you can go for such as getting real time notification on your website and SEO monitoring which starts at $1 per service.

Change web host to experience better server uptime

You know I’m always a fan of web hosting and working with a web host that cannot guarantee my server uptime is really bad.

The biggest problem when it comes to server uptime and web hosting is that most web host services offer 99% uptime. But do you know that the 1% downtime equals to 87 hours or slightly over 3 days?

Time is money, and I rather pay more money than having my website constantly inaccessible.

Yes, I moved host. Previously, I’m paying around $12 per month for a VPS. I got to admit that it is way better than most shared web hosting services but the downtime is killing me.

Bonus Material: Finding for the best and cheap web hosting services that come with great performance? Read this post.

I went on migrating to the all-time-favorite, FlyWheel.

With FlyWheel, I get:
- checkVPS even for the smallest plan
- checkNo downtime to worry about
- check24/7 support and monitoring from FlyWheel’s team
- checkA server that is optimized for WordPress
- checkGuaranteed server uptime
- checkSecurity issues are no longer a problem for me
The pricing structure for FlyWheel is really good and it is way better than most of managed WordPress hosting services in the market.

Here’s the pricing structure:

My niche site isn’t huge and it is slightly below 5,000 visits in a month. Thus, spending $14 ($2 more than my previous VPS) is a no brainer. More importantly, it is a massive win for me!

FlyWheel Alternative?

WPEngine is the next closest alternative to FlyWheel and WPEngine is often recommended as one of the best managed WordPress hosting for beginners and business owners.

The new pricing package for WPEngine starts at $30 per month and comes with Content Delivery Network (CDN) services to further speed up your site!

Bonus: Spot checking your website uptime

Do you know that you can also check your website uptime on the web?

Here are some sites you can use to check if your website is accessible or down:
Summary: Server Uptime and Website Availability

To recap, website owners need to play more attention on server uptime and monitor the website availability.

Having a website down is bad only for your income streams but also for your brand.
May 4, 2024