21 Best Online Course Platforms of March 2023 (Top 7 Picks)
Choosing the right online course platform is crucial to maximizing sales. From creating a course website and taking payments, to uploading videos and interacting with students, the best online course platforms can help you meet your goals. In this guide, we ranked and reviewed the 17+ best online course platforms, along with our top 5 choices, so that you can pick the best one for you.
Thinkific
Create, market, and sell your expertise with a single platform that gives you total control of your brand and business.
Kajabi
Create courses that attract premium prices. Create coaching programs, membership sites, podcasts, and more.
Teachable
With an easy-to-use online course platform, Teachable turns your expertise into a booming business from anywhere in the world.
Learnworlds
Engage learners with interactive videos, ebooks, assessments, certificates, SCORMs, surveys, and much more.
Podia
Podia helps build a community of customers while delivering your online course in a way that is easy to access and follow.
With the acceleration of online learning due to social distancing, starting a coaching business that delivers training through online course platforms has become widely popular.
The e-learning and online course market will be worth $325 billion by 2025.
Are you ready to tap into this market and sell online courses?
You need the best online course platform.
Here’s the secret: you need to pick a platform that gives your students a custom, professional learning experience so amazing that they’re completely unaware they’re using a platform. 🤯
If you’re unfamiliar with online learning platforms, these are browser-based platforms that help you:
- Create an online course website (or integrate your course with an existing site).
- Build sales landing pages.
- Price your course and collect payments (either one-time or in installments).
- Upload your videos, add assignments and quizzes, create interactive content, and engage with your students.
- Create membership communities.
- Host live webinars.
While online education has advantages and disadvantages, the best online course platforms can ensure that both teachers and students get the most out of the online experience.
What Are the Best Online Course Platforms?
Here are my top picks for the best online course platforms this year.
1. Thinkific.
Best Overall Online Course Platform (Free or $49/mo)
SaaS Review’s Take
I love Thinkific and use it for my online business, selling my course Blog Growth Engine. They provide an excellent student experience, easy integrations with Stripe and checkout providers to make collecting payments easy, and they have an expert support team that’s been super helpful. Overall, I recommend Thinkific wholeheartedly as my #1 recommendation for selling online courses.
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
Everyone
Free – $79/month
Yes – Save 20%
One Month Free Trial
Thinkific is the best overall platform to sell online courses.
It’s my #1 choice because the pricing is precisely in line with other affordable options on this list, and it can deliver a high-end course experience.
- Course websites can be customized, and you’d never guess they were Thinkific.
- Sales pages are highly optimized and look great.
- Student dashboards look nice and are customizable (you can add videos, text, and any downloadable file type to the same page).
- You can send your entire course at once or drip it out over time.
- Free Wistia video hosting (an immense value).
That’s honestly all that you need for an optimized course website.
Even though Thinkific plans start at just $49/month, huge brands like Fiverr use Thinkific to sell online courses.
I would have never guessed that this massive learning database was a Thinkific site until their team told me:
Their best (and most popular) Pro Plan offers a one-month free trial to get started.
First, this plan gives you the ability to create unlimited courses. It also features memberships and bundles, advanced pricing options, landing pages, certificates, and marketing tools.
Here’s a little preview of the experience of creating a Thinkific course.
All that you do is create and customize your course with their drag-and-drop editor:
Next, you upload your content and choose one of their website templates:
Lastly, you set up payment methods (you can collect payments in over 100 currencies):
There are also a ton of customization options. If you want to build a completely custom site, their onboarding team takes your vision and helps you turn it into a reality.
Here’s what people are saying about Thinkific:
- “You need to get on Thinkific. The team is creative, reliable, and offers unbeatable support. They always make sure all my bases are covered and, as a business owner, that’s invaluable.” – Lewis Howes.
- “We’ve grown ours by teaching our audience how to scale and grow their business through online training. We couldn’t have done it without Thinkific.” – John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs on Fire.
- “I seriously can’t be more impressed with your customer support team. They are the perfect blend of efficient and personable. It’s like having my very own IT department.” – Kim Garnett.
Key Features:
- Live Lessons & Cohorts allow you to deliver your course content live, in real-time, to students worldwide.
- Advanced customizations mean making your courses look and feel precisely how you want them to.
- Website themes help you quickly and easily create a professional-looking website without any design or coding experience.
- Communities & Memberships allow your students to connect and learn in collaboration.
- Progress Tracking lets you see how your students are doing and identify any areas they may need help with.
- Assessments & Certificates allow your students to demonstrate their understanding and progress.
User Interface:
Configuring your course landing page is one of the many benefits of using Thinkific.
You can use their built-in landing page editor to easily customize the look and feel of your page without having to know any code!
There’s also a wide range of course templates that you can choose from, so you can find one that fits the style of your course.
From pre-selling your course to creating a mini-course, hosting a webinar reply, and more, Thinkific has you covered.
Thinkific Pricing:
- Free ($0/month): Great to test out the features and get a feel for the interface.
- Basic ($39/month): Unlimited courses and students, drip (scheduled) content, custom domain, email integrations, and coupons.
- Pro ($79/month): Basic features, plus memberships and bundles, private courses, certificates, advanced HTML and CSS editing, assignments, live lessons via Zoom, and priority support.
- Premier ($399/month): Pro features, plus 50-course admins, onboarding package, and unlimited growth package (best for big teams).
What I Like/Dislike About Thinkific:
Like:
- Marketing automation and email features.
- Simple free plan to get started.
- You can fully edit the code of your course site.
- Customizable course certificates.
- Custom domains.
- Affiliate marketing help and reporting.
Dislike:
- There’s a slight learning curve to the setup.
- Integration with social media networks and CRMs would be a nice touch.
Product Updates:
- Thinkific Payments allows you to have a faster performance checkout page, reducing the dropoff rate. This means that you can keep more of your hard-earned money!
- Integrated order bumps functionality means that the average order value on your Thinkific site can be increased by offering a small add-on product at checkout.
Overall, I recommend the Thinkific platform as my #1 choice for course creators and entrepreneurs who are serious about creating, marketing, and selling their own course content.
With my link below, you can get started today with a one-month free trial of their Pro Plan.
2. Kajabi.
Best High-End Online Course Platform for Professionals ($119/month)
SaaS Review’s Take
Looking for a platform to take your business to the next level? Look no further than Kajabi! It’s seriously one of the best platforms out there for professionals wanting to scale their businesses. With Kajabi, you can customize your online training, add as many features as you want, and send out newsletters, host podcasts, or build membership sites – all in one place! It’s like having your own personal genie but without the funky pants. Give Kajabi a try and watch your business soar to new heights!
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
Professionals
$119-$319/mo
Yes – Save 20%
14-Day Free Trial
Kajabi is the best high-end course builder tailored toward information business, not tiny course creators.
It’s best when it comes to email marketing automation. Automation is a crucial component of pre-sale, pre-webinar, drip course, and upsell emails – and Kajabi does it best.
Their “Pipelines” feature lets you create fully-automated marketing campaigns and funnels. These are pre-built frameworks for lead generation, with pre-written copy optimized for conversions.
It also features powerful course site themes, the ability to sell digital products, a customizable checkout, and blogging functionality.
Overall, it’s the best high-end course platform with more built-in tools and features, but it costs a little more than others on the list.
Key Features:
- Course insights that give you a clear picture of how your students are doing
- Unlimited video hosting so you can create as many courses as you want
- Publish quickly to your website with just a few clicks – no need to learn to code!
- SEO-optimized so your courses show up high in search engine results
- Unlimited hosting for your classes and marketing materials
- Safe and secure, so your data is always protected
- One-click marketing sequences make it easy to promote your courses
- Website builder lets you create a professional website in minutes without any design or coding experience required
User Experience:
Regarding the user experience of using the platform for the first time, Kajabi is quite intuitive with where you have to click.
You can follow the instructions to create mini-courses and evergreen training, build your community, set up your membership site, and much more.
This makes it easy for new users to get started with the platform.
However, one downside is that the interface can be a bit overwhelming with all the available options and features.
This might take some time to get used to if you are new to using Kajabi.
I also like that the settings are grouped in various groups, allowing easy access to just the right options when you need to change something.
Kajabi Pricing:
Kajabi pricing is mainly based on the number of courses and active members you have:
- Basic ($119/month): 1 website, 1 admin, 3 products, 3 pipelines, 10,000 contacts, and 1,000 active members.
- Growth ($159/month): 1 website, 10 admins, 15 products, 15 pipelines, 25,000 contacts, 10,000 active members.
- Pro ($319/month): 3 websites, 25 admins, 100 products, 100 pipelines, 100,000 contacts, and 20,000 active members.
What I Like/Dislike About Kajabi:
Like:
- Best all-in-one software for a proper information business.
- Wistia video hosting is excellent.
- Primary focus on sales and marketing tools.
- More built-in tools than other platforms.
- Can offer monthly recurring subscriptions.
- Integrated with Stripe and PayPal.
- Big names use Kajabi, including Amy Porterfield.
Dislike:
- Email sequences can be more varied.
- Some improvement on the landing page builder would be welcomed.
Product Updates:
- Carousel modules in the Kajabi website builder mean you can quickly and easily create a responsive website on any device.
- Kajabi University got a new look and feel, so it’s even easier to learn and use Kajabi.
- The user experience of Kajabi payments was revamped, making it super simple to accept payments and manage your finances.
Where Kajabi excels is in its marketing automation tools.
You can segment users in your list, send emails at specific times based on advanced triggers, and send professionally branded messages.
If you’re an established business and want to try one of the more advanced platforms on the market, Kajabi is a solid choice.
Start your free 14-day trial of Kajabi today.
3. Teachable.
Best Online Course Platform for Beginners ($0-$249/mo)
SaaS Review’s Take
Want to sell any of your digital work online? Podia is a platform to consider. With the ability to sell online courses, and digital downloads, host webinars, and even build a community, Podia is a platform that can adapt based on your needs.
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
Beginners
$0-$99/mo
Yes – Save 25%
Start Free
Teachable is an option if you want a fast and easy course builder.
I consider it the best for beginners getting their feet wet in the course world, as it’s one of the cheapest and easy to use.
You can use their free plan (with $1 + $0.10 for all transactions) or select one of their three plans ranging from just $29/month to $299/month.
I recommend their most popular Pro Plan at $99/month as it’s the first with zero transaction fees.
Teachable also gave me a unique and limited-time promo code (200 left):
Use PROSOCIATE1MFREE at checkout to get free one month of their Pro Plan.
Key Features:
- Bring on the authors that will help you create content for your courses. With Teachable, anyone can become an instructor and share their knowledge with the world.
- Create gorgeous, money-making sales pages that will help you sell your courses. Teachable makes it easy to design a page to convert browsers into buyers.
- Use payment providers that are PCI level-1 compliant, so you can rest assured that your data is always safe and secure. Teachable takes care of all the behind-the-scenes work so you can focus on what’s important: teaching your students.
- Use their domain to connect to your own, or use Teachable’s built-in domain immediately.
- Talk to your students live, and schedule and host webinars from your Teachable account. Engage with your learners in a whole new way.
- Schedule and host online courses that work with your busy lifestyle. Teachable makes it easy to find the time to teach.
User Experience:
The user experience is excellent on this platform.
You can easily choose your objective, including creating your own course, choosing a topic, or building an audience.
This structured approach makes it simple to follow as you create your course.
You can also customize the look and feel of your courses with a few clicks.
There are also several tutorials that show you how to use the different theme features on the site.
Teachable Pricing:
- Basic ($29/month): 5% transaction fees, 2 admin users, drip content, course builder, members-only community.
- Pro ($99/month): Basic features, plus no transaction fees, 5 admin users, advanced reports, and course certificates.
- Business ($249/month): Pro features, advanced coding customizations, 20 admins, bulk student enrollments, and group coaching calls.
What I Like/Dislike About Teachable:
Like:
- Straightforward setup.
- Unlimited everything – bandwidth, students, courses, and coaching services.
- One-click checkout.
- Optimized storefront and sales pages.
- Live Zoom courses on their pro plan.
- International payment plans in 130+ currencies.
- Graded quizzes.
- Custom course completion certificates.
- Website theme customization.
- They can have 5 user accounts on their pro plan.
Dislike:
- Support for individual cases is not dealt with in the same way as general platform issues.
- Website navigation is difficult to get used to at the start.
Product Updates:
- Course templates called ‘Simple’ and ‘Colossal’ were added to help you quickly create beautiful courses without any design or coding required.
- You can add lead capture forms directly to product pages, allowing you to grow your email list and increase conversions.
- Bundle functionality was added, so you can create a course package and offer it as a one-time purchase or subscription.
Get started with your Teachable Pro Plan and use my promo code PROSOCIATE1MFREE at checkout to get one month free.
4. LearnWorlds.
Best Course Creation Software for Interactive Learning ($24/month)
SaaS Review’s Take
I think LearnWorlds is one of the best course platforms for interactivity. If you’re looking to give your students an engaging course, with quizzes, interactive videos, surveys, and certificates, LearnWorlds is a good choice. While it doesn’t have the ease of use of Thinkific, it does have strong student community features.
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
Interactive Learning
$24-249/month
Yes – Save 20%
30-Day Free Trial
LearnWorlds is a platform that’s best for course creators looking to interact in unique ways with their students.
Think quizzes, gamification, interactive videos, etc.
While the student experience isn’t as nice looking as a Thinkific course, it’s unique in that it offers students more interactive eLearning content.
Check out my in-depth LearnWorlds review for more information.
Key Features:
- Get tons of help when you need it from the Learnworlds team. You can access walkthrough videos, how-to articles, and even live chat with our support staff.
- You can easily create a mobile app for your courses with our Mobile App Builder. Students can take your classes with them wherever they go!
- The Learning Community feature lets your students connect and learn together. They can share ideas, ask questions, and more.
- With the Synchronized Transcript feature, you can easily track who is doing what and where they are in your course. This is great for keeping track of student progress!
- Branded Digital Certificates give your students a way to demonstrate their understanding and progress. They’ll be proud to show them off!
- Assessments for every need means that you can create quizzes, tests, and more to measure your students’ understanding. You’ll know exactly where they stand!
User Experience:
Customization is a great component of Learnworlds.
As soon as you start creating your course, you realize that the templates that are in place are easy to follow and you can quickly edit them to match your branding or the look of your website.
There’s also a focus on SEO, allowing you to optimize your courses for search engines so people can easily find them.
While it took some time to find a way to add media to specific lessons, once that was figured out it was a smooth process.
Pricing:
- Starter ($24/month paid annually): one admin, $5 fee per course sale, custom domain, unlimited courses, page builder tool, 4 payment gateways, coupons, and drip feed courses.
- Pro Trainer ($79/month): Starter features, plus no transaction fees, 5 admin accounts, subscriptions and memberships, custom checkout pages, live classes via Zoom and Webex, assignments, and affiliate management.
- Learning Center ($249/month): Pro Trainer features, plus a branded corporate academy, premium cloud servers, flexible invoicing, premium support, and a premium account manager.
What I Like/Dislike About Learnworlds:
Like:
- Interactive videos, e-books, gamification, and downloadable attachments.
- You can offer free courses.
- You can extract transcripts from your courses.
- A custom domain name and white-labeled content.
- Students can take notes and highlight important points.
- Certificates of completion.
- Custom mobile app on iOS.
- The ability to create coupons and discounts.
- Social media integrations.
- A new analytics platform to optimize your sales.
- The ability to create membership sites.
- A solid knowledge base.
- 24/7 support.
Dislike:
- No ability to get rid of site-wide features if you want specific customizations
- While there is the ability to change languages, it doesn’t work great.
Product Updates:
- Multi-Purpose Form Builder allows you to create custom forms for your courses. This can be anything from quizzes to surveys!
- New templates were introduced so that you have more choices and can quickly and easily create a professional-looking website without any design or coding experience required.
Get a free 30-day trial of Learnworlds with my link below and start building your interactive online community.
4. Cloudways.
Best Managed Cloud Hosting ($12/month)
SaaS Review’s Take
Cloudways offer high performance and reliability at an affordable price. Their platform is easy to use, and they provide excellent customer support. With simplicity and flexibility, you’ll still be able to get the performance and features you need without having to overspend.
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
Managed Cloud Hosting
$12/mo-$96/mo
No
3-Day Trial
As its name suggests, Cloudways uses a scalable platform built for speed and simplicity.
Unlike shared web hosting, cloud servers give you more dedicated resources, which can help with speed and stability.
It’s a robust hosting service for web developers, as it allows PHP developers to deploy containerized applications and other advanced features.
Besides supporting PHP7, Cloudways supports many other high-performance technologies like HTTP/2, Nginx, and Redis.
All Cloudways customers can add cloud servers to their accounts at any time.
You can also set up a virtual cloud server in under a minute.
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) used with Cloudways (not surprising), followed by Drupal and Magento.
And if you’re looking for security, they provide SSL certificates with domain mapping.
If you’re an experienced developer and want more control over your website, Cloudways is a good option.
Key Features:
- Server Monitoring Dashboard ensures your site’s availability by keeping a watch on the performance of all your servers.
- CloudwaysCDN Integration speeds up your website’s loading time by caching its content on a Content Delivery Network.
- Application Monitoring Dashboard gives you detailed insights into the performance of your applications.
- IP Whitelist allows you to whitelist IP addresses for increased security.
- SSD-based hosting gives you increased website and application speed.
User Experience:
From creating new members and ensuring the correct permissions are in place to monitoring the performance of your servers and applications, Server Management Dashboard is easy to use and provides a great user experience.
Pricing:
Pricing is tiered based on the server specs you choose and the cloud provider. It starts as low as $12/month, and there is a free 3-day trial.
It seems like a short trial, but it gives you enough time to dive into the platform and test its functionality.
What I Like/Dislike About Cloudways:
Like:
- You get out-of-the-box usability with Cloudways. You don’t need to set up or configure anything, create an account, select your application and server, and you’re ready to go.
- The performance is also excellent, so site visitors don’t have to wait long for pages to load.
Dislike:
- You can’t easily host DNS for free there, so you’ll have to use a third-party service if needed.
Product Updates:
- SafeUpdates feature for WordPress is now in General Availability. If something goes wrong when you update a plugin, theme, or WordPress, you can quickly and easily roll back to a working version.
5. Hostinger.
Best Web Hosting Service Powering Over 2 Million Websites Worldwide ($2.95/month)
SaaS Review’s Take
While Hostinger is excellent for those that want web hosting on a budget, the service is still top quality. You get free features such as SSL and migration, a speed boost for PHP, and even 24/7 tech support. If you’re looking to start a website without spending a fortune, I recommend you check out Hostinger.
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
Tailored Plans
$2.95/mo-$13.95/mo
No
Get Started For $2.95
Hostinger is a great hosting company because of its speed and price.
Using Hostinger allows developers to learn to code and experiment with PHP, FTP, cPanel, and MySQL without the added cost.
Using free hosting sites and learning PHP, you can learn to build free WordPress sites and hone your skills simultaneously.
They have a super knowledgeable 24/7 multilingual (20+ language) Customer Success Team and are known to pick up a live chat in less than two minutes.
They are also one of the fastest web hosting providers, with an average page load speed under 200 ms and guaranteed uptime of 99.9%.
Hostinger has a custom, easy-to-use dashboard.
The design is clean and straightforward, which is what you need when building a site.
Additionally, they are running a massive sale offering free SSL certificates and domains.
Hostinger provides a free WordPress site with a 1-click installation so you can start your blog free of charge in minutes. They also have their Zyro website builder with thousands of templates.
Key Features:
- Cloudflare CDN means having a cached site worldwide, so it will load quickly, no matter where visitors are.
- Daily Backups ensure that your data is always safe and secure.
- Unlimited Bandwidth means you can have as much traffic as you want without worrying about overage charges.
- Unlimited Databases mean you can store as much data as you need.
- Managed WordPress means that Hostinger will take care of all the technical details of running a WordPress site, so you can focus on creating content.
User Experience:
With a left-hand side menu that gives you all the needed information to get started, Hostinger’s interface is clean and easy to understand.
All the product options are categorized into separate tabs, so you can easily find what you’re looking for.
The steps to get up and running with their services are easy:
- Go to hostinger.com and click get started.
- Choose your hosting plan – the best savings are with the $0.99/month plan for 48 months.
- Enter your email and create a password.
- Choose either WordPress or build your site.
- Edit and publish your site.
If you want a mighty host on a budget with one of the fastest loading times and an incredible 90% discount, I recommend you get started with Hostinger for $0.99/month ($47.52 for four full years of hosting).
What I Like/Dislike About Hostinger:
Like:
- Multiple FTP accounts mean you can give different people access to other areas of your site, which is great for larger businesses.
- The user interface is clean and easy to understand, so you can get started quickly.
- You can choose the server of the desired country, which is helpful if you want your site to load quickly for visitors in that area.
- Affordable rates mean you can get started with Hostinger without breaking the bank.
Dislike:
- Their support system is a bit lacking and could be improved.
Product Updates:
Focus on fast loading speed means your site will load quickly regardless of where visitors are.
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: Single Shared Hosting at $0.99/month
- Term: 48 months
- Total cost at checkout: $47.52
- Savings: $432
6. HostGator.
Best Cheap Web Hosting Service ($2.78/month)
SaaS Review’s Take
I recommend HostGator if you’re looking for a proven web host with a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%, ensuring that your website is up and running when anyone tries to access it. I also like HostGator because they offer easy WordPress installation, free SSL certificates, and a free domain for the first year.
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
99.9% Uptime
$2.75/mo-$5.25/mo
No
Get 65% Off
HostGator is a well-known hosting provider based in Houston and hosts over 9 million websites.
They are one of the cheapest options, with plans starting at $2.78/month on 36-month plans and savings from 30-60%.
To dive deeper, you can read my complete comparison to Bluehost and review vs. GoDaddy.
As you can see below, they stack up well against GoDaddy and website builders like Squarespace in both price and feature set:
Their average speed is barely under one second, so they aren’t the fastest option, but they are better than average.
They also hit a 99.98% uptime, which is better than the industry average of 99.94%.
They make the website building process easy, with simple drag-and-drop functionality and the ability to add unlimited domains to your account.
They’ll also assist with free migrations within the first 30 days of your sign-up.
HostGator offers 24/7 customer support through live chat, email, and phone, and they have pretty good response times.
Key Features:
- One-click WordPress installs make it easy to get started with a WordPress site.
- Free WordPress/cPanel website transfers mean you can move your existing site to HostGator without paying any fees.
- Free SEO tools help you optimize your site for search engines.
- The free upgrade to Positive SSL means your site will be more secure and trusted by visitors.
- The free dedicated IP gives you a unique IP address that is not shared with any other sites, which can improve your site’s security and performance.
User Experience:
- With a menu dedicated to server stats, you can easily keep track of your site’s performance with HostGator.
- The interface is easy to understand and gives you all the information you need to start.
- In addition, there are shortcuts to the most popular functions that you can use to get started quickly.
Pricing:
They offer three main plans, including Hatchling, Baby, and Business. The higher-tier plans include dedicated IP addresses and SEO tools to grow your online presence.
They have a 45-day money-back guarantee if you’re unsatisfied with your purchase.
Here’s how to get started:
- Go to HostGator.com and click Get Started.
- Choose a domain (or add one you own).
- Pick your billing cycle. Select the $2.78/month plan for 36 months for the most savings.
- Enter your billing info.
- Click Checkout, and you’re all set!
You can get 30-60% off with promo code SAASREVIEW.
Why don’t you try the Hatchling plan and get started for $2.75/month?
What I Like/Dislike About HostGator:
Like:
- Lots of tools and interfaces make it easy to find what you need.
- An affordable solution that can save you money in the long run.
- The interface is easy to understand and use.
Dislike:
- Sending emails in bulk can be a bit tricky and time-consuming.
How to Save:
- Plan: Hatchling at $2.75/month
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout: $100.08
- Savings: $150.12
7. GreenGeeks.
Best Green Web Host ($2.95/mo)
SaaS Review’s Take
If you’re environmentally conscious, GreenGeeks is your web hosting solution. With no server wastage when using GreenGeeks, you’ll be doing your part in helping the environment while having a great host to run your website on. In addition, GreekGeeks also plant a tree for each hosting account created, which is a nice touch from their side.
Price
Annual Discount
Promotion
Green Webhosting
$2.95/mo-$10.95/mo
No
Get Started For $2.95
GreenGeeks is an environmentally friendly web host with over ten years of experience.
They boast 99.95% uninterrupted time and feature load times under 500ms.
They have data centers in the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands – specifically Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, Montreal, and Amsterdam- a solid international setup.
They’re an exciting choice if you’re looking for an environmentally-conscious web host.
GreenGeeks confirms that they buy 3x the amount of wind energy credits to account for the energy used to power their platform.
They’re a Green Power Partner with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
If you sign up for their services, you get unlimited file storage, bandwidth, and email accounts, enjoy their strong performance – and get a free domain.
And they don’t just slap WHM/cPanel on a dedicated server and call it a day like some other hosts – they go deeper than that.
They have a cool feature called their hosting account isolation setup.
Using a VPS, container-based approach, they provision accounts with dedicated computing resources and a secured virtual file system (Secure vFS).
Secure vFS ensures accounts cannot access other accounts, protecting your site against malware and other malicious activity.
Key Features:
- Free SSL Certificate so that your site is more secure and trusted by visitors.
- Unmetered Transfer means you can have as much traffic as you want without worrying about overage charges.
- On-demand Backups ensure that your data is always safe and secure.
- Free Dedicated IP gives you a unique IP address that is not shared with any other sites, which can improve your site’s security and performance.
- One-click WordPress installs make it easy to get started with a WordPress site.
- Object Caching (Memcached & Redis) means that your site will load quickly no matter where visitors are located.
User Experience:
With their data stored on SSD drives, the experience is great and allows you to focus on what you’re doing without worrying about your site’s performance.
I like that you can manage various SSL certificates as part of the user interface, making adding them to your site easy.
The navigation is straightforward, and I had no trouble finding what I was looking for.
Pricing:
They have their Lite plan at $2.95 per month, their Pro plan at $5.95 per month, and their Premium at $11.95 per month.
What I Like/Dislike About GreenGeeks:
Like:
- Bandwidth and resource allocation so you can have as much traffic as you want without worrying about overage charges.
- Good solid support by their team in case you run into any problems.
- Server performance is much improved with their object caching system.
Dislike:
- Software deployment could have been easier to implement.
Product Updates:
GreenGeeks is now offering Redis on its eco site premium hosting plans so that you can have the best performance for your site on all the plans.
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: EcoSite Lite at $2.95/month
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout: $116.15
- Savings: $225.85
8. SiteGround.
Best Client Satisfaction ($3.95/month)
SiteGround has been offering hosting software since 2014, and they pride themselves on fantastic customer support. They had a 98% client satisfaction rate in 2018 and respond to phone calls in seconds, reply to support tickets within 10 minutes on average, and are available 24/7 via chat.
In addition to customer service, performance is a significant benefit for SiteGround users, as they had an average of 99.99% uptime in 2018. They built their platform on Linux containers that are very stable, even with random traffic spikes. They also have excellent page load times under 750ms.
They boast the most significant discounts on one-year terms if you don’t want to pay for 3+ years. Basic plans start at $3.95/month (plus a $14.95 setup fee), including free Let’s Encrypt SSL, daily auto backups, unmetered traffic, and up to 10,000 visitors/month.
If you’re sick and tired of lousy service and want to work with the industry’s best customer support team, give SiteGround a try today. You can also read my review of SiteGround vs. Bluehost to compare these two web hosting giants.
How to Save:
- Plan: StartUp at $3.95/month + $14.95 setup fee
- Term: 12 months
- Total cost at checkout: $62.35
- Savings: $81.53
9. HostPapa.
Fast, Reliable Web Hosting for Small Business ($2.95/month)
HostPapa offers everything a small business would need to run its website and currently has a 70% discount on its plans.
These services include hosting, domain registration, 400+ business apps to connect to, and the option of an easy drag-and-drop website builder or WordPress installation, depending on your interest.
HostPapa has three main plans ranging from $2.95 to $11.95/month. You’ll want to ensure you turn off their other extras at checkout, which would add $39.90 annually.
Their most popular plan is the Business Plan (on sale for $2.95/month).
This plan is ideal for small business owners and includes unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: Business at $2.95/month
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout: $106.20
- Savings: $433.44!
10. DreamHost.
Fast, Secure Web Hosting with Purpose ($2.59/month)
DreamHost is a host that manages over 1.5 million sites used worldwide and is great for WordPress hosting. They offer a 100% uptime guarantee and an impressive 97-day money-back guarantee.
All sites come pre-installed with a free SSL certificate and WordPress firewall for added security. VPS Basic provides two virtual private servers to each customer to increase speed, scalability, and performance.
They also have multiple caching layers, auto-scaled memory, and these isolated servers to improve speed further.
Additionally, every customer of their DreamPress platform gets built-in server caching and a static IP. These servers quickly respond to web requests as a proxy with the Apache and PHP WordPress stack.
You can get started with the DreamHost Shared Starter plan for just $2.59 per month.
First, sign up and enter your domain information. Next, you’ll also want to deselect Dreamshield Protection and 1 Mailbox if you don’t need email yet.
How to Save the Most:
- Plan: Shared Starter at $2.59/mo
- Term: 36 months
- Total cost at checkout:$93.24
- Savings: $99.91
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to me at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. These are products I’ve personally used and stand behind. This site is not intended to provide financial advice and is for entertainment only. You can read our affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.
