Joomla Hosting

Most of the time, when you are in the process of creating a new website, there is an overall plan for the type of content, color schemes and fonts as well as the content management system (CMS) that you intend to use. This means that the plan must also include finding the web hosting service that is most compatible with the CMS that you have chosen to use. Web hosts generally include access to the most popular CMS scripts with their packages, but the variations in the commercial script installers and web host management systems, as well as the reliability and the cost of the web hosting services overall, makes it worth looking at the details more closely to make sure that the web host that you choose is the most compatible with your CMS.

One of the most popular CMS scripts is Joomla, which is a free Open Source content management framework that allows users to create websites in almost any configuration. Although it is more technical to use than WordPress, it is also a bit more flexible, and for more experienced web designers it can be easily customized to suit a wide variety of applications. Joomla has been downloaded over 30 million times, making it one of the major web design tools in use and so for many web designers it will be important to choose a web host that is compatible with it.

To save you much of the effort of looking through these details, we have compared the top web hosting services and chosen the three that provide the best Joomla friendly web hosting packages. By comparing the methods that are used to install Joomla, the record of service and reliability and the cost of the services that are offered, we came to the conclusion that BlueHost provdes the best value web hosting service for Joomla users.

We reviewed 12 different Joomla hosts by looking at the following factors:

Affordable - Is the hosting service competitively priced?
Reliable - Does the site load quickly with no downtime?
Ease of Use - Was Joomla easy to install and run?

BlueHost Review

BlueHost

Rating 10/10

Affordable
Reliable
Easy to Use

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BlueHost was established in 1996 and provides a reliable web hosting service that has been noted for its excellent technical support and state of the art hardware. They are offering a single flat rate shared web hosting plan that provides users with unlimited storage and bandwidth, as well as domains and e-mail addresses for only $6.95 per month. This makes BlueHost among the cheapest fully featured web hosting services available.

Joomla is an especially good script to use for managing databases or project management platforms, but these often require a lot of storage space, making the all-inclusive package from BlueHost the most cost effective way of building a larger website without having to continually upgrade your account to buy more disk space. As users' needs grow, they are likely to want to create more than one website with Joomla, and so it is also important that there are an unlimited number of domains and sub-domains allowed with the package that is chosen for their web hosting. BlueHost also includes all of the commercial features that are necessary to build an e-commerce site and which often cost extra with other web hosts.

The feature of BlueHost's service that makes it especially friendly for Joomla users is the use of cPanel as the web host management system. With cPanel, users are able to easily access the commercial script installer, and BlueHost uses Simple Scripts to supply all of the third party software that is used on their sites. This arrangement makes it very simple to install Joomla on your BlueHost web account, and Simple Scripts' single click installer process makes it even easier. Using cPanel also makes it simple to manage your Joomla site once it has been published to the web, and the full range of cPanel features gives users the tools to track the traffic to their website as well.

The technical support staff at BlueHost has earned a reputation for prompt and efficient service, and because they are 100% in-house, the service staff is usually able to directly handle any problems themselves. BlueHost claims to host 85,000 Joomla sites, so their expert technical staff should be able to help sort out many of the basic difficulties that Joomla users might encounter when they are installing and using the script. It is the guaranteed compatibility along with BlueHost's technical understanding of Joomla websites, plus their reliability record and the low monthly cost, that make them the best choice of web host for most Joomla users.

The Verdict: Extremely reliable, fast page load times, knowledgable support staff, very inexpensive at $3.95 per month.

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Rating 9.3/10

Affordable
Reliable
Easy of Use

Highly Recommended

2. HostGator

HostGator has been providing award-winning web hosting services since 2002, and they offer a wide variety of web hosting plans to suit every level of user. It is in the range of features that HostGator offers that makes it so they trail behind BlueHost. The most basic web hosting package from HostGator limits users to a single domain and only a shared SSL certificate for $3.96 per month, although this does include unlimited disk space and bandwidth. To purchase a fully featured HostGator package, the cost rises to $10.36 per month and this still comes with fewer free features included than a similar package from BlueHost.

Another area where HostGator is less Joomla-friendly is the commercial script library that it uses. HostGator includes cPanel with all of its accounts for the management of websites, and the version that they use provides Quick Install as the script installer. This is definitely not as user friendly as Simple Scripts and, as a beta program it is still at the developmental stage that makes it better suited to more technically savvy Internet users. Quick Install does provide a range of versions of Joomla, from 1.5 up to 2.5, but this would appear to be superfluous for developing a new website that would usually be created with the latest version of the software.

HostGator does advertise that their service is 100% compatible with Joomla and that its hardware exceeds the specifications required to use the script to power a website. They also provide a free transfer service for existing Joomla websites that move their web hosting to HostGator. Their award winning service does give you the confidence that the support staff at HostGator will be able to help you with your Joomla problems, but the level of support for Joomla specifically is less than what you would get from BlueHost.

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Rating 8.7/10

Affordable
Reliable
Easy of Use

Also Recommended

3. DreamHost

The shared web hosting package that is offered by DreamHost is a flat rate, unlimited, fully featured web hosting service much like the one from BlueHost, at the slightly higher price of $8.95 per month. DreamHost has been in operation since 1997 and is promoting their web hosting as the grassroots web host, where the focus is on a good user experience. Because the people that work for DreamHost own the company, they can assure users that they are interested in solving their problems and providing excellent technical support.

DreamHost differs from the first two web hosts in that they have their own website management system and script installer instead of the ubiquitous cPanel. While this control panel is still very user friendly, because it is unique to DreamHost it means that it doesn't come with as many options as cPanel. Similarly, the script installer, which does include Joomla, doesn't have the same range of choice of the other scripts that webmasters may want to use in their sub-doamins and alternative websites. The unique management systems at DreamHost mean that users also have to learn their way around new software, and as Joomla users are often the more experienced webmasters, they will probably prefer to stick with a web hosting management system that they already know well.

The strong technical background of the support staff at DreamHost means that they have the expertise to help users with most of the problems that they might encounter while using Joomla, but as they promote themselves as being WordPress friendly, it would appear that they are better suited to that script rather than Joomla. There is a helpful page in their on-site wiki about using Joomla that includes links to tutorials for setting up a Joomla website that could be handy, but there doesn't seem to be the same level of support for Joomla users as you will find at BlueHost.

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Which company has the best Joomla hosting? We recommend BlueHost
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