4.6 
As the name suggests, Linux web hosting uses Linux as its operating system. It is open-source, so anyone can access, use, and edit it. Today, it remains popular because of its low- price and flexibility. As such, it is considered a better platform among many web hosting providers and website operators than restrictive Windows hosting services.
However, be selective with who you entrust with your web hosting needs. You have to choose based on the provider’s features, customer support, reliability, user-friendliness, and price. The independent study we conducted included analyzing thousands of user reviews, surveys, and testing based on these parameters. As a result, We have compiled our list of the best cheap Linux shared hosting providers based on these parameters.
Key Points To Consider When Choosing A Hosting Provider
- Price – Look for a provider that manages to perfectly balance your needs within a reasonable budget.
- Average Uptime – Aim for the highest possible average uptime. Every hour of downtime can mean thousands of lost sales.
- Cyber-Security – A single data breach can seriously hurt consumers’ trust in your brand. Hosting providers offer several security features you can opt for if you need them.
- Bandwidth And Load Time – The higher the bandwidth, the better your load time – which is the amount of time a website takes to load.
- Storage And Backup – The last thing you need is to run out of space to store data. Fortunately, many hosting providers will offer you the easy option of simply upgrading your storage capacity if you begin reaching its limits.
The Best Hosting Services of 2024 (Bought and Tested)
Hostinger is a Lithuanian web hosting provider that is backed by significant German venture capital. Over the years, it has established a name for itself as among the cheapest hosting providers. However, its low cost comes at the expense of advanced features.
- Overall Score 4.6/5
- Features 4/5
- Support 3.5/5
- User Friendliness 5/5
- Pricing 5/5
- Reliability 5/5
Features 4/5: Hostinger has a respectable list of features, with an uptime guarantee of 99.9% and unlimited free SSL certificates. However, the low price does mean some of its best features are locked behind higher packages. This falls short of most growing businesses’ needs. You do not even get free domain registration and have to pay $9.99 for it.
Support 3.5/5: Hostinger is known for pioneering the live chat system. Professionals used it to manage their live chat services, and customers could expect instant, satisfactory responses to their queries. Now, they can take up to 30 minutes or more to get back to you. Furthermore, Hostinger does not have any phone line for urgent assistance. In other words, you cannot rely upon timely and punctual assistance when needed, which can result in a significant loss of revenue.
User Friendliness 5/5: What Hostinger lacks in customer support, it makes up for it in its user-friendliness. It is fully optimized for WordPress, too, although its WordPress Staging Tool is only available to the top Business Shared Hosting plan. They also offer a free-to-use website migration tool. Lastly, Hostinger employs its own hPanel as the in-house control panel. We found hPanel to be significantly superior to cPanel, with its larger icons, vibrant graphics, and intuitive UI.
Pricing 5/5: Nothing beats Hostinger’s pricing. They have by far the cheapest Linux web hosting packages.
- Single Shared Hosting: $1.99/month
- Premium Shared Hosting: $2.99/month
- Business Shared Hosting: $3.99/month
Reliability 5/5: Despite its low price, Hostinger actually has fairly reliable service, with very low downtime and an uptime of 99.99 percent, as promised. It delivers on its promise of quick load times and consistency. Although the cap on visitors can be a problem for large businesses, they are adequate for most small to medium-sized enterprises – the exact kind of organizations that would find Hostinger’s low prices appealing.
Pros Of Hostinger
- Consistent 99.99 percent Uptime
- Exceptionally Low Price
- hPanel
- Scalable Plans
Cons Of Hostinger
- Poor Customer Support
- Cap On Monthly Visitors
- Lack Of Features For Lower-End Plans
Launching in 2019, Hostarmada is a very new entrant in the web hosting industry. Hostarmada is great for fast-growing businesses that need to regularly scale their web hosting operations to keep up with surging demand. Indeed, with Hostarmada, you will have access to several features and easily scale up as your business grows
- Overall Score 4.1/5
- Features 5/5
- Support 4/5
- User Friendliness 4.5/5
- Pricing 3/5
- Reliability 4/5
Features 5/5: Hostarmada has servers present on four continents and promises fast load times. It also offers several hosting options, including cloud web hosting. It promises daily backups for all plans, a cPanel control panel, unlimited bandwidth, a free website builder, and a free domain for all its subscription plans. All plans also get unlimited email accounts and unlimited databases.
Support 4/5: As is the industry standard, Hostarmada offers 24/7 customer support via live chat, phone, and ticket. However, when we tried their services, we faced a delay in responses. Alas, it was nothing exceptional, and we would get responses between 10 to 15 minutes. The agents were polite and well-informed about the product and were able to guide us effectively. Unfortunately, the company also does not offer remote assistance, so you have to do everything manually on your end.
User Friendliness 4.5/5: Hostarmada also incorporates the cPanel control panel, which is very easy to use. It also has a one-click Softaculous installer as a part of its package. Softaculous gives you instant access to hundreds of applications and tools to incorporate into your website, making it especially ideal for eCommerce platforms. But besides this, it does not go very far.
Pricing 3/5: Hostarmada offers three plans with a 45-day refund policy.
- StartDock: $7.99/month – 15 GB of SSD storage and 1 website
- WebWarp: $14.99/month – unlimited websites and 30 GB of SSD storage
- SpeedReaper: $17.99/month – 40 GB of SSD storage and dynamic caching
Reliability 4/5: For a relatively new company, Hostarmada has surprisingly good reliability, with a consistent uptime of 99.99 percent. However, their customer support is far from perfect, and they need more time to gather experience and become somebody you can trust blindfolded.
Pros Of Hostarmada
- Free Website Migration
- Consistent Uptime
- Unlimited Emails
Cons Of Hostarmada
- Lack Of Remote Assistance
- High Prices
- Low Storage Space
Fastcomet first entered the web hosting provider market in 2013. It has used that time to improve its services and truly become an industry leader with some of the best customer support available. Fastcomet has reliable speeds and notably stellar customer support.
- Overall Score 4.1/5
- Features 4.5/5
- Support 5/5
- User Friendliness 3.5/5
- Pricing 3/5
- Reliability 4.5/5
Features 4.5/5: Fastcomet has an impressive list of features integrated with cPanel, including Cloudflare CDN, a global delivery network that accelerates data transmission from the servers to your website’s visitors. The one-click Softaculous auto-installer tool is also incorporated, allowing for the smooth adoption of WordPress and Joomla. Just the basic plan has all the features you will need for a successful website.
Support 5/5: With Fastcomet, you are primarily paying for excellent customer support. Not only is their helpline active 24/7 and reachable via phone, live chat, and ticket, but they are also very responsive. We got instantaneous responses and were able to get our problems resolved on the fly. They were also remarkably transparent and honest each time, which really left an impression on us.
User Friendliness 3.5/5: Fastcomet’s admin control panel is well-designed, but its UX is not as intuitive as we would have liked. This might make it tricky to use for people who are not familiar with web hosting portals. We also had trouble setting up an account with Fastcomet, though a quick chat with a customer support agent resolved that. In any case, it is not the most user-friendly provider.
Pricing 3/5: Fastcomet has a standard 45-day money-back guarantee and three packages for you to choose from. They are a considerably pricier option to start with.
- FastCloud: $9.95/month – 15 GB of SSD, free domain and website transfer, and a “Website Starter Kit.
- FastCloud Plus: $14.95/month – 25 GB of SSD space and the ability to host multiple websites.
- FastCloud Extra: $19.95/month – 35 GB of SSD storage space.
Reliability 4.5/5: Based on our analysis, we can conclude that Fastcomet is able to deliver on its promise of fast load times and reliable uptimes – provided your server is nearby. This is usually not an issue since they have servers present in virtually all important corners of the globe. They also conduct daily backups, offer free SSL encryption, and protect their databases with BitNinja server security.
Pros Of Fastcomet
- Excellent Customer Support
- Free Daily Backups
- Express Transfer
Cons Of Fastcomet
- Glitchy Dashboard
- High Price
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Verpex is a relatively new entrant in the market, but it has established itself as a major player in a short amount of time. Its servers are on five continents in some of the most significant tech hubs like San Francisco, Bangalore, and London – proof of the company’s reliable customer support. For organizations looking for affordable providers without compromising quality, Verpex is an excellent option.
- Overall Score 4.9/5:
- Features 5/5:
- Support 5/5:
- User Friendliness 5/5:
- Pricing 5/5:
- Reliability 4.5/5
Features 5/5: Verpex does not cut any corners when it comes to features. It has servers present around the world, so you can get one close to your customer base, improving load time. It offers daily website backups, meaning your backup will always be the latest version of your website. Best of all, it has a 99.5% uptime guarantee for the basic plan, which goes as high as 99.99% for those with a Bronze plan or better.
Support 5/5: We tried to get in touch with Verpex’s support team at all hours of the day, including weekends, and we got an instant response – from a person and not a bot. Their support teams were also remarkably active during the holidays. Plus, the company’s website claims they have a 99 percent support case resolution rate. This is unsurprising since we always found the support team to be cordial, knowledgeable, and supportive.
User Friendliness 5/5: Verpex is optimized for WordPress and various other web tools. Thanks to this, we had a seamless, familiar, and intuitive experience – after they migrated our website free of charge! Plus, they have a helpful and easy-to-use auto-installer that makes it quick to adopt and integrate into your website design. Verpex provides its clients with a cPanel Control Panel for a detailed and real-time overview of and control over your website, too.
Pricing 5/5: Verpex has a generous 45-day money-back guarantee. Its pricing model is also affordable, considering the value they offer. They have four web hosting plans.
- Iron: $5/month
- Bronze: $5.99/month
- Silver: $9.99/month
- Gold: $14.99/month
Reliability 4.5/5: Verpex offers free unlimited SSL certificates, so you can rest assured your website is encrypted and secure from hackers. Indeed, customer testimonials also suggest that Verpex is very secure against virtual threats. We still encountered problems, like unexpectedly slow load time (although the support team was quick to address our concerns).
Pros Of Verpex
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Unlimited Free SSL Certificates
- Free Domain Registration
- Free Migrations
- WordPress Optimized
Cons Of Verpex
- Managed Hosting Providers Are Still Expensive
- Lack Of Storage On Starter Plans
- Newcomer With Untested Track Record
Ranking comparison between the Top Providers
Best Web Hosting Services: Final Recommendations
Now that you know details regarding leading web hosting platforms and their specific pitfalls and advantages, you have to choose one for your website. Make this choice depending on your specific needs. Some might want a platform that can handle large volumes of data and traffic but cannot fork over a lot of cash for it. So look for a platform that fits in the ideal sweet spot between the two.
Verpex remains our highest-ranked web hosting platform because of its readily-available customer support, a lengthy list of features, low prices, and impeccable reliability. It can appeal to just about every organization’s needs without burning through its wallet. Nevertheless, if you want something that is oriented towards your specific needs, then all the other options are great too.
How Do We Rank And How You Should Choose Your Web Hosting Provider?
- Features30%
- Reliability30%
- Support15%
- User Friendliness15%
- Pricing10%
- Features (30%)– We looked at how generous each provider was for their cheapest subscription plan and how useful they were for us in our test and for other consumers. The worth of a provider is determined by its features
- Reliability (30%) – We checked how fast these different providers are by testing them. We also tried to connect to them from different locations and via different internet providers. Of course, we also took user feedback into account as well
- Support (15%) – We made several inquiries with all web hosting providers using all of their available communication options and calculated how long it took for them to satisfactorily resolve our queries. We also incorporated other customers’ sentiments about customer support services into our evaluation, too
- User Friendliness (15%) – We had a UI/UX expert assess how intuitive these hosting platforms are and how different demographics would interact with them. Once again, we also incorporated customer feedback into our assessment
- Pricing (10%) – We looked at what each provider’s various subscription plans offered relative to one another. If they gave better overall services, even if their prices were not the lowest, and offered significant scalability in the future, then we gave them a higher score
So with this in mind, you need to think about what web hosting provider you should opt for.
If you are an eCommerce platform, you should aim for a provider that allows scalability and is compatible with various plugins and applications suitable for online shopping. However, these tend to be pricier. So you need to get the perfect provider that is within your budgetary needs but still satisfies your eCommerce needs.
Similarly, if you do not expect a high volume of visitors, then do not unnecessarily get more expensive packages that allow unlimited bandwidth or high storage. You can easily scale if you need it later once you grow, but do not waste additional money on data storage, bandwidth, or features that you do not need right now.
