Best Shared Hosting Services of 2025

Here’s our breakdown of industry-leading providers like Hostinger, ScalaHosting, and Bluehost. We’ll tell you which shared hosting service is best based on our experience.
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Best Value

4.9
Editorial Rating
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On Hostinger web hosting's website

Hostinger web hosting
BLACK FRIDAY: From $1.95/mo + 2 Extra Months & Free Domain
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Best for Large Businesses

4.9
Editorial Rating
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On ScalaHosting's website

ScalaHosting
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Best for WordPress

4.8
Editorial Rating
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On Bluehost's website

Bluehost
PROMOTION: Starting at $2.99/mo
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Hostinger is our pick for the best shared hosting service, with affordable plans starting at just $1.95/mo. If you’re looking for something a bit more powerful, ScalaHosting offers more server resources for the price. Bluehost is also a great option if you need shared hosting for WordPress.

Shared hosting is the ideal entry point for most first-time website creators. Keep reading for a detailed breakdown of our top web hosting picks and what makes each of them a smart buy.

In this article
The best web hosting services for shared hosting
Compare the best web hosting services for shared hosting
Hostinger: Best for affordability
ScalaHosting: Best for larger businesses
Bluehost: Best for WordPress
Do I need shared hosting?
Bottom line: The best web hosting service for shared hosting
FAQs

The best web hosting services for shared hosting

Best for Affordable Web Hosting
4.9
Editorial Rating
Learn More
On Hostinger web hosting's website
Website Hosters
Hostinger web hosting
BLACK FRIDAY: From $1.95/mo + 2 Extra Months & Free Domain
  • Robust user-friendly AI tools for quick web building
  • Cheaper than other all-in-one ecommerce web host & builders like Wix and Shopify
  • Passed tests for reliability and speed

Best for Larger Businesses
4.9
Editorial Rating
Learn More
On ScalaHosting's website
Website Hosters
ScalaHosting
  • Easy-to-use, custom-built SPanel control panel
  • Knowledgeable and responsive 24/7 customer support
  • Simple WordPress setup via dedicated WordPress Manager

Best for WordPress Sites
4.8
Editorial Rating
Learn More
On Bluehost's website
Website Hosters
Bluehost
PROMOTION: Starting at $2.99/mo
  • Popular WordPress platform with good security features and affordable plans
  • High-quality tools for first-time WordPress users
  • Low renewal costs provide long-term affordability

Compare the best web hosting services for shared hosting

Hostinger web hosting logo ScalaHosting logo Bluehost logo
Best for Best for affordability Best for larger businesses Best for WordPress
Star rating
4.9
4.9
4.8
Starting price Starts at $1.95/mo Starts at $11.95/mo Starts at $2.99/mo
Money-back guarantee Yes — 30 days Yes — 30 days Yes — 30 days
Uptime guarantee 99.9% 99.99% 99.99%
Monthly visits 25K - 200K 90K - 300K 40K - 400K
Number of websites 3 - 100 Unlimited 10 - 100
Storage 20 GB - 100 GB 10 GB - 100 GB 10 GB - 100 GB
Free SSL certificate On all plans On all plans On all plans
Free domain for a year Starting at annual plans Starting at Start plan On all plans
Learn more Get Hostinger

Read Hostinger Review

Get ScalaHosting

Read ScalaHosting Review

Get Bluehost

Read Bluehost Review

Hostinger: Best for affordability

4.9
Editorial Rating
Learn More
On Hostinger web hosting's website
Website Hosters
Hostinger web hosting
BLACK FRIDAY: From $1.95/mo + 2 Extra Months & Free Domain
  • Robust user-friendly AI tools for quick web building
  • Cheaper than other all-in-one ecommerce web host & builders like Wix and Shopify
  • Passed tests for reliability and speed

What we liked

Weekly backups: Even with the most basic shared server plan, Hostinger gets you free website backups every week with data retention of up to 7 weeks.

AI-search optimized: Hostinger offers an LLM optimization tool that generates an LLMS.txt file to aid AI search engines in crawling your site. It works as a companion to your ROBOTS.txt and XML sitemap, which helps AI agents index your website content faster.

Beginner-friendly web builders: Every shared web hosting user gets free access to an AI website generator for static sites and a WordPress-specific AI website builder. Both offer plenty of visual tools to design and customize your site without any coding knowledge.

What we didn’t like

Throttling concerns: Hostinger maintains a policy of throttling your website speed once your monthly traffic crosses your plan’s limit. Any visitors who try to access your site after the traffic limit is exhausted will experience slower loading times.

No CDN on Premium plan: Hostinger’s Premium plan does not offer access to Cloudflare’s CDN. You’ll have to invest in the Business plan or choose a cloud hosting plan like Cloud Startup or Cloud Professional.

Test results

Hostinger maintained a flawless 100% uptime during our testing period with a solid average response time. When we put it through a stress test by sending over 200 virtual users to our test site within 1 minute, there were no loading errors or failed requests. And in our speed tests across the three locations in the U.S., Canada, and France, Hostinger received a score of 97/100.

Uptime 100%
Average response time 138 ms
Did Hostinger pass the stress test? Yes
Learn more Get Hostinger

Read Our Hostinger Review

Star rating summary

Hostinger is one of the most popular web hosting services out there. Its great value, additional features like its weekly backup, and reliability earned it a star rating of 4.9 out of 5 in our review.

Hostinger earned a near-perfect star rating of 4.9 because its user-friendly and comprehensive, provides reliable performance, and affordable for small- to medium-sized businesses. 

Decision factor Weight Verdict
Our experience 10% 5.0
Value and capacity18% 4.2
Performance20% 5.0
Features25% 5.0
Security20% 5.0
Support and reputation7% 4.9

Learn more about our testing experience in our Hostinger review.

ScalaHosting: Best for larger businesses

4.9
Editorial Rating
Learn More
On ScalaHosting's website
Website Hosters
ScalaHosting
  • Easy-to-use, custom-built SPanel control panel
  • Knowledgeable and responsive 24/7 customer support
  • Simple WordPress setup via dedicated WordPress Manager

What we liked

Proprietary control panel: ScalaHosting’s own control panel, SPanel, is a modern control panel for beginners. It’s a lot less cluttered than cPanel, with clearly labeled tabs like emails, websites, and databases. You can even customize the dashboard to show you the most important highlights by dragging and dropping widgets onto the page.

Extremely good support: We reached out to ScalaHosting’s support team during our evaluation period, and every single time we were connected to an agent within a minute. Support agents demonstrated a high degree of product knowledge, with the ability to troubleshoot complex issues.

Outstanding resource value: With the Start and Advanced shared hosting plans, ScalaHosting gives you way more server resources than other options. You can host unlimited websites with zero bandwidth limits, with plenty of NVMe storage and a free CDN.

ScalaHosting AI builder step 7

What we didn’t like

Added costs for cPanel: While ScalaHosting’s built-in SPanel dashboard will please most web hosting beginners, advanced users who want a familiar UI will have to pay an added premium for cPanel access.

Lacks two-factor authentication (2FA): ScalaHosting does not offer 2FA on any of the shared hosting plans. You’ll need to sign up for a VPS plan for more secure sign-in options.

Test results

ScalaHosting achieved an excellent 99.33 out of 100 score on average across our speed tests in Montreal, Dallas, and Strasbourg. During stress testing, it reported zero HTTPS failures even with a peak of 82 requests per second. Uptime Robot noted no downtime issues during our entire monitoring period.

Uptime 100%
Average response time 665 ms
Did ScalaHosting pass the stress test? Yes
Learn more Get ScalaHosting

Read Our ScalaHosting Review

Star rating summary

ScalaHosting is a very powerful shared hosting service that offers VIP support, solid security, and a free AI website builder. These aspects earned it a 4.9 star rating during our review.

ScalaHosting received a near-perfect star rating of 4.9 due to its intuitive setup process, comprehensive web hosting solutions, and good performance. 

Decision factor Weight Verdict
Our experience 10% 4.8
Value and capacity18% 4.6
Performance20% 5.0
Features25% 5.0
Security20% 5.0
Support and reputation7% 5.0

Learn more about our testing experience in our ScalaHosting review.

Bluehost: Best for WordPress

4.8
Editorial Rating
Learn More
On Bluehost's website
Website Hosters
Bluehost
PROMOTION: Starting at $2.99/mo
  • Popular WordPress platform with good security features and affordable plans
  • High-quality tools for first-time WordPress users
  • Low renewal costs provide long-term affordability

What we liked

WordPress integration and AI builder: Bluehost supports one-click WordPress installation for all users via its web hosting management dashboard and has an official WordPress recommendation. It also features a very easy-to-use AI website builder optimized specifically for WordPress.

Security features: Bluehost offers SiteLock Essentials, SSL monitoring, IP blockers, and DDoS protection as standard across all hosting plans. It also comes packed with a Cloudflare CDN for enhanced security and performance.

Beginner-friendly UI: Bluehost features an intuitive dashboard called Account Manager that centralizes all your hosting details on top of cPanel for traditional server management. There’s no need to log into cPanel again once you’re signed into Account Manager, which keeps things simple for new users.

Bluehost site setup

What we didn’t like

Post-sales concerns: Bluehost has a mixed reputation among customers due to its poor handling of renewals and refunds. Many users report long lines for accessing live support, which is only made worse by the aggressive upselling by agents during sessions.

Reports of security issues: Some users have reported server issues, and there are complaints of at least one data breach in 2023. While we weren’t able to verify the data breach claims, several user reviews do talk about security issues affecting their sites in the same year.

Test results

During our most recent performance tests, Bluehost recorded a 100% uptime with an average response time of 135 ms. It received a perfect score on speed tests across Montreal, Dallas, and Strasbourg. There were zero HTTP failures during stress tests with over 250 virtual users in 1 minute.

Uptime 100%
Average response time 139 ms
Did Bluehost pass the stress test? Yes
Learn more Get Bluehost

Read Our Bluehost Review

Star rating summary

Bluehost has a 4.8 star rating in our review thanks to its stellar WordPress integration, beginner-friendly UI design, and an AI site builder that’s purpose-built for the platform.

Bluehost received a high star rating of 4.8 due to its extensive web hosting features and reliable performance.

Bluehost offers everything you need from a web hosting service, but it's not as affordable as its competitors. We also believe the WordPress installation process could be improved. 

Decision factor Weight Verdict
Our experience 10% 4.5
Value and capacity18% 4.2
Performance20% 5.0
Features25% 5.0
Security20% 5.0
Support and reputation7% 4.8

Learn more about our testing experience in our Bluehost review.

Do I need shared hosting?

When looking for a web host, there are a few different types of hosting you can choose from. Shared hosting is a great choice for beginners for its cost-effectiveness, even if the performance may leave room for improvement.

VPS hosting splits a single physical server into multiple virtual servers, giving you dedicated resources at an affordable price. There’s also cloud hosting, where resources are spread across multiple servers for improved redundancy, and dedicated hosting, which reserves an entire physical server for a single client or site.

Shared VPS Cloud Dedicated
Pros
  • Most affordable
  • Accessible for new website owners
  • Better performance than shared servers
  • Better security isolation
  • Scalable resource management
  • Resource-based pricing options
  • Retain complete control over a physical server
  • Dedicated resources and bandwidth
Cons
  • Resource sharing with other sites
  • Slightly more expensive
  • Requires technical knowledge
  • Higher costs than shared or virtual servers
  • More complex to manage
  • Most expensive
  • Requires advanced IT management

Bottom line: The best web hosting service for shared hosting

Hostinger is our pick for the best shared hosting service due to its excellent value. It’s also one of the best web hosting services we’ve tested based on its overall value, performance, and ease of use.

We recommend ScalaHosting for growing teams that expect to scale quickly with demand, while Bluehost is the platform of choice for most WordPress beginners.

All three hosting providers offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, letting you freely test their paid plans. You can also scale your shared server resources up or down any time you renew your plan.

How we test web hosting services

We use our proprietary grading rubric to evaluate web hosts based on performance, ease of use, features, support, and overall value. Our hands-on approach ensures our ratings reflect how each service actually performs in the real world, so you can choose a host with confidence.

Our process starts with signing up for each service and setting up a real website, just like you would. We run page speed, uptime, and stress tests to measure reliability and performance under load. We also explore the dashboard, test security tools, and contact support to see how responsive and helpful it is.

To learn more about how we test, check out our full testing methodology here.

FAQs

Is shared hosting better than dedicated hosting?

Shared hosting isn’t necessarily better than dedicated hosting, but it is cheaper. Shared hosting plans may be better suited for smaller teams and professionals who don’t want the complexity of a dedicated physical server.

Which shared hosting provider is the best?

Hostinger is our top web host pick for most new users. It offers good security, ample resources, a beginner-friendly UI, and AI tools to simplify your website launch.

What is shared hosting?

Shared hosting is where multiple users and websites share CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth across the same physical server. Resources are ultimately assigned on a first-come, first-served basis when it comes to moment-to-moment spikes in usage. 


4.9
Editorial Rating
Learn More
On Hostinger web hosting's website
Website Hosters
Hostinger web hosting
BLACK FRIDAY: From $1.95/mo + 2 Extra Months & Free Domain
  • Robust user-friendly AI tools for quick web building
  • Cheaper than other all-in-one ecommerce web host & builders like Wix and Shopify
  • Passed tests for reliability and speed
Author Details
Ritoban is a writer for All About Cookies, having written professionally about web hosting and development, data protection, and other business software categories for over eight years. He has published hundreds of reviews, guides, comparisons, and lists covering web hosting, VPNs, identity protection, and IT management across Techradar, Tom's Guide, ZDNET, and ITPro.