Choosing a host can be a tricky business. Most people go by brand names like “GoDaddy”, or by the cheapest price, and both choices can quickly lead to major problems. Your site should be hosted by a stable, reputable company with fast connections and weekly backups, which won’t cost you more than an extra few cents a month. You’ll find the difference in quality is enormous for such a small amount of money.
At Kits Media, we don’t recommend hosts that allow adult sites of any kind (pornography, gambling, etc) on shared hosting, because your Google rankings will be affected. Popular hosts that allow adult content include Hostgator, Dreamhost, Justhost, Omnis, Supergreen, Hostican and Canadian Web Hosting, but the list is much more extensive because most hosts allow adult content.
When you get an account with a host, you are assigned storage space on one of their servers. The storage space has an address called an “IP” address, and it is shared with other websites. If Google flags or bans a website sharing your IP because it has adult or spam content, the whole IP address is flagged or banned – including your files. To avoid this situation entirely, we only recommend hosts who do not accept any kind of adult sites.
In addition, we only recommend hosts who do daily or weekly backups of your files - especially for WordPress sites. WordPress files are vulnerable to hacking. The only copy of your files is on your host’s server. We have had clients who hosted with GoDaddy, Hostpapa, Canadian Web Hosting and other popular hosts, and lost all their files to hackers. This was a major loss because there were no backup files we could re-install. Therefore we do not recommend these hosts for WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or Magento sites.
Third, we only recommend hosts who make access to the back end (administration panel) of your site easy and efficient. WordPress currently has more than 1500 files in an installation. We’ve found that the only way to ensure the installation is complete is to do a manual installation.
We do not recommend hosts who use Windows servers, and we do not recommend servers hosted by individuals.
If you’re looking for a Canadian host, it is difficult to find one that actually hosts in Canada. Hosts physically located in Canada tend to be much more expensive, on a network that is not sufficiently secure, charge disproportionate monthly rates for backup, or a combination of these issues. Read more about issues with Canadian hosts
Bluehost is our #1 host of choice, and it is the #1 choice of server by WordPress itself for good reason. The administration panel (cpanel) is simple, intuitive and easy to use. WordPress and other CMS software can be installed through the back end or a wizard. (We recommend the back end.) Bluehost makes it easy to install databases.
Bluehost does weekly backups and do not allow adult sites. Their support staff is available by phone 24/7 and we can personally guarantee that – having phoned them late at night many times, even on holidays.
You can sign up for hosting on your own, or you can take advantage of our managed hosting. We have “rented” our own IP and it contains only the files we create ourselves, giving your site a high level of security. Our managed hosting is $6.60 per month.
Ask us more about managed hosting at 604-731-7020. We’ll be glad to give you good advice at no charge.
