Joomla is a giant in the market of CMS (Content Management Systems) as well as in the market of website platforms in general. It serves more than 2.5 million websites worldwide in 2021 (Source: Built With). That’s why no doubt you want to build your website with Joomla. But it’s just the first step. The second step is choosing the best Joomla hosting service.
In this article, LitExtension will cover the following content to help you maximize your return on investment through
- 5 criteria for choosing Joomla hosting service
- Top 5 best Joomla hosting with the honest review of winning Joomla hosting providers
What to consider when choosing Joomla hosting service?
Joomla hosting services are provided by various companies. However, not all hosting platforms can operate Joomla installations smoothly, which can result in server downtime. As a result, you must choose a powerful one that meets your business objectives while minimizing server downtime.
Before jumping into the top 5, let’s dive into 5 critical factors affecting your best Joola hosting decision. Though each hosting provider has its own strengths and weaknesses, there are still some must-have features that you need to prioritize.
1. Compatibility
Before making any decision, make sure that your hosting provider’s functions are Joomla-compatible or Joomla-optimized.
We strongly advise you to use PHP 8.0 or higher, as well as MySQL 5.6 or higher/PostgreSQL 11 or higher, for best performance. All adjustments or applications should meet Joomla’s latest compatibility guidelines, regardless of whether your server runs Apache, NGINX, or Microsoft II S.
2. Speed
When it comes to web hosting, one of the most important features is speed. Nobody enjoys wasting time on a slow website. To put it another way, a slow-loading website will hurt your online sales.
According to Google, sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load are abandoned by 53% of mobile users. As a result, if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, you may lose half of your potential customers. We recommend contacting your hosting provider to see if the server can handle overloads and provide the fastest possible service for your online store.
Your SEO ranking is also influenced by uptime. Google and other search engines will penalize you if your site is frequently down.
The industry standard is about 99%. If your site was up for 99% of the time, it would be down for more than 3.5 days throughout the year.
So we recommend you choose a web hosting service with an uptime rate as high as possible.
3. Server location
This is a key phase point.
While the location of Joomla hosting providers has a significant impact on response time, few store owners are aware of the location of their servers. Your site’s loading speed will be significantly improved if you choose a server that is nearest to your customers. This factor will have an impact on your SEO ranking as well.
4. Security
Security is the most important factor after all.
Though Joomla stores can secure themselves, server-side security should not be overlooked. Your store’s security system should be capable of safeguarding all data, including but not limited to customer personal information, credit card information, and other sensitive information.
That’s why you need to select a web hosting provider that offers all of the major security features, such as dedicated firewalls, SSL certificates, IP whitelisting, 2-factor authentication,…
5. Support
Last but not least, a hosting provider who offers a dedicated technical support team is also essential.
The customer service department should be reachable by phone and email 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You might wish to have a team that could assist you with any technical issues at any time. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. As a result, be prepared to pay more for premium support from your provider.
…
Here is an overview for you before we jump in each Joomla Hosting Review:
What Are The 5 Best Joomla Hosting Providers?
Cloudways review
Cloudways, which was founded in 2011, is one of the best Joomla hosting services. This managed hosting service includes cloud servers from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, and GCE, among other top cloud hosting providers.
Cloudways also has the edge of hosting in all five cloud computing companies’ datacenters.
Simply put, the more providers they have, the more data centers they can access. Consequently, you’ll stand a chance to deliver data and information faster to your customers or audiences thanks to the proximity.
Cloudways is rated 4.7/5 on Trustpilot with 1,262 reviews.
Cloudways Pricing
Joomla Hosting Service named Cloudways offers a wide range of pricing options.
To get started, you can go with Digital Ocean’s DO1BG plan, which costs $10 per month and includes 1 CPU core, 1GB RAM, and 25GB storage.
To get the most out of what Cloudways has to offer, you can change your payment to hourly instead of monthly. You’ll be able to track how Cloudways manages your pay and adjust your investment accordingly once you’ve signed up.
If you’re not sure about Cloudways and its features, take advantage of their 3-Day Free Trial to get a feel for the service before you pay.
Cloudways Support
Cloudways outsources frontline customer support teams to Pakistan and Malta. All customer support agents are industry experts who are well-versed in the field of hosting.
Unfortunately, they will not be able to solve all of your problems. Cloudways’s in-house Joomla experts will be contacted for advanced technical issues. This time-consuming procedure may have an impact on the performance of your store.
To enhance its service, Cloudways offers 3 levels of customer support, 24/7 and 365 days. These 3 plans come with different prices and features.
Standard Support is the most popular among merchants. It’s free with 24/7 LiveChat support. However, if you are planning to go beyond a regular support relationship, Advanced and Premium Support add-ons are better choices. These add-ons come with a faster response time, a private Account Manager and customization support.
Cloudways Features
- ThunderStack: Cloudways uses the ThunderStack caching formula. This is Cloudways’ own formula to help boost up the server and application performance. Correspondingly, it guarantees a fast loading time for eCommerce stores built with Joomla. ThunderStack includes some main applications like Apache, New Relic, My SQL, PHP-FPM, etc.
- 1-Click SSL Installation: This feature helps improve your website security with a trusted certificate that fulfills all your HTTPS requirements.
- Server Settings and Packages via UI: This feature allows you to have full control over several server parameters and deploy applications. Cloudways also supports you changing store settings directly from Cloudways Platform without going to the command line.
- CloudwaysBot Notifications: Cloudways AI-based assistant will save your time going back and forth between channels by sending you real-time notifications and insights via Slack and emails. Take advantage of it to integrate and boost your store performance.
Best Cloudway Discount Code 2022
Fortunately, LitExtension is giving a special CLOUDWAYS DISCOUNT CODE for your eStore:
| LITCLOUDWAYS20 for 25% off for 3 months. |
MissHosting review
Miss Hosting is one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world. They offer a wide range of hosting-related services, such as Web Hosting, Domain Registration, VPS, Dedicated Servers, Website Builder, Magento Hosting, SEO Hosting, Affiliate Hosting, Email Management, and much more.
MissHosting is rated 4.9/5 with 3,835 reviews on Trustpilot.
MissHosting Pricing
Starting with only 0.99$/month, MissHosting provides a fully cloud-based shared web hosting with cPanel for a tight budget.
Their data centers are located in USA-Chicago and Sweden-Stockholm. This will make MissHosting be a good option if your audience is within the US and Europe.
MissHosting Support
MissHosting provides many support options:
- Live chat support with MissHosting’s agents answering in real-time
- Phone/Email service operating 24/7
- Ticket service working non-stop which has 10 minutes response time in average
- Knowledge base
MissHosting Features
All Plans Include:
- Free Email Addresses
- One-click install of 200+ Free Applications
- MySQL availability
- 24/7 security monitoring and DDoS protection
- 9% uptime guarantee
- 45 days Money-back guarantee
Hostinger review
A big competitor of Cloudways and MissHosting in Joomla hosting service is Hostinger.
This hosting provider has its own data centers in different locations over continents (Europe, Asia, North and South America).
Hostinger Pricing
This is the most affordable option on our list because they provide shared hosting. However, this advantage comes with a price: Hostinger guarantees a 99% uptime rate – a standard rate but not so competitive.
Through a few tests, Hostinger’s performance appears sometimes unstable.
So please consider this factor carefully if your website handles huge traffic daily.
Hostinger Support
Hostinger does provide full 24/7 customer support, reachable via live chat and email but does not offer phone support. A big plus of the Hostinger Support Team is they provide multilingual assistance. You won’t need to worry about language barriers.
Hostinger Features
- 30-day money-back guarantee: Hostinger will refund your payment for whatever reason. No hassle, no risk.
- Free SLL for all plans
- hPanel: Hostinger provides its own user-friendly hPanel instead of cPanel.
- Zyro website builder
- Speed Boost: This custom-built infrastructure by Hostinger allows you to optimize performance and increase loading speed by 4 times.
- 1-Click App Installer: This exciting function allows you to download 100+ apps in just 1 click, helps you add more advanced features to store – no custom code needed. Many users are fond of Hostinger because of this function.
Best Hostinger Discount Code 2022
Check available Hostinger Coupon Code and Promotions on this site.
SiteGround review
SiteGround has data centers in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
It’s rated 4.7/5 on Trustpilot with 9,956 reviews.
SiteGround Pricing
Although SiteGround offers 3 inexpensive initial plans compared to the other providers, their price on a renewal is a bit high.
SiteGround Support
Unlike Cloudways, SiteGround has a solid in-house customer support team.
The team is committed to providing excellent customer service and incorporating cutting-edge technology into its operations. The technical support team is available via LiveChat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means that whenever you need assistance, you’ll be connected with the most knowledgeable SiteGround technicians.
SiteGround Features
- Free SSL
- Free domain
- Automatic daily backups
- 1-click app installer
- Free email account
- FTP connections
- SSH access
- Free CDN
- Caching.
HostPapa review
Founded in 2006, HostPapa is a multinational web hosting company that won many awards such as Best Web Hosting Canada (2022) by HostingCanada.org, Top Picked Shared Hosting in 2016 by HostingReview, etc.
Also, HostPapa is the only web hosting company offering dedicated one-on-one sessions with web hosting specialists.
HostPapa Pricing
You will receive a good pack with Starter plan: Just 3.95$/month for
- One website
- Free domain (for the first year)
- Free Standard SSL Certificate
- 100GB SSD Web Space
- 100 email addresses
- Unmetered bandwidth
- And all essential features include a free website migration, Cloudflare CDN, SSL certificate, and access to their 400+ apps and website builder.
Now you might think:
“Why not choose Business Plan while it offers more value but at the same price as Starter Plan?”
You better pay attention to “Regular price” above $3.95 and $12.95. The discounted prices are just applied with a three-year commitment. Once the first year ends, you’d have to pay double the price.
HostPapa’s renewal prices:
- With Starter Plan, it’s $9.99/month
- With Business Plan it’s $14.99/month
- And with Business Pro Plan it’s $23.99/month.
Paying 1 year with discounted price and 2 years with these renewal prices in advance, it seems not a good deal anymore.
HostPapa Support
HostPapa seems to offer a customer support quality above their cost. They offer email and phone support in four languages (English, French, German, and Spanish).
Also, a free 30-minute one-on-one training session with their experts is included. This is an exclusive offer among most hosting services in the market nowadays.
HostPapa Features
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Multiple to unlimited hosted sites
- Unlimited disk space and bandwidth
- Free domain name registration
- 24/7 support
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL, Cloudflare CDN
- Free website transfer
- 99% uptime
- Performance and security enhancements
- CloudLinux servers.
Best HostPapa Discount Code 2022
Enjoy the hot deals that we collected below:
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FAQ
What is a content management system?
A CMS or Content Management System is software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website. Examples: Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Squarespace, Wix,…
What is Joomla?
Joomla is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites which includes many content-enhanced applications such as discussion forums, photo galleries, eCommerce and user communities and numerous other web-based applications.
What’s the best Joomla hosting?
The top 5 Best Joomla Hosting providers that we recommend are Cloudways, Misshosting, Siteground, Hostinger and Interserver.
Can I open a store with Joomla?
Yes, you can!
Various extensions will allow you to turn your website into an online store. You can find them in the free Joomla plugin directory. Each one has a unique set of features and you can test them all out before deciding which is best suited for your needs.
Joomla or WordPress is better?
While there isn’t a clear winner between Joomla and WordPress, Joomla is among the top CMS that you will consider first. Almost a third of all websites around the world are based on these open-source platforms. Both are excellent options for creating a website with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. You can read our detailed Joomla and WordPress comparison here.
How to connect a domain to my hosting account?
Each hosting service has tutorials. But basically, you will need to go through these steps beloved:
- Log in to your hosting account
- Find Domain section in your control panel
- Add your domain address and other information required
- Finish/save
Usually, it will take a while for the server to connect your domain to a hosting successfully.
After 24h, if the connection remains “connecting” or fails, contact the support team for help.
Wrap up
To wrap up, no service is perfect. As a result, you should first determine your top priority and then compare it to what your providers have to offer. When making your decision, you should consider all factors, including prices, support, and features. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. All of the hosting companies listed above offer a money-back guarantee. It’s perfectly acceptable to switch providers if you don’t feel comfortable with one.
Many top-tier hosting providers, as you can see from the list above, support Joomla with their incredibly useful features. If you are using another platform for your website, choose the hosting best suited for you then migrate it to Joomla to get the most out of this platform. Let LitExtension be your partner if you’re looking for a Joomla migration solution.
Should you have any further questions/ comments, join LitExtension’s community to connect with other merchants and eCommerce experts, receive case studies, eCommerce growth hacks, free ebook, private discounts, and so on.