Best Web Hosting Services for Features

Web hosting services come with specific features and, therefore also, limitations. Before choosing a provider, you should be clear about what is important to you and what can be overseen.

Most web hosts mention the same features and specifications in large lists to make their service look good on paper, no matter what. We made sure to filter out the ones that are true of value and features that not all providers offer by default.

So what should you consider searching for the best web hosting features? Let’s dig into the details.

What Makes the Best Web Host in Terms of Features?

Any hosting type can be denoted by specific key attributes' availability (or lack of). Together, these website hosting features determine the service's convenience, scalability, security, and reliability.

SSL Certificate

Security is a top priority both in real life and online. SSL certificates keep a connection secure and safeguard your users’ sensitive data preventing criminals from reading or modifying it.

The users always know if a website protects personal information by seeing “HTTPS” in the URL. Also, Google Chrome flags a page without SSL as “not secure,” so nowadays, an SSL certificate is a must-have. This one is so basic that we placed it here and not into our security score. A good web hosting provider should include SSL in their website hosting features. We have included this feature with a 10% weight in our overall features score.

Site Migration

Choosing a hosting provider, you count on long-term cooperation with that company. But you might need to move your website to another platform. As your business requirements change and your website grows, you could need more bandwidth, storage, or better performance overall.

To make the process hassle-free, it can come in handy if your new web host offers the feature of a free site migration at no extra charge. It can be a blessing for you, especially if your website is complex or you are not tech-savvy and need your website transferred. The site migration also contributes 10% to our features score.

Staging Environment

A staging site is a copy of your website where you can play with changes and test updates before they go live. This website hosting feature comes with many benefits, such as the reduced risk of technical issues and errors, stable uptime, and, ultimately, more satisfied users. Since the availability of a staging environment is so important, it goes into our features score at 20%.

Cron Jobs

Cron is a utility program that allows you to schedule and automate repetitive tasks on a server at a specific time. These assignments are called cron jobs. This web hosting feature lets system administrators maintain seamless backups and monitor disk space. Cron jobs have a weight of 10% for our features score.

Email Addresses

Email hosting is another essential feature of web hosting, at least for beginners who want to have everything out of the box. No business can work properly without its own professional business email addresses. Some providers include emails in their web hosting plans, making their offer more convenient for many users that don’t have or plan on using third-party email hosting. Keep in mind that this solution will likely include less inbox storage and won't offer as many integrations to apps, calendars, etc., as it’s usually the case with the big email hosts like Gmail and Outlook. We have included free domain-based email address with a weight of 20% in our web hosting features score.

Number of Websites

The number of websites means how many websites you can host under the entry plan of each hosting provider. It might seem like an irrelevant feature of web hosting when you are solving the challenge of launching the first site. Although, chances are that sooner or later, you may want to take another website live and then think about a third one. Managing each on a separate hosting account can get confusing and cost you a lot more money when having to pay for each separately.

Here this feature shines.

Though you’ll likely need to upgrade your hosting plan over time as resources for multiple websites become tight, it’s still way more cost-efficient and easier to manage.

The number of websites contributes 10% to the overall features score.

Traffic Limit

A traffic limit indicates the number of visitors per month your website can handle when hosted on the platform. The traffic limit is connected to the bandwidth, which we categorized separately under the performance metrics. Many providers use a traffic limit, but the issue is that it doesn't translate one-to-one with the bandwidth.

Why is this an issue?

1. The file size of each website is different and thus can’t be fairly compared. In other words, a well-optimized and lightweight site will have a severe disadvantage as it uses way less bandwidth per visitor than heavy websites.
2. Cached resources take fewer resources to load when a visitor opens a website on another day.

In conclusion, traffic limits are a disadvantage because you mostly pay for less bandwidth overall. This negative feature accounts for 20% of our features score.

10 Best Web Hosting Providers for Features

How to Choose Web Hosting with Great Features?

Don’t leave your website’s success to chance. Take some time to think over the web hosting features you might need to find a solution that has it all.

Try our Comparison Tool if you have trouble choosing between several options. And if you can’t decide which website hosting features are right for your business, the Finder Tool can get you started.