Nowadays, Linux hosting is used by many if not by most Web hosting providers. If you have a small website, you won’t care too much about which OS is hosting your website since all what you are interested in is speed, availability and reliability of your website host. As your website grows big along with your number of visitors however, you will want to be very selective when it comes to hosting your resource-demanding website.

Similarly if you are an experienced website developer, a website owner who knows Linux, you should know already the kind of platform you expect to host best your website.



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Why Linux based hosting ?

Linux has been around for decades surviving operating systems business ebbs and flows. Its open source character makes it available to all and thereby cost effective, flexible and compatible with the ever changing world of apps , software and CMS tools needed to create websites. Linux offers also better support for programming languages like Perl and PHP.

Users would feel they can easily control many features of their websites like script installations, private DNS, unlimited emails, control panel configuration, database selection and much more. The large Linux community of developers are constantly improving, enhancing and stabilizing the hundreds of utilities that are available on Linux. This never ending contribution to Linux operating system makes it one of the most flexible, secure and feature-rich operating system. No wonder most host providers prefer to use Linux as their main hosting platform.

Features to keep in mind before signing up with a host provider ?

Before choosing the most convenient host provider for your website, you would need to keep in mind the following important features :

Load times :

This affects your visitor’s retention rate aka bounce rate as well as your conversion rate eventually. It is known that a one second delay in your site load time can have negative consequences on your website’s expected conversion returns. This can be as high as 7% reduction in conversion rate !

A 3 second delay can result in losing half of your visitors. Your search engine ranking (SEO) might also be affected since Google ‘loves’ fast loading websites and gives them priority when yielding ranking results.

You might want to test your website loading speed using gtmetrix.com for instance.

High availability or Uptime :

You will want to select a host provider that boasts high uptimes. Linux servers are known for their high reliability, availability and security. This will ensure your website is always online and secure against potential hack attacks. This will give you peace of mind.

Expert 24/7 support :

In case you have issues with your website, you would need to react quickly to solve the problem. Having a 24/7 support is important for your business. Make sure they offer a phone, chat and Email expert support .

Now besides the features above and before you sign up for one of the host providers below, make sure they offer enough disk space, regular backups, many apps that you can readily install and a large bandwidth.

Best Linux web hosting services 2020 at a glance:

Inmotion Hosting

Siteground

HostGator

Hostinger

bluehost

A2 Hosting

Interserver

GoDaddy

Let’s take a look at a few of our picks;

Inmotion Hosting – Secure, Fast and Reliable

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On-Demand Excellent Tech Support

Offers a large variety of Shared, Cloud, VPS and Dedicated Servers

Free website migration + Free domain!

CloudFlare CDN

Regular backups

Handling of multiple WordPress installations

WordPress Support

90 day money-back guarantee

Cloud Based & Managed VPS Support

Inmotion is certainly impressive at first glance, with an A+ rating by the BBB and a 90 day money-back guarantee. Considering how you’ll generally know what your up-time statistics are at the end of a given calendar month, ia a pretty generous window to decide whether or not you enjoy their product. It’s White Label ready as well, so when you need to transfer or sell your domain, they’re ready to make that magic happen free of charge !

Inmotion is an employee-owned company as well, so you can rest assured that there’s always someone working around the clock to ensure the experience you have with their services is constantly improving. Experienced users will enjoy the support for PostreSQL and MySQL databases, Ruby,PHP 7, Python and Perl and more.

With one-click data backup and a free speedy SSD drive with all hosting plans included, they offer one of the most affordable packages for businesses.

Siteground – Made for Ease

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Reliable web hosting

Auto Scalable cloud hosting

Best responsive 24/7 technical support

Cloudflare integration

Deep technical expertise

Unlimited emails and databases

Free daily backups

Enterprise-level solutions

WooCommerce Hosting – Great for Businesses

WordPress Hosting

Boasting over two-million domains, SiteGround is considered one of the easiest, most user friendly platforms on our list. They offer plenty of beginner friendly website building tools and a plethora of user interface features to include on your website.

Whether you are a newcomer to web design on Linux or an old pro, they’re bound to have exactly what you need to make your visions come true. Their cheapest plan offers free daily backups with unlimited email accounts as well as unlimited bandwidth and MySQL databases.

SiteGround’s shared hosting plan provides excellent options for beginners: cPanel, free Let’s Encrypt SSLs, Cloudflare integration, unlimited emails and databases as well as free daily backups and many more.

Read: Best website builder software

WooCommerce is another feature they support, which is one of the most used shopping cart plugins in all of the eCommerce world. It’s virtually free, although limited, but for those wanting to start up an online store, it’s a great place to start with.

They provide 24/7 live phone and chat support for businesses. Homeowners won’t get the same level of support though.

With an interface made for collaboration with clients and with an uptime guarantee of 99.9%, SiteGround has everything you need to run a business website, even if you’ve never done it before.

HostGator – Will Make Your Jaw Drop

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Easy, Comprehensive Web host packages

Free Website and Domain Transfer

24/7/365 Premium Support via Chat and Phone

Daily automatic backups

Free HostGator Website Builder

Easy to use drag-and-drop website builder

Various application support, including Wiki Hosting

Additional freebies with every unique hosting plan

Stable uptime

1-click installation for apps

Good response time

If you’ve ever seen a blue alligator mascot selling web domains, you’re either coming off of a bad night of drinking, or you’ve stumbled upon HostGator.

HostGator is renown for its variety of flexible and affordable packages that fit the needs of just about any Linux web host seeker you can think of.

Their website builder tool offers an incredibly useful drag and drop building experience. You will have the possibility to choose from a large selection of themes, and even pre-made sections, to design your own website and publish it in no time.

Some of the best and most used applications and plugins are supported via their systems as well from WordPress to Drupal to community applications such as phpBB Hosting.

Their QuickInstall utility which is available on all their Web Hosting plans, allows you you to create websites with blogs, CMS, forums, photo galleries, wikis, E-commerce store and a lot more!

As HostGator runs on Linux and Apache and using MySQL and PHP, a large number of existing software and applications are compatible.

Hostinger – For When Speed Is King – For When Speed Is King

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Fast Speeds

Protection against DDoS

High availability

Customizable server-level caching

Proactive server monitoring

Free Domain + Transfer

Affordable Plans

30 day money-back guarantee

WordPress Optimized

24/7/365 Chat Support

Based in Europe,Hostinger web hosting service offers Shared, Cloud and VPS options .

They provide near-instant responsive reactions to incidents. They also perform predictive monitoring to prevent issues before they occur.

In case of an unfortunate event, they can restore your account to the most recent snapshot in a matter of minutes since they carry out full backups for all accounts in order to ensure your data is safe.

Their plans include Custom hPanel, Litespeed, Access Manager, CloudFlare integration and LetsEncrypt integration.

LiteSpeed caching and advanced optimization power their backend to ensure your websites are reliable, fast and secure.

Hostinger’s servers span 7 regions: US, UK, Netherlands, Brazil, Singapore, Lithuania and Indonesia. Low latency and high reliability will give customers an enjoyable experience as Hostinger deploys in globally inter-connected Tier-3 datacenters. This will allow you to handle traffic spikes with no problems.

You can achieve better SEO results and increased visitor retention thanks to Hostinger’s advanced technology, which can carry out 3x more requests per second.

Bluehost – Stability and Speed

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Best Uptime

Great Mobile Load Speeds

Unlimited websites with WP Pro

CDN included for free

Low Introductory Pricing

Easy to Use for Beginners

Unmetered bandwidth

Resource protection

Free SSL Certificate and Domain Name

has 24/7 Support

Bluehost is considered as one of the top host providers when it comes to both load speed and uptime passing 99.99% uptime threshold for most users with very little to none downtime. In a world where anything less than 99.94 is considered disappointingly low, that’s an excellent uptime score to have.

Their latest WP Pro product provides an All-in-one marketing center and dashboard. It also includes SEO, social media and email marketing utilities. You will be able to build as many websites as you require since WP Pro enables unlimited WordPress installations and customization.

CloudFlare will be built directly into your account. An advanced CDN (content delivery network), Cloudflare will automatically increase the performance of your site without having you to make any code changes. This will deliver images to your users from their closest Cloudflare data center which improves their browsing experience and increases customers’ retention time.

Bluehost enables you to enhance your WordPress hosting with data-rich website analytics, security, marketing tools and data backups all in one place.

In case you require more than one account, you can Add shared, VPS, or even dedicated servers with ease. You would just need to log in once to easily manage all of your shared web hosting services from one location.

Bluehost’s technology is able to identify websites that are using excessive resources and will temporarily re-assign them to isolated systems. This will improve your website performance as well as mitigate the risk that is usually associated with shared servers.

With mobile load times rarely exceeding 390 ms or so, Bluehost is convenient for those who want to strengthen their mobile reach and stay with modern growing trends.

Web surfers around the world are waiting to see your business, your shop, your blog and your creative ideas. Bluehost can provide you with free, expert guidance from their WordPress experts.

A2 Hosting – Customer’s Seal of Approval – Customer’s Seal of Approval

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Highly rated among users

Very knowledgeable service reps

Excellent customer service

Site includes WordPress support !

High Uptime

Fast speeds

Unlimited SSD Space and Transfer

Money Back Guarantee – Cancel at any time !!

Free Automatic Backups

Free and Easy Site Migration

A2 is one of the most highly rated hosting provider in the market. Whether you are a beginner or a professional website developer, whether you have an online shop, a blog or a business site, A2 provides a customized blazing fast web hosting solution that fits your needs.

As your site’s speed affects your bounce rate, SEO rankings, visitor satisfaction and your conversion rate, A2 is the most suitable choice for your site. A2 makes sure you get the fastest hardware, the top developer features, the most secure settings and much more so that your sites as well as your applications will run at their peak performance.

At A2, you will be hosted on their fine-tuned SwiftServer platform which comes loaded with several tools like a free CDN, SSDs (solid-state drives) and your choice of data centers allowing you to host your site closer to your customers or visitors. You will have the option to choose their Turbo Servers which feature up to 20X faster page loads compared to other website hosting services.

A2’s 24/7/365 support team featuring expert system administrators work hard to guarantee your server runs at its peak. A2 uses industry best practices and feature the best data centers so that your site will be up over 99.9% of the time.

A2’s customer service reps are considered highly knowledgeable which will be a valued asset to newcomers to the Linux hosting scene. They are some of the friendliest support teams around according to several high end reviews.

From WordPress to Joomla to Drupal, A2 pre-optimizes the most popular applications for you so you don’t have to spend time or handle complex configurations.

Interserver – Quality Service and VPS Support

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99.9% Uptime

No Renewal Cost !!

Modernized support for VPS distribution

Unlimited space for website hosting

Free domain name registration

30-day money back guarantee

Free site migration service

Free Website builder

24/7 Support

Interserver.net is another name that is a mainstay in the industry. As a mark of quality for over 20 years, they’ve adapted really well, and while they may not have as impressive an ad campaign as GoDaddy, they have unlimited space for website hosting and offer domain name registration free to newcomers. They appear to have one of the best VPS distribution options for Linux, which as you’ll probably know, is important for privacy, a growing concern in our modern era .

They provide industry leading service reliability and content delivery thanks to their partnership with cloudFlare and their global network of caching data center.

Your website will surely load faster as Interserver’s servers are never overloaded as they run the latest security technology and server optimization.

On top of everything else, they’re one of the few services that offer 24/7 support, so you won’t need to squeeze in a phone call to the tech center for your website at 6 AM as you’re making breakfast to try and catch them before you have to leave for work. You can reach them by Phone, Chat or via their Ticketing System.

In terms of quality, Interserver.net is one of the longest running services that puts customers first.

GoDaddy – The One You Know Best

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100 GBS + unmetered Bandwidth

Free MS Office 365 Business Email

Free Domain

Guaranteed 99.9% uptime

24/7 security monitoring and DDoS protection

Industry-leading load times

1-click install of 125+ free applications

Flexible, easy-to-use control panel

Let’s be truthful with ourselves; we’ve all cracked a smile at the name of this hosting service, whether we first heard of it via the raunchy ads with Jillian Michaels in them, or witnessed Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits on some flower vases while blasting a boom box. Their hilarious advertising campaign has certainly made GoDaddy one of the first names that come to mind when they think of a domain hosting service and for more than just a great marketing campaign.

GoDaddy is considered widely popular for a number of reasons. Chief among them are the fact that they’ve been a HUGE name in the industry since the day Network Solutions ceased being the sole registry. That was 2001 and today they are considered the largest, even after a domain exodus of 37,000 in 2011. Though it’s kind of hard to call that any sort of an exodus when they have over 62 million registered domains.

GoDaddy offers what you’d expect from any server hosting; name registry so you appear in any whois search inquiry, all the tools you need to publish your website, but it also offers unmetered bandwidth, 100 Gbs of storage, free MS Office 365 Business Email for a year, and a free domain when you sign up for their annual plan. All just on the basic package!

For a small additional fee, GoDaddy can automatically back up your data every day. And in worst-case situations, if disaster strikes, you can restore your data with a single click.

It’s definitely a good service for people who are just starting out with Linux hosting and who don’t need the shiny bells and whistles of other more advanced services. Right now, they’ve got special offers for new Linux server hosting, so give it a look.