When it comes to hosting solutions many clients are confused due to the multitude of offerings. Isotropic Design recommends several different hosts for different needs and requirements. The following is a list of the hosts that we recommend our clients use, a collection of pros and cons, pricing, recommended plans and suggested use cases. If you'd like to figure out what solution is the best for your needs feel free to reach out. Some of the links in this article are Agency Links which offer you discounts and us commission - win win for both parties!

- Small Businesses

Bluehost - Choice Plus ($6/month)

Pros

• Low cost
• Unlimited storage
• Great for email 

Cons

• Speed

We use Bluehost with about 70% of our projects because of their cost to features ratio. We recommend the Choice Plus plan, which offers unlimited storage and a host of security tools. The backend interface is easy to use, even for non technical clients, and the email interface is simple - something important to think about if you're going to manage multiple email accounts. This is shared hosting which is enough for most small business needs.

- Small Businesses

Siteground - GrowBig ($20/month)

Pros

• Speedy 

Cons

• Not unlimited storage
• Higher cost

If you're worried about speed, Siteground is a bit quicker than Bluehost, but costs significantly more. For the price increase, you get faster loading speeds (in our experience this ends up being about 0.5 seconds quicker) but limited storage. Unless you're extremely worried about loading times, we recommend Bluehost, but have included Siteground as an alternative option for small businesses. This is also shared hosting. 

- Scalable Needs

AWS Lightsale ($20-40/month)

Pros

• Super fast
• Very secure
• Amazing support

Cons

• Complicated, requires a developer to set up and manage

Lightsale is a cloud service offered by Amazon Web Services, which can be configured to host WordPress-based websites. Because it's built ontop of the the AWS servers, it's super quick and able to scale quickly and efficiently. For example, if your traffic spikes 400% in a matter of days, the service will dynamically adapt to this (and charge you more). There are other services, but this is the most cost effective we've found.

We're looking to incorporate this service into more client sites if we're able to develop a simple management interface, and will keep client updated on our progress. At this time, we can only recommend this host to those with specific, scaleable needs.

- VPS

Inmotion - VPS-2000HA-S ($35/month)

Pros

• Super fast
• Very secure
• cPanel

Cons

• High monthly cost
• Service type not usually needed

If clients need a VPS (typically they don't) InMotion offers the best service for the price. For our customers, needing a VPS solution is rare, but on the occasion that we need to use that type of host, we use InMotion. 

- Demanding Needs

WPEngine

Pros

• Super fast
• Very secure
• Amazing support

Cons

• High monthly cost
• Limiting payment/feature tiers

WPEngine is hands down the best host we've worked with in all aspects. The service is fast and secure, support is the best in the industry, and the company has solutions for all types of clients. We'll recommend this for companies with high performance requirement: if you get 10,000+visitors a day, then this is for you. however, these need only apply to a select group of our clients. For most, who are small businesses the first two options offer the best value. 

WPEngine offers plans for small businesses, but in our opinion these are overpriced for what you're getting. 

If you're a current Isotropic client, feel free to reach out and discuss potential hosting options. If you're a prior client, we offer no-cost host consulting services to determine if your host still is the best fit for your current needs. 

Visitors should also feel free to reach out, we're happy to speak about hosting solutions, potential projects and more through Isotropic Consulting. 

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