Hosting Coupons – 2020 Update

It’s not just a new year – it’s a whole new decade!

We’re cleaning up, taking inventory, and making sure all of our hosting coupons are updated for 2020. We know that discounts from ten years ago aren’t necessarily going to help you today, so we’re digging through the archives and dusting off those old links until they all work again.

Here’s the current status of the project based on which web hosts have confirmed coupons or not:

Confirmed Hosting Coupons

• Dreamhost Coupons
• Hostgator Coupons

Inactive Hosting Coupons

• Anhosting
• Midphase

Beyond Price: Evaluating Website Hosts

Price matters a lot when shopping, but it isn’t the only factor to consider when selecting a hosting provider for your websites.

A good website host should be both fast and reliable. Ideally, your websites should load instantly 24/7/365. Any downtime should be refunded, but it really shouldn’t be an issue in the first place. A web host’s job is to keep their servers online and accessible through the public internet, so if they’re not holding up that end of the bargain they’re not really providing the service they’re charging you for!

Dreamhost and Hostgator stack up well for beginners to web publishing. They aren’t the fastest or the most customizable hosts around, but they are extremely reliable and friendly to new users and veterans alike. Simplified control panels and administrative tools allow people without too much technical knowledge to get started building websites right away.

If and when you start looking for something at a professional level of speed and access, they might not be the best hosts available. Most corporate level websites tend to look toward cloud based hosting services – or at the very least, setting up their own Linux or Windows stack (depending on what’s needed for the specific web application).

Why do web hosts offer coupons?

Well, it’s marketing! There are a lot of web hosting providers out there and they all want to be the one to earn your business. Moving an already established site is a complex task that takes time as well as technical knowledge about server administration, so the companies figure that a new customer is likely to stick around for a while – especially if they’ve made running the site relatively easy and painless.

So web hosts with high customer satisfaction also tend to offer very large coupons and promo codes for new customers. This allows them to compete aggressively on prices while also charging enough – in the long run – to provide a high quality service.

Alternatives to Web Hosting

Ready to publish your first website online? Just not ready to pay for it?

There are options available beyond paid web hosting.

A popular choice is to sign up with free blogging sites like Blogspot and WordPress and Tumblr. These sites allow you to set up a subdomain with your own website and you can start posting away! The biggest advantages are financial and technical: you don’t need to set anything up and you don’t have to pay for anything, either. The downside is that you’ll ultimately have less control over your site, the types of content it can display, and how you can monetize the traffic.

The other option is to set up your own web hosting server at home – but that’s quite an involved project to save $5 or $10 a month! This usually isn’t recommended unless you’re setting up a smart home with remote controls or if computer networking is literally your favorite hobby. It will usually require at least two dedicated computers as well: one for the DNS server and one for the web host. Always check with your ISP’s rules and regulations before jumping in, as many won’t allow you to set up public-facing hosts on your private internet connection.

Shared Hosting is Usually Just Right

If you’re not sure what kind of web hosting you need to get started, there’s a good chance shared hosting is right in that perfect spot. You’ll get most of the control and access that a more complex plan offers, but you’ll have an easier start and lower monthly budget to worry about. There are also a lot of server management interfaces and control panels that greatly assist in installing and managing domains, web files, and content management software.

Don’t let another decade pass you by, start publishing today!