[REVIEW] The BEST Green Web Hosting 2018 – A2 Hosting Vs. GreenGeeks Vs. FatCow Vs. HostPapa
Searching for the best Green Web Hosting Companies in 2018?
Here are the BEST green web hosting solutions (depending on what you’re looking for – read on)…
Welcome to our detailed review of the best green web hosting for your business, blog, or website in 2018.
We have tried to find the best green hosting available in 2018; we have tested EACH web hosting we recommended, except Ethical Host as we endeavour (not a typo – just being Canadian) to find the best green web hosting.
Without further ado, base on our first-hand experience and extensive fact checking, the best green hosting for speed and performance is A2 Hosting.
The best green web hosting for VALUE & reliability is FatCow Green Hosting:
The BEST Green Canadian Web Hosting Company is HostPapa providing green web hosting, reliability, and value with their web servers in Montreal or Vancouver.
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When it comes to web hosting, you don’t want to take any risks. It is the core of your business and website success. We’ve extensively sought through for the best green hosting and have come to the following conclusions about web hosting companies you can trust. (That are also eco-friendly.)
Here are our five best Green Hosting recommendations:
We’ve searched high and low, tried many green web hosting services, and done an extensive review to find the BEST green web hosting for 2018. (subject to updates and changes partly base on our experience.)
#1 – A2 Hosting – THE BEST GREEN WEBHOSTING in 2018.
(1) Fast hosting – 4X faster than our other hosting. (We have 1 second page-loads with a WordPress site that has a complex template installed.)
(2) Reliable servers with good uptime.
(3) 24/7 customer support.
(4) Competitive pricing and monthly plans – always buy monthly hosting if you can instead of yearly.
(5) Green hosting and company culture. 100% Carbon neutral through partnership with Carbonfund.org. They own their own data centers in Ann Arbor, Michigan which is one of the greenest city in US.
We truly believe that A2 Hosting is one of the BEST if not BEST green hosting you can find online that combines both green hosting, eco-friendly practices in the company culture and also more importantly (1) keeping your data safe, (2) keeping your website up/online, and (3) providing a competitive price as a green web host.
#2 – GreenGeeks – Fast hosting, 300% green hosting through Renewable Energy Certificates. A EPA green power partner. Good prices and reasonable support. Our draw back to GreenGeeks is they are a smaller web hosting company that do not own their own data centres like A2 Hosting does. Instead, they seem to resell SingleHop servers. We don’t recommend going with smaller hosts as you don’t want to risk your data in case it gets sold or goes under.
#3 – FatCow – FatCow is an EPA green power partner. They provide green hosting that’s FULLY powered by wind energy through 200% purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (just a little less than GreenGeeks). They are also the ONLY green hosting that offers incredible perks like $100 Bing Ads Coupon and possibly the cheapest green hosting you can find at just $5/month. The drawback to FatCow is that Fat Cow Hosting does not use cPanel which is the easiest control panel for non-techs.
#4 – Hostpapa – Canadian web hosting. 100% green hosting through Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Great customer support. Fast web hosting.
#5 – Ethical Host – Ethical Host as its name implies is a small web hosting company that focuses on ethical practices and green hosting. The prices are good but the support isn’t very fast. It seems to be a one-man show. They do donate 10% of their profit to non-profits yearly but if you’re looking for green hosting there are better options to be had.
Before we get into a detailed exploration about each of the five green hosting companies we’ve mentioned, I’d like to take a few moments to explain why you need to choose the RIGHT green hosting company for your website/business and NOT JUST a green web hosting company. This is crucially important that you don’t just sign up for web hosting because they are eco-friendly but find a good web hosting provider who’s eco-friendly.
We’ve done the search for you and can confidently say that this is the BEST green hosting in 2018. It’s fast, reliable, and green with reasonable 24/7 customer support. They also have a special 51% off your first billing cycle of green hosting if you use the link here:
=> 2018’s Best Green Web Hosting
What happens if you choose the wrong green web hosting provider:
If you choose the wrong web hosting provider, one of several things can happen:
(1) Customer Frustration – If your green web hosting company does not maintain a regular and consistent up-time, frequent down time can cause you to lose visitors or potential customers. These web visitors (potential customers) get frustrated AT YOU (your business/brand), not your green web host
(2) Lower Search Engine Ranks – Frequent down time of your green web hosting can also result in lower search engine rankings. Understandably, search engines like any good product or service, desire to give their customers, (web users) the best solution (to their question or web searches). If your website is down frequently it reflects negatively on the professionalism and reliability of your website/business just like being late all the time, – your website speed is a factor of your search engine rankings directly and indirectly (If your website loads faster, it affects user experience and results in better metrics of your website quality meaning search engines will likely favor your website – search engines are very sophisticated today in understanding user response to your website content.) . It’s not your fault that your website is down! But then again as the webmaster and business owner, the onus falls on you and not your green web hosting company.
(3) Loss of Customers – As mentioned earlier, slow website loading times can cause your customers to look to your competitor instead of you. Think of it this way… if you want to order poke but the line up is so slow that you get frustrated and leave to the next door poke store to order your meal. Yes, we’re talking about green web hosting and website page load times but the analogy works. The slow loading time of your website can also result in lower search engine rankings meaning customers are finding your competitors instead of you. You’re missing out on free traffic; very high quality traffic, at that because of your web hosting company. Traffic from search engines are value to businesses and websites – people who are specifically looking for the solution, service, or product you provide! That is one of the most valuable form of traffic online.
(4) Your Sanity, Frustration and Lost Time – Some green web hosting companies have horrendous service. Bad service is bad enough but your web hosting company is not the area you want bad customer service because it can affect your profitability and business if customer support cannot resolve your web hosting issue with downtime. Imagine if your website makes you $100/hour, or during a traffic spike $1000/hour – every hour your server is down means huge sales being lost because of your “green web hosting company”.
Bad customer service from the green web hosting company can cause you to waste YOUR time and frustrate your day. Why spoil your day or why waste your time dealing with bad customer service from green web hosting companies. Imagine the frustration of your website being down due to their technical fault and without resolution from unreliable customer support?
That’s why it is crucial, not just to pick a green web hosting company but pick a reliable web hosting company with environmentally friendly culture and green practices.
I think we’ve underlined the importance of choosing the right green web hosting company for your business and website hosting. Absolutely, picking a green web hosting provider is important for our environment (web hosting is set to be one of the largest polluters after aviation), your conscience, and your corporate social responsibility however just like the plethora of options with shared web hosting, there are many options available with green web hosting.
-> Take the time to choose the right green hosting solution so you don’t need to waste time moving your website again. Get the work done well once and ride the success in picking the right green web hosting company for your website!
Now that we’ve emphasized the importance of choosing the right green web hosting company, let’s underline the opposite – what happens when you choose the RIGHT green web hosting company.
Remember, you want to choose a great web hosting company that’s eco-friendly and NOT a green web hosting company that’s a mediocre web hosting provider. Quality, Up-Time, Customer support should come first considered along side eco-friendly policies, green initiatives and ethical practices
What happens if you choose the right green web hosting provider:
On the other hand if you choose the right green web hosting provider, your business or website is not going to suddenly and magically become successful. It will however provide you the foundation to build your work and get results. It will allow you to focus on what you do best and on what you love, your business, your customers, or your niche!
Choosing the right green web hosting company can help you in the following ways:
(1) Better website SEO: A website with faster page load times means customers will enjoy using your website more which means better user experience – by virtue of providing a better user experience, it also translates to better search engine signals. Basically, having a fast loading website can help your website rank easier on Google and similar search engines (because you provide search engine with what they are looking for – that being better user experience for their web users) meaning you can get more traffic and more people seeing your content …almost effortlessly (or free.)
(2) Happy Customers and Visitors: Our time is important; you have five seconds to convince a web visitor you have what they need. A slow loading page can frustrate your visitors (as perhaps you have experienced yourself.) With a fast website however, your customers and visitors not only find you (see your content) but can effortlessly utilize your website meaning more happy customers and visitors. It can even increase conversion rates. A good green web hosting company like A2 Hosting that has page load times of 500ms or 1 second in our experience for a fully-loaded WordPress site will mean BETTER customer experience and happy website visitors!
(3) Hassle-Free Web Hosting: A good green web hosting service provider will also help you to handle your server management keeping you running and hassle-free. They can ensure that those pesky malware and viruses don’t sneak up on your website and spoil your work – a virus can completely tank your website on search engines and a virus can hurt your website visitors computers. It can also tarnish your reputation because customers see that their site was infected while visiting your website causing a loss of trust. If it flags their anti-virus, they may think your website is a malicious site.
A good green web hosting provider will maintain several days of back up for your content so to restore it as necessary also. However, you should always keep your own back-ups.
(4) 24/7/365 Web Asset: A good green hosting solution can keep your mind at ease knowing that your website (like a 24 hr employee) is always running and ready to serve your purpose.
(5) Reliable Technical Support: Lastly, a good green web hosting provider will ensure that they can provide you with technical help when you need it. It will save you time with customer support.
In the rare event that you need to contact a technical support staff, you want your complaint and issue resolved asap. You don’t want to wait hours to get in touch with a technical support staff or keep your problem unresolved. Effectively, a good green hosting solution will save you precious time by ensuring that help is there when you need it. Not just outsourced help tech support somewhere in India (if you’ve tried talking to outsourced call centers, you know how frustrating it is – they aren’t empowered to do anything and they give you the round about or information you can find yourself on Google. You’re better off talking with a bot than with them because at least it’s comprehensible.) You want to look for a green web hosting provider who provides 24/7 support but support that can help you fix any issues at hand when you need it rather than wasting your time.
That’s why finding a green web host for you is partly about the technical performance and partly about their responsiveness to customer support inquiries. These are five of many reasons why in your search for a green web hosting solution, you need to first find a green web hosting company that will serve you well as a reliable web hosting service and then look at the eco-friendly or green practice which isn’t hard at all to implement or adopt.
Remember, if you’re looking for a green web hosting company, it starts first with you. Ensure that you are practicing green with recycling, energy conservation, water conservation. Avoid excessive use of lights and work in the day if you can instead of into the night. We hope you enjoy our brief write-up about why you must choose the right green hosting and not just a green web hosting (unless you want a horrible, expensive, and time consuming experience – which is not what a web hosting experience should be.)
Our Green Hosting Recommendations: Green web hosting is something very important to us at SEOtProsperity Services Inc.
Being based in Vancouver, eco-friendly practices are part of Vancouver’s culture.
We truly believe all our efforts matter in making this place we live in a cleaner and healthier earth.
However, you don’t need to sacrifice performance and reliability for green web hosting to being eco-friendly just as you need not neglect delicious food while trying to eat healthy. -> You just need to find wholesome foods and prepare it well.
In like manner, you ought to take the time and effort to finding the right green web hosting. This means sorting through the mess and fake reviews online to try and find the best green web hosting available.
Thankfully, we’ve done that for you. We’re going to save you the time of finding a good green web hosting service….and recommend one that we’re using.
What we do to find the BEST green web host:
We regularly build content-based websites so we occasionally buy a new web hosting account every few months. We took this opportunity to learn about green web hosting companies and then try a few of these green web hosting companies with our website hosted to see how they perform by experience.
This is not just a review of green web hosting without having tried the web hosts; we’ve tried 4/5 of these green web hosting companies (and several others that aren’t worth mentioning.)
We also test it under normal use conditions meaning we’re hosting a website there just like you might do, we see the up-time, the page load speeds, and the customer support from a real customer experience. What you get is as close to an accurate review as you might find online about green web hosting companies.
These are truly the BEST green hosting for both performance and eco-friendly practices. Without further ado… (yes, it’s been quite a bit of ado already.)
1) A2 Hosting – Truly The BEST Green Hosting:
=> Click here to get A2 Hosting for 51% discount.
Speed – From the get go, we’ve chosen A2 Hosting as the BEST green hosting in 2018. It’s the FASTEST hosting. (Not just fastest green hosting, but fastest hosting we’ve experienced, period.)
Out of all featured green web hosts on this list, A2 Hosting is the FASTEST page load times and most consistent performance.
Green Policies– It is a green web hosting company that is carbon neutral and also encourages employees to work from home (saving the CO2 from commuting – they do provide free lunch for employees who come to the office as well).
Happy Employees – It has a great company culture where people enjoy working there which translates to better customer support and better hosting quality – happy employees do better work which means better experience for customers.
Good Pricing – It also is very fairly priced (slightly higher than other web hosting companies featured on this list such as FatCow at $5 and GreenGeeks at $4 on a one year plan however the slight premium is worth it when it comes to your business or website! (Can you find a 24/7 sales personnel to work for $16/month? What you spend on your website hosting is less than any part-time employee in essence.).
Monthly Billing Available – A2 Hosting also offers monthly plans which is important. If you’re trying out a new web hosting company, avoid signing on for a full year, two years, or three years.
What happens if the host shows problem within a few months? You want the flexibility of taking your website elsewhere if the web host gets acquired or starts declining in performance/quality. [More susceptible for newer hosts (or web hosting companies who use data centers they don’t own) than more established hosts with their own data centers like A2 Hosting because they’ve already systematize their processes and calibrated their business like a well humming machine. They have also proven themselves.]
Go Yearly Green Web Hosting if you Want – With A2 Hosting, I wouldn’t hesitate going for the yearly plan with this 51% off coupon code which makes the shared web hosting just $64.21 USD working out to a little over $5 per month for phenomenal green web hosting! The same price as FatCow or GreenGeeks hosting with FASTER website hosting and greater reliability/stability. However, it is always best to go monthly with web hosting; it benefits the web hosts more if you go yearly but it’s better for you to go monthly.
=> Click here to get A2 Hosting. Green Web Hosting for 51% off with this discount link.
[Do note, the coupon code is valid only for your FIRST billing period meaning if you get the monthly plan, it’s $6.37 for the month and renews at $12.99 per month. Price-wise… If you get the yearly plan it’s $64.62 (works out to $5.39 per month). for the year and renews at $131.88 per year. If you get the bi-annual plan it’s $117.48 (works out to $4.90/month) and renews at $239.76 every two years. If you get the three year plan it’s $176.22 (works out to $4.90/month) and renews at $359.64 after three years.]
A2 Hosting Prices:
The yearly plan with the 51% off coupon allows you to get A2 Hosting quality at the price of FatCow hosting for your first billing period; a very incredible deal that’s recommended to act upon while it’s still available. (Not too sure when they might do a product costing and find it isn’t actually worth while providing such amazing hardware for that low price with the coupon code, factoring in the customer acquisition costs. (They would be able to provide that service at break even point if they didn’t have a high customer acquisition cost but being the web hosting industry, their customer acquisition cost is probably high.)
A2 Hosting Credibility:
They have the reputation though being in hosting since 2001; that’s 17 years. They will honor the deal if the special link isn’t disabled.
Best Green Web Hosting Pricing Strategy – Three Years of A2 Hosting?
I wouldn’t recommend going for the three year plan, however. As even though A2 Hosting is reliable, too much can change in three years to sign on for a three year plan. Signing on for the one or two year plan may be very worth while with A2 Hosting’s reliability and quality; you basically get a great deal on amazing green web hosting. Personally, I still always go monthly and pay the extra premium for flexibility and added assurance.
Overall, if you’re looking for a green web hosting company that has a reputation for being one of the FASTEST and best web hosting in general (green hosting or not) then A2 Hosting should be your pick and is why they are #1 on our recommendation of the best green web hosting.
It is not just a green web hosting company. It is, for all purposeful comparisons, one of the TOP web hosting companies in the industry – when you compare your website’s page load times and up times.
A2 Hosting can provide incredibly fast hosting even on a shared hosting plan that many web hosting companies fail to do. How they do it at the price they offer is quite a mystery because usually for such incredibly fast millisecond page load speeds, you might only expect paying $50+ per month on a Virtual Private Server or cheap Dedicated Server. Getting that speed on a Shared Hosting environment is VERY rare and probably costly to provide for the green web hosting company (A2 Hosting).
A2 Hosting’s SWIFT Vs. TURBO
Note that we’re only using the SWIFT plan, the TURBO plan is apparently 20X faster. I haven’t had the need to try Turbo hosting for about 30% more. Our website performs well enough with SWIFT (the medium plan) that we do not need to try TURBO.
Turbo plan on A2 Hosting basically means fewer accounts on the same server and boasts up to 20 times faster web hosting. Not too sure how this translates to results in reality as I’ve not registered for a Turbo hosting plan.
Perhaps I may do so in the future for comparison and update this A2 Hosting review.
Best Green Web Hosting with A2 Hosting Summary:
So in summary, here’s why we thought A2 Hosting was the BEST green hosting in 2018…
Why is A2 Hosting the BEST Green Hosting?
(1) FASTEST WEBSITE PAGE LOADING – 200% faster than industry average.
(2) Great up-time – 99% up time.
(3) Ok 24/7/365 support – Honestly, support isn’t phenomenal unless you pay extra. That’s disappointing but no web hosting company is perfect.
(4) VERY ECO-FRIENDLY – They don’t just carbon off-set they have environmentally-friendly company policies.
(5) Good Security & Tech – A2 Hosting has a good web development team and they create unique tools for A2 Hosting that help your hosting be faster or more secure. They take a very strong stance against any DDOS attack so one person’s DDOS attack doesn’t affect your website. Their technical team is very experienced and constantly creating new innovations that make their web hosting faster and safer for their customers. They even have an A2 Hosting optimized WordPress installation to make your WordPress site even faster with server-level caching. A2 Hosting is very good with speed as you may be able to tell.
=> Click here to try A2 Hosting for 51% off.
2) GreenGeeks – Very Good Green Hosting:
For many, when they think of green web hosting, they consider GreenGeeks. It’s one of the most popular green web hosting solution hosting over 70,000 websites hosted by GreenGeeks today.
It’s excellent choice for green hosting; you can expect:
(1) Good pricing for green web hosting – The price for web hosting at GreenGeeks works out to about $5.95/month on their yearly plan. That’s less than a venti extra-hot, no whip pumpkin spice latte. However, as mentioned you should avoid yearly hosting plans in favor of monthly web hosting.
(2)Reliable web hosting – They have proved their reliability for over a decade. Not only does GreenGeeks provide green web hosting, they provide green hosting that’s fast with reliability up-time you can trust.
(3) Multiple web hosting locations – They offer website hosting in Canada, US, and Europe. This is useful if you want to be a little closer to your predominant geographical location of web users/customers resulting in faster page loading times. However, A2 Hosting already has incredibly fast page load speeds across the United States.
(4) Ok customer service – GreenGeeks have proven themselves to provide reliable customer support that is quick, helpful, and empowered to solve the problem or question at hand. It’s also 24/7 customer support. There is a draw-back and warning, however… Many customers have reported that their billing team can incorrectly bill you or suspend your account. This is why we would recommend once again signing for a monthly green web hosting plan instead of a yearly hosting plan.
(5) 300% Green web hosting – They are EPA Green Power Partners and through the purchase of renewable energy certificate, they offset any energy consumption with 300% green energy certificate purchase. Basically, this pumps 300% of green energy into the grid for every kw or watt they use. It’s a very green web hosting. FatCow does 200% green energy certificate purchase. A2 Hosting does 100% carbon neutral web hosting.
GreenGeeks is the #2 Green Web Hosting Option:
With all this said, why are they #2 on our green web hosting feature and not #1? If you’re looking for good, reliable, and cheap green hosting, you can trust GreenGeeks but A2 Hosting is still better in our opinion. There are a couple draw backs with GreenGeeks when paired besides A2 Hosting.
(1) GreenGeeks doesn’t own their own data centers – GreenGeeks provides reliable green web hosting services but they do so either through a co-location (using someone else’s data centers with your own hardware) or as a web hosting reseller. (reselling web hosting provided by another web hosting provider)
This pose several issues; if they need to fix something in the data center, there is an extra middle man involved. Rather than being able to solve the issue directly, they need to work with their web hosting provider. This is because they don’t actually have technicians at the data centers.
A2 Hosting however owns their own data center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. With A2 Hosting, while you do not have the option to host your website in Canada or Europe locations as you do with GreenGeeks, you can expect more direct support. It’s also like buying from the wholesaler or producer than buying from the retailer or distributor… Each level up you get to the supply, the slightly less it cost. Each level from manufacturing to wholesale to distributor to retail adds their own profit margins; by reaching direct with the green web hosting provider instead of a reseller, you can get better value.
(2) A2 Hosting is the FASTEST hosting we’ve seen – This is not faulted with GreenGeeks. GreenGeeks does provides very fast green web hosting comparing with industry average.
HOWEVER as mentioned, A2 Hosting provides some of the FASTEST hosting in the industry…four times faster than our hosting at FatCow. It also happens to be green web hosting as well – A2 Hosting is carbon neutral AND environmentally-friendly through tele-commuting company policies.
So at A2 Hosting, you don’t just get green web hosting, you can get one of the fastest web hosting available for shared accounts. As you already know from our discourse above, speed matters when it comes to web hosting.
Therefore in comparison between GreenGeeks green hosting to A2 Hosting, A2 Hosting gets a leg up because of their server performance and page load times. Perhaps because A2 Hosting owns their own data center, hire experienced technicians, and controls their own network access, they are better able to provide customers with faster hosting. Being that they own the data-center, they know more about their server specs and performance than a reseller or colocation client. They also avoid over-selling their servers and ensuring good data access across the board for all customers.
These are some perks of owning your own data center as A2 Hosting does. While reseller web hosting companies have to make a profit on top of the profit margin you make as a data center provider, you can provide better web hosting for less.
(3) A2 Hosting is really green web hosting – A2 Hosting founded in 1998, is truly a green web hosting company. A2 Hosting actually stands for Ann Arbor hosting. Ann Arbor is one of the greenest city in America. Being a web hosting company that names itself after its city, you can expect they reflect many characteristics and values of Ann Arbor…and that they do.
A2 Hosting encourages environmentally friendly practices from the company culture to the energy and carbon emissions from their data center.
Many green web hosting companies will be considered green hosting simply by purchasing renewable energy certificates for the energy they use. This basically means that they pay an extra premium to add energy from green sources (such as wind or solar energy) into the grid for their energy used on the grid. However, A2 Hosting takes it a step further by encouraging telecommuting as a policy. A2 Hosting basically encourages their engineers and customer support staff to work wherever they are to avoid the carbon emissions from traffic. (and the risk of killing yourself in a car accident)
While they have server locations across the United States and even in Europe, as mentioned, they have headquarters in Ann Arbor. Being in Vancouver (one of the greenest city in North America – more green than Ann Arbor for sure), I can share with you first-hand how the city culture and values impart onto you and your values and as a subsequent result, your corporation values and mission. Ann Arbor is an exceptionally green city and A2 Hosting inherits the value of being eco-friendly and environmentally conscious from their city. Meaning, you can expect the practice of A2 Hosting from management-down to be more environmentally conscience and truly a green web hosting provider beyond just purchasing renewable energy certificates.
Nonetheless, this is not to say GreenGeeks is not green hosting. It is! It is also a VERY GOOD green hosting option. I am sure Trey Gardner cares passionately about the environment and green hosting as you do. (else they wouldn’t be in the industry of green hosting – it’s still a relatively small niche)
However, I am saying that we know A2 Hosting has policies that reflect their value for the environment in part due to their location in Ann Arbor and company policies with employee feedback I’ve read on GlassDoor while taking a closer look at A2 Hosting.
I haven’t read the same policies about GreenGeeks. Hence, being able only to go by what we know and not what we don’t know or speculate about, we have placed A2 Hosting at an extra “green advantage” to GreenGeeks. With this said, GreenGeeks does a remarkable job of being 300% green hosting. Although, as you know – it’s not just about energy usage but carbon emissions from driving that truly impacts the environment. All this to say, company policies do matter, as far as green hosting is considered. Perhaps, we’ll learn more about GreenGeeks green company policies later but base on what we know now, A2 Hosting is the best green web hosting for performance and being green-friendly.
GreenGeeks Green Web Hosting Prices:
On a price comparison basis, A2 Hosting is cheaper than GreenGeeks and provides better green web hosting than GreenGeeks. As mentioned, there are advantages to owning your own data centers than reselling web hosting services.
For their basic EcoStarter Plan:
– Yearly is $71.40 USD (A2 Hosting is $64.62 for SWIFT plan)
– Bi-annually is $118.80 USD (A2 Hosting is $117.48)
– Tri-annually is $142.20 USD (A2 Hosting is $176.22)
Then again, keep in mind that many customers have complained about GreenGeeks service for their bi-annual and tri-annual service plans with issues from their billing department.
With A2 Hosting, you get the faster green web hosting service for less when going with their yearly or bi-annual plan. It is slightly more for the tri-annual billing plan but first I would advise against going for a tri-annual plan and secondly, I would rather pay $30 more for a green web hosting service I can use than saving $30 and spending hours in troubling shooting mode.
These are the reasons why A2 Hosting is #1 and GreenGeeks is at #2 (possibly counter intuitively) for our evaluation of green web hosting options. A2 Hosting has faster web hosting performance with 1 second page-load speeds for a fully loaded WordPress site. A2 Hosting has better track record with reviews from customers. A2 Hosting has cheaper web hosting prices for new customers. A2 Hosting is also carbon neutral and employs green-friendly practices beyond just using green energy. Finally, A2 Hosting is a highly credible and trusted company in operation since 2003…GreenGeeks is respectable as well but there are a few mix reviews about customers like yourself who were looking for green web hosting and signed on to GreenGeeks being disappointed because of their management and customer service from billing department. (Accidentally missed one invoice and your account is suspended according to several frustrated customers. Another customer mentioned they were billed for SSL services they weren’t provided.) So while the technical support is good and the green web hosting is good and the 300% green hosting is good, there are issues to be had with operational ethics base on customer reviews. We have not experienced these issues personally but chose to take that into consideration as they were verified reviews from customers who stated they chose GreenGeeks because they wanted an eco-friendly solution for their business…but it didn’t pay off.
Why GreenGeeks is an excellent choice for Green web hosting:
– 300% Green Web Hosting
– Reliable web hosting with good up-time
– Excellent customer support from technical team
– Competitive (CHEAP) Green web hosting prices
– Con: Yearly or Bi-annual plan with bad billing department base on customer reviews. Evidently, mainly only unhappy customers complain.
Click here to get GreenGeeks Green Web Hosting for 60% off your first billing cycle.
3) FatCow Green Hosting – Good & Cheap Green Web Hosting Company:
We’ve been using FatCow’s green web hosting for the past two months and quite frankly, we like it very much! I signed up our account for the monthly (moonthly) plan at $5/month instead of the yearly plan at $49/year.
About FatCow’s long history in web hosting:
FatCow has been in business since 1998, that’s 20 years. They are more experienced than most green web hosting today. (A2 Hosting has been around since 2003 which is 15 years, but the team has been around since 1990s. GreenGeeks has been around since 2004 which is 14 years.)
This matters because with experience often proceeds excellence. FatCow’s experience in the web hosting industry allows them to truly optimize their operations and server performance (details bellow). More critically, many entities in the web hosting industry come and go by night. You may have a green web hosting company that pops up, operates for three maybe four years and then suddenly disappear (with your data) as quickly as they pop up. You don’t want to lose your data.
If a green web hosting company has been around for 10, or 20 years, you know that they are doing something right. They likely have many legacy customers who stick with them for the long haul allow them to continue operating and growing (or they have a very good churn.) Either way, in the web hosting industry, if a green web hosting company has been around for a long time – that’s generally a good precursor.
Good Green Web Hosting:
We’ve been very pleased with FatCow’s green web hosting services (or as FatCow themselves put it “Green-certified hosting“. The billing is accurate, the support is honest, and its cheap at just $5/month. Simple billing policy with no set-up fees like GreenGeeks charges.
Why FatCow Green Web Hosting?:
– FatCow provides reliable and consistent green web hosting: FatCow is known for their consistency with their web hosting speed.
They have a unique set up that allows them to operate more consistently with fewer slow periods than most other green web hosting. (sans A2 Hosting – as mentioned, they’re very fast and consistent.) Basically, when you need the server resource, its there. They do this by pooling together VERY large clusters of server with an advance technology set-up that any server in their network is able to access server files. They have a very excellent redundant system so if one primary server fails, another secondary server in the application cluster is able to take the load effortlessly.
– FatCow has very efficient operations: Being in operation for 20 years, gives you quite a few perks. Namely, you have many experienced technicians and you’re able to operate your business more efficiently with experience. FatCow is the epitome of web hosting efficiency. They have their servers set up for efficiency and their operations are stream lined. This means two things (1) cheaper and greener practices for FatCow and (2) more reliability and performance for customers.
They are effectively able to do things cheaper and better than most other web hosting companies. This is good for the economy as a whole. Innovation, and optimization helps us increase production capabilities on a whole. The more efficient an industry can operate, the more resources (time and capital) can be allocated for further growth nationally. This is one reason why we like FatCow. They have truly improved over the years with their green web hosting to streamline and optimize their company’s performance – while this importantly improves shareholders value for their shareholders, it also helps America be more productive, fruitful, and efficient.
– FatCow has very stable servers: Going back to their advanced web server set up, FatCow is not only a green web hosting provider but they are able to utilize their server resources and energies more efficiently (greener) while also provide more stability for their customers.
They have petabytes of storage and large servers pooled together. They have servers optimized for different tasks (such as Web, FTP, incoming mail) in clusters with redundant hardware so if the primary one fails, it automatically runs on the secondary. Then they have other servers that mirror your data so if the hardware fails on the primary servers, the back-up servers have your content/data available.
This all makes for a very reliable and stable server set-up along with an efficient and green-friendly operation set up. By segregating different servers in clusters for varying tasks, they are able to optimize the servers better for performance of that task. As you know specialization always yields higher efficiency. They also pool servers together for greater performance and then maintain extra storage for mirror back-ups in case of hardware issues. We’re very pleased with how seriously FatCow takes managing our content and the stability of their servers/web hosting services.
– FatCow has great server up-time record: In part due to the set up mentioned earlier, FatCow also has very good up-time record. Keeping your websites up when they should be.
– FatCow is 200% green web hosting: FatCow is a very green-friendly web hosting service provider. They buy 200% in renewable energy certificates for every KWH or watt of energy used by FatCow web hosting; not just the servers chomping energy but when their engineers make coffee, they also count that energy and purchase renewable energy certificates 200% (GreenGeeks does 300% but they only do so on the server energy usage) which ensures they are conscious about their energy uses across the board and not just on their servers hardware.
This is important when looking for a green web hosting provider. You want a green web hosting provider that cares about the environment and their individual action beyond just the marketing gimmick of buying renewable energy certificate for their server’s energy (although something is better than nothing.) But it is first and foremost about environmentally friendly practices and eco-friendly awareness. You want to have renewable energy certificates across the board so you know the costs of your daily energy usage which individually compounds to a lot of energy consumption. This is what FatCow does so in effect, they are also educating their employees about green-practices. This is truly a green web hosting provider.
FatCow web hosting is also a EPA Green Power Partner.
– FatCow is an EPA Green Power Partner: To that point, FatCow is a EPA Green Power Partner. What this means is they are recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency of US as a green power user. It just adds an added measure of validity to their claim of using wind energy.
GreenGeeks is also an EPA Green Power Partner but FatCow has a little more credibitility with using green energy not just for their servers but also for their business operations. They purchase 200% in renewable energy certificates thereby effectively being green for another web hosting company of their size.
– FatCow has monthly web hosting plan: This is what we especially appreciate about FatCow. They have one plan, creatively called “the FatCow Plan”, but they also introduced “moonthly” option for their web hosting plan in addition to yearly and bi-annually or tri-annually as most other green web hosting companies.
As mentioned, monthly plan is always preferred because it gives you more flexibility to manage your web hosting and it adds an added incentive for web hosting companies to maintain their service standards and excellence. It’s much like signing on to a two year contract with a cellphone company or going as a monthly customer. Monthly customers usually receive better customer service and attention to their service reception than the ones already locked in on a contract. (Evidently, cellular providers do not toggle the service reception for monthly and contract plans but they do toggle service reception priority for pre-paid vs. post-paid plans in the US which shows there is definitely favouritism in play.) In like manner, you want to give your green web hosting provider an incentive to continue earning your business month by month instead of locking yourself into a two year contract even if things go down hill.
FatCow offers the “moonthly” plan for their FatCow plan almost the same rate as their yearly plan. GreenGeeks has gimmicks that add on a “setup fee” of $15 in addition to your monthly cost of $10 (about 40% more than their advertised $3.95/month web hosting for their three year plan!) The more I write about FatCow, the more I’m thinking they deserve to be at #2 for the best green web hosting instead of #3. Reviews have indicated that GreenGeeks incentivizes customers to sign on for their two and three year plan for cost savings and then drastically drop their service standards since customers are already lock in with almost strong-man tactics.
FatCow’s yearly plan is $49/year while their monthly “moonthly” plan is $5/month. It’s real pricing instead of hidden costs and pricing. They advertise their service as $49/year on their front page which shows their ethical practices. Many web hosting companies like to advertise their monthly prices that they provide ONLY if you sign up for a three year plan (with their actual monthly prices being as much as three times that three year plan monthly price. For example, GreenGeeks advertises “starting from $2.95/month” which is only available for their three year plan.) It is a good sign when FatCow doesn’t play shenigans and simply says $49/year web hosting with an option for $5/month web hosting for the same unlimited plan. There is also no hidden fees and no tricks. You even get a free domain if you want (but I wouldn’t suggest taking up the free domain, it’s just $9 on NameCheap with free whois guard.) So basically, with FatCow you get HONEST and no trick pricing but truly a flat $5/month green web hosting gets you everything you need to get your website online and running (receiving up to millions of visits. If you get more than millions of visits then you should probably have the budget to pay for a VPS anyways.) They have honest and ethical billing policies/practices and they won’t continue to bill you after you cancelled. (Some GreenGeeks reviews I’ve come across indicated that they were billed even after service cancellation.)
– FatCow is a time-tested green web hosting provider: FatCow has been around since 1998. It’s safe to say that they are a safe bet when it comes to green web hosting. They have shown themselves to be able to keep afloat and provide green web hosting.
If there was any scam in their green web hosting, it would probably have been caught by now after being in operation for 20 years. You know also that they are not the fly by night company that would take your data and run after making a buck (or failing to do so.)
The length of their operations give an added assurance and security to choosing FatCow as your green web hosting provider of choice. It gives added assurance that your data can be trusted with FatCow (I have read an experience about an individual who lost this data but this was due to his own errors as admitted.) Of course, there is always an element of risk and even if a web hosting company has been around for 20 years, who’s to guarantee it will be there for the next 20. Yet, the fact that FatCow has been around the longest out of all our green web hosting choices, is a very confident indicator that FatCow is one of the few green web hosting providers that can be trusted to safeguard and host your data/content. (along with A2 Hosting. We’re putting some of our biggest sites on A2 Hosting because we trust A2 Hosting and their web hosting is phenomenally fast.) FatCow hosting speed is at the industry standard.
– FatCow has 24/7 Support & Experience: FatCow understands that your web hosting must always be attended to. Besides having tech support at their data centers 24/7/365..they also offer customer chat support 24/7. The customer support is outsourced to India (evident from our experience – they speak perfect English but their tone is different in text). This is ok if you have the typical questions that small and medium business owners or new webmasters have about site set up…it’s mainly just a tech support – like what most companies including HP does in outsourcing their customer support (effectively a personal FAQ) to Philippines or India. The problem with so however is that there are limitations to the ability of these lesser experience, lower paid customer service representatives. They cannot likely handle more complex problems that would require technical work. The customer support live chat personnel are also polite and helpful (to a measure). If you have a technical question, you can be sure to get a quick response from their live-chat…if you have a technical issue, you may have to wait longer.
– FatCow is the ONLY green web hosting that provides FREE marketing credits: FatCow is the ONLY green web hosting provider that provides FREE marketing credits. This is basically free money to advertise your business. They provider a $100 Bing Ads Coupon code (that few web hosting companies do nowadays. They are able to do so because of their long-standing operation in the web hosting industry and because of their large volume of customers. Bing Advertising partners with major web hosting companies who target small and medium business owners to provide their customers with a $100 Bing Ads coupon. This is a very rare allocation nowadays but FatCow which has been in business for 20 years still has this partnership with Bing Ads to provide $100 Bing Advertising coupon code. This $100 in Bing Advertising coupon code can be used on new accounts and do not have a spending minimum. It is in as good as free money on advertising!
With this said, Bing Advertising is usually cheaper than Google Adwords too but they have slightly lower traffic volume (higher household income) with traffic coming mainly only from US and India. Thankfully however if you prefer to try Google Adwords, FatCow also has a partnership with Google Adwords to provide a $100 Bonus ad credit. Here is another $100 in free advertising so long as you’re using a new account (setting up a new account for your business). Google Adwords coupons are more readily available with varying web hosting plans. Bing Ads coupon are more rarely found with web hosting.
This truly packs the value of FatCow green web hosting. There is NO other green web hosting that provides Bing Ads coupon; as a bonus, you can also avail yourself to $100 in Google adwords bonus. In effect, for $5/month hosting you get $100 up front in free advertising. This is an INCREDIBLE deal even if just to get the $100 Bing Advertising coupon. (if you plan on trying Bing Advertising anyways) This is a KEY reason why you should choose FatCow green web hosting over other green web hosting provider; it effectively gives you your first two years of web hosting free. Value-wise FatCow green web hosting is hard to beat. It even beats out A2 Hosting and most definitely GreenGeeks but A2 Hosting still has the edge with the website’s page-load speed and performance. (which is critically important and why they are still #1 on our list of the best green web hosting in 2018. They are also a very green-friendly company and employ environmentally friendly practices and green culture.)
Do note however, that you will only be able to request the $100 Bing Advertising coupon, seven days after you have first registered for your FatCow green web hosting plan. This is to avoid scammers who sign up for a new account, request a Bing Ads coupon and then cancel the account.
Some drawbacks to consider with FatCow Hosting: It’s not all sunshine and butterflies with FatCow green web hosting however…there are some drawbacks that you must consider if choosing FatCow Green web hosting. They are the BEST value when it comes to green web hosting once you consider their $5/month pricing ($49/year) and their $100 Free Bing advertising coupon.
They are also providing reliable web hosting at incredible prices with high stability and industry average for web hosting speed. They are also a reliable and trusted web hosting company with green web hosting through renewable energy certificates. They are also trusted by hundreds of thousands of websites and they have very advance server set up for efficiency. They also have reliable 24/7 customer support albeit outsourced support overseas and very honest & ethical billing standards. They are also very green-friendly and truly one of the BEST green web hosting in 2018 in my opinion (I’m quite a fan of FatCow after trying them out)….however, even with all these perks, pros, and benefits, there are some VERY VERY minor draw backs as listed bellow.
– FatCow is owned by EIG: FatCow is an EIG host but they operate slightly different from other EIG hosts. Perhaps, EIG finally got their act together because thus far using FatCow web hosting, we’ve not experienced any noticeable down-time or issues. Due to the reputation of EIG hosts, I still do not have the confidence to put our important/major sites on FatCow yet but we’ve been testing with a new website we’re building and things have been going well. I would have no problem recommending FatCow has a good green web hosting option for both its value, marketing bonus, and server performance/consistency! EIG doesn’t have a very good reputation with the web hosting industry formally but it seems they are turning things around because both FatCow, BlueHost, and HostGator have been reporting very happy customers, suprisingly. What I especially like about FatCow however is that FatCow is the ONLY Green web hosting that gives customers $100 in Bing Ads Coupon. (Very rare these days…which is basically free money to advertise your business or website. That’s $100 USD in advertising credit flat-out without any conditions nor spending minimums – you only need a new Bing Ads account. In fact, it’s such a deal – I think it’s worth while registering for a new web hosting with FatCow as a redundant/mirror host just for the $100 Bing Ads coupon if you’re starting a new business website.)
– FatCow does not use cPanel: Here’s one of the biggest drawbacks of using FatCow hosting; FatCow does not use cPanel. FatCow has their own control panel (cPanel is actually a large recurring cost for many web hosting companies but it is also the most comprehensive and user friendly control panel). With this said, it isn’t at all a huge inconvenience.
I have used FatCow’s control panel and think many webmasters and newbies will be able to familiarize themselves with the FatCow control panel within minutes. It is a scaled back version of cPanel in a sense. There are few options available to a user but it is exceptionally easy. Simplicity is definitely what it appears they were aiming for and simplicity is what they achieved!
You can effortlessly manage your website, install WordPress (but through Mojo Marketplace which adds a lot of bloatware to your WordPress) as well as manage your email through FatCow’s intuitive control panel. It is not cPanel but it is an acceptable alternative.
Still, with this said, the biggest drawback of having a control panel that is not cPanel is migrations. Many web hosting companies will offer to migrate your website for you freely if you use cPanel because cPanel has effortless migration. With FatCow’s own control panel however you would have to handle migrations yourself in most instance – some web hosting companies may still do it for you. If your website is built with WordPress it is simple enough to migrate the site yourself without a tech to help – all you need to do is copy your WordPress database and Public HTML files to your new server and adjust the wp_config files to suit your new host environment! Basically, there is little to worry about migration even then.
– FatCow outsources their customer support: This is another drawback to using FatCow hosting. It is good green web hosting. It is reliable green web hosting. It is even cheap green web hosting but all that comes with a cost. The cost of $5/month or $3.15/month hosting is reasonably that they outsource their support overseas to India.
This means your experience with the web hosting support can be hit or miss. You are better of with your friend, Google, than with the support team occasionally. On other occasion, the web hosting support can be ok.
So basically, you lose out on some web hosting support for the cheap price and reliable green web hosting. I always prefer great support and think a web hosting company should provide phenomenal support and for this I would recommend HostPapa. (A2Hosting has incredibly fast web hosting and fast green web hosting but the support isn’t good – much like FatCow support in comparison – unless you upgrade to their $30/month premium support with is atrociously priced for the options available. You shouldn’t have to pay $30 for quality support.)
– FatCow has up-sells: FatCow much like Godaddy and notorious with EIG web hosting companies is to upsell their customers. You get a cheap based price but you pay for it if you want any added premium features. Don’t be concerned however, with the flat based hosting you have literally EVERYTHING you need to build a website that includes the WordPress installer and what you would expect with a web hosting company, a green web hosting company. The upsells are extras like added security or WordPress expert, email marketing and such matters. You don’t need them but they like to automatically tick it for you so you must untick it to get the $3.15/month promotional price.
– FatCow only has one hosting plan: To keep things simple, FatCow has chosen only to offer ONE web hosting plan for webmasters and small/medium business owners looking to host their website with FatCow. This adds simplicity because this one web hosting plan known very creatively as “The Fatcow Plan” includes unlimited bandwidth and storage space for your website.
Would we recommend FatCow Green Web Hosting?
YES! Base on our experience with FatCow so far, and the value delivered by FatCow, we would definitely recommend FatCow as a reliable and GOOD, very good actually, green web hosting.
Here’s why…
Overall, it is good green web hosting. FatCow is a green host; they do have green practices, they operate efficiently with resource usage, they purchase REWs, and they are a Green Power Partner. Let’s settle that FatCow is a green friendly web hosting company.
It is also reliable. Uptime is reliable. Their server load times are reasonable and I have yet to experience any down time with the web sites hosted on FatCow.
Importantly, they have the BEST value you will find for a green web hosting company. You are paying just $3.15 per month or $44.04 per year! This includes a $100 Bing Ads coupon that you will ONLY FIND with FatCow. This truly makes FatCow one of the BEST green hosting in 2018 and I have no qualms recommending FatCow for those who need green hosting.
They have a user-friendly control panel but it isn’t cPanel. This poses a slight flaw but it works and it’s simple enough for someone who doesn’t know anything about tech to set up their own WordPress website. Their support is outsourced but giving credit, they can type English – the support experience varies.
Overall, FatCow is an excellent green web hosting and does not have any usual scents of an EIG host besides the upsell. It has reliable servers and reasonable page load times. It is actually quite remarkably good green web hosting company that is actually a green host!
So, yes, base on our experience with FatCow currently – we would recommend FatCow as a green web hosting and I am confident you will not face any negative experience with FatCow …unless you require their support.
4) HostPapa – Canadian Green Web Hosting Company
Here’s what you need to know about HostPapa. HostPapa is a Canadian web hosting company based in Burlington, Ontario (close to Toronto). They care about the environment. You all know we Canadians care about our polar bears (weather), maple syrup (trees), and poutine (ground/soil). HostPapa is a green web hosting company.
Excellent Green Web Hosting at HostPapa:
HostPapa is an excellent green web hosting company, make no mistake about that.
What you need to know about HostPapa:
HostPapa #4 Best Green Web Hosting:
HostPapa Green Hosting Prices:
Why you should host your website at HostPapa:
More about HostPapa Canadian Green Web Hosting:
Comparing HostPapa Green Hosting with A2Hosting Green Hosting:
Click here to check out the green web hosting plans on a special sale at HostPapa.
5) Ethical Host – Small Green Web Hosting Company
Ethical Host is the only green web hosting company on this list that we have yet to try. Why? Honestly, it’s such a small company I don’t trust them with our websites for several reasons.
(1) I don’t want an owner to look through our website, our SEO, and our website concepts which may be more common on a small scale web hosting operation than at a large scale – perhaps some appreciate the personal attention but I prefer to have what we do fly under the radar (in part to avoid competition and potential copies).
(2) My pre-sales question has yet to be responded to… I can’t imagine what the after sales support is like.
(3) Since it is a small green web hosting company, they likely do not have the support infrastructure to deploy at scale meaning you may very well be getting support from the owner him/her self which can be great BUT means you have to operate at his time zone. This goes back to the matter that my pre-sales question was not replied to.
With this said, Ethical Host is a green web hosting company that commits to donating 10% of their annual profits to an organization voted by their customers. They focus their donations to five different non-profit categories from environment, education, to wildlife funds for animals.
This was the main reason for listing Ethical Hosts on the #5. It was admirable to have someone not only be a green web hosting company and fully compile to green practice standards but also donate 10% of their profit to a non-profit organization (arguably when FatCow and Green Geeks purchase 200% and 300% renewable energy certificates, respectively, they are doing something similar by making other web hosting, green as well! Caring for our environment in their own way.)
Ethical Hosts Web Hosting:
Since I haven’t tried Ethical Hosts, there is not much I can share about their web hosting. It appears they do use cPanel and it appears they have realistic web hosting plans without over-selling. (It is most likely that they are a web hosting reseller for such small operations than running their own data centre or colocation servers.)
Ethical Host – Ethical Hosting:
You may like to know that Ethical Hosts adopt green practices in their operations and also donate 10% of their profits to charity. Seeing as this is their branding and hence demographic, you likely will have website neighbors who also care about ethical practice and green web hosting as yourself because the price point or web hosting plans isn’t really any allure, the only reason someone would sign up for Ethical Host is because they agreed with their brand values. So making a principled or value-driven business decision; I argue there are other ways to do so without jepordizing your business, data, and website. However I can’t comment on their green web hosting as I haven’t used it as mentioned previously.
Should you host with Ethical Host Green Hosting?
You probably shouldn’t but I’m sharing it here for you to consider if ethical host is something you’re interested in.
How to Find the Best Web Hosting Company:
For your curiosity, we’re going to share a rough rubric of what was considered when choosing a green hosting company for this list. You can skip this if you’re just interested in finding the best green hosting in 2018 – A2 Hosting. However if you want to get a better view of what we considered, feel free to read on and ask any questions you may have!
Here is what we considered when choosing the BEST Green Hosting provider:
Uptime & Server Performance (30%) – There’s no point paying for a service if you can’t use it. We considered significantly the speed of the server (the internet connection and sever) along with the uptime of the green webhosting we were looking at. You want a server that has good specifications (large amount of ram, good processor, and hard drives) which wasn’t oversold. Some web hosting companies may put hundreds of thousands of websites onto one server to save costs – this is ok if the websites don’t take too much resource but if they oversell their servers and overload their servers then you lose out on performance. We want to find a green webhosting company who cares enough to ensure tat the server performance is not affected and that servers are not oversold! We also considered the uptime because downtime isn’t good for you, your customers, or your search engine rankings. It’s like going out of your way to buy poutine but the shop is closed. (Yes, we’re Canadian. The list contains both Canada and US green web hosting providers, however. North America, we’re good neighbors.)
Features & Software (30%) – Presuming if you’re reading this article that you’re not too technical. You want a managed green hosting solution. One where a team of tech ensures your server is always operational and ready for your use. You also importantly need the right control management system for yourself that’s easy to use and user-friendly. You also don’t want to deal with the code and hassle of installing control management systems (CMS) like WordPress yourself but want a one-click button to get it done saving you time and the learning curve. Hence, in consideration that you are likely not too tech savvy or someone who needs to save your time, we’ve considered which features and software are included in the best green hosting selection. For example, green web hosts that use CPanel (the most common and user-friendly software) is preferred while those having Softaculous or Fantastico are preferred for easy installation of CMS like WordPress, Joomla or PHPBB and tens of other CMS. Also consideration was given for green hosts who had CDN (content delivery network) and acceleration tools that made your website run faster! And more efficiently. This is important both in a green sense and both in a sense that you want a fast website so your customers and visitors are happy. You have 5 seconds to capture their attention, if your website loads too slow – you lose their attention to other customers. It’s like getting people in the door but turning them away with noisy music.
Customer support (30%) – As mentioned customer support is one of the MOST important aspect to finding a good green hosting solution. We wanted customer support that was 24/7 so you could get help in the middle of the night if your website went down instead of waiting till business hours in the morning at 9 AM. We also wanted customer support that was empowered to resolve the solution with real techs at hand. We also considered how accessible and easy it as to contact the customer support whether through a life chat or a ticket system and the ticket response time. Time is important and valuable, if your website is facing issues you’re losing customers and visitors getting turned away – you don’t want to wait hours before a tech responds to your ticket if there is no live chat available. So you need a web hosting company who can respond to customer inquiries quickly and enabled to help. We’ve considered the level of customer support and customer reviews of their experience dealing with customer support. Having a friendly customer service is helpful too but the main focus is on speed and solutions.
Green Initiatives (10%) – Why is green initiatives only 10% when this is a green webhosting feature? Well, precisely because this is a green webhosting feature, we’re taking it a given that the web hosting provider is environmentally-friendly or green friendly. This is the pre-requisite to being considered for our green hosting feature (in addition to the three points above of server reliability and speed, customer service, and software). All of these green web hosts already power their servers using green energy (through certificates) and employ eco-friendly servers and practices. There are however varying degrees of eco-friendly practice by company. Some of these may incorporate more green practices into their company culture beyond servers (such as encouraging green modes of transportation – bikes, car pool, walking – to work and recycling practices in the office.) Some green hosts also employ energy-saving solutions for their server without compromising server performance while others may use older hardware to recycle it instead of sending to the landfill. It really varies by the green web hosting provider but safe to say that the green hosts on our feature are already eco-friendly. You want eco-friendly web host but more importantly you want a reliable web host who wouldn’t run away with your website or data/files. (that wouldn’t be good.) You want a green web host that is reliable and that is considered for performace and reliability as well and that is precisely what we want. There is no point choosing a extremely green hosting provider if they cannot deliver the service and reliability that you need – you may as well not get a web hosting provider otherwise. Therefore, we have considered the green practices at only 10% bellow the three key performance indicators after having already set being green-friendly or eco-friendly as a pre-requisite to consideration. The extra 10% is just a bonus to consider for the added eco-friendly practice. So to emphasize, all the web hosts on our green web hosting feature are already eco-friendly, we’re just considering the environmentally friendly things they do above the necessary requirement or floor (using green energy through carbon offset) …the real importance is on performance and customer service once green energy and carbon offsets are considered already.
Once again, here’s our summary of the BEST Green hosting in 2018:
1) A2 Hosting – The best green hosting IMHO. Partnership with carbonfund.org. 100% carbon neutral since 2007. Fast servers, good uptime, excellent support. They own their own datacentres and have eco-friendly company culture! Oh great prices for web hosting too.
2) GreenGeeks – The greenest web host. EPA Green Power Partner. 300% carbon offset, fast servers, good up time, great support.
Two drawbacks: They don’t offer monthly plans. Smaller web hosting company.
3) Fat Cow – EPA Green Power Partner. Free $100 Bing Ads Coupon, slightly slower servers, Ok support, no Cpanel, but they do have monthly green hosting option.
4) Host Papa – Excellent green web hosting. Reasonable support, fast servers, Canadian web hosting. 100% powered by green renewable energy certificates through BEF.
5) Ethical Host – Very small web hosting company. Inconsistent support. Fast website. 10% donation to non-profit. Green hosting.
There you have our recommendations for the BEST Green Hosting in 2018. We’ll be updating this next year in 2019 if needed; web hosting rarely changes except the fly by night hosts or certain web hosting companies who improve.
I am going to proceed with an individual review of each web hosting company we’ve mentioned above from #1-#5 of the best green web hosting solutions.
Since A2 Hosting is #1 on our list of the BEST green hosting company, we’re going to begin with an A2 Hosting review. Unlike some unethical web hosting reviews, we’ve actually tried A2 Hosting before writing a review of it. This was prefaced with a lot of fact-checking and search about A2 Hosting in our quest to find the best green hosting BEFORE signing up for A2 Hosting shared hosting plan.
I have to say that I am VERY impressed with A2 Hosting server speed. Our website loads quicker than 96% of all sites tested on Pingdom.com. To give you some perspective, our WordPress site hosted on A2 Hosting (which actually stands for Ann Arbor Hosting – hence A2. Ann Arbor is one of the GREENEST city in America with trees every block.)…but back to hosting, our WordPress site loads in 563 ms (milliseconds). That’s ALMOST instantaneous page load!
Comparatively, our website used to test on FatCow hosting is loading at 2.17 seconds and is faster than 67% of sites tested on Pingdom. Not bad but still A2 Hosting was almost 4 times faster than Fat Cow!
With that said, we’re now going to get into a more detailed review of A2 Hosting bellow, looking at both the pros and cons of A2Hosting.
Many review of A2 Hosting will agree that A2 Hosting has some of the QUICKEST speed in the industry. Speed is important because web users will only give you five seconds to choose whether they will continue using your site or bounce (a high bounce rate will affect your website usefulness and your search engine rankings subsequently.)
If your website loads quicker, you lose less customers and they can evaluate your site and access your content easier. It also plays better for your search engine rankings marginally (because of happier website users = higher search engine ranks…generally speaking.)
Also other A2 Hosting reviews have also indicated page load speeds as fast as 463 ms which means my experience of 563 ms is not unusual or the exceptional case. You can expect fast page load times hosting with A2 Hosting as well rather than an inconsistent result with one account being fast and another account being slow. It seems that A2 Hosting has done a phenomenal job of controlling server loads to quicken website page load times. They are likely ensuring that their resources are not over sold.
Note, you do pay for this extra speed. I’m paying $16.99 per month for Swift Hosting package. Still, with one of the FASTEST hosting I’ve seen (and we try a lot of web hosts), I think it’s well worth the price.
Before I get ahead of myself, let’s get into the proper A2 Hosting review.
A2 Hosting Review:
What is A2 Hosting:
A2 Hosting
A2Hosting Rating – 9/10
A2 Hosting Pros –
A2 Hosting Cons –
A2 Hosting Review –
A2 Hosting Green Hosting –
Should you use A2 Hosting?
A2Hosting Discount:
Following on with our individual review of each green web hosting company featured above, next on our list is GreenGeeks.
I hope this would provide you a more broader understanding of each individual web hosts and find one that suits your needs and preferences best. I will try my best to ensure that we cover all the same points for each of the web host from A2 Hosting to Ethical Host. GreenGeeks is an excellent web hosting company but pails in comparison to A2 Hosting.
Almost every web hosting company will have a one-time new customers promo code (before they renew you at the regular price – theoretically you could choose to hop from web host to web host yearly and consistently save 50-60% off your web hosting but honestly it’s not worth the trouble – once you’ve found a reliable web hosting company, hanker down. That’s why they are counting on too. This is a similar practice adopted by domain name registrars – except domain registrars can easily be switched.)
We’ve searched around the web to find you the incredible discounts and shared the discount in part of our review (the bottom of the GreenGeeks hosting review.) GreenGeeks specifically offers a one-time 60% off your first billing period.
GreenGeeks review:
What is GreenGeeks:
GreenGeeks Rating – 7.9/10
GreenGeeks Pros –
GreenGeeks Cons –
GreenGeeks Review –
GreenGeeks Green Hosting –
Should you use GreenGeeks?
GreenGeeks Discount:
This is our review of GreenGeeks web hosting. If you have any specific questions about GreenGeeks or any other web hosting we’ve recommended then please feel free to join the conversation (it’s a little boring talking to yourself) and post onto this thread.
Myself or another will be answering the questions to help you choose the right web hosting for your website!
Reserved for FatCow Review
Reserved for HostPapa review
Reserved for Ethical Host commentary:
Ethical Host is the only green web hosting on the list that have not actually been tried. Hence since we have not tried Ethical Host, it is not a review but a commentary.
Why have we not tried Ethical Host?
We listed it because it was something unique. It was a web hosting company implementing green friendly policies that donates a portion of their profits. Problem is, I do not have confidence to host our own sites with them. They are a very small web hosting company and the risk for them to pack and go is too high to actually put any important data with them. I’m sure they’ll last BUT they did not even respond to our pre-sales question so I question if they will respond to customer support inquiries. It seems to be a very small team (if not a owner-operator web hosting company)
They are clearly a reseller and their packages are fairly limited (the way resellers should do so they don’t over sell with unlimited packages they cannot affordably deliver for.)
So I’m not recommending anyone on here to actually host with Ethical Host. I have included it on the list as a nod to their efforts of being green and donating their profits.