What is an IP address?

Getting online is generally very easy these days. There's no real need for any technical expertise, just turn on your device and you're typically connected right away.

If you're not a networking geek, this simplicity will probably appeal, as it means you're not forced to get involved with low-level details like protocols, packets and ports.

But it does pay to learn more about a few networking concepts, and the IP address comes top of the list. Although it involves exploring a few technical ideas, there's nothing that even the greenest of network novices won't be able to figure out. And once you do have that basic understanding, you'll find new ways to improve your privacy and security, as well as being better able to troubleshoot any connection problems you might have in future.

Definitions

The internet is a huge network of devices, ranging from the routers, PCs, mobiles and tablets you might have in your home, to the web servers and top-of-the-range computing powerhouses used by big business.

Whenever any device goes online, it's allocated a public IP address. The standard type (also known as an IPv4 address) of public address is four numbers separated by periods, where the first number is usually between 1 and 191, and the remaining three are between 0 and 255, like:

81.151.203.58

A second type of address format, called IPv6, might look something like:

2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1

The IP address is vital because it tells everything else on the internet where you are, and allows you to communicate.

When you enter Google.com in your browser, for instance, your system uses a Domain Name Server to translate that domain to a public IP address like 216.58.213.100. Your browser then sends a request for the Google search page, with your own IP address attached, and Google uses your address to send the page back. None of this would be possible without sharing addresses.

IP addresses aren't just for the internet. If you connect your device to a router at home, it’s assigned a private IP address, usually starting with 192.168. This allows you to communicate with other devices on your network, perhaps sending information through the router, or sharing resources like files, folders or a printer.

Finding your public IP address

There are many ways to find out your public IP address.

Type 'what is my ip' into Google, for instance, and the site displays your public IP.

Point your browser at the website whatismyip.com and you'll find both your public and (probably) private IP addresses.

Developers use special geolocation services to discover the IP address of a device and find out more about it. Regular users don't need to understand that kind of complexity, or even know it exists, but one or two of these services can make everyone’s life a little easier.

Enter api.ipify.org in your browser, for instance, and you'll see a plain text display of your IP address, and nothing else at all. This is intended to make it easier for an app to extract that data, but there's nothing stopping anyone else using it, and the site is probably the simplest and quickest way to find your public IP address.

Keep in mind that your public IP address might change depending on how you're getting online (via a mobile network, public Wi-Fi, a home broadband connection, something else), and it could change again when you reconnect to a network.

To test this with home broadband, use whatismyip.com to check your current public address, then turn your router on and off, wait for it to reconnect to the internet, and try whatismyip.com again.

IP address lookup services

Here’s a handy list of 10 of the best websites you can use to find out your IP address (starting with the option we’ve just mentioned):


What Is My IP: This clear and simple site displays your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, your location and ISP. Nothing too technical and no ads at all.

What Is My IP Address: An easy way to find your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. It displays what it thinks is your location on a map, too, but this isn't always accurate.

IP Address Guide: View your IP address and run other technical tools (ping, traceroute, IP address conversions) with a click. Handy for experienced users.

IP2Location: Launch the site and click 'Try Demo' to see your IP address, location, ISP, and a stack of other low-level details (net speed, proxies, and more).

IP Address Locator: Point your browser here and you'll not only see your current IP address and location, but the distance to nearby cities, too.

IPLocation: No hassles, no complications, just a simple display of your IP and location, and a Search box where you can locate other IPs in seconds.

IP Address Info: This site displays your IPv4 address on the front page, and has links to a host of other web tools where you can find out more.

IP Fingerprints: Your IP address and a map showing your location are displayed on the front page, and other technical tests are available from website menus.

Info Sniper: This service is aimed at developers, but anyone can use Info Sniper to check their own IP, and it makes the best use of a map to display your location.

Find IP Address: A quick way to view your IP address, location, and other details your browser might be giving away (browser version, operating system, language).

Finding your private IP address


Finding your private IP address

Your private IP address identifies your device on the local network only, which makes it a little less interesting than the public address. But if you're trying to figure out a network issue, or having problems sharing resources, it can be useful to track it down. And, fortunately, Windows now has several ways to help you do this. Here are three.

1. Press the Ctrl + Esc + Left Shift keys together to launch Task Manager. Click More Details if you see it, then click the Performance tab and choose the active network adapter in the left-hand pane (it'll probably have a graph showing recent data transfers). Your private IP address is displayed on the right.

2. Click the network icon in your system tray, then the network you're connected to. Click the network name again in the window that appears, and Windows should display its private IPv4 address.

3. Click Start, type cmd and click Command Prompt to open a command line, then type ipconfig in there and press Enter. The command will list all your network adapters, probably only one of which is connected, and the IPv4 address you see is the one you need.

Potential dangers of your IP

The IP address system is great for helping you communicate online, but it also has some issues, particularly in terms of your privacy.

That's because whenever you access a website, send a message, or use any other web resource, you must provide your IP in order to get a reply, and that service can then use your address to find out more about you.

A public IP address like 81.151.203.137 isn't just some random number, for example. A website can look that up and perhaps see your ISP, your company if you're connecting from work, your country, maybe even your nearest city.

Your IP address could remain the same for a very long time, too, and in some cases it may never change. That allows websites to record your IP when you first visit, recognize it when you return, and build up a record of what you're doing over time, even if you don't register or sign in.

This isn't just about privacy; there are practical issues, too. Ever visited YouTube or some other streaming site and been told that content isn't available in your region, for instance? The website has probably used your IP address to find out where you are, and then locked you out if you're not in an approved country.

To discover what a website can find out from your IP address, visit iplocation.net. The site tries four different geolocation services to discover your country, ISP and nearest city. Geolocation isn't an exact science, and we found these four services each displayed different cities for our IP address. But one service did get it right, and if that website also had our name, that could allow it to identify our real-world address.

NordVPN


Changing your IP address

Although your public IP address will always give away some information about you, there's an easy way to reduce the chance of any issues: you can change it for another.

One option is to access the internet via a different network. If you're on your phone and connecting via home Wi-Fi, for instance, switch to your mobile provider's network and you'll have a different IP.

Depending on your setup, you might get a new public IP address if you restart your device, close your connection and reopen it, or when you're at home, turn your router off and on again. (There are no guarantees, though, so use a site like What Is My IP – or one of the others we highlighted above – to check your address before and after restarting).

If that doesn't work, you can use Tor (The Onion Router) network. When you connect to the Internet via Tor, your Internet traffic is encrypted and routed through any of the network's worldwide machines or nodes. Websites will only be able to see the IP address of the last Tor node, effectively changing your IP address and rendering you anonymous. You can download the Tor browser to connect to the Tor network for free.

Remember however that Tor does have some drawbacks. For instance, you’ll notice that browsing the web is considerably slower than outside the Tor network. That’s because before it reaches the website, your request is bounced across several nodes all over the world. This makes Tor unsuitable for a variety of uses like streaming and gaming. You should also note that Tor is often used by criminals to access the darknet, which is why several websites block connections coming in from publicly known Tor nodes.

Use a VPN

All things considered, perhaps the most effective way to change your digital identity is to sign up for a VPN (Virtual Private Network), a service which allows you to replace your old IP with a shiny new one, whenever you like.

Most VPNs give you a choice of IPs from 20 or more countries around the world, allowing you to appear as though you're in the US, UK, Asia, or wherever else you need to be. If you can't access US-only web content because you're somewhere else in the world, getting a US IP address from a VPN might be enough to get you in.

There's another massive benefit in that the VPN securely encrypts your connection to protect it from snoopers. If you're accessing the internet via public Wi-Fi, this makes it very difficult for hackers to monitor your traffic, steal usernames, passwords and other personal details.

If that sounds appealing, sign up for a free VPN or two and check out how they work. It's generally very easy – install an app, choose your IP address country and click Connect – and we've got a list of the best free VPNs to help you choose a good one.

However, bear in mind that free VPNs can be slow, and often have limits on the amount of data you can use every month. There are plenty of top-quality commercial services around, though, some priced at under $3 a month: check out our favorites in terms of paid offerings in our best VPN roundup. 

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Best green web hosting of 2019

Choosing a web hosting company typically involves weighing up many factors, such as price, features, support, reputation and more. The environmental impact of a web host probably won't rank high on most people's priority lists, if they think about it at all – but that could be a mistake.

Web hosting is very energy-intensive. Data centers may have tens of thousands of high-powered computers, most of these with permanently high CPU and drive usage, generating so much heat that the provider will usually need a massive cooling system to keep temperatures manageable.

The math can be surprising. Web Neutral Project founder Jack Amend calculates that powering the average website produces 4,500 pounds of CO2 a year, equivalent to driving the average new car for more than 10,000 miles. We're not quite sure what ‘average’ means in that context, but whatever the precise details, the message is clear: hosting has a very real environmental impact, and it's much more significant than you might think.

Green web hosting companies try to address this issue by investing in some form of carbon offsetting scheme, so that for every unit of energy they use, they pay to generate the same amount of energy (or sometimes more) from renewables, and pump that into the grid. This doesn't negate their environmental impact entirely – building and disposing of all those computers produces issues of its own – but it does at least mean that your individual website isn't adding to the problem.

Going green does tend to have some hosting consequences, in particular with the price: it's often a little higher than the competition. That's no surprise when a company is paying a second energy bill to generate renewable power, though, and the extra cost usually isn't significant. Check out our pick of the green hosting crop to find out more.


Founded in California back in 2008, GreenGeeks now proudly claims to be the ‘world's #1 green energy web hosting provider’, not surprising given that it is dedicated entirely to green causes.

That's a big statement, but there is some substance behind it. The company doesn't just say that its platform has been designed for maximum energy efficiency, it also promises that "for every amperage we pull from the grid, we invest three times that in the form of renewable energy via Bonneville Environmental Foundation." So in theory at least, your hosting isn't just carbon-neutral, it's carbon-reducing.

GreenGeeks' hosting range isn't quite as impressive. There are the usual set of plans – shared products, application hosting, VPS, dedicated – but there isn't much choice, and what you do get is mostly very average.

There is one exception in GreenGeeks powerful shared hosting plan. This offers unlimited websites, emails, databases, web space and bandwidth, and throws in a free domain, shared SSL, Cloudflare CDN integration, nightly backups, the Softaculous one-click app installer, a simple website builder and support via email, chat and telephone.

Pay for three years upfront and you can get everything for an equivalent $2.95 (£2.2) per month – $9.95 (£7.10) on renewal – and a 30-day money-back guarantee represents a risk-free way to test the service for yourself. It's a good deal, and shows that green hosting isn't just about making eco-friendly gestures: you can find some capable products, too.

Despite the increasing interest in green hosting, many providers do little to flag up their eco-friendly credentials. The DreamHost website doesn't talk about the issue on its front page, there's no clear link or green 'energy saving' logo, or indeed no sign that the company is thinking about this at all. But dig a little deeper and you'll find the reality is very different.

DreamHost says its data centers are powered by grids that obtain electricity from many renewable sources, for instance. It's a partner in state-level 'clean wind' programmes. Cooling systems are designed for efficiency, and the evaporative cooling plants use both municipal and reclaimed water.

The company offices are LEED Platinum and EnergyStar-certified. Optimized heating, ventilation and air conditioning plants keep energy demand down all year round, and the working environment is designed with sustainability in mind: recycling bins everywhere, electronic forms to reduce paper usage, disposable cups and plates replaced by ceramic, financial incentives to use public transportation and work-from-home policies to keep some people off the roads entirely.

All this environmentally-friendly infrastructure powers a good-looking range of highly specified and fairly-priced products. Shared hosting gives you unlimited everything from $5.95 (£5.70) a month on a 3-year plan (renews at $7.95 a month). Fully managed VPS hosting starts from $13.75(£10.45) a month, and the list goes on.

DreamHost has its issues, too – in our review, we weren't impressed by the non-standard hosting panel, and found support response times could be slow – but it's still a decent host in many areas, and an exceptional 97-day money-back guarantee shows just how confident the company is in its service.

Green web hosts make all kinds of claims about their eco-friendliness, but it's not always easy to figure out what these mean. A provider might say it's using an energy-efficient cooling system, for instance, but how does that compare to the rest of the industry, and what could the savings be, if any? There's no way to tell.

iPage sidesteps this problem by avoiding the usual vague chat, and instead presents a clear and definitive green policy in a single sentence: "For every KWH of energy that iPage uses, the company purchases Renewable Energy Certificates to offset that amount with wind energy by 200%!"

Simple, straightforward, and it outperforms most claimed carbon-neutral providers by offsetting twice its energy usage (although GreenGeeks manages 300%).

iPage's hosting products also have plenty of appeal. Prices are sometimes a fraction higher than the competition, but there some excellent introductory deals – three years feature-packed shared hosting for $1.99 (£1.50) a month, renewal at $8 (£6) – and a range that also includes managed WordPress, capable VPS plans and powerful dedicated servers. Well worth a browse for demanding users who are more interested in functionality than getting the lowest possible price.


A2 Hosting is another provider that doesn't boast about its green credentials. There's not a word about the topic on its website's front page, and unless you're in the habit of browsing web host 'About' pages you might never know anything about A2’s green-friendly aspects.

This is a little surprising, because in reality A2 Hosting has more to boast about than many providers. This starts with a Carbonfund.org energy offset scheme which has allowed the company to be effectively carbon-neutral since 2007. This isn't just about buying energy from wind farms: Carbonfund.org also works on reforestation and promoting energy efficiency in many other areas.

A2 highlights some of its green hosting practices, too, covering everything from using coffee mugs instead of disposables, to allowing telecommuting for its staff as much as possible.

Whatever you think of its environmental attitudes, A2 Hosting's plans have a lot of appeal. Starting prices are a little higher than some, but that's mostly because the company is focused on delivering power and functionality, rather than barebones products which only exist to create a low headline price.

Even the most basic shared hosting account gets free site migration, for instance. Not to mention Let's Encrypt SSL, Cloudflare CDN integration, and regular virus scanning. Oh, and performance-boosting AnyCast DNS. You don't just get one-click installs for WordPress, PrestaShop and others: A2 gives you optimized performance settings, too. And there are data centers in the US, EU and Asia. Not bad at all for a starting price of $3.92 (£3) a month, rising to $7.99 (£6) on renewal.

HostPapa was one of the first hosting companies to commit to going green, and we're not just talking vague claims about energy-efficient data centers: it's making real and significant promises.

The company explains that it "purchases ‘green energy tags’ or certificates from a certified green energy supplier. That supplier calculates the total energy consumption of our operation and uses their suppliers of green energy to pump in 100% equivalent energy back into the power grid."

Essentially, although HostPapa's operations aren't directly powered by green energy, it purchases the equivalent amount from green providers, a carbon offsetting system which balances out emissions overall.

HostPapa's products include shared hosting, managed WordPress and a website builder. Prices are a little higher than the competition, but individual plans could appeal in other ways. Even simple shared plans offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space (although Starter plan has 100GB disk space), for instance. And although there's no dedicated hosting, the company has some monster VPS packages, with the high-end Extreme plan giving you 12 CPU cores, 24GB RAM, 1TB storage and 8TB bandwidth for $299 (£215) a month (first month is $249.99).

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best domain registrars in 2020

Every great website needs a snappy, memorable domain name. Coming up with something new is a serious challenge, but once inspiration strikes, you'll need to register that name with a domain name registrar before you can use it online.

Registration isn't difficult, but first you must choose from the hundreds of companies competing for your business, and there are several things for you to consider before signing the virtual dotted line.

How to choose the perfect domain registrar

  • Pricing structures can be complicated. A low headline figure could become expensive on renewal, for instance. Prices vary between domain extensions, too, so a registrar that offers great value for a .com domain might give you a poor deal on when it comes to .org.
  • There may be extra costs for tasks like transferring your domain to another registrar, too. Read the small print before you sign up.
  • Look for any bundled or optional extras. A Whois privacy service prevents your address, phone number and email address appearing as public contact details for the domain, something which could otherwise get you a significant amount of spam email and phone calls. We've seen this cost as much as $11.20 a year, but several registrars provide it for free.
  • Many domain registrars offer hosting as an extra, but keep in mind that web hosting companies can also register domains. If you have an idea of which web host you'd like to use, check the details of its plans: you may be able to register a domain for free when you buy hosting, and that's often the cheapest option.
  • Finally, take a look at the support a registrar offers. You may never need any help at all, but if anything critical crops up – maybe an issue which might cause a problem with renewal – it's important that your provider is on hand to ably assist. 
  • Balancing all these priorities can be tricky, so that's why we've created this list of top domain registrars to help point you in the right direction. 


With a name like Domain.com, the EIG-owned brand, means business, focusing primarily on small and medium businesses. It offers most popular top level domains and over 25 country code top level domains and also sells premium domains as a broker.

With nearly two decades of online presence, the company - which is one of the world’s biggest domain name registrars - expanded in web hosting and now ranges a number of products including a website builder, a full design service and web hosting.

Domain.com prices tend to be average but we have managed to blag a 25% discount off almost everything in your cart*. Non-premium TLD (.Biz, .Men, .Win etc) start from $2.99 for the first year ($2.24 with our code). In line with the rest of the industry, they rise significantly after the second year).

You need to pay for privacy protection, a reasonable $6.99, plus you can add email, web hosting, SSL certificates and malware protection, none of which is compulsory. You can stick with its basic website builder which is free with every domain: you get a drag and drop website builder, tons of mobile-friendly templates, up to six pages, SEO tools, Paypal integration and even access to stock image library.

Support is more than adequate with 24/7 chat, email and phone support. Domain.com may not have the cheapest prices but it provides with a very balanced offering.

*All renewals after the initial discounted period will be charged at the then current standard list price for the selected period. Coupon is not valid with sunrise registrations, landrush registrations, EAP registrations, pre-registrations, premium registrations, renewals, transfers, custom website design, other coupons, or special pricing.


Web giant GoDaddy is the world's biggest domain registrar, currently managing more than 75 million domains for 17 million customers around the globe.

The company is well-known for its low headline prices, and it's the same story here, for instance,  .mobi domain is available for $7.17 in year one. On the other hand .com and .org are less impressive (though still apparently cheap) starting at $12.17 and $9.17 respectively. Beware, though: these aren't the bargains they initially seem.

The first catch is that GoDaddy's starting prices only apply if you pay for two years upfront, and the second year is significantly more expensive (.com rises to $18.17, .uk and .co.uk domains are $12, .co, .org and .mobi are ridiculously high, $34.99 for .co, $21.17 for .org and $29.17 for .mobi. 

The second problem is that there are no bundled extras, so adding something like Whois privacy – a valuable service often included for free with other providers – costs $8 a month for year one, and $10 on renewal.

There's clearly much better value to be had elsewhere, but GoDaddy may still appeal to web beginners looking for a bundled hosting and domain registration deal. The company has an array of products covering every possible requirement, with telephone support if you need it, and buying your domain and hosting from the same provider will make life a little easier.

Just keep in mind that other providers can also combine hosting and domain registration, and GoDaddy may not provide the best package for you. Check out our various hosting guides for possible alternatives.

Hover is a popular domain name registrar owned by Tucows, which also operates eNom and the domain reselling platform OpenSRS.

Hover's website is clear and straightforward. A domain pricing page allows for checking registration costs before you start, or you can use the search box to immediately locate your preferred TLD (top-level domain).

By default the results page displays every domain you can register and their prices, giving you a lot to scroll through and read. But a handy sidebar allows filtering domains by categories including Personal, Businesses, Audio and Video, Food and Drink, and more. It's a neat touch which could help you spot an appealing domain that you otherwise might have missed.

Prices are very reasonable, with .com domains costing $12.99 for year one, .co.uk priced at $10.99, .org costing $13.99 and .mobi reaching $19.99. Shop around and you'll find slightly lower prices elsewhere, but Hover generally provides good value.

There's a welcome bonus in Whois Privacy, which comes free for as long as the domain is managed by Hover.

The company keeps upselling to a minimum, even in the final shopping cart stage. You're simply offered three email-related extras: email forwarding at $5 a year, a 10GB email account for $20, or you can opt for a 1TB inbox, file sharing, a calendar and more, for an annual $29.

If you have any questions, support is available via email and chat, although it's not 24/7. Working hours are 8am to 8pm (Eastern Time) Monday to Friday, and 12pm to 5pm at the weekend.

Most domain name registrars offer a simple identikit service with little to separate them from the competition, but Dynadot is an interesting exception which has some unusual advantages.

This starts right at the beginning, with your initial search. You can use the website much like any other – type your preferred domain, press Enter, read the results – but you also get Bulk and IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) search tools, and advanced options allow defining which domain extensions to include in your searches, as well as setting those as defaults for all future searches.

These searches can optionally return results from domain auctions, Dynadot's Marketplace (where other customers sell domains they no longer need) and other sources. There's also a Backorder option to try and grab a domain that isn't currently available, if it's not renewed.

Prices are on the low side, with Dynadot offering both special deals on some extensions and good value at renewal. For instance, .com sites have the same initial and renewal price at $8.99. If you’re after a .co.uk domain, that’ll set you back $6.95, .org is $7.99 initially, $10.99 on renewal, and .mobi domains are $5.99 initially, $17.99 on renewal.

That's just the start: Dynadot also piles on the free extras. A Website Builder allows you to build and host a simple one-page responsive website. There's free domain forwarding if you'd like to redirect visitors somewhere else. DNS support allows creating 50 subdomain records, 10 email addresses, and 5 each of MX and TXT records. There's even a Grace Deletion list which allows returning a domain if you change your mind.

This requires a small fee and won't always be allowed (the details on how it works are here), but it's still a welcome extra you'll rarely find with other registrars.

Dynadot's support wasn't always as impressive, with live chat being offline when we checked. But the website does have a publicly available forum, allowing anyone to browse common questions and see how happy (or otherwise) Dynadot's customers might be.


Founded in 2000, Namecheap is a popular domain name registrar and web host which now manages more than five million domains.

Namecheap's excellent website allows searching for individual domains, or in batches of up to 50.

If the domain is taken, you can view the Whois record or offer to buy the domain (via DomainAgents) from the current user.

If the domain is available, results are displayed across four tabs: Popular, New, Discounted and International. This is a neat approach which makes it easier to browse the list and find what you need.

Prices are generally very good at $8.88 (£6.8) for .com domains - $12.98 on renewal, $6.88(£5.6) for .co.uk - $8.58 on renewal, $12.98 (£9.3) for .org - $14.98 on renewal, and $3.88 (£3.15) for .mobi ($17.98 on renewal). There are some special deals available, and Namecheap has an Agent 88 set of domains which are almost always available at $0.48 (£0.35) for the first year (these usually include the following: .site .website .space .pw .press .host .tech .online and .fun – but there may be others as well).

That would be good value all on its own, but Namecheap doesn’t stop there: you get WhoisGuard domain privacy thrown in for free.

Namecheap's billing is straightforward and honest, with current and renewal prices clearly described in your Namecheap shopping cart, and Auto-Renew turned off. But if there's something you don't understand, helpful FAQ pages and live chat are just a click or two away.

Shopping around for a domain registrar can involve a lot of hassle as you research companies you've never heard of, try to separate genuine bargains from marketing tricks, and browse the small print looking for hidden catches. With potential savings only amounting to a few pounds or dollars a year, at best, you might prefer to simply sign up with a big-name provider that you know will give you a reasonable service, even if it does cost a fraction more.

Enter Google Domains, Google's lightweight domain registration arm, a straightforward provider that puts speed and simplicity at the top of its priority list.

Google Domains doesn't confuse you with endless sales, or 'special' deals that turn out to be not so special after all. Upselling is kept to a minimum. Instead, it's all about making the purchase process as easy as any other online shopping site: search, click, and check out.

The difference is obvious from the moment you reach the site. There are no animated ads at the top of the page, no 'Sale!' banners, no low headline prices: just a search box where you enter a single domain.

The results page is equally straightforward, with prices listed for nine common top-level domains, and an All Endings tab listing every option in alphabetical order (domain.academy, domain.bargains, domain.camera).

One potential problem is that Google Domains doesn't support all the domain extensions you'll get elsewhere, and this includes some quite common examples (.mobi, .tv). If you think you might ever want to buy something beyond the most popular extensions, it’s a good idea to check that your likely choices are available before you buy.

Prices are standardized to whole numbers, so for example .com, .co.uk and .org domains are all priced at $12. That's a little above average overall, but better than some, especially as Google Domains throws in free Whois privacy for as long as you're registered. That's a valuable extra which could cost $2.80 to $11.20 a year elsewhere.

If you do have any questions, a Help link displays articles on common problems. If that's not enough, the Contact Us page enables talking to a support agent by email, live chat or telephone (Google calls you), the highest level of domain registrar support we've seen anywhere.

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Best managed web hosting services of 2019

You've designed a great website, found a quality web hosting package and got your creation online. That's great, but don't relax just yet; there's plenty more to do.

Maintaining your website involves a lot of work. You'll need to monitor it to make sure it's online and working normally.

Web apps like WordPress (and any other software you install) must be updated when patches appear, and you'll have to test these updates to confirm they're working (that gave rise to managed WordPress hosting providers). Then, as the site grows, you might have to work to troubleshoot it, find and fix odd problems, or optimize it for better performance.

Managed hosting packages try to simplify your life by taking on many of these tasks. Automatic system monitoring enables providers to detect and fix many common problems before you've realized anything has happened. The support team may install and update all software for you, sometimes testing updates first to look for problems. The best hosts go even further, offering expert advice to help you fix, optimize and maintain your site.

This kind of premium support usually comes at a premium price, but if speed and reliability are top of your priority list, managed hosting could be worth the extra cost. Browse our list of five top managed hosting providers to find out what they can do.

Managed hosting can be expensive – very, very expensive, sometimes – but look carefully and you'll find some worthwhile exceptions.

HostPapa's VPS packages all include managed hosting as standard, for instance. They're still not exactly cheap, but the baseline Plus plan has a decent feature set – 1.5GB RAM, four CPU cores, 50GB storage, 1TB bandwidth, unlimited emails, free SSL, cPanel/WHM control panel – for $49.99 (£38) a month on the annual plan (currently, there is a discount and you can get the first month for $19.99).

HostPapa is unusual in that it gives you a lengthy list of the type of tasks where tech support can help. These cover getting started (software installs and migrations, Google Apps setups, Perl/PECL module/extension installations, DNS configuration), firewall setup and email configuration, to more advanced advisory jobs like security audits – and of course troubleshooting everything from server boot failure to network issues and even script and website errors.

The service includes all the usual core maintenance tasks, too – server and control panel updates, patches and monitoring – and you can contact HostPapa's support 24/7 via telephone, email and chat.

Tsohost is a versatile UK-based web host with products to suit everyone from a total website newbie to the most demanding enterprise user. Managed hosting comes as standard with some of the high-end products, but home users aren't left out – there are handy support features available for everyone.

Even the cheapest shared hosting package (£2.92 or $3.83 a month annually) comes with a free migration of a blog or simple business website, for instance. Higher spec plans come with one or more e-commerce migrations, where the company will relocate a complex transactional website to your new account. You get a dedicated engineer to manage the process at the date and time you choose (within an 8-hour window), and you can check the end results before the site goes live.

Moving to the Tsohost VPS range gets you regular managed hosting features, including server monitoring and alerts, proactive threat detection, and full handling of software updates and security patches.

There's in-depth support for running Redis, memory caching systems like Memcached or PHP optimizations such as opcode caching.

Once you've installed the software you need, Tsohost will even help you customize and tweak it to suit your needs.

Prices are higher than many competitors – even the most basic VPS product costs $52 (£39.99) a month – but they're not unreasonable for the service you get, and overall Tsohost is a must-see for professional and business users.


Most web hosts provide a basic level of WordPress setup support – a one-click installer, maybe advice on migrating your current site – but after that, you're typically left on your own.

WP Engine offers a far more comprehensive managed WordPress service that can help you with setup, updates, security, performance optimization, troubleshooting and a whole lot more.

Much of this is invisible to the end user, as a good managed service should be. No need to worry about WordPress updates, for instance – WP Engine handles these for you. Not blindly, simply when they're released, like many other hosts: the company tests them carefully, first, to make sure they don't cause problems.

WP Engine's abilities become more apparent when you check out its support. The website knowledgebase is so crammed with detailed articles and in-depth webinars that it feels like a professional training course, and an expert support team is available by chat, 24/7, to help you quickly solve any problems.

The powerful WP Engine platform adds many useful extras. A Staging area allows you to work on a copy of your site, which is perfect for testing new themes, plugins or anything else, without affecting the production site. In another highlight, integrated performance tests can benchmark your website and offer useful speedup tips.

This level of power isn't cheap. Even the most basic WP Engine plan costs $31.5 (£24.9) a month, more than three times the price of the budget competition (although, you can get 10% discount on your first purchase, and annual plan gives you three months free). But if you're looking for an optimized environment, with quality tools and excellent support, this could be a price worth paying.

While all managed hosting providers take on basic website maintenance tasks – monitoring, installing patches – InMotion Hosting can go further, working with high-powered web technologies to set up a custom solution which matches your needs.

This starts in a simple way, with InMotion Hosting's Launch Assist. Included free with VPS, Reseller and Dedicated hosting plans, this gives you two to four hours to have the Managed Hosting Team do whatever you need: migrate websites, install and optimize software, configure security, automate key tasks and just about anything else you might want to do.

Day-to-day management tasks cover all the basics, including regular monitoring of your website and automatic updating of your software. InMotion still delivers more than you might expect, though, for example with a KernelCare feature which allows more updates without rebooting, avoiding costly downtime.

What's even more interesting is InMotion Hosting's ability to customize your site. How well this goes will depend on what you need, but the InMotion website talks about setting up the ConfigServer firewall and OSSec's intrusion monitor, working with NGINX, tuning your Varnish caching, speeding up PHP and more.

The price for all this depends on your hosting plan, but it might be less than you were expecting. Choosing managed, rather than self-managed VPS hosting, can add as little as $8 (£5.70) to the initial price of your plan, for instance, dropping to $27.99 (£21.8) on renewal – which sounds like a bargain to us.


Liquid Web is an expert provider of high-end managed hosting solutions for everything from email to WordPress, WooCommerce, VPS, dedicated and assorted other cloud products.

Most plans deliver far more than you might expect. Liquid Web doesn't just automatically update WordPress, for instance: it also updates your plugins in a separate, isolated environment to check for any issues before sending them live on your production site.

Unlike other hosts, this level of management doesn't involve restricting what you can do. You can handle WordPress updating manually, if you prefer, some or all of the time. The plans give you full access to both the server and the database, too, essentially meaning you have the best of all worlds: expert WordPress management where you need it, but with detailed hands-on control of the site available as required.

Liquid Web's VPS and dedicated server plans add even more managed hosting features covering many areas. The company has its own data centers with fully managed hardware and network infrastructure. Key software is installed, updated and supported, there are free external migrations, virus and spam protection keep threats at bay, and system monitoring enables speedy notification of problems.

If you have problems anyway, a thorough SLA (service level agreement) guarantees a phone or chat response time of under a minute, and that you'll get an active response to the issue within 30 minutes.

Liquid Web won't appeal to bargain hunters, and its baseline prices can be much higher than some of the competition ($59.99 or £48.5 – for a starter VPS, compared to a fiver for 1&1 IONOS. However, you can lower that to $19.99 per month if you choose the 2-year billing). Those plans are often far more powerful, though (the company doesn't sell crippled products just to get a low headline price), and when you compare providers on features, Liquid Web often comes out ahead.

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best Windows hosting services of 2020

Most web hosting packages run on Linux servers, and it's easy to see why: the operating system is fast, reliable, secure and free, with an impressive software ecosystem that includes some of the best web applications around.

For all these benefits, Linux won't be the right setup for everyone. If your site is based on Microsoft technologies like ASP.NET or .NET, or you're intending to run Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server or some other Microsoft stack product, you'll need to choose a Windows plan.

Opting for Windows hosting doesn't restrict you to Microsoft products. Most plans offer one-click easy installation of popular apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, phpBB and more.

There's no cPanel, but something similar (like Plesk) will make it easy to view your website status, create email accounts, tweak settings and generally manage your plan.

Select a VPS or dedicated hosting plan and you'll also be able to use Remote Desktop to manage the server from its own desktop.

Windows hosting has some issues. You won't get the same choice of applications as with Linux. There's less help available for troubleshooting apps like WordPress on the Windows platform. There are Microsoft licence fees to pay, too, so it's a little more expensive than Linux plans.

Overall, though, if you need to take advantage of Microsoft technologies, Windows hosting can deliver a great service for a surprisingly low price. Read on for five top Windows hosting providers you might want to check out first.

  • If you want even more choices consult our list of the best web hosting providers

Windows hosting has a reputation for being costly, but 1&1 IONOS's shared Windows range shows it doesn't have to be that way.

Prices start at $1 (£1 for UK page) a month for the first year, $7.99 (£5 for UK page) afterwards, yet even the most basic plan is better specified than some of the Linux competition. You get 1 website, 100GB web space and unlimited  bandwidth, along with 25 email accounts with 2GB storage per account, plus daily backups, 24/7 phone and email support, a free domain and an SSL certificate thrown in.

Windows-specific features include five Microsoft SQL databases of up to 1GB each, ASP.NET 4.7, ASP.NET Ajax and MVC 3, 4 and 5. There's support for SQL import, SSI and dedicated app pools, and your plan will be running on Windows Server 2019 (many hosts are still using 2012).

Ramping up to the top-of-the-range Expert Windows plan gets 500 databases (1GB SSD), 500 email accounts, a dedicated IP, regular malware scanning and an integrated Cloudflare-based CDN. Again, this is good value at $1 (£1 for UK page) a month for the first six months, $14 (£7 for UK page) afterward.

These are shared plans and don't give you full control over the server, but more flexible VPS and dedicated plans are also available at very low prices, and opting for Windows instead of Linux will cost from an extra $14 (£10) a month.

Factor in the one-month trial and 1&1 IONOS could be a sensible choice for novices looking to try out Windows hosting with the minimum of risk.

A2 Hosting is a capable provider with a huge range of plans covering everything from basic shared products, managed WordPress and email hosting, to reseller plans, cloud VPS and dedicated servers.

A2's Windows offerings include a capable Swift plan priced at $5.88 (£4.5 for UK) a month initially, $11.99 (£9.27 for UK) on renewal. This is a shared product, but a good one, with unlimited websites, subdomains, email addresses, databases and more. Highlights include free site migration, SSD storage as standard, virus scanning, automatic backups, free Let's Encrypt SSL, Anycast DNS, and Cloudflare Free CDN for a claimed average of 200% faster page loads.

Your site will be hosted on Windows Server 2012, although you can choose Windows Server 2016. Windows Server 2016 debuted many new features – Nano Server, containers, ReFS, Linux Secure Boot support – but you won’t be using these capabilities on a shared hosting plan.

What you do get with the Swift plan is support for an array of current and legacy Microsoft products and standards: ASP.NET 2.x, 3.x and 4.x, classic ASP, .NET Core 2.2, ASP.NET MVC 4 or 5, IIS 8.5 and Silverlight 4 or 5. And if your needs are more cross-platform, there's PHP 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 or 7.2 support, phpMyAdmin, and one-click installers for PrestaShop, WordPress, Drupal and more.

If shared hosting isn't enough, A2 also provides managed Windows VPS plans. These are well specified and priced fairly from $25 (£19.32 for UK) a month initially, $49.99 (£38.65 for UK) on renewal, which represents decent value for the features and support you get.


While there are plenty of low-cost shared Windows hosting packages around, they're not the best choice for everyone. We suspect that many users who need a Windows website will also require more speed and functionality than the average customer, and budget hosting may not be good enough.

Hostwinds' Windows VPS hosting offers no less than 10 plan configurations, making it much easier to find and purchase the precise level of service you need.

The baseline specification is impressive. Every plan offers free site migrations, SSD storage, and 1Gbps network connectivity (100Mbps is common with other plans). You also get the ability to use Windows Server 2008, 2012 or 2016, along with fast response times for any support issues (30 seconds for chat or phone, 5 minutes for tickets), and 99.999% uptime guaranteed overall.

The starter Tier 1 plan offers relatively limited resources, with one CPU core, 1GB RAM, 30GB disk space and 1TB traffic per month. But it's also good value at $9.89 (£7.6) a month for the first term, $10.99 (£8.4) on renewal. Those prices are for a monthly billing cycle, too – no lengthy contract required.

Upgrading to a higher tier gets you more power. The mid-range Tier 5 plan offers four CPU cores, 8GB RAM, 150GB disk space and 3TB bandwidth, for example, and is priced at $45.89 (£35.20) a month initially, $50.99 (£39.1) a month afterwards.

Optional extras are reasonably priced. You could add cloud backups for $1 (£0.70) a month, for instance, while spending $5 (£3.60) on basic server monitoring will see Hostwinds watch your system and automatically raise a support ticket if it goes down.

Put it all together and these seem well-designed hosting plans which are powerful, configurable, with excellent support and a generous 60-day money-back guarantee. If basic Windows hosting isn't enough, Hostwinds could be worth a try.

Many web hosts provide some level of Windows support, but it's often limited to a specific set of products, such as dedicated servers. That could become an issue if you decide you'd like to upgrade or downgrade your hosting at a later date, so it makes sense to look for hosts that offer more flexibility.

HostGator has a range of Windows plans covering personal and business-friendly shared hosting, and ranging up to highly-specified dedicated servers with the power to run just about anything.

Most of these products are distinctly short on limits and restrictions. The starter Personal plan may only support one website, but you're allowed unlimited subdomains, emails, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases, and unmetered bandwidth and disk space. It’s priced from $2.64 (£2) a month if you sign up for the three-year plan, $6.95 (£5.3) on renewal, which is cheaper than the equivalent Linux plans of some providers.

There is a potential downside in HostGator's relatively dated software: Windows Server 2008 R2, IIS 7.5, MSSQL Server 2008 R2 Web Edition, Access Databases 2007, 2010, ASP.NET up to 4.5, PHP 5.2.17 and PHP 5.3. This won't matter to everyone, but check your technical Windows requirements before you sign up.

HostGator's dedicated plans are a little more up-to-date, though still lagging behind some of the competition, with Windows Server 2012 R2, IIS 8.5, SQL Server 2014 Express, and ASP.NET from 2.0 up to 4.6. 

Headline prices are reasonable, with the Value Server plans starting from $89.98 (£70.8) a month, and occasional special deals as low as $79.99 (£57) for legacy servers. Be sure to carefully check the small print, though – you might have to sign up for three years to get these prices, and large introductory discounts mean that you could pay more than double on renewal.


Liquid Web is a popular provider of high-end professional web hosting services, and its current range includes some very capable Windows products.

The company's Cloud VPS range hosts your web space across multiple devices to improve performance and scalability, delivering what Liquid Web claims is the "fastest managed VPS hosting on the planet". All plans include features that might be chargeable extras elsewhere – unlimited sites, Gigabit transfer, Cloudflare CDN, DDoS attack protection, US or EU hosting – and run Windows Server 2012 or 2016, yet you can still get a capable setup for $59 (£48) a month ($39 a month if you go annual).

Unusual touches include a choice of SQL Server versions. 2014 or 2016 Express come by default and you can add the Web Editions for $35 (£25) a month, but Standard and Enterprise editions are also available if you need them.

For even more control, you could opt for one of Liquid Web's Private Cloud Servers, although these are primarily made for organizations considering the price. These give you all the power of a Cloud Dedicated Server, but also allow for creating, managing and using custom VPS instances (separate virtual servers). You could set up a Windows VPS to run your ASP.NET site, for instance, but also create a Linux VPS instance to run WordPress, another for PrestaShop, maybe a third as a Windows development environment – it's up to you.

Private Cloud Servers prices start from $1599 (£1261) a month with no long-term contract requirements, and no leap in costs after an initial discount expires.

Liquid Web may charge a Windows license fee on top of that, but you'll only pay once per Cloud Server. This allows you to create as many Windows-based VPS instances as you need, at no extra cost.

Interestingly, if you remove all Windows instances then the license fee will no longer be charged, a handy money-saver for users who only need Windows support occasionally.

Whatever product you choose can be fully managed by Liquid Web's excellent support team, another company highlight. The firm doesn’t just promise to keep your site up and running, there’s a commitment with a 100% uptime SLA (service level agreement), a strong sign of confidence in its services that you rarely see elsewhere.

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best e-commerce hosting providers in 2020

Got a great idea, service or product? Building a quality web store could help you sell it to the masses, and it's easier than you think.

Even basic web hosting plans will often include core e-commerce functionality: templates for web stores, PayPal integration, easy installs for popular shopping carts.

Ramping up to specialist e-commerce plans will get you powerful product catalogues, stock inventory and other business management tools, and support for more payment methods.

While these products can be packed with features, even the high-end e-commerce plans are designed to be simple to use. Choose a layout, fill in forms to build your product catalogue and your store will start to take shape. There's still work to do – opening an account to take credit card payments, perhaps – but even web store novices will be able to figure it out as they go along.

Prices are low, too, with one decent starter plan giving you three years hosting for £1.50 ($2.10) a month, or a total of £54 ($76) plus tax. If you're wondering about e-commerce but not quite sure whether it's right for you, this gives you a cheap and easy way to test your ideas.

Whether you're a total e-commerce newbie or you're already running a busy web store, we've found five excellent hosting plans that could take your selling to the next level.

If you're new to web selling, building your first store can seem complex and intimidating, but it doesn't always have to be that way.

Website builder Wix comes with some gorgeous store templates which can be freely customized via its excellent editor. Site design takes a far more visual approach than most of the competition, so for example you can see designs and layouts before you drag them onto the page. Choose your preferred option and it's displayed with dummy product images, instantly giving you an idea of how the finished store will look.

There's plenty of power here. Products can be physical or digital, they may be illustrated with images or videos, assigned custom options (colors, size), promoted with coupons, and you can set up your own shipping and tax rules to cope with tricky situations. Plus, with the introduction of Wix Turbo, your site will load much faster.

Wix supports a wide range of payment methods. Exactly what's on offer depends on your location, but when we tested the service from the UK we were offered Square, Stripe, Moolah, Worldpay, Wirecard and PayPal.

Whatever your choice, you'll pay the provider only: Wix doesn't charge any transaction fees.

Your finished store still won't have as many features as the top e-commerce providers, but Wix is easy-to-use, the $17 (£14) a month price is fair, and it's a smart way for newbies to dip their toes in the web store waters.

Getting your first web store up and running is often an expensive business. Many providers offer little or no e-commerce functionality in their starter plans, and you'll often have to fork out for a high-end specialist plan before you can do anything useful.

iPage is a rare exception where even the most basic hosting plan gives you more than enough to get started.

A template-based website builder and free web store make it easy to design your shop, for instance. There's PayPal support for taking payments. You also get integration with your choice of shopping cart (AgoraCart, OpenCart, OSCommerce, PrestaShop, TomatoCart, Zen Cart), a free domain for the first year, and 24/7 phone (toll-free in the US and UK) and chat support to handle any urgent problems that might crop up.

There are limits, too. The website builder only supports a maximum of six pages, for instance, and many customers will expect to be able to pay by credit card as well as PayPal. (You can do that, but you'll need to sort it out yourself.)

Still, the introductory price is very low at $1.99 (£1.50) a month for up to 36 months, $7.99 (£6) on renewal. It could be worth buying just as a learning environment to experiment with the technology and see what you can do. And if you do go online, you shouldn't have to sell many products to make your hosting fees back.


While many web hosts go to huge efforts to highlight e-commerce abilities, others barely mention them at all. SiteGround is a great example: there's no big "build your web store here" headline, and yet when you look at the details, even its most basic shared hosting plan has a lot of e-commerce power.

A Weebly-based website builder is available to create your store, for instance. HTTP/2 enabled servers and Cloudflare CDN integration boost speeds, reducing the chance that customers will abandon the site. And when it's time to buy, free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates will give your customers confidence that their payment details are secure.

SiteGround plans include the Softaculous installer, which enables speedy setup of big-name shopping cart and e-commerce tools including PrestaShop, WooCommerce and Magento.

At the time of writing, the company quotes 99.996% uptime for the last 12 months, good news when you're running something as important as a web store. Although if you do hit trouble, 24/7 support and automatic daily backups should help you quickly recover the situation.

The baseline StartUp plan gives you all this for $3.95 (£2.95 for UK) a month for the initial term, rising to $11.95 (£8.95 for UK) on renewal. It has some limits – 10GB web space, a suggested maximum of 10,000 visits a month, support for hosting one website only – but these won't be an issue for many smaller stores, and there are more powerful plans available if you need them.

1&1 IONOS eCommerce Website Builder/Online Store is a powerful tool which combines simple template-based web store design with professional features and functionality.

High quality design templates help you get up to speed quickly. There aren't many, but they look good, and can easily be customized to suit your needs.

1&1 IONOS's baseline account is a little underpowered, considering its price – $20 (£20 for UK page) a month (the first three months are free though). You get support for up to 5000 items and there's a free domain, an SSL certificate thrown in, and some basic SEO.

The range improves significantly with the next plan priced at $25 (£25 for UK) a month. This adds more product support (up to 10000), advanced SEO, improvement to shipping (scheduled pickup and real-time shipment tracking) and some additional extras like Instagram store.

The highest plan takes your store to the next level by increasing the product support up to 1 million and allows you to sell on eBay and Amazon Marketplace along with additional improvements. It's an unusual and welcome extra, but the price is relatively high at $45 (£50 for UK page) a month.


Starter e-commerce hosting plans can do a lot for a very low price, but you'll often pay in terms of service quality. Websites based on shared hosting may be slow, or fail entirely, and support is often limited. This might not matter for tiny web stores, but if you're running a big business, it could be a major issue.

Liquid Web's hosted WooCommerce plans are far more expensive (higher-performance plans, specifically), with prices starting at $299 (or £230) a month, but it's easy to see why: they trample all over the underpowered baseline efforts of the competition. There are also plans for new stores/beginners with prices starting at $19 a month. These aren't as powerful, but they are worth checking out if you need a more "lightweight" option.

Wide product support covers physical goods, digital downloads, virtual products (like online courses), for instance. There are no limits on the number of products you can sell, and you have many powerful ways to present them. The site doesn't just allow customers to choose product variations from a list, for example (color, size, design) – you can show them photos which match their selections.

Store management tools are just as flexible. You can define your own custom order statuses and workflows, automatically offer customers related products, set promotions, create coupons, accept product reviews, manage inventory and more.

Professional design features include hundreds of responsive themes and a drag-and-drop page builder for editing.

Your site is hosted on scalable containers. These are isolated environments which aren't shared with other users, improving reliability. Even better, they don't limit you to some preset amount of system resources. The platform can detect when you're busy and dynamically add RAM and CPU cores as required.

Premium touches include performance testing and a staging area to test site features before going live. Jilt's abandoned shopping cart recovery may help you regain lost customers, and support for Glew's analytics will deliver valuable information about your customers and orders.

For busy stores, perhaps most important of all is Liquid Web's excellent support. The company isn't just available 24/7/365 to respond to problems: it monitors stores, often detecting and fixing hosting-related issues before you even realize anything is wrong.

Put it all together and this is one very impressive range, with more than enough power to run the busiest of web stores. Go take a look.

The importance of getting the best ecommerce web hosting

Today, e-commerce has become a massively lucrative channel for retailers. However, the quality of the hosting services that many small businesses are using often leaves a lot to be desired. A recent report showed that one in three Britons have abandoned their online transactions because of poor website design and inefficient hosting.

Research from hosting company 1&1's '2011 Digital High Street Audit' finds worryingly low levels of consumer satisfaction with the small business websites available to them. The risk to firms from providing a bad online experience is clear – 49% of consumers believe that a bad website makes a worse impact than a business having no website at all. This conclusion has led 37% to walk-away from companies completely, in favour of using a competitor. An additional 9% of Britons have found themselves reducing their spend with small companies as a direct result of being deterred by a poor company website.

Oliver Mauss, CEO, 1&1 Internet said: "Research shows that keeping an ugly or badly functioning website online can comprise a risk to sales revenue. Consumers have ever higher expectations, and it is essential that every company website inspires confidence. Businesses that invest carefully in their web experience will see higher levels of customer spend, retention and referral".

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best free and public DNS servers in 2020

If you're looking for the best DNS servers around today, we're here to help.

DNS (Domain Name System) is a system which translates the domain names you enter in a browser to the IP addresses required to access those sites, and the best DNS servers provide you with the best service possible.

Your ISP will assign you DNS servers whenever you connect to the internet, but these may not always be the best DNS server choice around. Slow DNS servers can cause a lag before websites start to load, and if your server sometimes goes down, you may not be able to access any sites at all.

Switching to a free public DNS server can make a real difference, with more responsive browsing and lengthy 100% uptime records meaning there's much less chance of technical problems.

Some services can also block access to phishing or infected sites, and a few offer content filtering to keep your kids away from the worst of the web.

You need to choose your service with care - not all providers will necessarily be better than your ISP - but to help point you in the right direction, this article will highlight six of the best DNS servers around.

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Why paid DNS is better than free

As with every service, you get what you pay for and it’s no different here. Free DNS can be good but it’s nothing compared to a Premium paid version. Granted, not everyone wants to pay and depending on their needs they might not need to, but paid DNS is always a better choice. Apart from the increased website performance and security, you also get additional features.

For instance, Dynamic DNS and Secondary DNS are a staple of the premium DNS service. The Dynamic DNS works with dynamic IP addresses and it allows users to access their home computer from anywhere in the world. The Secondary DNS works as a backup of sorts which is always a plus. This is just a small fraction of what a premium DNS can do and the exact number of features will depend on the service provider.

Best free, paid and business alternative domain name servers

  1. OpenDNS
  2. Cloudflare
  3. Google Public DNS
  4. Comodo Secure DNS
  5. Quad9
  6. Verisign DNS


Founded in 2005 and now owned by Cisco, OpenDNS is one of the biggest names in public DNS.

The free service offers plenty of benefits: high speeds, 100% uptime, phishing sites blocked by default, optional parental controls-type web filtering to block websites by content type, along with free email support if anything goes wrong.

Commercial plans enable viewing a history of your internet activity for up to the last year, and can optionally lock down your system by allowing access to specific websites only. These aren't going to be must-have features for the average user, but if you're interested, they can be yours for around $20 (£14.30) a year.

If you're an old hand at swapping DNS, you can get started immediately by reconfiguring your device to use the OpenDNS nameservers.

If you're a newbie, that's okay too, as OpenDNS has setup instructions for PCs, Macs, mobile devices, routers and much, much more.


Best known for its top-rated content delivery network, Cloudflare has extended its range to include a new public DNS service, the catchily-named 1.1.1.1.

Cloudflare has focused much more on the fundamentals. These start with performance, and independent testing from sites like DNSPerf shows Cloudflare is the fastest public DNS service around.

Privacy is another major highlight. Cloudflare doesn't just promise that it won't use your browsing data to serve ads; it commits that it will never write the querying IP address (yours) to disk. Any logs that do exist will be deleted within 24 hours. And these claims aren't just reassuring words on a website. Cloudflare has retained KPMG to audit its practices annually and produce a public report to confirm the company is delivering on its promises.

The 1.1.1.1 website has some setup guidance, with simple tutorials covering Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux and routers. These are very generic - you get one set of instructions for all versions of Windows, for instance - but there are some pluses (IPv6 as well as IPv4 details) and you should be able to figure it out. Additionally, mobile users can use WARP which secures all of the phone’s internet traffic.

The product doesn't offer ad-blocking or attempt to monitor what you can access, and what you can't. The one caveat is that Cloudflare has introduced content filtering for malware and adult content blocking, with their 1.1.1.2/1.0.0.2 and 1.1.1.3/1.0.0.3 services respectively, but this is an option a user can choose rather than have forced on them.

If you have any problems, Cloudflare offers a community forum where you can ask questions or see what others are doing, a nice extra touch which we'd like to see followed by other providers.


Google has its fingers in most web-related pies, and DNS is no exception: it's free Public DNS is a simple and effective replacement for your own ISP's nameservers.

Privacy can't quite match the 'we don't keep anything' promises of Cloudflare, but it's not bad. The service logs the full IP address information of the querying device for around 24 to 48 hours for troubleshooting and diagnostic purposes. 'Permanent' logs drop any personally identifiable information and reduce location details to the city level, and all but a small random sample of these are deleted after two weeks.

There's a further benefit for experienced users in Google's detailed description of the service. If you'd like to be able to assess the significance of Google's privacy policy, for instance, you can read up on absolutely everything the service logs contain to find out for yourself.

Google's support site offers only very basic guidance targeted at experienced users, warning that "only users who are proficient with configuring operating system settings [should] make these changes." If you're unsure what you're doing, check the tutorials from a provider such as OpenDNS, remembering to replace its nameservers with Google's: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.


Comodo Group is the power behind a host of excellent security products, so it's no surprise that the company also offers its own public DNS service.

Just as you'd expect, Comodo Secure DNS has a strong focus on safety. It doesn't just block phishing sites, but also warns if you try to visit sites with malware, spyware, even parked domains which might overload you with advertising (pop-ups, pop-unders and more). Furthermore, you can try out the Comodo Dome Shield service, which adds additional features to Comodo Secure DNS.

Comodo claims its service is smarter than average, too, detecting attempts to visit parked or 'not in use' domains and automatically forwarding you to where you really want to go.

Performance is key, of course, and the company suggests its worldwide network of servers and smart routing technology give it an advantage. DNSPerf's Comodo stats are less impressive, unfortunately. As we write, DNSPerf reports its average query time as around 72ms.

That said, Comodo may still be interesting if you're looking for an extra layer of web filtering, and the support website has some short but useful instructions on setting the service up on Windows PCs, Macs, routers and Chromebooks.


Quad9 is a young DNS outfit which has been providing a fast and free DNS service since August 2016.

The company sells itself on its ability to block malicious domains by collecting intelligence from 'a variety of public and private sources.' It's not clear what these sources are, but the website says Quad9 used 18+ 'threat intelligence providers' as of December 2018.

That's a little too vague for us, and we're not convinced that using a large number of threat intelligence providers will necessarily help – the quality of the intelligence is generally more important than the quantity.

There's no arguing about Quad9's performance, though. DNSPerf currently rates it seven out of ten for average worldwide query times, lagging behind Cloudflare and OpenDNS, but effortlessly outpacing contenders like Comodo.

Drilling down into the detail reveals some variations in speed - Quad9 is in eighth place for North American queries - but overall the service still delivers better performance than most.

Setup guidance is a little limited, with tutorials for the latest versions of Windows and macOS only. They're well presented, though, and it's not difficult to figure out what you need to do.


Verisign was founded in 1995 and through the years offered various services, including several security services, like managed DNS.

Verisign DNS service is free to use and the company highlights the three features they deem the most important and those are stability, security, and privacy. The service definitely delivers on that account, especially for security and stability. As for privacy, while you can never be 100% sure when it comes to the company claims, there weren't any issues and the company assures you that your public DNS data will not be sold to third parties.

Performance, however, wasn't that great when compared to some other providers. Still, it's decent and depending on your needs, you might not be bothered by this. At the moment, DNSPerf.com ranks the service at the eleventh place, worldwide.

On their website, you can find tutorials on how to set up their public DNS. Tutorials are available for Windows 7 and 10, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices. There is also a tutorial on how to configure DNS server settings on your router.

All in all, Verisign offers a good alternative to some other DNS providers, plus it's free so it's worth checking out.

Got further questions about DNS? Here are some common queries along with our answers.

What is DNS?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a phonebook for the internet, a framework which translates domain names, like facebook.com or twitter.com, into the IP addresses necessary for devices to load those internet resources.

The mechanics of DNS can be quite complicated, as information isn't held in a single database, but rather distributed in a worldwide directory including a vast number of DNS servers.

Fortunately, the average internet user doesn't normally have to get involved in any of the low-level technical details. Your ISP automatically provides you with access to a DNS server whenever you go online, and whenever you enter a URL into your browser, this will find the relevant IP address for you. 

Verisign

Your ISP DNS isn't performing? Verisign is one of many big-name companies offering a free alternative

Why might DNS matter to me?

DNS servers can vary hugely in speed, particularly in areas which don't always have the best internet coverage (Africa, South America, Oceania.) To take an example of a single day when we tested, DNSPerf.com reported Cloudflare achieved an average 4.43ms query time for Oceania, while Yandex was left trailing at 350.24ms. That's potentially more than a third of a second in extra waiting time before your browser is able to access any new website.

This is an extreme example, to be fair. European or US lookups may see less than 30ms variation between most DNS services, and as your device or router will probably cache the address for reuse later, even this delay will only occur very occasionally. Still, a sluggish DNS server can noticeably slow down your browsing in some situations, and trying an alternative – especially as the best options are all free – is generally a good idea.

There's a second possible benefit in terms of uptime. If your ISP DNS server fails, you might not be able to access some or all of your favorite sites. Big-name providers such as OpenDNS claim they've had 100% uptime going back years.

DNS Jumper

How can I find the fastest DNS service?

DNS speed depends on many factors, including your location, the distance to your nearest server, and that server having enough power and bandwidth to handle all the queries it receives.

DNS Jumper is a portable freeware tool which tests multiple public DNS services to find out which delivers the best performance for you.

The program has a lot of options, but isn't difficult to use. Launch it, click Fastest DNS > Start DNS Test, and within a few seconds you'll be looking at a list of DNS services sorted by speed.

DNS Jumper can be useful, in particular because it's checking how servers perform from your location, but it doesn't run enough tests over a long enough period to give you a definitive answer.

DNSPerf

DNSPerf tests multiple DNS services every minute from 200+ locations around the world and makes the results freely available on its own website. This gives a very good general idea of performance, and also enables seeing how services compare on different continents, as well as assessing their uptime.

How can I switch DNS servers?

The steps involved in changing your DNS service vary according to your hardware and possibly your operating system version.

Generally, you must start by finding the primary and secondary nameservers for the DNS service you'd like to use. These IP addresses are normally displayed very clearly on the service website, so, for example, Cloudflare DNS uses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1.

The simplest approach for home users is to update their router to use the new addresses. Most other devices will then pick up the new DNS settings automatically, with no further work required.

To make this happen you must log in to your router (the default password may be printed on its base) and look for the current DNS primary and secondary nameservers. Make a note of the current values in case of problems, then replace them with the nameservers you'd like to use.

If you run into problems, check out your DNS service website for any setup guidance. Keep in mind that you can also use the tutorials of other DNS providers, as long as you remember to replace their nameserver IPs with your preferred options. OpenDNS, for instance, has specific guidance for many different router types on its support site.

If router tweaks aren't right for your situation, you may have to change the DNS configuration of each individual device. Cloudflare has short and simple guidance here, while the OpenDNS website goes into more depth.

How can I find my current DNS servers?

How can I find my current DNS servers?

If you're troubleshooting your internet connection, or maybe thinking of switching DNS servers, it might be useful to check which DNS servers you're using at the moment.

The simplest way to do this is to visit DNSLeakTest.com and tap the Standard Test button. Within a few seconds the website will usually display your DNS server IP addresses, host names, and sometimes (if appropriate) the name of your ISP.

After that, life gets more complicated as there are several potential options. Your device could be set up to use specific DNS servers; it might ask your router to give it the best DNS servers every time it boots; or it might not know anything about DNS servers, and leave your router to handle everything.

On Windows, you could get started by entering IPCONFIG /ALL in a command line window. Look for your network adapter and you should see its DNS servers specified in the list.

If there's a single DNS IP address which points at your router – 192.168.x.x – that suggests the router is handling all DNS queries. Enter that IP address into your browser, log in to the router if necessary and your DNS servers should be listed amongst the settings.

How can I test a DNS service?

How can I test a DNS service?

If your browser is telling you a website's 'server IP address could not be found', even though you're sure it's up and available, then this could be due to a problem with your DNS. But you might not want to go to the trouble of changing your DNS service to find out.

Windows users can use the command line tool nslookup.exe to look at the results of any DNS server without touching their system settings.

Run cmd.exe to open a command line window, then type:

nslookup website.com

Then press Enter (replace website.com with the address of whatever website you're trying to reach).

Nslookup uses your default DNS server to look for the IP address of website.com. If it tells you it 'can't find website.com', this means your DNS server doesn't have a record for that domain.

Next, tell the tool to use another DNS service by entering a command like:

nslookup website.com 8.8.8.8

The 8.8.8.8 address uses Google DNS – replace that with any DNS service you like, such as 1.1.1.1 for Cloudflare.

If nslookup returns errors using multiple servers, this doesn't look like a DNS issue. If one server returns an IP address and another doesn't, you might want to try setting up your system to use the working DNS and see if it makes any difference.

You might also want to look over our many web hosting guides:

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Best cloud hosting services in 2020

Cloud hosting has changed the hosting industry for the better, allowing for increasing reliability and resilience for clients. 

Signing up for a simple web hosting package would usually buy you a defined block of resources on a single server: register your domain name, then choose this much web space, that much bandwidth, maybe a set amount of RAM or CPU cores.

While this works well for many websites, having fixed resources can be a problem for larger projects. There's generally no way to temporarily allocate extra RAM or bandwidth if you experience an increase in traffic, and even a simple plan upgrade might require your website to go offline for a while.

Cloud hosting plans look much like virtual private server (VPS) web hosting products, where you'll initially pay for a set amount of web space, RAM, CPU time and bandwidth. But these resources are spread across multiple devices instead of just one, and changing your plan later – adding another gig of RAM, for instance – is generally as easy as dragging a slider, with the extra power coming online within moments.

There are also additional options for small business web hosting, such as environmentally-friendly green web hosting. Additionally, cloud hosting is scalable and can provide for a good alternative to needing a dedicated server with colocation provider, and there are options for managed web hosting services.

You can use cloud hosting for everything, from just hosting your emails, to replacing your business server. However, if you want a hands-on experience expect the virtual servers to be running Linux, not Windows.

Cloud hosting still won't be for everyone, and small, simple websites are likely to be better off with regular packages. But the technology has a lot to offer anyone with larger or more ambitious projects, and many hosts run free trials which make it easy to explore their abilities for yourself.

  • Want your company or services to be considered for this buyer’s guide? Please email your request to [email protected] with the URL of the buying guide in the subject line.

Best cloud hosting - at a glance

  1. Micrososft Azure
  2. Hostgator
  3. Cloudways
  4. Clook
  5. DigitalOcean

If you're looking to move your business hosting into the cloud, one of the first places to consider is one of the big cloud computing platforms, such as Microsoft Azure.

This isn't a solution for small businesses looking to simply host a website, but it's a great place to go if you have additional computing needs as well and you want to bundle everything together into a single place. The advantage then is that you can move all your business data and apps into the cloud and run them from a single unified platform.

Additionally, by keeping to a single provider you can avoid all the complications of having to deal with cloud management for hybrid clouds and on-premises data. On top of this, Azure boasts more compliance and security certifications than any other cloud provider.

However, moving to a major cloud platform isn't for the faint-hearted, but if you have the IT skills in house, or if you can utilize third-party cloud support services, the move could make a lot of sense even for smaller businesses with a lot of data.

And for the larger small business up through medium to enterprise businesses, the move the a cloud platform like Azure may be a case of 'when' rather than 'if'.

If you only need to host a website rather than additional business data, then HostGator's cloud platform could be a more ideal choice. Unlike normal web hosting, Hostgator's cloud hosting platform spreads your website load across multiple virtual server instances for more reliable and scalable hosting, but it's as easy to use as standard shared hosting, and only costs a little more.

For example, the baseline Hatchling Cloud plan gets you support for one domain, unmetered bandwidth and storage, a share of up to two cores and 2GB RAM, and distributed Varnish caching to speed up the loading of static content. You can get started for as little as $3.13 (£2.50) a month if you buy three years upfront, although the price leaps to $8.95 (£6.40) on renewal.

If you need something more powerful, the top-of-the-range Business Cloud plan supports unlimited domains, gives you up to six cores and 6GB RAM, and includes private SSL and a dedicated IP. Another chunky introductory discount means you can pay as little as $6.28 (£5.10) a month over three years, but after that you'll pay $17.95 (£12.80) per month.

Benefits of the cloud plans include (up to) twice as fast load times, along with more site statistics, and because your site is mirrored across multiple devices, the ability to switch your site to another server in the event of a hardware failure.

But the key advantage of all cloud hosting schemes is scalability. If your site can't cope with demand, you can scale up to eight cores and 8GB RAM with a click. There's no waiting around for someone to process your order and no downtime while your web space is reallocated – you get the extra resources right away. 

Also, while prices go up after the initial discount promotion, they still remain extremely competitive.


At first glance, cloud hosting products seem to be divided into two clear groups: enterprise-level technology from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and more, or simpler and more user-friendly products from hosts like Hostgator.

Cloudways represents an interesting middle path. The company offers managed cloud hosting which is powered by your choice of the top providers – Amazon, Google, DigitalOcean, Kyup, Linode or Vultr are supported – and comes packed with features, yet is configured from a simple web console which is just as easy to use as the more basic competition.

It's an impressive platform. Cloudways' ThunderStack covers all your core performance needs: Nginx, Apache, Memcached, MySQL/MariaDB, Varnish Cache, PHP 7, PHP-FM and Redis. There's one-click cloning, backup and restore, integrated Git and team collaboration tools for developers, and no less than 60 data centers strategically placed around the world (over 25 locations).

Despite all this high-end functionality, Cloudways products are generally simple to operate, and prices start at a beginner-friendly $10 (£7.15) a month for one core, 1GB RAM, 25GB storage and 1TB of bandwidth. It's all supremely configurable, and a free trial allows you to check out the product, with no credit card details required. Furthermore, a referral system is available, where both you and your friends can receive free hosting credits.


Clook is one of the UK's leading independent webhosting providers, who offer Managed Cloud Servers among their various hosting services. 

Again, it's targeted at more basic web hosting needs, but if you're looking for this in the UK market then Clook is up there with the best.

Unlike many other web hosting providers who chase the lowest prices while cutting corners on service, Clook instead invest in some of the best support in the business. This does mean you pay more, but it also means you can enjoy piece of mind because if something goes wrong then you can be assured that Clook are already working hard to address it.

Additionally if you have additional support queries Clook are fast to respond, and rather than script-reading frontline support you're actually talking directly with people who have direct system administration experience of their server network. This avoids the frustration of running round in circles and instead means the job simply gets done.

Because this is a company run by sys admins, it also means that the hardware and network is very solid, and their managed cloud servers are no different. This is a managed service as well, which means you don't have to worry about a thing. While other providers might aim for high uptime, Clook ensures their customer actually enjoy it, resulting in a headache-free service. 

Overall, there are cheap hosting providers and complicated cloud platforms out there, but if you simply want rock-solid webhosting and are looking at the UK market then Clook is one of the best options you can go for.


DigitalOcean puts the cloud hosting focus on data as much as websites, providing a background of cloud computing services that make it the ideal place to host and run your own applications in the cloud.

While cloud hosting schemes always involve pooling resources from multiple devices, most do their best to keep you away from the low-level details. You may be able to scale your plan by adding CPU cores, RAM or storage, for instance, but the console will present this to you as a single system.

DigitalOcean's Droplets are based around similar resizable and customizable virtual machines, but that's just the start – the technology has much more to offer.

For starters, the system supports Droplets of different types. If the standard plans aren't enough – priced from $5 (£3.55) a month for one core, 1GB RAM and 25GB storage – Optimized Droplets aim to ramp up your performance by using the best Broadwell and Skylake CPUs, and providing more RAM and storage space.

Individual Droplets have more features than you might expect, including performance monitoring and alerts, snapshots and automatic system-level backups.

There are various interesting ways to work with your Droplets as a group, including setting up a cloud firewall, and using a load balancer to distribute incoming traffic across your infrastructure.

DigitalOcean's transparent pricing is a highlight. You're billed hourly, with monthly caps, ensuring you only pay for the resources you use. Many of the features come for free – monitoring, cloud firewall – while others follow very simple pricing rules. Snapshots cost $0.05 per gigabyte per month, for instance, while backups are priced at 20% of the cost of the virtual machine – easy.

If all you want to do is host a scalable WordPress site, this will probably be overkill, but developers, sysadmins and other more demanding users will appreciate the power and flexibility DigitalOcean offers. Browse the lengthy list of tutorials (which numbers 3,300+ at the time of writing) on the DigitalOcean site to find out more.

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best dedicated server hosting providers of 2020

Opting for a dedicated server means that you get an entire server to yourself. There's no sharing of CPU time, RAM or bandwidth, which means your website stays responsive at all times.

Shared web hosting can appear to be amazing value, with feature-packed products available for just a few pounds every month. But the reality is often very different, and they're not always the bargains they seem.

Very low prices probably mean the host is cramming more customers onto each server, for instance. Performance will be poor as there aren't enough resources to go around, and the extra load could mean more server problems and downtime.

Dedicated hosting implies that you also get far more control over how the server is configured. You can add and remove software, install updates or tweak all settings, allowing you to optimize the server for your specific needs.

Best of all, dedicated hosting contracts often come with fast and knowledgeable support. The best providers will even monitor your server for issues, like failed services, and can often fix them before you've realized there was a problem.

This kind of power doesn't come cheap, and although there are some good signup deals around, you can easily spend $50-$140 a month and more on just a basic package.

With that kind of investment, it's important to make the right choice. In this article, we're going to highlight five top dedicated hosting providers who you might want to check out first.

Bluehost is a popular web hosting service with powerful and flexible plans, and their dedicated hosting plans follow the same principle. 

The pricing starts with the Standard plan which is priced at $73.99 (£61.85 for UK) per month for the first term, $119.99 (£98.64 for UK) per month afterward. The plans might be a bit more expensive compared to rivals but they sure don’t lack the features. For the Standard plan you get 4 cores at 2.3 GHz, 500GB of storage, 4GB RAM, 5TB bandwidth and 3 IP addresses. Free domain and SSL certificate are also included. 

In addition, there are plenty of advanced features too, like multi-server management, secure shell (SSH) access, custom-designed database manager and more. For users that want more, they have the option to upgrade to a faster CPU, more storage, more bandwidth and pretty much more of everything.

Some optional features are also available, so if you want domain privacy and protection, SiteLock or spam protection you can get those as well.

Bluehost is a capable hosting provider with 24/7 support so you can call for help any time you need it. If by any chance you’re not satisfied with the service, Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Hostwinds is a capable hosting provider which crams a huge range of features into all its products, from the most basic shared hosting plans to its enterprise-level cloud-based range.

Its dedicated server range may start at just $79.50 (£60.6) a month, for instance – $106 (£76) on renewal – but even these baseline products include features that are premium extras elsewhere.

All systems have 1Gbps ports, for instance (some providers start at 100Mbps). Every server is fully managed, ensuring you're not wasting time running operating system updates or other basic maintenance tasks. Hostwinds monitors your server to detect problems as soon as they crop up, and automatic nightly backups ensure you can quickly recover from even the worst of disasters.

Storage is extremely configurable, too. Some servers have four drive bays available, and they can be equipped with any mix of 1TB to 3TB SATA drives, or 120GB to 1TB SSDs. That's considerably more flexible than providers like 1&1, where you can only use SSD drives on some products, and even then they're often available in fixed configurations only (1TB SATA or 800GB SSD, for instance).

There's more good news with the choice of operating system. Not only do Linux fans get a choice of CentOS, Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu, but Windows users can choose Windows 2008, 2012 or 2016 Server for a low $25 (£18.8) – we've seen charges of up to $50 (£35.70) elsewhere.

Put it all together and the Hostwinds dedicated range is refreshingly honest. Servers aren't crippled by low specifications to hit a price point, and yet final costs remain low, with most updates very fairly priced. Well worth a look for anyone who needs a reliable, highly-specified server for a low price.

German-based 1&1 (as October 2018 called 1&1 IONOS) is well known as a budget hosting provider, but the company doesn't just offer value for website newbies: its dedicated server range starts at a very low $45 a month for the first six months, then $65.

As you might imagine, 1&1 has had to cut a few corners to hit that price point. The cheapest plans are relatively basic, with limited hardware, although network bandwidth got an upgrade with 1Gbit/s. Features like SSD drives and server management (1&1 updates, monitors and manages the server for you) cost extra. Oh, and there's also a setup fee of at least $50 (entry level plan doesn't have setup fee).

But there are plus points, too, including unlimited bandwidth, bundled Symantec SSL certificates, and the Plesk Onyx server control panel thrown in for free. Overall, even the most limited 1&1 dedicated server plan has enough power to handle many tasks. Additionally, you get a personal consultant free of charge.

Demanding users have plenty of paid upgrades to explore, including a faster CPU, more RAM and storage, a bundled backup service and more. Some of these add-ons include more than you might expect, too. Paying $14 a month for management doesn't just mean 1&1 will look after server admin: you also get a website builder, simple analytics, a photo slideshow service, automatic backup and restore for WordPress sites, and more. Sounds like a good deal to us.


Opting for dedicated rather than shared hosting will speed up your website in itself, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. A2 Hosting's managed server plans blend multiple tricks and technologies to try and ensure you see the best possible performance.

This starts with a powerful set of server components: OPcache and APC may speed up PHP processing by 50%. Memcached holds key MySQL data in RAM for faster retrieval, while mod_pagespeed uses multiple tricks to optimize site content. SPDY and HTTP/2 accelerate page loads even further, and support for technologies like edge side includes and websockets allow more fine-tuned optimizations of your site.

A2 Hosting plans also include Cloudflare's free CDN and its Railgun Optimizer, which "compresses previously uncacheable web objects up to 99.6%" and may result in an average 200% performance increase. In reality you might not see anything like that – the boost will vary greatly, depending on your site – but it's still a technology worth having.

Elsewhere, performance-boosting add-ons include RAID 1 SSD storage of up to 2 x 1TB. An optional Turbo Boost feature costing from $35 a month replaces Apache with the LiteSpeed server, apparently bringing up to 20x faster page loads, and another add-on can cache the HTML contents of a page, then speedily reload it later without needing to run PHP. We were happy to see cPanel is thrown in, too (it's often a chargeable extra with other hosts).

These kind of professional features come at a cost, with even the most basic Sprint plan priced from around $99 a month. But if speed is your top priority then this company could be worth a try, especially as A2's ‘Anytime Money Back Guarantee’ will refund your fees if you cancel within 30 days of your order.


Liquid Web is a popular provider of high-end business hosting products ranging from managed WordPress and WooComerce plans, to cloud VPS, dedicated servers and private clouds.

The company's dedicated offerings may look expensive, with a starting price of $199 a month (can be reduced to $140 a month if annual billing is chosen), but they're also far better specified than most of the budget competition.

Even the cheapest dedicated server includes two speedy 240GB SSD drives, for instance. There's also a 1TB SATA backup drive provided, making it easy and convenient to run regular backups.

The plan includes a dedicated IP. Support for Cloudflare CDN should boost your website speeds, and your server can be hosted in one of three data centers (Arizona, Michigan, or the Netherlands). Although, the special entry plans are only hosted in Michigan.

Most importantly, all dedicated servers are managed by Liquid Web's professional support team. They monitor system health, proactively respond to notifications (for example, they’ll restart a failed service), alongside taking care of installing and updating the operating system. If you have any difficulties, support is available 24/7/365, and the company guarantees a 59 second response time via phone or chat, 30 minutes via ticket and email.

Factor in the wide range of optional add-ons – load balancers, firewalls, VPN – and the range has more than enough power for almost any purpose. If you're managing a heavy-duty website, Liquid Web needs to be on your shortlist.

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best email hosting providers of 2020

Email hosting is much like web hosting services. Getting hold of an email account is easy – sign up with an ISP, register with Google, buy a web hosting account – but free and standard packages won't always deliver the quality that professional users need.

Email hosting plans are an easy way to get a more efficient and reliable service. Exactly what's included depends on the provider, but you might get support for larger attachments (up to 50MB), 50GB or more storage space for your inbox, online storage for easy file sharing, bundled apps like Microsoft Office online, Exchange and Active Directory support for business users – not to mention 24/7 support if anything goes wrong.

Your email will work with a custom domain ([email protected]), and it's typically straightforward to set up. You can use an email hosting plan to effectively replace your web host's service, or you can try one without having any hosting at all.

With quality services priced under $1 per month per user, and free trials available, it's easy for anyone to check out the email hosting market. Whether you're after an individual account or would like to cover your entire business, read on for five great providers that you might want to check out first.

The best email hosting at a glance

  1. Bluehost email hosting
  2. Fasthosts email hosting
  3. Microsoft 365
  4. Zoho Mail

Bluehost


If you are a small business with a small headcount and don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on email accounts, then consider this. From EIG-owned Bluehost comes an exclusive business email package for TechRadar readers where you get unlimited email accounts and email storage for as little as $2.75 when paying for three years; that’s a mere $99 for the duration of the term. Is it truly unlimited though?

Bluehost says that they do not enforce any official limitations. Furthermore, they add “while email account creation is unlimited, these rely on the file storage available on the account. Therefore customers need to be operating within the Terms of Service to ensure resources are available to fully enable email functionality. Customers operating within the Terms of Service have yet to come up against technical boundaries for email, domains, or websites”.

What’s the catch then? For a start, while you get POP3 and IMAP4 plus 24/7 support, this is more of a barebone solution. You get to choose between three webmail applications (the equivalent of Outlook.com or Gmail.com); Horde, Roundcube or Squirrelmail.

You can of course configure an email client like Mail for Windows 10 or Mozilla Thunderbird to read your emails offline. Creating a new email address is a doddle thanks to an easy user interface.


Email hosting can seem expensive, and that's largely because the big companies are forever competing to offer the largest amounts of inbox and file storage space. That's great if you need it, but not so much for light email users looking for a bargain.

Fasthosts Standard Email plan is a stripped-back email hosting plan which offers the bare essentials for a very low price.

Signing up gets you two email addresses with 2 x 2 GB mailboxes. You'll also get an antivirus, POP3 and IMAP4,  24/7 support, and webmail access. That's limited, but look at the price: just $2.60 (£1.99) a month on the annual plan (at the time of writing, you can get 50% off). If your users genuinely don't need the gigabytes available elsewhere, Fasthosts more basic package could make a lot of sense.

Fasthosts also offers a more capable Exchange Email product with a 50GB inbox, access via Outlook's web app, and even a free domain for the first year. It's priced at $5.8 (£4.49) per month for 5 or more users with the annual contract. You can also choose a 100GB inbox for $13 (£9.99). As before, Fasthosts is focusing on price more than power, but if you only need a basic Exchange account, there's plenty of value here.


Microsoft Office 365 isn't just a powerful suite of productivity apps. It also throws in a very capable email package, and for less money than some providers charge for email alone, which could make the service worth a place on your shortlist.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic offers support for 150MB attachments, for instance, three times the size allowed with even some premium competitors. 50GB of storage per user (and a custom email domain address) means you'll be able to keep your messages for a very long time, and there's 1TB of online storage available in your OneDrive account.

Access to Office Online enables working with Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint documents from within your browser, and there's a whole range of business-friendly extras: calendars, online conferencing, intelligent search, workflow automation and more.

If you don't have Office 365 already, the Business Basic price of $5 a month (for annual billing) looks like good value to us. If you're solely interested in business class email, though, Microsoft's Exchange Online Plan 1 provides Exchange accounts for $4 per user per month on the annual plan.


Zoho Mail is a hosted email service with a bundled online office suite, and a stack of other extras. Several of the newest features Zoho Mail introduced, are: Offline Mode, undo mail, recall mail, huge attachments (up to 250MB) and a few others.

A free plan gives you five mailboxes with up to 5GB per user, a 20MB attachment limit and webmail access. A referral scheme could get you support for a further 25 mailboxes (at the time of writing the referral program wasn't available due to remodeling).

If that's too basic, the Standard plan gets you IMAP and POP support, 30MB attachments and 30GB of storage, 5GB file storage space, and support for working with multiple domains. That's more capable than some of the premium competition, and includes the same productivity tools as the free suite, yet still only costs $3 per user per month, billed annually.

Zoho's Professional plan gets you 100GB of storage (per user), 40MB attachments, support for Active Directory groups, and more. It's yours for $6 per user per month (billed annually), not bad at all for the storage space and features you're getting. Also, Lite plan is available with less features, but it's only $1 per user per month, billed annually.

10 things to look for in your next email hosting

If you want to host email accounts together with your website, then you should look at these email features before signup.

Most hosting companies will offer the ability to host your own email (something like email@yourdomain. com). Your package will include a number of email accounts – usually between 1-10 for basic hosting.

You’ll be given access to your own email control panel to set up your accounts. Using email requires two things: an email server and an email application, this could be an email client such as Outlook, or alternatively access to Webmail like Gmail or Yahoo.

The email server is a piece of software that runs on the server and is constantly connected to the internet. It receives and processes any mail sent to it and sends out any mail you send.

The email client is an app that runs on your PC, phone or tablet and enables you to send, receive and organise your emails, e.g. Microsoft Outlook. The client checks the mail server for messages and downloads them for viewing. It is a control panel for reading and writing messages.

The good news is that most email clients can connect with most email servers, you can even connect multiple email servers to work with multiple email accounts.

So your work and personal emails can be accessed from the same email client. The more popular email clients such as Outlook give you more features (calendars, tasks etc.) than using webmail.

Webmail is a web-based email interface that can be accessed in a web browser is often faster and more convenient because it accesses the stored data more directly without the user having to download software locally.

Emails can be checked from any device with access to the internet. Email protocols are a set of rules that help the client to send the information to or from the mail server. Two of the most common email protocols are POP and IMAP:

1. POP (Post office protocol) Applications like Outlook will use POP to download emails from the server to your computer and then delete them on the server.

2. IMAP (Internet message access protocol) IMAP is more advanced than POP, with IMAP, emails are stored in the mail server and can be accessed from any clients anywhere if they all use IMAP. 

Mail data is kept on the server as well as your computer, until you delete the mail. When comparing hosting packages, be sure to choose one with full IMAP support.

Exchange Exchange is the gold standard email protocol – the most expensive option of the three, but for good reason. It’s a Microsoft protocol that gives you the power to sync tasks like IMAP does, but with the added ability to share contacts and calendars among employees.

If you can afford to pay the extra cost (around $9.99 per month per mailbox), you will reap the benefits of its advanced functionality and tools which can be used even when you are on the move. 

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best VPS hosting providers of 2020

Standard shared web hosting packages are cheap and user-friendly, but they're also slow, inflexible, and don't have the power or functionality that professional and business users often need.

If you need more than a basic host but can't afford a dedicated server or don't want to deal with the complexity of these beasts, VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting could be a smart choice.

Buying a VPS plan means that you get your very own virtual server environment. You have full control over the operating system, the extensions and apps you install, and all their settings. Each physical server will still host multiple VPS customers, but not as many as with shared hosting, and typically each VPS will be allocated a share of key resources – RAM, storage space, CPU cores – for their use alone.

This can be easier to manage than you might think. Many VPS plans include standard tools like cPanel to help monitor and configure your site. Some hosts will manage the service for you, monitoring for problems like a crashed service, and fixing them as soon as they're detected.

VPS prices and specs vary from a few dollars a month to hundreds, depending on your requirements. There's a lot of choice out there, but don't panic – our list of five best VPS providers will point you in the right direction.

Founded in 2004, Hostinger has been providing a quality hosting service for some time now and their VPS hosting is no different.

You have plenty of choices here from the low-tier plan that has 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB of storage and 1000 GB bandwidth to high-tier plan where you get 8 CPU, 8 GB RAM, 160 GB of storage and 8000 GB bandwidth. 

Pricing is affordable too, especially if you commit to longer terms. The 1 CPU plan starts at $3.95 per month (if you choose the 4-year billing) and renews at $8.16 per month, while the 8 CPU plan starts at $29.95 per month (if you choose the 4-year billing) and renews at $65.56 per month.

All plans have IPv6 support, a dedicated IP, 100 Mb/s Network and a few more additions. Linux users also have plenty of choices. Apart from the usual CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian, you can also choose Suse. Windows VPS hosting is available as well, with the plans being more pricier but also more powerful.

If you encounter any problems, there’s a 24/7 live chat service to help you. Hostinger delivers a capable VPS hosting with a very tempting first term price, and with all plans being fully refundable, everyone can try out the service.

Bluehost has been around for quite some time and always offered powerful plans for a variety of users, and their VPS range is no different. 

You have three plans to choose from, with the cheapest plan starting at $17.99 per month for the first term and $29.99 per month on renewal. That gets you 2 CPU cores (2x Xeon Gold 5220), 30GB SSD  storage, 2 GB RAM, 1 TB bandwidth and one IP address. The top-tier plan called Ultimate, gives you 4 CPU cores (2x Xeon Gold 5222), 120GB SSD storage, 8 GB RAM, 3 TB bandwidth and two IP addresses, and it’s priced at $57.99 per month for the first term and $119.99 per month on renewal.

All plans come with a free SSL certificate and a 1-year domain. You also get unlimited subdomains and email accounts, and cPanel is included too. Domain privacy and protection, and SiteLock are categorized as optional add-ons, so you’ll have to pay extra if you need them.

Support is available 24/7 so if you encounter any difficulties you’ll be able to call them at any time of the day. All in all, Bluehost is a capable provider for both newbies and experienced users so they are definitely worth a try.

InMotion is one of the more popular web hosting providers out there and it is no surprise that they're secured a spot here

Check out a few VPS hosting providers and it's easy to be tempted with low headline rates, but don't be fooled – companies use a range of tricks to keep their charges down.

The hardware specs of a starter product are often kept unrealistically low, for instance, to keep the price right down. Important items – backups, cPanel – may be expensive extras. And even then, the headline rate may only apply if you pay for two or three years upfront, increasing dramatically on renewal.

InMotion Hosting is refreshingly different. Its baseline VPS-1000HA-S plan doesn't have the most eye-catching price at $24.99 per month over two years, but it's easy to see why the company asks this much. The product has a better specification – 4GB RAM, 75GB storage, 4TB bandwidth, 3 dedicated IPs – than some high-end plans from other providers, backups and a cPanel licence are included for free, and there's a 90-day money-back guarantee.

There's an unusual feature in what InMotion calls "unlocked CPU cores". Rather than having access to one or two cores only, you're able to spread your processing load across all cores on the server, a major performance boost for tasks involving a lot of simultaneous processing.

Welcome bonus touches include a feature called Launch Assist, which essentially means you get two hours of free time with one of InMotion's server administrators. Whether you need to change domain settings, configure cPanel, migrate WordPress or database files, they can help you get the job done.

Put it all together and you're getting a very capable set of VPS hosting plans. If you'd prefer a package that comes with unexpected surprises, rather than hidden catches, we'd give InMotion a try.


Some VPS hosts focus on first-time users, others go for big business, but Hostwinds does its best to appeal to everyone with no less than 10 different VPS hosting plans.

The low-end Tier One plan looks a little underpowered to us, with just 1GB RAM, one CPU core, 30GB of disk space and 1TB traffic. But it's cheap at $4.49 per month, and you can extend it significantly without spending a huge amount (adding basic server monitoring and cloud backups costs an extra $6 a month for both).

The more realistic Tier Four includes 6GB RAM, 100GB drive space, two CPU cores and 2TB of traffic. It's also significantly more expensive at $26.09 a month, but still competitive with other providers.

Meanwhile the top-of-the-range Tier Ten product gets you 96GB RAM, 16 CPU cores, 750GB storage and 9TB of traffic for an initial $296.09 a month. You probably don't need anything like that, but this does show there's plenty of scope for upgrading your site over time.

Every plan has some appealing configuration options. In particular, along with support for the usual Linux variants – CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian – you can choose Windows Server 2008, 2012 or 2016 for only a $5 a month premium. That's very good value, and if you're more familiar with Windows than Linux, it could save you from lots of management hassles later on.


Liquid Web is a premium web hosting provider which has been offering top quality managed solutions for more than 20 years, and now handles 500,000 sites for more than 32,000 customers worldwide.

The company doesn't try to beat the competition on price, instead focusing on delivering comprehensive products which will deliver quality results.

The cheapest Liquid Web plan may cost $59 a month (you can reduce that to $39 a month by going annual), for instance, but that gets you 2GB RAM, 40GB storage, a very generous 10TB of bandwidth, and 100GB backup.

There are lots of configuration options. Instead of just telling you that you're getting CentOS 7, Liquid Web allows you to select CentOS 6, Debian 8, Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04, and often with multiple options of their own: cPanel, Plesk, CloudLinux and more.

This is a managed product, too. Liquid Web fully supports the base operating system, and the support team will proactively restore failed services as soon as they're detected. Getting a managed VPS with other providers could cost you an extra $30 a month, or more.

If your VPS still has issues, there's speedy 24x7x365 support from knowledgeable professionals who will do their best to solve your problems at speed.

Liquid Web may not have the most appealing headline prices, but it's still cheaper than many others considering the features you get, and the excellent support will help keep your site running smoothly down the line.

You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:

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Best cloud backup of 2019

If running regular backups is important for home users, it's essential in business: losing even a small fraction of your most important data, for a brief period of time, could still be a real disaster in 2019 especially with GDPR around.

You could try to protect yourself by copying files to local drives, but that takes time and effort. It also leaves you vulnerable to fire, theft and hardware failure, which is why automatically uploading your files to a cloud backup service is often a better idea.

Choosing the right backup solution can seem tricky, as there's a lot to consider. How much storage space do you really need, for instance? Must the service support versioning (where multiple versions of documents are kept)? How should this be managed?

Security is important, too. What sort of encryption options do you get? How is access to your data managed? What options are there for managing your users, seeing what they're doing, making sure they're complying with your policies and procedures?

You're probably not going to get by with a free Dropbox account, but there are plenty of business providers ready to deliver the extras you and your company need. Here, in alphabetical order, are seven of the best.

  • Want your company or services to be added to this buyer’s guide? Please email your request to [email protected] with the URL of the buying guide in the subject line.

Image credit: IDrive 

IDrive Small Business is a versatile cloud backup service which does its best to cater for just about every possible need.

You're covered on PCs running anything from Windows 2000 up. There's Mac support, Linux backup scripts, iOS, Android and Windows mobile clients, and backup support for Windows Server, Microsoft SQL, Exchange, SharePoint and Oracle.

The baseline 250GB storage may not be enough for everyone, but hybrid backup support – the ability to save some files locally – allows you to be more selective about which files head for the cloud, and which stay nearby.

Once your data is online it can be accessed via a web interface, synced with computers or mobiles, and there's even a mechanism for sharing files via email, Facebook and Twitter.

IDrive Express is a feature which enables quickly backing up or restoring your system via a physically shipped drive. Unusually, the Business plan allows three free backups per year.

Despite all this functionality, the ability to create subaccounts for your storage space and a straightforward web-based management console helps you keep track of what's going on.

Overall it's a likeable package, and if your budget is non-existent then also consider IDrive Personal. There's no server backup or subaccounts, but the basic features and 5GB of storage can be yours for free.

Image credit: Backblaze

Backblaze has been delivering easy, low-cost backup services to consumers for years, so it's no surprise that its business products have the same focus on simplicity and value.

There are no limits on capacity, for instance, or bandwidth. There's no need to browse multiple service levels and try to figure out what's right for you. Backblaze Business is just a single plan which offers unlimited backup space for one computer, at a flat rate of $47.50 per computer per month on a two year contract.

The backup process is just as straightforward, with the program initially backing up all your data – which can even be on external disks and USB keys – and then backing up individual files as they change. Your data is then accessible online via a web interface and mobile app.

Bonus features include versioning, where file changes are kept for four weeks. An anti-theft feature records the IP address of your computer when it connects, and backup data can be sent on a flash drive or USB hard drive for speedy restores, anywhere in the world. Send the drive back within 30 days and they'll refund the price in full.

The service now includes some handy central management tools. Admins can assign users to separate groups for custom billing, view details about their backup status and settings, and receive alerts on problems.

There's even built-in support for BackBlaze's B2 cloud storage, an Amazon S3-like service which backs up servers and NAS for a flat $5 per terabyte per month.

In our experience BackBlaze only delivers mid-range backup performance, but that's fine for most purposes, and we think the service delivers in terms of features and value.

Image credit: Carbonite 

Unlike most backup products, Carbonite Safe is licensed to run on as many computers, external hard drives and NAS drives as you need. Sounds good, and although the base price is higher than some – along with the $99 per year per 100GB of extra storage – it's in line with other business backup companies.

However, the service does deliver plenty for your money. Carbonite can manage just about every aspect of your backups, keeping training and other hassles to a minimum. Even the initial backup is largely automatic, and incremental backups then upload changed files only.

Encryption is vital in keeping data safe once it has left your system, and Carbonite uses multiple technologies, including TLS during transfer and 128-bit Blowfish when stored.

All your files are visible from a web interface, iOS and Android apps, and there are various ways to restore them: individually, or all, and everything in-between, along with deleted files or previous versions (for up to a month), or everything that's changed after a point in time (handy if you've been hit by ransomware).

Put it all together and Carbonite Safe is a quality package, although as mentioned, there are cheaper services around.

Image credit: CrashPlan

Some business backup providers try to compete on functionality, others on price, but CrashPlan for Small Business aims to do both. The service combines a low price with a lengthy list of features and controls, including some that are rarely found elsewhere.

The package works on Linux, as well as PCs and Macs, for instance. There's unlimited storage space, including unlimited versioning, and it's easy to find documents by date, time or version (such a useful feature that it could be a reason for choosing this product in itself).

The service is hugely customisable. You can have continuous or scheduled backups. Online destinations, local, or both. And it’s possible to use your preferred encryption or compression settings, retention policies and more.

Some genuinely intelligent features help to enhance reliability. The package can watch for new documents in your chosen folders, for instance, ensuring files are protected as soon as possible.

All this can be managed from a powerful web console. You're able to monitor backup progress and settings, configure clients, enforce policies and more, although notably this is desktop-only – the console doesn't support mobile browsers.

There might be cheaper packages than CrashPlan for Small Business around, but on an overall level, they don't get close to its power and functionality. If you're a desktop user and need anything more than the backup basics, CrashPlan is definitely one for your shortlist.

Image credit: SOS Online Backup

SOS Online Backup for Business may seem expensive, but there's a simple explanation – the standard package includes a host of features which are premium add-ons elsewhere.

There's no limit on the number of devices you can back up, for instance. Servers are supported, too. SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint? No problem at all.

The core product removes many of the annoying restrictions you'll find elsewhere. There's unlimited versioning, no file size limits, no maximum retention times, and the service backs up just about everything: PCs from Vista up, Macs, iOS and Android devices, flash drives, network drives and more.

SOS Online Backup offers an optional per-user encryption key which is never stored in the cloud, ensuring your data can't be read by anyone else. That's a major security plus, if you can put up with the usability issues. (You can't browse or access files from the web, and if you lose the key there's no way to recover them at all).

In day-to-day use, the SOS Online Backup clients don't always deliver quite as much functionality as we'd like. They're still above average, though, and the service scores where it matters, being both fast and very easy-to-use. There's a 15-day free trial if you're interested in taking a look.

Image credit: SugarSync 

SugarSync Business is a convenient file sync and cloud backup service with one or two handy enterprise-friendly extensions.

The core of the package is its powerful and configurable sync service. You choose your folders, and they're uploaded then backed up in real-time, giving easy access to your data from PCs, Macs, Android or iOS devices.

There's considerable control over file sharing. You can create public links to share data, invite specific people only, allow file viewing only, or give them editing permission, too.

SugarSync's key advantage over similar services is that it's not just based around a single folder. You're able to choose any folder or folder tree, and have everything backed up and synced in the same way.

Opting for the Business plan takes the package further with 1TB of storage space for up to three users. Remote management enables the creation of user accounts with storage limits and permissions, and there's a bonus option to remotely wipe one of your systems.

Limited versioning support might be an issue for some. SugarSync only maintains the last five versions of a file, not much of a safety margin, and disappointing when some services have no fixed limits at all.

On balance, SugarSync Business doesn't have quite as many features as other products, but the strong sync and file sharing technologies have kept it on our shortlist.

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Best domain name registrars of 2019

Every great website needs a snappy, memorable domain name. Coming up with something new is a serious challenge, but once inspiration strikes, you'll need to register that name with a domain name registrar before you can use it online.

Registration isn't difficult, but first you must choose from the hundreds of companies competing for your business, and there are several things for you to consider before signing the virtual dotted line.

How to choose the perfect domain registrar

  • Pricing structures can be complicated. A low headline figure could become expensive on renewal, for instance. Prices vary between domain extensions, too, so a registrar that offers great value for a .com domain might give you a poor deal on when it comes to .org.
  • There may be extra costs for tasks like transferring your domain to another registrar, too. Read the small print before you sign up.
  • Look for any bundled or optional extras. A Whois privacy service prevents your address, phone number and email address appearing as public contact details for the domain, something which could otherwise get you a significant amount of spam email and phone calls. We've seen this cost as much as $11.20 a year, but several registrars provide it for free.
  • Many domain registrars offer hosting as an extra, but keep in mind that web hosting companies can also register domains. If you have an idea of which web host you'd like to use, check the details of its plans: you may be able to register a domain for free when you buy hosting, and that's often the cheapest option.
  • Finally, take a look at the support a registrar offers. You may never need any help at all, but if anything critical crops up – maybe an issue which might cause a problem with renewal – it's important that your provider is on hand to ably assist. 
  • Balancing all these priorities can be tricky, so that's why we've created this list of top domain registrars to help point you in the right direction. 


With a name like Domain.com, the EIG-owned brand, means business, focusing primarily on small and medium businesses. It offers most popular top level domains and over 25 country code top level domains and also sells premium domains as a broker.

With nearly two decades of online presence, the company - which is one of the world’s biggest domain name registrars - expanded in web hosting and now ranges a number of products including a website builder, a full design service and web hosting.

Domain.com prices tend to be average but we have managed to blag a 25% discount off almost everything in your cart*. Non-premium TLD (.Club, .Me, .Website etc) start from $2.99 for the first year ($2.24 with our code). In line with the rest of the industry, they rise significantly after the second year).

You need to pay for privacy protection, a reasonable $8.99, plus you can add email, web hosting, SSL certificates and malware protection, none of which is compulsory. You can stick with its basic website builder which is free with every domain: you get a drag and drop website builder, tons of mobile-friendly templates, up to six pages, SEO tools, Paypal integration and even access to stock image library.

Support is more than adequate with 24/7 chat, email and phone support. Domain.com may not have the cheapest prices but it provides with a very balanced offering.

*All renewals after the initial discounted period will be charged at the then current standard list price for the selected period. Coupon is not valid with sunrise registrations, landrush registrations, EAP registrations, pre-registrations, premium registrations, renewals, transfers, custom website design, other coupons, or special pricing.


Web giant GoDaddy is the world's biggest domain registrar, currently managing more than 75 million domains for 17 million customers around the globe.

The company is well-known for its low headline prices, and it's the same story here, with .uk and .co.uk domains available for $0.99 in year one. On the other hand .com and .org are less impressive (though still apparently cheap) starting at $12.17. Beware, though: these aren't the bargains they initially seem.

The first catch is that GoDaddy's starting prices only apply if you pay for two years upfront, and the second year is significantly more expensive (.com rises to $18.17, .uk and .co.uk domains rise to $12, .org and .mobi are ridiculously high, $21.17 for .org and $26.17 for .mobi). 

The second problem is that there are no bundled extras, so adding something like Whois privacy – a valuable service often included for free with other providers – costs $8 a month for year one, and $10 on renewal.

There's clearly much better value to be had elsewhere, but GoDaddy may still appeal to web beginners looking for a bundled hosting and domain registration deal. The company has an array of products covering every possible requirement, with telephone support if you need it, and buying your domain and hosting from the same provider will make life a little easier.

Just keep in mind that other providers can also combine hosting and domain registration, and GoDaddy may not provide the best package for you. Check out our various hosting guides for possible alternatives.

Hover is a popular domain name registrar owned by Tucows, which also operates eNom and the domain reselling platform OpenSRS.

Hover's website is clear and straightforward. A domain pricing page allows for checking registration costs before you start, or you can use the search box to immediately locate your preferred TLD (top-level domain).

By default the results page displays every domain you can register and their prices, giving you a lot to scroll through and read. But a handy sidebar allows filtering domains by categories including Personal, Businesses, Audio and Video, Food and Drink, and more. It's a neat touch which could help you spot an appealing domain that you otherwise might have missed.

Prices are very reasonable, with .com domains costing $12.99 for year one, .co.uk priced at $10.99, .org costing $13.99 and .mobi reaching $15.99. Shop around and you'll find slightly lower prices elsewhere, but Hover generally provides good value.

There's a welcome bonus in Whois Privacy, which comes free for as long as the domain is managed by Hover.

The company keeps upselling to a minimum, even in the final shopping cart stage. You're simply offered three email-related extras: email forwarding at $5 a year, a 10GB email account for $20, or you can opt for a 1TB inbox, file sharing, a calendar and more, for an annual $29.

If you have any questions, support is available via email and chat, although it's not 24/7. Working hours are 8am to 8pm (Eastern Time) Monday to Friday, and 12pm to 5pm at the weekend.

Most domain name registrars offer a simple identikit service with little to separate them from the competition, but Dynadot is an interesting exception which has some unusual advantages.

This starts right at the beginning, with your initial search. You can use the website much like any other – type your preferred domain, press Enter, read the results – but you also get Bulk and IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) search tools, and advanced options allow defining which domain extensions to include in your searches, as well as setting those as defaults for all future searches.

These searches can optionally return results from domain auctions, Dynadot's Marketplace (where other customers sell domains they no longer need) and other sources. There's also a Backorder option to try and grab a domain that isn't currently available, if it's not renewed.

Prices are on the low side, with Dynadot offering both special deals on some extensions and good value at renewal. .com sites are $7.99 initially, $8.99 on renewal. If you’re after a .co.uk domain, that’ll set you back $6.95, with .org costing $10.99, and .mobi domains are $4.25 initially, $13.99 on renewal.

That's just the start: Dynadot also piles on the free extras. A Website Builder allows you to build and host a simple one-page responsive website. There's free domain forwarding if you'd like to redirect visitors somewhere else. DNS support allows creating 50 subdomain records, 10 email addresses, and 5 each of MX and TXT records. There's even a Grace Deletion list which allows returning a domain if you change your mind.

This requires a small fee and won't always be allowed (the details on how it works are here), but it's still a welcome extra you'll rarely find with other registrars.

Dynadot's support wasn't always as impressive, with live chat being offline when we checked. But the website does have a publicly available forum, allowing anyone to browse common questions and see how happy (or otherwise) Dynadot's customers might be.


Founded in 2000, Namecheap is a popular domain name registrar and web host which now manages more than five million domains.

Namecheap's excellent website allows searching for individual domains, or in batches of up to 50.

If the domain is taken, you can view the Whois record or offer to buy the domain (via DomainAgents) from the current user.

If the domain is available, results are displayed across four tabs: Popular, New, Discounted and International. This is a neat approach which makes it easier to browse the list and find what you need.

Prices are generally very good at $8.88 (£6.8) for .com domains - $12.98 on renewal, $7.58(£5.8) for .co.uk - $9.58 on renewal, $12.98 (£10) for .org - $14.98 on renewal, and $16.88 (£13) for .mobi (at the moment, you can get .mobi for $2.88 for the first year). There are some special deals available, and Namecheap has an Agent 88 set of domains which are almost always available at $0.48 (£0.35) for the first year (these usually include the following: .site .website .space .pw .press .host .tech .online and .fun – but there may be others as well).

That would be good value all on its own, but Namecheap doesn’t stop there: you get  WhoisGuard domain privacy thrown in for free.

Namecheap's billing is straightforward and honest, with current and renewal prices clearly described in your Namecheap shopping cart, and Auto-Renew turned off. But if there's something you don't understand, helpful FAQ pages and live chat are just a click or two away.

Shopping around for a domain registrar can involve a lot of hassle as you research companies you've never heard of, try to separate genuine bargains from marketing tricks, and browse the small print looking for hidden catches. With potential savings only amounting to a few pounds or dollars a year, at best, you might prefer to simply sign up with a big-name provider that you know will give you a reasonable service, even if it does cost a fraction more.

Enter Google Domains, Google's lightweight domain registration arm, a straightforward provider that puts speed and simplicity at the top of its priority list.

Google Domains doesn't confuse you with endless sales, or 'special' deals that turn out to be not so special after all. Upselling is kept to a minimum. Instead, it's all about making the purchase process as easy as any other online shopping site: search, click, and check out.

The difference is obvious from the moment you reach the site. There are no animated ads at the top of the page, no 'Sale!' banners, no low headline prices: just a search box where you enter a single domain.

The results page is equally straightforward, with prices listed for nine common top-level domains, and an All Endings tab listing every option in alphabetical order (domain.academy, domain.bargains, domain.camera).

One potential problem is that Google Domains doesn't support all the domain extensions you'll get elsewhere, and this includes some quite common examples (.mobi, .tv). If you think you might ever want to buy something beyond the most popular extensions, it’s a good idea to check that your likely choices are available before you buy.

Prices are standardized to whole numbers, so for example .com, .co.uk and .org domains are all priced at $12. That's a little above average overall, but better than some, especially as Google Domains throws in free Whois privacy for as long as you're registered. That's a valuable extra which could cost $2.80 to $11.20 a year elsewhere.

If you do have any questions, a Help link displays articles on common problems. If that's not enough, the Contact Us page enables talking to a support agent by email, live chat or telephone (Google calls you), the highest level of domain registrar support we've seen anywhere.

Shopping around for a domain registrar can involve a lot of hassle as you research companies you've never heard of, try to separate genuine bargains from marketing tricks, and browse the small print looking for hidden catches. With potential savings only amounting to a few pounds or dollars a year, at best, you might prefer to simply sign up with a big-name provider that you know will give you a reasonable service, even if it does cost a fraction more.

Enter Google Domains, Google's lightweight domain registration arm, a straightforward provider that puts speed and simplicity at the top of its priority list.

Google Domains doesn't confuse you with endless sales, or 'special' deals that turn out to be not so special after all. Upselling is kept to a minimum. Instead, it's all about making the purchase process as easy as any other online shopping site: search, click, and check out.

The difference is obvious from the moment you reach the site. There are no animated ads at the top of the page, no 'Sale!' banners, no low headline prices: just a search box where you enter a single domain.

The results page is equally straightforward, with prices listed for nine common top-level domains, and an All Endings tab listing every option in alphabetical order (domain.academy, domain.bargains, domain.camera).

One potential problem is that Google Domains doesn't support all the domain extensions you'll get elsewhere, and this includes some quite common examples (.mobi, .tv). If you think you might ever want to buy something beyond the most popular extensions, it’s a good idea to check that your likely choices are available before you buy.

Prices are standardized to whole numbers, so for example .com, .co.uk and .org domains are all priced at $12. That's a little above average overall, but better than some, especially as Google Domains throws in free Whois privacy for as long as you're registered. That's a valuable extra which could cost $2.80 to $11.20 a year elsewhere.

If you do have any questions, a Help link displays articles on common problems. If that's not enough, the Contact Us page enables talking to a support agent by email, live chat or telephone (Google calls you), the highest level of domain registrar support we've seen anywhere.

Posted in Uncategorised

Best WordPress hosting 2020

Getting started with WordPress web hosting doesn't have to be expensive, after all the 17-year old WordPress is free (and open source). Even the cheapest shared hosting plan usually comes with a one-click WordPress installer, allowing the greenest of blogging newbies to have their first post ready in less than 60 seconds (we tried it).

Managing a blog over time is much more challenging, though. You'll need to find your own themes and plugins. And also keep them, and WordPress itself, up-to-date (although you can even get that done automatically).

Blogs are often targeted by malware, so it's important you have some way to detect and remove any threats, and you'll want regular backups to help get a broken blog working again. 

There's a long list of hosting companies offering WordPress plans, but we've picked out five of the best to point you in the right direction. Whether you're a first-time user or a big business, there's something for you here, and with prices starting at around a pound per month, it's well worth taking the time to find out more.

  • Want your company or services to be added to this buyer’s guide? Please email your request to [email protected] with the URL of the buying guide in the subject line.

These are the best WordPress hosting services of 2020

Image Credit: Bluehost

Budget WordPress hosting can have a lot of appeal, but it usually won't deliver the features, performance or reliability that high traffic sites need. If you're the demanding type, opting for a premium hosting plan will give you much better results.

Bluehost has created its own VPS-based architecture to deliver optimum WordPress performance via NGINX, a custom PHP-FPM setup and intelligently allocated resources through KVM hypervisor. (If you're not a hosting geek, this just means Bluehost has taken the time to optimize the low-level setup of its platform for WordPress, rather than simply making do with a standard configuration.)

The company doesn't waste time by pretending to offer ‘unlimited’ resources, and instead tells you exactly what you're going to get. For the Basic plan which starts at $2.75 per month for the first term (renews at $7.99), this means 50GB SSD storage, a single website, a free domain for one year and $50 Marketing Credit.

Additional features for all plans include free SSL, unmetered MySQL DB, site analytics dashboard, unlimited parked/sub domains and Bluehost Marketplace where users will have access to premium themes and plugins at exclusive prices. New Bluehost accounts will also get a free service called Blue Spark, which is designed to help newcomers with everything WordPress related.

The Plus plan which starts at $5.45 per month for the first term (renews at $10.99), adds unlimited websites and website space, and additional features like spam protection, free CDN and WP staging environment. The Choice Plus plan costs $5.45 per month for the first term (renews at $14.99) and adds even more features. Bluehost also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you feel the service doesn't deliver. 

If you need more power, BlueHost has a managed hosting solution called WordPress Pro that has been optimized for WordPress websites, with prices starting at $17.95 per month. These plans have many additional features like unlimited everything, malware detection and removal, JetPack site analytics, business review tools and more.

Image Credit: Tsohost

Managed WordPress packages can often feel overpriced. Many hosts charge significant premiums for impressive sounding claims – optimized servers, malware scanning – that are difficult to evaluate or confirm.

The UK-based Tsohost isn't interested in any of that, instead focusing on providing the core WordPress essentials at a very fair price.

The baseline Economy plan gives you a free domain name, will migrate your existing site, includes 50% discount on Standard SSL and has no limits on bandwidth. You get daily backups and can restore any of the last 30 days with a click. There's 24/7 support via ticket and email, and phone and live chat is available from 7am to midnight.

You get a hundred 200MB mailboxes, and the plan restricts you to 100GB storage and 100,000 page views a month. If that's enough for you, the plan costs ~$4.9(£3.99) a month paid annually.

If that's just too underpowered, opting for the Deluxe plan gets you unlimited storage, 500x1GB mailboxes, and unlimited hosted websites. That's significantly more capable, yet still very reasonably priced at ~$7.8(£5.99) a month paid annually.

The  "most popular" Ultimate plan is priced at ~$11.7(£8.99) a month paid annually and supports unlimited storage, unlimited hosted websites, unlimited 10GB mailboxes and a free SSL certificate among other things.

Tsohost doesn't offer all the frills and extras you'll get with some products. There's no talk of SiteLock malware protection, optimized WordPress add-ons or a custom CDN. But it's hard to complain at this price, and Tsohost is still delivering a capable service with more than enough power for smaller sites.

Image Credit: Inmotion Hosting

Most web hosts offer only a few WordPress plans, and even these might be set up to point you in a particular direction. You'll often see an underpowered plan, an overpriced one, and a special deal on the mid-range plan they really want you to buy. That makes it easy to decide, but it also limits your upgrade options if your site grows over time.

InMotion Hosting is unusual in offering six WordPress plans, covering everything from small personal blogs to resellers and big business. Figuring out which is the best product for you will take a little more thought, but at least there's room to upgrade – or downgrade – if your circumstances change.

Better still, InMotion hasn't artificially limited the low-end plans by removing key features. Even the baseline WP-1000S plan – which costs $5.99 (£5.15) a month initially (1-year plan), $9.99 (£7.70) on renewal – gives you 50GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth and email addresses, preinstalled WordPress, SSL, backups, automatic updates, SiteLock security, cPanel site management, and extras like BoldGrid and WP-CLI. The only significant issue is InMotion's suggestion that the plan works best for blogs with up to 20,000 monthly visits, and even that won't be a problem for many smaller sites.

Upgrading your plan gets you some extras – premium themes and plugin subscriptions, a dedicated IP address, support for hosting more sites – but it's mostly about giving you more resources.

There are cheaper deals around, but in previous reviews, we've found InMotion to be reliable, professional, and honest, and any price premium is likely to be worth paying. You don't have to take our word for it, though – an exceptional 90-day money-back guarantee gives you plenty of opportunities to find out for yourself.

Image Credit: 1&1 IONOS

Web giant 1&1 IONOS seems to have a hosting product for every possible need, and WordPress is no exception. Novice users can try out its service for a nominal $3 (£2.4) a month, yet the plan still outperforms many competitors. 

The bundled 25GB of storage means you won't be running out of space in a hurry, for example. There are no bandwidth or visitor limits, and you can set up as many email accounts as you need.

1&1 IONOS offers the core WordPress management functions that you would expect: a setup wizard, preinstalled plugins, automatic updates and 24/7 support (including by telephone). Also, you get a personal consultant free of charge. 

All this is built on a capable platform – NGINX, PHP 7.2, OPcache, up to 2GB RAM guaranteed – to enhance your blog's performance.

There's SSL included and even a free domain thrown in, which is a ridiculously good value at this price.

If you're a WordPress novice, it might be worth taking out the plan for an initial year, claiming your free domain and taking the time to learn how the blog works. When you time is up, renew if you're happy, or if you're not, use your knowledge and experience to find a better plan.

1&1 IONOS isn't just about newbies, though: there's value for more demanding users, too. In particular, the Unlimited plan gives you unlimited Wordpress sites and storage space, unlimited databases (1GB max), and unlimited email accounts (2GB each). Bonus features include a Wildcard SSL, a CDN and SiteLock malware scanning, as well as RailGun content delivery network, and the price looks good at $18 (£14.6)

Image Credit: HostGator

Choosing the best WordPress hosting package can seem like a complicated business, with a stack of low-level details and issues to consider. But it doesn't have to be that way. If you don't have special requirements then opting for a reliable company will get you capable mid-range products that can handle everything most users need.

HostGator generally delivers powerful hosting plans for a fair price, and its managed WordPress range is no exception. Its Starter product may only cost $5.95 (£4.25) ($3.98 with our promo code) per month for three years, $9.95 (£7.10) afterwards, but you still get a free site migration, an SSL certificate, automatic malware detection and removal, unlimited email addresses and unmetered storage and bandwidth, and it can handle up to 100,000 visits a month.

Ramping up to the high-end Business plan gets you more CPU power, support for up to five sites and 500,000 visits a month, yet still costs only $18.17 (£14.4) ($11.18 with our promo code) a month for the first three years, $27.95 (£22.10) a month afterward.

Smart caching and a CDN are on hand to enhance your website's performance, 24/7 support helps keep your site up and running, and surprise bonus features include free domain privacy to protect from identity theft and reduce annoying spam.

We've had good experiences with HostGator's service, but if you're not so lucky, there's a generous 45-day money-back guarantee. As with other hosting companies, this won't cover any domain registration fees, but it's still a better deal than you'll often find elsewhere.

You might also want to check out our other buying guides:

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Best email service 2020: paid, free and business providers

If you're looking for the best email service providers around today, you've come to the right place.

Getting hold of the best email service providers today can be easy. Sign up with an ISP and you’ve got one account for starters. Creating an account with Google, Microsoft or other big names will get you more. Buy a decent web hosting package and you'll probably get enough email addresses to power a large business, all for no extra charge.

But picking the best email service providers for you can be more difficult, as there's a lot to consider - especially in these days of remote working. What are the spam filters like? How easy is it to keep your inbox organized? Can you access the account from other email clients? And what about using the service with a custom domain and address of your own ([email protected])?

Keep reading and we'll highlight some of the best email service providers around. All have decent free services, perhaps with ads and some limits, but we'll also talk about their business-friendly commercial products which deliver the power, functionality and enterprise-level extras that demanding users need.

The best email service providers of 2020 are:

Image credit: Proton Technologies

Signing up with an email provider will often involve some privacy compromises. Yahoo Mail asks for your name and mobile number, for instance. Gmail and other services might scan your messages to carry out useful actions (such as adding events to calendars), and just about everyone serves you with ads.

ProtonMail is a Swiss-based email service which focuses on privacy above all else. You can sign up anonymously, there's no logging of IP addresses, and all your emails are end-to-end encrypted, which means there's no way ProtonMail (or anyone else) can read their contents. Also, address verification (which allows you to be sure you are securely communicating with the right person) and full support for PGP email encryption is available. In late April 2019, elliptic curve cryptography was introduced, which adds additional security and faster speeds.

There are some significant limits. The free product has a tiny 500MB storage space, only supports sending 150 messages a day, and is distinctly short in terms of organizational tools (no folders, labels or smart filters). As the end-to-end encryption is specific to ProtonMail, it also ensures that you can't use the service with other email clients.

Still, it seems a little unfair to complain about a service which is no-strings-attached free, and doesn't even show ads. In reality, ProtonMail is a specialist tool which is intended for use alongside services like Gmail – not to replace them – and overall it performs its core tasks very well.

If you do need more, ProtonMail's $5 (you can choose to pay in USD, Euro and CHF) a month (or $48 yearly) Plus account gives you 5GB storage, a 1,000 message-per-day allowance, custom domains ([email protected]) and support for folders, labels, filters as well as some addition features like contact groups.

A further Professional plan brings more storage, email addresses and a second custom domain, as well as adding a catch-all email address and multi-user support. It's priced from $8 per month per user (75$ yearly), which is reasonable if you need ProtonMail's security, although it's also notably more expensive than the business accounts of the big-name competition.

best email providers

Image credit: Google

First released back in 2004, Google's Gmail has become the market leader in free email services with more than a billion users across the globe.

Gmail's stripped-back web interface is a highlight. Most of the screen is devoted to your inbox, with a minimum of toolbar and other clutter. Messages are neatly organized via conversations for easier viewing, and you can read and reply to emails with ease, even as a first-time user.

There's plenty of power here. Dynamic mail makes Gmail more interactive, with the ability to take action directly from within the email, like filling out a questionnaire or responding to a Google Docs comment. Messages can be automatically filtered into tabbed categories like Primary, Social and Promotions, helping you to focus on the content you need. Leading-edge spam blocking keeps your inbox free of junk, you can manage other accounts from the same interface (Outlook, Yahoo, any other IMAP or POP email), and there's 15GB storage for your inbox, Drive and photos. 

You can also access Gmail offline, although you'll need Google Chrome for that to work. Furthermore, there is a neat snooze feature that allows you to, well, snooze an email for a specified amount of time (it also automatically labels that email as important).

Other features are more questionable. Instead of organizing messages into folders, for instance – a simple metaphor which just about every user understands – you must filter them using a custom labelling system. This works, and has some advantages, but isn't popular with all users. Still, Gmail is an excellent service overall, and a good first choice for your email provider.

Google makes a paid business-oriented version of Gmail available in the shape of its G Suite product.

This more professional product drops the ads and allows using a custom email address on your domain ([email protected]). Business-oriented migration tools can import mail from Outlook, Exchange, Lotus and more. Storage space doubles to 30GB on the Basic plan, and you get unlimited group email addresses, 99.9% guaranteed uptime and 24/7 support.

G Suite is Google's answer to Microsoft Office, so of course you also get apps for working with documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Shared calendars keep you better organized, there's video and voice conferencing for online meetings, and again, there’s 24/7 support to keep your system running smoothly.

This more Office-like power makes for a more expensive product than the email-only competition, with prices starting at $6 a user for the simplest plan. You're getting a lot for your money, though, and if you'll use G Suite's features then it could be a smart choice. A 14-day free trial provides an easy way to help you find out.

best email providers

Image credit: Microsoft

Outlook's web interface follows the same familiar style as its desktop incarnation, and most other email clients: folders and organizational tools on the left, the contents of the current folder in the center, and a simple preview pane on the right (with adverts in the case of the free account).

A toolbar gives you speedy access to common features, and right-clicking folders or messages shows you just about everything else. If you've ever used another email client, you'll figure out the key details in moments.

Despite the apparent simplicity, there's a lot going on under the hood. The service automatically detects important emails and places them in a Focused Inbox, keeping any distractions out of sight. Events including flights and dinner reservations can automatically be added to your calendar. It's easy to share that calendar with other Outlook.com or Office 365 users, or you can save your events to a Family calendar that everyone can access. In addition, there are some interesting features too, like the ability to add polls directly to your Outlook emails.

Excellent attachment support includes the ability to directly share OneDrive files as copies or links. You can also attach files directly from your Google Drive, Dropbox and Box accounts, and a chunky 15GB mailbox allows storing plenty of files from other people.

This all worked just fine for us, but if you're unhappy with the service defaults, there's a chance they can be tweaked via Outlook.com's Settings dialog. This doesn't have quite as many options as Gmail, but they're well organized and give you plenty of control over layout, attachment rules, message handling and more.

If that’s still not enough, Microsoft offers a bunch of app-based integrations to take the service further. You get built-in Skype support via the beta, and apps give you easier access to Evernote, PayPal, GIPHY, Yelp, Uber and more.

Upgrading to Office 365 gets you an ad-free inbox, 50GB mail storage and a vast 1TB of OneDrive storage. Extras include offline working, professional message formatting tools, phone or chat-based support, file recovery from malicious attacks like ransomware and more. Oh, and the latest versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. All this can be yours for the equivalent of $7 a month on the single user Office 365 Personal plan or you can pay 70$ for a year.

best email providers

Image credit: Yahoo

Yahoo Mail doesn't make the headlines so much, these days, but its latest version is a polished and professional service which stands up well against the top competition.

The well-designed interface resembles Gmail, at least initially, with a large view of your inbox, one-click filters for common messages and content (Photos, Documents, Travel), and easy browsing of all the emails in a conversation. But you can also organize mails into custom folders, and the layout can be tweaked to display a message preview in a couple of clicks. Mobile users have some additional features like the option to unsubscribe to newsletters and such, without ever leaving the Yahoo Mail inbox.

A powerful underlying engine can integrate with Facebook, supports sending SMS and text messages, is accessible via web, POP and (in some situations) IMAP, and can forward email to another address. Valuable extras include disposable email addresses to protect your privacy, and a mammoth 1TB of mailbox storage means you can keep just about everything you receive, for a very long time.

Demanding users might find issues, over time. Mail organization can't quite match the flexibility of Gmail's labelling scheme, for instance, and there aren't nearly as many low-level tweaks, settings and options as you'll often see elsewhere. But overall, Yahoo Mail is an appealing service which needs to be on your email shortlist.

As with other providers, Yahoo offers a Business Mail plan with more features. The highlight is an option to use the service with a custom domain ([email protected]), although there are other advantages, too. The service can import contacts from Facebook, Gmail, Outlook and more. You can view all your mailboxes on the same screen, and there are all the usual business-friendly productivity tools (multiple calendars, document handling, analytics and more).

Prices start from $3.19 per mailbox per month, billed annually, and they drop as you add mailboxes – $1.59 for 5, $1.19 for 10, and for 20+ you'll need to contact them. Additionally, another pricing plan called Yahoo Mail Pro is available at $3.49 per month. This gives you ad-free inbox, priority customer support and additional features.

There's even a free domain name included, and not just the initial registration: Yahoo will also renew it for as long as your subscription is active.

best email providers

Image credit: Zoho

Zoho Workplace is a business-oriented email service which throws in an online office suite, document management, and a host of collaboration tools and other extras.

Zoho's free plan supports up to 25 users, although there's an extra 25 available if you can refer others to the service (update: Zoho is currently remodeling the referral program so this isn't available at the moment), each with 5GB of mailbox storage, and can be used with one domain of your own. These are features you'll normally only find in commercial products, and when you factor in the spreadsheet, word processor, presentation and other tools, it looks like a real bargain.

The email service is easy-to-use, and provides a decent set of features to help organize your emails: folders, tags, filters, smart searches, and more. You can also create custom hotkeys to expand and replace easy abbreviations of your choice with full words and phrases as you type. Zoho also has an offline mode, which allows you to read and respond to your emails even when your internet connection fails you.

The free plan is still a little basic. It gives you web access only, for instance, and there's no support for email forwarding.

Fortunately, the Zoho Standard plan fixes that. A mere $3 per user (paid annually) gets you IMAP and POP access, email forwarding, active sync, multiple domain hosting, domain aliases, 30GB storage, a 30MB attachment limit (up from 25MB with the free plan) and some major improvements elsewhere (the ability to send cloud files to non-Zoho users, for instance). You also have Lite plan which is a cheaper Standard plan ($1 per user) with less features, and a Professional ($6 per user) plan which adds more features.

A number of these features are available elsewhere for free, of course, but businesses or anyone who will use the custom domain support or Office tools will find a lot to like here. Well worth a closer look.

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