The Great List of Shared Web Hosting Providers

Posted on 10 March 2012

Confused on which web hosting provider to choose for your domain? Want to host your first website or forum but don’t know where to start? Can’t make up your mind having seen all the glowing reviews from fake “top 10 hosting” sites that look very similar to one another?

Years of participation in webhostingtalk forums as a neutral observer does give one a very good idea of a select few hosting companies to go with. Some details before hand : -

This list is a compilation from the massive archive that is webhostingtalk.com, saves you from wading through thousands of topics. Listed are hosts which I consider safe to use based on their reviews, popularity and attitude of staff members. This does not mean I have first hand experience with all of the hosts.
Hosts are sorted in the order of ascending budget (at least to the best of my sorting capabilities =p)
Budget column is a suggested price point (higher price usually means you can host more resource demanding sites) . Respective hosts may have cheaper hosting plans, especially when coupons are used.
ALL links in this list are clean without any affiliate links, neither are there any cookie stuffing like other malicious review sites. However if you find this list helpful and wish to help, use the affiliate banners on the right sidebar of the site.
If you find a missing or incorrect field, do drop a line and I’ll be sure to make appropriate changes!

Without further ado, I present to you the Great List of Shared Web Hosting!

Host (Start Year)	Budget	Target Region	Control Panel	Comments
Tsohost (2003)	£2.99 Pricing	UK	cPanel	Generally good reviews all around.Appears to be the only budget UK provider (packages start at £1.20/mo) that isn’t a fly by night host.
Hawkhost (2004)	$3.95 ($2.60 w/ coupon) Pricing	USA, Asia	cPanel	Cheaper alternative to Hostgator.Medium sized company with several staff members.Seattle or Texas location has good pings to Asia. Good for hosting personal or small websites.
Totalchoicehosting (2003)	$4 Pricing	USA	cPanel	Somewhat low profile, but large community and respectable fleet of servers.Plenty of satisfied long term clients in company forum.
powerMonster (2007)	$5 ($2.50 w/ coupon) Pricing	USA, Asia	Directadmin cPanel	Friendly and helpful support service.LA server (WebNX datacenter) has excellent connectivity to Asia.The only safe choice for a Directadmin host with a budget of $2.5/mo (with lifetime discount coupon)
Ipserverone (2003)	$5 Pricing	Asia	Directadmin Plesk	Likely the only host worth considering in the south east Asia region.Hosts some of the largest websites in Asia.
Innohosting (2003)	$7 Pricing	USA, UK	cPanel	Seems to be the most popular provider for resellers. Many companies used Innohosting before renting their own servers.Shared hosting equally good, but somewhat pricey.Toll free numbers for UK and US clients.
Medialayer (2005)	$9.95 (30% off w/ coupon and annual payment) Pricing	USA, Asia	Directadmin (Customized skin + secured access)	Best directadmin host around.Pricey but undersold nodes coupled with their hardware setup deliver quick loading sites.Top notch support.LA location great for hosting sites with Asian visitors. Good for medium sized sites (e.g heavy mysql usage).
Hostgator (2002)	$9.95 (search for 20% off coupon) Pricing	USA	cPanel	Safest choice for most people. The largest hosting provider at time of writing.Generally good reviews and fast helpful customer support. CEO himself steps to make exceptions for customers.The only overselling provider that knows how to manage “Unlimited” plans.Can get away with using massive amount of bandwidth (e.g sites serving legal videos etc) for cheap.
Rochen (2000)	$12 Pricing	USA, UK	cPanel	Servers well specced.Expensive considering its small resource allocation but solid hosting for sites requiring excellent uptime.
Downtownhost (2001)	$15.95 Pricing	USA	cPanel	Plans get significantly cheaper with longer payment terms.CEO active in WHT forums.Offers semi dedicated hosting as well.Good reviews generally, but few reviews considering the size of the company which is also a good indication. Happy customers tend to shy away from posting reviews for some reason.
Kualo (1999)	£9.95 Pricing	UK, USA	cPanel	Lots of happy customers in their forum although some testimonials are dated.Offers SSH access as well as free shared SSL.No indication if their expensive plans can take heavy sites but seems like a few big sites are hosted with them.
Pair (1996)	$19.95-80.00 Pricing High Volume Pricing	USA	cPanel	Long standing host.Expensive with very little resource allocation but widely known to be a good provider.Personally think its too pricey for what it offers but many huge sites use Pair, so they are probably great for uptime critical sites (e.g company website).SSH access provided.