A simple way of thinking about website hosting

Website hosting is where your website files are kept (on the internet). Think of the website as the word doc you have created and the hosting is the folder you are saving it in on your computer.

Website hosting is important because it is the foundation for how your website performs in terms of speed and function.

Example:

A 'bad' website host means your site runs slowly. This means when you are sending people there from your Facebook ads, your page loads slowly. They might get bored while it is loading and click away. So you have paid for that traffic, only to lose them before they even see your content.

or

A 'bad' website host means your functionality doesn't work reliably. A potential client might try and send you a message on a contact form. A host that doesn't have enough resources might make your website crash as that form is being sent, meaning you never get the potential lead.

or

A 'bad' website host overloads their servers with other sites, so you are all in the same "computer file" together. You all run slow, but if someone else in that computer file is hacked or infected with malware - you are all at risk. If someone in the computer file gets a lot of traffic to their site and the site goes down, yours does too.

or

You are trying to make changes on your website, and it takes forever to save, or it crashed before saving, and you've lost all your work. Another example of 'bad' website hosting.

Who we recommend as website hosts

As you can see above - the difference between good and bad hosting is time and money. Bad hosting will hook you in with a $3 a month plan (ie DreamHost, BlueHost, anything super chape like this). Every time you have a problem with them (and trust me - it will be often) you'll be spending time on support for an hour or more each time, and they will try and upsell you new things all the time (often before they take your site back online).

Good website hosting costs about $30USD a month. You'll get excellent support within minutes (but you don't need it nearly as much), your site will run faster, there are no upsells, its a transparent and legit service.

We use and trust WpEngine (That's an affiliate link) and recommend it to all our clients who don't get managed hosting with us. We have over 100 sites hosted with them, not one site has ever gone down due to a hosting reason. The amount of time we have saved in going with WpEngine means that it has paid for itself over and over again.

Other good website hosts: