Category: Internet

Are you looking for the best web hosting which doesn’t suck? Great!

You are at the right place, we (our team at Techixty) have made a list of some of the best web hosting companies which you can use & trust for your next project. No matter how big your project is going to be we have covered all the web hosts.

At the time of writing this article, we have used and tested more than 25 web hosting services. Some of those web hosts were good but many of them didn’t live up to their reputation.

After doing a series of tests and comparing these web hosting companies, we found the top web hosting services. These comparisons are made over a period of a year of using these services.

Here are the steps we follow to find out and rank these web hosts:

1. We sign up with these web hosting companies.
2. We create the test site with a dummy content.
3. Then we start monitoring these sites. The important metrics we monitor are – uptime, speed, and support.
4. We write our reviews about them, we just don’t promote a web host because it provides more commission.

Some of the most popular web hosts we have tracked are – SiteGround, BlueHost, Kinsta, etc. So, without further ado, let’s begin our list…

3 Best Web Hosting Companies Of 2020 (Ranked)

Here’s our list of the best web hosting companies. These results are based on speed, uptime & price. Let’s go…

#1 SiteGround: The Best All-Round WEB Host (3.95$/month)

Here are the things we like about SiteGround –

• Uptime: 100%
• Loading Speed: .87ms
• Support: The best support team, Fast support ticket fixed i.e, under 20 minutes
• Cost: 3.95$/month

Summary –

SiteGround, founded in 2004, is now one of the best, if not the best (host for beginner) and most reputable web host in this list. Many people started their online journey with SiteGround, it’s rare for someone to mess up with this host. We too started out with SiteGround.

If you’re also just starting out and are a total beginner you should go with SiteGround. Not only that it’s also good for established site owners. It’s one of the reputable web hosts. You will find it very hard to find negative reviews about SiteGround.

Make sure to check out our SiteGround review to know why we rate them so high for beginners. It’s the most beginner friendly site, you also won’t have to spend a lot to host your site with SiteGround. It’s far better than BlueHost, HostGator, etc.

Pros

• Beginner Friendly Web Hosting.
• Great Support Team.
• Affordable Pricing.
• Lots of features.
• Fast Loading Time i.e, .87ms
• Excellent Uptime – 100%.
• Best Well-Rounded Web Host.

Cons

• High Renewal Price.
• No free domain names.
• CPU Resource Usage Fixed.

Click here to visit SiteGround

#2 Kinsta: Best Managed WordPress Hosting (30$/month)

Here are the things we like about Kinsta –

• Uptime: 99.99%
• Loading Speed: .76ms
• Support: Knowledgeable WordPress Experts will fix any WordPress problems. They’re good.

Summary –

There are far too many hosts which claim to be the best-managed WordPress host but in reality, they aren’t. Why? It’s because when it comes to managed WordPress hosting the top spot belongs to Kinsta.

The only thing you will need to get started with Kinsta is a decent budget as its one of the premium Managed WordPress hosts. It’s for blogs and sites which receive too much traffic. We won’t recommend it for small sites, small blogs and beginners.

Make sure to check our review to know why we consider it the best managed WordPress web host. If you have a big budget and want to invest in top-notch web hosting it’s the best (for WordPress sites).

Pros

• Good and knowledgable support staff.
• Blazing fast web hosting, quick loading times.
• Good Uptime i.e, 99.99%

Cons

• Expensive for beginners & some experts. (Quality comes at a price though.)
• No free domain names.
• Suitable for only a limited number of page views on a plan.

Click here to visit Kinsta

#3 WPX Hosting: One Of The Best WordPress Host (20.83$/month)

Here are the things we like about WPX Hosting –

• Loading Speed: .65ms
• Support: One of the most knowledgeable support team out there, they are also very friendly.
• Uptime: 100% Uptime, can’t ask for more than this.

Summary –

WPX Hosting (formerly known as Traffic Planet) is one of our favorite web hosts. When compared to other hosts on this list it’s quite new however the services they provide are at the top of the industry.

It is one of the well managed WordPress web hosts i.e, the hosts which are specifically made for hosting WordPress websites. WPX Hosting is best for bloggers and site owners which get high traffic.

WPX Hosting competes with Kinsta for the top Managed WordPress hosts. These two are the very best in this department. Also, check our WPX Hosting review to know why we rank it at no. 3 on our list.

Pros

• Built for speed, one of the fastest managed WordPress host.
• One of the best support team I’ve asked help from.
• No bluffing, they just get the work done.
• Feature-packed web hosting.

Cons

• Might be expensive for newbies.
• No free domain names.

Click here to visit WPX Hosting

What is web hosting?

In simple words – Web Hosting is a service which lets you (or your company) start a website on the internet. If you want to start an online business or a site for fun you will have to host it somewhere. You will need to host websites and this is where web hosting companies which are also known as web hosts come in.

A web hosting provider (or simply, a web host) is a business which provides all the infrastructure, services and tech which is needed by people to host their sites on the internet. For using these services you only have to pay a small fee which can be monthly or yearly, it depends on your budget.

Websites are located on servers, it’s the place where your website is stored. If you want to visit any site you will have to just enter the domain name and hit the enter key. Your computer then will be connected to the servers and the webpage (or website) will be seen on your browser.

There are thousands of web hosts but only some of them are worth trusting. To start a website, blog or e-commerce store, etc. you will first need a domain name, some web hosting companies also provide a domain name for free.

Some of the best web hosts which provide a free domain name are – SiteGround (our top recommendation), FastComet, etc. You should check them out…

Types of Web Hosting – Shared, Managed, VPS, Cloud & Dedicated

When you’re just starting out terms like web hosts, shared hosts, cloud hosts, etc. may go over your head. Don’t worry you’re not alone it happens with everyone as there are many kinds of web hosts.

Making a website can be very easy or very difficult for you as it depends on how much you know about web hosting. For newbies, it seems like magic but for experts, it’s just a simple task.

Like humans, web hosting also comes in various types. (Still way less when compared to humans though.) And now, you will learn about them in a small introduction. We will make a separate article explaining them in full details.

These are the most common 5 types of web hosting that you will come across –

1. Shared Web Hosting
2. Managed Web Hosting
3. Virtual Private Server (VPS)
4. Cloud Hosting
5. Dedicated Servers

Below we will cover each one of these web hosting services in brief. Let’s begin…

Shared Web Hosting 

Shared web hosting services are great for people who are just starting out on their online journey. In simple words, it means that your website will be on the same server as many other websites.

It has both pros and cons. The benefit is that you cost will be low but you will have the same resources as everyone else. Your site may also go down if someone on the server uses too many resources.

Managed Web Hosting 

Managed web hosts provide you all the services like software setup, maintenance, tech support, updates, etc. Most of the hosts nowadays are managed ones. After shared hosts, these are the most commonly used hosting services.

The most popular service in this category is Managed WordPress hosting. WordPress is undoubtedly the most popular and best CMS that you can use. Most Web Hosts now specialize in providing this service.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) 

For those users who want to have the power of Dedicated Server but don’t have the technical knowledge and expertise using a VPS is the best choice. It’s for people who want more control over their server.

A VPS is just like a dedicated server but the main difference is that it is within a shared environment. It means that your website will be on your virtual server but will share the physical server with other users.

Cloud Hosting

If you’ve been looking for a suitable web host for some time it’s impossible that you wouldn’t have come across the word “Cloud Hosting” many times. After all, it’s the buzzword of the industry nowadays.

In simple words –  unlike physical web servers, cloud hosting is running in a virtual environment which is managed by the web host. It’s great for those who want to scale their services. You only pay for the resources you use.

Dedicated Servers

Power comes at a price. This is a sentence that can define Dedicated servers easily. With Dedicated servers, you will have 100% control over the server which is running your site.

You should only use dedicated servers when you have sites with very high traffic. Else you’d just be wasting your money on it. It’s costly! You also need to have the technical knowledge to install and manage it.

Data mining practices have become the norm as businesses seek to obtain data that can help them understand the market and improve their services. Most businesses today have some level of digital presence. Therefore, people are continuously looking for data online. You can always read more on this topic, if you would like to dig in deeper!

As data mining becomes more prevalent, its vocabulary is also finding its way into everyday conversations. In most of these conversations, you’re likely to hear the terms web crawling and web scraping. Many users use the two interchangeably, and it would be forgivable if you think they are synonyms.

They are not.

Web crawling and scraping refer to two different data mining processes. Even the end-product data you get at the end of each method and their usage are technically different. Sometimes you might employ both processes depending on the type of data you want.

Due to the similarities between the two, a web crawling vs web scraping comparison would not be enough for you to understand the processes. The differences become more pronounced when you first have a good grasp of each of them individually.

How search engines do web crawling

Search engines offer the best model that you can use to learn about web crawling.

The results you get when you search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines are catalogs of information available on websites. To create these catalogs, search engines are continuously sending web crawlers to websites.

Web crawlers go by various names like web spiders, crawler bots, web bots, etc.

They are sent into an initial list of websites and explore all the data on those websites. The web bots then categorize or index this information and put it in a database. Your online search results are sets of information retrieved from the database created in this process.

These first set of websites that the crawlers mine data from are commonly known as starting or seed URLs.

In the seed URL websites, the spiders will identify links and hyperlinks. They follow these to other sites and continue with the same process of obtaining, indexing, and storing information in the database.

They add new data to the original indexes. The bots identify links in the latest websites and follow them to new sites. For search engines, this process is virtually perpetual to keep the search results fresh and updated.

Crawling data for your business

You can replicate this web crawling process to obtain data from various websites for your business.

All you need is a set of crawling tools to identify, obtain, and index sets of data websites for easy retrieval. Most bots, like those used by search engines, collect as much information as possible from the site.

For your business, however, you can have them configured to collect the specific sets of data that you need. You can program the spiders to mine data from a particular website. Or to follow the links to the end.

How is scraping different?

Web scraping is also a data mining process, but it is usually more focused or targeted. Data scrapers get the data you need from a raw set of data and put it in a format that’s easier to process or analyze.

For instance, you can have a scraper programmed to get you the stock prices from a given website. To this extent, the scraping tool will do some level of web crawling on the site as it seeks the targeted data. It doesn’t retrieve any other data from the site.

The scraper will then retrieve and present the data in the format you prefer, such as MS Excel.

Scraping is not limited to websites and other online sources. You can scrape data from an offline database, an excel sheet, or other data storage formats. This is generally known as data scraping.

Web crawling vs web scraping

From the above descriptions, we can make the following web crawling vs web scraping comparison:

• In web crawling, the bots usually collect the data from websites indiscriminately. While scraping tools mine targeted sets of data.
• Web scraping deals with more structured sets of data such as prices, and customer contacts, while crawlers collect as much information as possible thus the data is usually unstructured
• The Web crawlers are continuously following links leading from one website to another while most times scrapers mine data from one or few targeted websites

Web crawling and web as complementary components

Most web data mining tools have both web crawling and web scraping properties. This combination, together with other software components such as parsers, make sure you mine quality data.

Looking at the web crawling process, for example, it results in only the indexing or listing out of information. You can’t download it into your PC, just like you can’t download and store search results.

To download the data, you will need to extract it using a web scraping tool. If you have information that needs conversion or modification, the parser component will process it ready for extraction by the scrapers.

The data is then extracted and can be presented in various formats, depending on how the tool was programmed. The data at this stage is well structured. Further analysis can be conducted on it to provide insight into the market, business competitors, or customers.

Conclusion

In modern business discussions, you will often hear that you need to collect data for you to gain an edge over competitors. Collecting data aimlessly, however, will leave you with information that you can’t use to direct your business.

The first step in collecting useful information is getting a good understanding of the various data mining processes and tools. This includes learning the different sets of data that each process can extract.

Also Read:

• How To Easily Skip Or Block Hulu Ads

Web crawling and scraping are some of the most common yet essential practices in data mining. Learning how to practice them efficiently can provide you with all the data you need to understand your business and how it relates to the business environment.