As a web designer, I get asked daily for web hosting recommendations. While there are literally thousands of web hosting companies that provide excellent service, great uptime and have knowledgeable tech support, I have compiled a list of 13 hosting companies that either I use personally, have clients using or trusted associates recommend. These are companies I recommend if you are looking for hosting for your blog, small to medium size business site, online store or community.

Most of these sites feature two things - cPanel and Fantastico - both of which are requirements for ease of use in my book. cPanel is easy to navigate and loaded with features allowing you to easily check stats, set up email, create database, password protect directories, and more. Fantastico offers the fastest and most straight forward installs for more than 20 of our favorite Open Source programs and scripts like WordPress, phpBB, ZenCart, Galleries, and other utilities. For the average website owner or blogger, these features cut down on a lot of tech support/webmaster support time.

In alphabetical order the web hosting companies I recommend are: (more…)