Best Shared Hosting

Below are the best web general purpose hosts according to my own selection criteria. If you'd like to learn how I choose the hosts I list please see the Hosting Selection Criteria page.

	Brainhost
	Year Established: 2004
	Uptime Guarantee: 99.9
	Money Back Guarantee: 30 Days
	Support: 24/7/365 Toll Free Phone \| Live Chat \| Ticket System
Comments: No matter which hosting package you choose, you get unlimited disc space, unlimited email accounts, unlimited bandwidth, and an unlimited number of hosted sites. I started using Brainhost recently and find the site to be extremely fast, likely due to start of the art technology and a OC-96 Backbone Connection (400 Gigabits Per Second throughput!). That's monster-sized bandwidth!
Support Check: Was talking to tech support in less than 2 minutes.

	AvaHost
	Year Established: 2001
	Uptime Guarantee: 99%
	Money Back Guarantee: 60 Days
	Support: 24/7/365 Toll Free Phone \| Live Chat \| Ticket System \| Email
Comments: Several hosting plans, reasonable pricing, fast technical support, all the features you need, speedy servers, fully redundant network, six different bandwidth providers, secure data center with 24/7 camera surveillance and armed guard patrol, redundant UPS, generator backup and smoke detection/fire protection systems.
Support Check: Was talking to tech support in about 25 seconds.

	Web Wizards
	Year Established: 1997
	Uptime Guarantee: None
	Money Back Guarantee: 30 Days
	Support: 24/7/365 Toll Free Phone \| Email
Comments: This is a small company that prides themselves on friendly service. They go where many hosts will not, they'll help you install and debug CGI scripts. Their set up includes redundant optical backbone connections, intrusion detection, and daily security updates. No uptime guarantee, but they claim a 99.999% uptime over the last 5 years. Especially recommended for those who like being treated more like family than a number. You can even call and talk to the owner. Web Wizards have an "A" rating from the Better Business Bureau.
Support Check: Immediately connected with support receptionist.

	Liquid Web
	Year Established: 1997
	Uptime Guarantee: 100%
	Money Back Guarantee: 30 Days
	Support: 24/7/365 Toll Free Phone \| Ticket System
Comments: Data center walls are reinforced concrete! connected to the internet using multiple premium Tier-1 bandwidth providers. Motion detection camera system, electronic security, staffed 24/7, UPS, redundant backup generators. Superior support, if you submit a support ticket they guarantee to answer in 30 minutes. Toll free phone is even faster. The list of features doesn't look big, but that's because they don't spell out all the cPanel features like other hosts.
Support Check: Answered on the first ring!

	eBoundHost
	Year Established: 2000
	Uptime Guarantee: 99.97%
	Money Back Guarantee: 90 Days
	Support: 24/7/365 Phone \| Ticket System
Comments: I'll be honest with you, I probably wouldn't consider this company to host my sites because they don't have toll free tech support and don't provide any information about their data center, security, etc., but a very trusted associate of mine swears by them—including the tech support—so I've included them and will let you make up your own mind. Their shared hosting plan looks good but my associate uses their VPS service. (VPS is short for virtual private server)
Support Check: Not tested.

	BlueHost
	Year Established: 1996
	Uptime Guarantee: None
	Money Back Guarantee: 30 Days
	Support: 24/7/365 Toll Free Phone \| Live Chat \| Ticket System
Comments: BlueHost has been a quality host for a long time and feature Quad Processor Performance Servers, 24/7 network monitoring, OC-48 Backbone Connection, UPS power backup and diesel generator backup power. While they don't offer an uptime guarantee, Bluehost is one of the hosts I use personally and haven't had any problems with my sites being down. They offer a ton of features, decent pricing, and very good support.
Support Check: Talked with support in about 15 seconds.

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Want More Choices

Admittedly our recommended lists are pretty short because we only recommend hosts we use. If you want a bigger selection, I've put together a really big list of hosts.

Understand though, that other than the hosts carried over from our recommended lists, we haven't tried the other hosts on this list.

The Big List of Web Hosts

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