If you’re reading this you’re probably one of many people who trust TemplateMonster in all things web design. Which is a right thing to do, we’ve been here for ages and we know the ins and outs of the industry, especially when it comes to websites based on our templates. So, being this kind of an expert we often receive questions from our customers about what hosting provider to go with when using this or that template from TemplateMonster.

Today we’re going to speak just about that – choosing the hosting for your template-based website. I’ll start with a couple of secrets about how we collect the data, so that you would know whether or not our methods are serious enough for you and therefore whether our suggestions are credible.

We have a special person in our support team, his name is Alex Ross (heya Alex, this post is about you! kind of). Alex’s job among other things is to test templates of all types on all major hosting providers. We provide him with an access to the regular hosting accounts from these providers and he installs the templates. After the installation his feedback is documented and we use it to decide what hosting to suggest to our customers. When new versions of CMS platforms or eCommerce engines are being launched (which happens pretty much all the time) he tests these new versions with all these hosting providers and documents the process again. Yeah, he’s a busy bee.

Another method that we use is the metric based on the customers’ feedback and the number hosting-specific problems with templates that the audience reports to our support operators. We have a chart where every hosting provider has its own score and this chart is updated once per month.

So based on data from these two channels, we would like to present you a couple of hosting providers that we would recommend to install our templates to. A lot of other providers are also ok with most of our product types, but we didn’t include them into the post because some major product types either could not be installed on these providers’ servers or the CMS engines have other compatibility issues.

#1. BlueHost

This is truly the #1 choice in all aspects.

Compatibility/technology score: 10 out of 10

The major reason why we can suggest BlueHost is because of its great compatibility with all of our templates and engines that these templates are built for. The installations go seamlessly and the websites run smoothly. All of the additional uncommon features required for some of our products (such as Zend Optimizer/Zend Guard Loader and the latest versions of PHP) are fully available on demand.

In addition to being perfectly compatible with the platforms that our templates are built for, BlueHost hosting also supports a whole lot of other technical solutions that are very useful for website owners these days.

One little note here though: BlueHost’s regular shared hosting plan isn’t exactly a good fit for Magento engine which requires VPS hosting or a dedicated server, so there’s just nothing that BlueHost can do about it. From our sources at their company we know they’re about to launch a VPS solution really soon.

Price score: 10 out of 10

With $4.95/mo price tag for this kind of premium hosting BlueHost leaves competitors behind. One important thing to note here is that this price is available for customers buying the hosting plan for 3 years upfront, but for TemplateMonster audience this price magically becomes $3.95/mo. The same goes with other durations – whatever commitment you choose to go for, following TemplateMonster’s referral link makes it $1/mo cheaper than the rest of the world pays. Plus, the free domain name registration is included into the plan.

From our customers we’ve learnt that price is a major factor for them and that is one more reason why BlueHost is on #1 spot in our list.

Support Score: 10 out of 10

This score is based on the fact that none of the customers that we’ve recommended BlueHost to has reported any support-related problems. Plus, we’ve been using BlueHost hosting ourselves and have addressed their support, so we know they do reply fast and solve problems right away.

What’s also important is that we at TemplateMonster personally know some people working at BlueHost, and they’re really great guys taking customer experience really seriously.

Overall score: 10 out of 10

So in case you’re looking for an affordable hosting for your next web project we highly recommend going with BlueHost and joining their multi-million army of happy clients, you won’t regret it. In case you want to purchase it right now at a special price, please feel free to use the special link and click the banner below.

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#2. HostGator

Compatibility/technology score: 10 out of 10

In terms of technical background and compatibility, HostGator is just as good as BlueHost. It’s also compatible with all of our products, the installation of these products and respective CMS platforms is also smooth.

And just as BlueHost, HostGator also easily switches on the additional features required for some of our products.

Additionally, HostGator already does have VPS and dedicated server solutions available that are recommended for Magento.

Price score: 9 out of 10

The cheapest shared hosting plan on Hostgator (the Hatchling plan) starts at $3.96/mo in case of a 36-months commitment – about the same rate as the plan from BlueHost for TemplateMonster audience (except you don’t need to click TemplateMonster’s link for it). But the tricky part is that for this price you will get a basic plan which – unlike the respective BlueHost plan – doesn’t allow unlimited domains. But it’s actually not that much of a big deal in most cases.

Oh, and speaking of the domains – the shared hosting plans on HostGator do not include a free domain name registration like BlueHost does. So the regular .com domain on HostGator will cost you $15. That’s why its score in this category is 9 out of 10.

Support Score: 9 out of 10

As in case with BlueHost, none of our clients has ever reported any difficulties with HostGator support. The only reason why this score is not 10 out of 10 is because we ourselves have experienced difficulties once or twice, it was with the VPS support. Other than that it seems to be a pretty good support.

Overall score: 9.3 out of 10

Also a very good hosting that we can definitely recommend to choose for website projects that are either based on one of our templates or anything else. This is a reliable solution backed by one of the world’s most popular providers.

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Of course there are many more other hosting providers, but these ones are on the top of our list of the most popular ones. We’re not making it a big secret that the links you see in this post are referral links and we get rewarded for the referrals we send. But this doesn’t mean that what we’ve said before is not true – Alex Ross is a real person who really does test the hosting compatibility and we really do have hosting score charts.

Also, we’d love to know your opinion about these hosting providers if this opinion is different from ours (or even if it’s not). What hosting do you currently use – VPS or shared? What’s your provider of choice? Please share your thoughts!

Written by Alex Flow

Alex has been a columnist for TemplateMonster since early 2007 and he is now happy to share his extensive experience from our awesome blog.

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