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Create a free website

How to Make a Website for Free

Learn how to create the perfect website for free with great design and functionality that's super easy to maintain and cheap to operate.

Knowing how to create a website today is more about knowing what website builders, Web hosting services, and Web design tools exist to do the job for you.

Top website builders

Shopify overtook WordPress as the most searched website builder platform in 2020.
Shopify overtook WordPress as the most searched website builder in 2020, with over 1 000 000 brand searches per month.

Get an Awesome Website Fast

Making passive income means investing in better resources and technology to help capture more traffic and grow fast.

  • Get lightning fast hosting with cutting edge themes and templates
  • Lightning Fast Hosting & Cutting Edge Themes

    The Genesis Framework from StudioPress offers exceptionally fast hosting for WordPress sites (up to 38% faster page load times) along with a complete framework to develop best-in-class WordPress websites.

    500 000+ WordPress sites have been upgraded using StudioPress.

    Get Started

Use The Best Web Platforms

Take advantage of cutting-edge website builders to streamline development and improve SEO, performance & visibility.

Here's the thing.

You don't need to be a mechanic to drive a car and you don't need to be a programmer to build the website you want.
  1. Web Builder Hosting Costs
  2. Important Terms
  3. Find a Domain Name
  4. Ways to Create a Website
  5. Understand your Site's Requirements
  6. Choose a Web Platform
  7. Choose a Web Host (if Required)
  8. Design Considerations

1. Web Builder Hosting Costs

It is possible to create any type of website for free for up to one month. Thereafter, most will require a small monthly Web hosting payment.

Completely free websites that never charge anything are often ad supported with no personalized domain names.

WordPress Pricing

WordPress has a completely free Web hosting plan and a range of cost-effective paid plans to suit your blogging needs.

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform

  • Personal

    Best for Personal Use

    $4/month

    Add some personality to your website with a custom domain and access to 24/7 support.

  • Premium

    Best for Freelancers

    $8/month

    Build a unique site with advanced design tools, custom CSS, and Google Analytics support.

  • Business

    Best for Small Business

    $25/month

    Power your business with custom plugins & themes, 200 GB storage, and live support.

  • Commerce

    Best for Online Stores

    $45/month

    Open your online store with a powerful, flexible platform designed to grow with you.

WordPress offers refunds on all plan purchases and renewals (for example, Personal, Premium, Business, Ecommerce) within 30 days of payments. Similarly, you can get a refund on domain registrations and renewals within 96 hours from purchase.

Wix Pricing

Wix offers a free Web hosting plan and a range of premium plans to suit your needs.

Create a free website with Wix

  • Connect Domain

    Most Basic

    $4.50/month

    • Displays Wix brand ads
    • 1GB Bandwidth
    • 500MB Storage
  • Combo

    For Personal Use

    $8.50/month

    • 2GB Bandwidth
    • 3GB Storage
  • Unlimited

    Entrepreneurs & Freelancers

    $12.50/month

    • UNLIMITED Bandwidth
    • 10GB Storage
  • VIP

    First Priority Support

    $24.50/month

    • UNLIMITED Bandwidth
    • 20GB Storage
  • Business Basic

    Accept Online Payments

    $17/month

    • Accept Online Payments
    • 100% Commission FREE
    • UNLIMITED Bandwidth
    • 20GB Storage
  • Business Unlimited

    Grow Your Business

    $25/month

    • Accept Online Payments
    • 100% Commission FREE
    • UNLIMITED Bandwidth
    • 35GB Storage
  • Business VIP

    Get the Full Suite

    $35/month

    • Accept Online Payments
    • 100% Commission FREE
    • UNLIMITED Bandwidth
    • 50GB Storage
  • Money Back Guarantee

    You can try Wix for 14 days and if you're not 100% satisfied, you'll get your money back.

Displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions, paid in full at the time of purchase. Prices do not include VAT, which is determined based on your billing country.

Weebly Pricing

Weebly has a completely free Web hosting plan and a range of cost-effective paid plans to suit your needs.

Create a professional website with Weebly

  • Connect

    Connect a Domain

    $5.00/month

    • Weebly branding
    • 500MB Storage
  • Pro

    Groups & Organizations

    $12.00/month

    • Free Domain
    • UNLIMITED Storage
  • Business

    Small Businesses & Stores

    $25.00/month

    • Free Domain
    • UNLIMITED Storage
  • Business Plus

    Power Sellers

    $38/month

    • Email Marketing
    • UNLIMITED Storage

All paid Weebly accounts offer a 30-day money back guarantee provided you cancel within the first 30 days of activation. Displayed prices are based on annual payment plans.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers a 14 day free trial and a range of cost-effective paid plans based on your requirements.

Start an online store for free with Shopify

  • Basic Shopify

    All the basics for starting a new online boutique

    $29/month

    • Unlimited Products
    • Up to 64% Shipping Discount
  • Shopify

    Everything you need for a growing business

    $79/month

    • Unlimited Products
    • Up to 72% Shipping Discount
  • Advanced Shopify

    Advanced features for scaling your business

    $299/month

    • Unlimited Products
    • Up to 74% Shipping Discount
  • ShopifyPlus+

    Enterprise-grade solutions for high volume merchants

    Custom

Save up to 10% when you pay annually or 20% discount when you pay biennially.

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce offers a free 15 day trial and a range of cost-effective paid plans based on your size (sales volumes).

Create an eCommerce store with BigCommerce

  • Standard

    Sell online with your own beautiful online store

    $29.95/month

    • 0% Transaction Fees
    • Unlimited Storage
    • Up to $50k Annual Sales
  • Plus

    Grow your online business with marketing tools proven to increase conversion

    $71.95/month

    • 0% Transaction Fees
    • Unlimited Storage
    • Up to $150k Annual Sales
  • Pro

    Scale your growing business with a comprehensive set of features

    $224.95/month

    • 0% Transaction Fees
    • Unlimited Storage
    • Up to $400k+ Annual Sales
  • Enterprise

    Power your team’s success with the best full-service open platform

    Custom

    • 0% Transaction Fees
    • UNLIMITED Storage
    • Custom (> $400k)

Save up to 10% when you pay annually for Plus or Pro plans.

2. Important Terms

Terms that you should understand before you can take your first step:

  • Domain:
    • A website domain is the address that people type into their browser in order to view a site
    • Every website needs a unique domain name which will direct the browser to your website’s home page
    • Domains are usually the same as the business name - but not always, because most domains are already taken
  • Web Host:
    • A Web host, sometimes also called a hosting service is a company that provides the resources and connection to the Internet that your website needs to operate and serve pages over the Web
    • Most Web hosts offer facilities to purchase a domain name, when you purchase a monthly Web hosting plan from them
  • Website Builder:
    • Website builders offer online Web design facilities in addition to Web hosting - i.e. everything, all in one place
    • Modern website builders are easy to use, fast, high quality, and very affordable
    • Using a website builder is the easiest way to set up a website for beginners

3. Find a Domain Name

Finding and registering great domain names can be a real hassle for small businesses. But, with a bit of imagination and creativity, it is still possible to buy a reasonably cheap domain that works. The problem for most businesses looking to register a new domain is that either someone else is using it, or the dreaded cyber-squatters are holding it ransom.

Researching New Domains

Initially, you might type in a potential address directly into your browser to see if someone is using it. Often, when researching new names like this, you'll come across a page covered in ads with a big sign saying something like "This domain is for sale".

Avoid buying from domain squatters to help discourage the practice.

But manually searching for names like this can be a real time-consuming chore. Fortunately, there are registration services like WordPress (the world's most popular Web platform by some margin) that can help out.

Instead of thinking of a name, and then trying it out, it is far quicker to search for them using something like WordPress' domain search (click on the screenshot below to try it out).

WordPress domain research tool

With a powerful search tool at your finger tips, you are now in a position to find new names a lot quicker. Not only will a research tool tell you if your proposed name is taken, it will also:

  • indicate if alternative extensions (i.e. .net, .biz, .org) are available
  • offer related, alternative ideas that may be suitable

At the very least, this speeds up the process of researching which potential site names are available and which aren't. But, there's more...

Get Creative

Despite having plenty of suggestions and alternatives at your fingertips, the chances are that you won't be able to find exactly the one you're after. In this case, you have several options:

  1. Pay a premium for the one you want
  2. Pick a longer name that is not taken
  3. Pick a complex name that is not taken
  4. Choose a different extension
  5. Include sub-domains and extensions

Paying a premium: The first option may be suitable if your domain name is available at a reasonable price. However, be careful when purchasing domains for more than, say, $13, as some can get very pricey.

The most expensive domain ever purchased was sex.com, which sold for $13 million.

Longer and complex names: Longer and more complex names may be the best option provided that they aren't too difficult to remember, or actively confusing for people. Don't choose something that is ambiguous, has unusual spelling, or simply doesn't make sense.

Alternative extensions: Do you really need a .com? If your business focuses on a local region, it may be better to get a regional extension like .ca for Canada, or .co.uk for Britain. What about .info and .org?

Subdomains & extensions: There are a number of very large websites that made clever use of sub-domains and extensions to create a brand or meaningful URL.

Delicious, for example, used the URL del.icio.us. In this case, the sub-domain was del, the domain icio, and the extension .us. Put together, it made Delicious.

Many other URLs can be made in this way, and the benefit is that the actual domain part may not be taken because it is only a fraction of a word in itself.

Important Considerations

Apart from actually finding a name that you can live with, there are a few other issues that you must take into account:

  • Age: New names take a while to start featuring in Google search results. From an SEO perspective, a brand new domain can mean a wait of a few months before Google starts showing some love.
  • History: Since Google Panda & Penguin, many businesses simply closed their doors, and their domains (along with the reasons for their algorithm penalties) came on the market. What might seem like a good domain name, might have some unwanted SEO baggage.
  • Value: Some domain names have greater value than others because they may be attached to relatively high quality websites, with a reasonable PageRank (although this is not necessarily too important anymore). Existing domain names of high quality, that are also well aged, and related to the type of content you will add, can be more expensive.

4. Two Primary Ways to Create a Website

  • Use a website builder:
    • Fast. Easy. Cheap. Everything done for you in one place.
    • Requires no experience.
  • Build a website yourself and host it using a hosting service:
    • Slower. More difficult. More expensive.
    • Requires some Web design experience.
    • Requires an understanding of Web hosting, domains, IPs, DNS, servers.

The second option seems really difficult and more expensive, so why would anyone take it? The answer is that building your own website gives you complete control over it, which is useful if you know a lot about building websites.

For 95% of business websites (give or take), however, a website builder is the best option because they are continually updated by really smart designers and engineers, and all the costs are built into the monthly hosting prices - which are really low (comparable to the Web hosting costs you would pay to host your own website anyway).

In fact, so many businesses, bloggers and entrepreneurs are using website builders now, that they have started overtaking the traditional Web design software tools.

5. Understand Requirements

This is quite important because there are different Web design tools and services that cater for different types of websites. Knowing your website's needs allows you to choose the right website builder (step 5) which will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Here's a selection of the most common types of websites:

  • eCommerce:
    • Appropriate for selling virtually any type of product online, including digital goods and subscriptions
    • Handles online payments as well as managing products and stock
  • Blog:
    • Mainly for creating written content and embedding other media such as images and YouTube videos – similar to an online diary
    • Blogging is a valuable tool for marketing purposes, as interesting content can end up attracting potentially valuable visitors to your site
  • Professional:
    • Used by traditional businesses to create an online presence
    • Serves as the face of your business on the internet
    • Normally contains important information about your services, products, general company details and contact information
  • Community (including forums):
    • Allows you to build an online community of people centred around a common interest
    • Provides user account management facilities for members

6. Choose a Web Platform

There are a lot of website builders out there. Choosing the right one can be a daunting task. The last thing you want is to get stuck with a poor website builder when there are so many awesome ones available. To make your life easier, we've looked at the most popular ones and compared them by quality, customer satisfaction and ratings, and their overall value for money.

We've paired a list of the top website builders with the type of industry that they suit best - like a wine pairing with your meal. Included is plenty of extra research and information about each platform, as well as step-by-step guides to creating your website using each one.

But first, let's take a more in-depth look at how they stack up against each other in terms of SEO and value for money.

The major online Web design platforms do a good job of building best practice SEO into their software. The reason? It's an extremely competitive niche so there is great incentive for each platform to ensure their clients enjoy the best chances of ranking in the SERPs.

Website builders allow anyone to create and publish high quality websites cheaply without needing technical experience.

Best Website Builders (by Value For Money*)

Site builders are designed for specific things, and you'll want to be sure to choose one that closely matches the needs of your business. For example, if you intend selling stuff online, use a hosted eCommerce solution instead of a blog type solution.

Here's a list of the top 4 site builders along with some guidance on what type of sites they are best suited for:

Rank (Value for Money) Name SEO Mobile Ease Price Suitability
1. (90%) Shopify 9 10 9 $30+ Perfect for one man online stores - but also caters for larger businesses. Arguably the quickest and easiest setup on offer.
2. (89%) Weebly 8 8 9 $4+ Weebly is great for organizational sites like churches and schools. It is also perfect for professionals - consultants, lawyers, doctors, and so on.
3. (89%) Bigcommerce 9 8 7 $25+ Great for retailers who want to integrate with 3rd party platforms like Amazon and eBay. Perfect for dynamic eCommerce startups.
4. (87%) Wix 8 6 9 $4+ Wix is very popular with companies that rely on visual design - artists, photographers, film-makers and just about any business in the creative space.

*Value for money for our top website builders is calculated as an aggregate score, presented as a percentage, across a range of metrics - including technology, features and resources, power, flexibility, support, pricing, customer reviews & sentiment, SEO, responsive design, and more.

Best Website Builders (for SEO)

Some do a slightly better job than others, however, so it is worthwhile checking out the differences. Please note that we have compared eCommerce platforms with others site builders in this table, although we have specified which are which :

Rank Platform YSlow PageSpeed Load Time
1 Shopify (eCommerce) 84 84 0.89
2 Weebly 80 89 0.98
3 Bigcommerce (eCommerce) 76 95 1.52
4 Wix 84 95 1.70
5 Yola 80 86 1.32
6 GoDaddy 79 90 1.44
7 Webs 75 28 0.82
8 Homestead 79 57 2.76

These rankings give you a great idea about performance related SEO, which plays a big role in determining how Google ranks your pages (Google has stated that page load time is factor in their ranking algorithms). It is important to note that eCommerce websites have additional search optimization requirements that we taken into account for the purposes of this comparison.

Website Builder Trends

In the same way you don't need to know how to build an internal combustion engine in order to drive a car, website builders allow us to build awesome, cutting edge websites without needing to understand what goes on under the hood. For small businesses this is incredibly useful (from the perspective of saving time and money).

This usefulness is reflected in the changing trends of website technologies. This Google trends chart shows the fall of popular CMS systems (like Drupal and Joomla) as compared with the leading site builders like Wix & Weebly:

There's a full analysis of why website builders have overtaken CMS systems as the preferred way to build a website, for most small businesses.

Understanding Website Builders

There are two basic classes of website builder. One focuses on professional & personal sites - like blogs, schools, churches, etc. The other provides eCommerce functionality. In order to be successful in either field, your Web design & content needs great built in SEO that is specific to the type of site (i.e. SEO for eCommerce stores is different from blogs).

eCommerce

Setup a free two week trial on a top SEO platform for eCommerce, and build your own online store using the latest, cutting edge technology that makes it quick, cheap and easy to start operating. We have in-depth setup guides for the two biggest eCommerce site builders:

Shopify Setup Guide

Bigcommerce Setup Guide

Professional & Blogs

While there aren't any quick and easy startup services like the ones available for eCommerce sites, the setup involved in a professional site is also a lot quicker and easier. There are two SEO performance leaders to choose from, and you can follow a quick startup guide for either one:

Weebly Setup Guide

Wix Setup Guide

If you're not sure which one is right for you, try both. It only takes a few minutes to get setup and not much longer to get a feel for how the design interface works. Pick the one that seems more intuitive and easy for you to work with. It's also important to know what you're looking for, and how to test whether or not you're getting good value for money. There's a lot to learn, but there is also a wide range of tools to help monitor and improve your SEO.

Let's take a quick look...

Google Page Rankings (You're In Control)

I should point out that since most website building software solutions are highly configurable, it is important to realize that the Web design choices you make play a big role in determining how good or bad a site's SEO is.

In general, it is important to resist the temptation to use flashy animations, images instead of text, large images that slow the site down, too much JavaScript, and so on.

A simple, uncluttered, easy-to-understand site that is lightweight and well written will generally outperform heavier, effects-laden sites when it comes to generating organic search traffic from Google and the other search engines.

The quality of your content & outreach campaigns play a much greater role in capturing high page rankings and driving valuable organic search traffic.

In addition to the above rankings it is also prudent to take into account the mobile support features of each platform since Google announced that mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor for search (but only for searches performed on mobile devices).

Any new website should be responsive. So make sure you choose a responsive theme or template when designing your site with one of builders mentioned above.

On-Page SEO

What you want to have above and beyond great built-in features is the flexibility and control to customise them. In particular, an average page should have the following features available for editing:

  • H1 title tag
  • Meta description (& keywords if necessary)
  • URL
  • Image names
  • Image descriptions
  • Canonical tags
  • Rich snippets

In addition, your Web builder should also have a sitemap file to help search engines pick up new, changed or deleted pages on the site. Fortunately, all of the major site builders mentioned above support these on-page features.

Here are our ratings in terms of SEO features, flexibility and underlying implementation:

Rank Platform Features Flexibility Implementation
1 Bigcommerce (eCommerce) All Excellent Good
2 Shopify (eCommerce) All Good Good
3 Weebly All Good Good
4 Wix Most Average Good

It's worth pointing out that there is no 'penalty' for using one site builder over another. By far, the greatest impact on how well a site ranks is the number, quality and relevance of backlinks and referrals (building your backlink profile is an entire discipline in itself - see the list of helpful articles below for more), combined with useful and interesting content.

BigCommerce (eCommerce)

Bigcommerce online shopping cart website builder

Bigcommerce specializes in 3rd party integrations that can be used to grow your operations effectively. They rely on plenty of 3rd party plugin modules that give you plug-n-play functionality for virtually anything.

All things being equal, if you are planning on selling stuff on different platforms (like Amazon, eBay, etc), or are looking to use the latest cloud based gadgets and technology then this is the right choice for you.

Bigcommerce is Best For...

In general, stores that aim to sell high volumes of products through multiple channels will get the most from Bigcommerce:

  • Mainstream - books, electronics, etc
  • Virtual products, subscriptions, memberships, magazines, etc
  • Multi-channel, catalogues, directories, etc
  • Mail order
  • Online only

Bigcommerce offers excellent usability, design and a powerful range of features, and is well reviewed and liked. We scored it as follows (Hint: click on the name below to follow our step-by-step guide to setting up an online store with Bigcommerce):

Name Price Features Popularity¹ Reviews² Value³
BigCommerce $25+ /month eBay + Facebook integration. Email marketing integration. Abandoned cart saver. Single page checkout. No transaction fees. 6 9 89%

Weebly

Weebly online website builder for professional sites

For complete beginners, Weebly is arguably the best way to build a high quality, professional online presence (which you can do for free). It is fast and very easy to use.

Not only that, the quality of the websites they produce are excellent, and Weebly came out top of the pile in our SEO comparison of the top site builders.

And while they are expanding their functionality to things like eCommerce (check out Weebly eCommerce vs. Bigcommerce), there are still some things they are better at doing.

Weebly is Best For...

Weebly has a strong focus on designing sites for specific purposes, and, in particular, they focus on professionals and organizations:

  • schools
  • churches
  • professions - lawyers, doctors, etc
  • estate agents
  • skilled trades - plumbers, electricians, etc

What's nice about Weebly is that they take a lot of planning and research out of your hands by allowing you to choose a focused template at the start of the design phase. This means you are never more than a few clicks away from having a great site template/design.

Get started with Weebly right now.

Shopify (eCommerce)

Shopify eCommerce software
Shopify is arguably the most popular of all online shopping cart solutions, and this comes down to the fact that it is really easy to use (even for people who are allergic to technology and the Web), and is technically superior.

So, for example, it is known that the speed of a store often has a significant impact on the conversion rate of that store. As you can see from our forum answer Which is the fastest shopping cart software?, Shopify is generally the fastest.

Shopify is Best For...

Choose Shopify if your priority is to capture a specific niche market and dominate it, or, sell high-value items to focused target markets, like:

  • Boutique store
  • Arts & crafts
  • Expensive, high end, luxury items
  • Bricks & mortar store

In our review of the top shopping cart solutions, we scored Shopify as follows (Hint: click on the name below to follow our step-by-step guide to setting up an online store with Shopify):

Name Price Features Popularity¹ Reviews² Value³
Shopify $29+ /month Full featured CMS. Free SSL. Advanced store analytics. 9 9 90%

Wix

Wix website builder for visually dynamic sites

Without doubt, Wix are the masters of creating highly visual, stunning and emotive websites for their clients. They stay on top of the latest technology and developments to put a lot of cool features at your fingertips.

We did a direct comparison between Wix & Weebly and noted that Wix tended to be ahead of the curve when it comes to updates, upgrades, and new development.

However, the price you pay for visually rich design is worse performance, and while Wix is no slouch, it isn't as fast as Weebly.

Wix is Best For...

Anyone who wants a strong focus on visual media will find that Wix is ideal. Rich media like online videos, images, and animations are all part and parcel of Wix design aimed at:

  • artists
  • musicians
  • architects
  • crafters
  • designers

Wix also has a thriving app marketplace that can add cool features to your site - think along the lines of 'interactive portfolio' that wows prospective clients, customers and employers.

Get started on a Wix site for free.

WordPress

WordPress CMS website builder hybrid

WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System) with a strong focus on building blogs. It is by some measure the most popular choice of blogging platform amongst the CMS and online website builders.

I've included it on it's own here (as opposed to bundling it in with the other CMS software) because wordpress.com is essentially an online blog builder. You can download WordPress from their .org site if you want to design and develop it yourself, but for most people, simply using the website builder version is suitable.

WordPress is Best For...

Let's not fool around here. While there are plenty of modules that allow WordPress to function as all sorts of different things, it is, at heart, good for one thing:

  • blogs

While WordPress is well-established, and a market leader, I have noticed that many webmasters have complained about organic search traffic drops as a result of using plugin modules on their WordPress blog.

Google isn't playing around any-more. Install the wrong SEO module on your WordPress site, and you can kiss your traffic and revenue goodbye.

CMS - Drupal, Joomla, etc

Drupal CMS
I've included CMS software here for completeness. I use Drupal myself because that is what I have the most experience with. However, I do not recommend CMS systems for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

There are a number of reasons why CMS systems are no longer suitable for the small business startup. But I can demonstrate one of my own problems quite easily:

It is very important to incorporate responsive Web design into your site to cater for the rise in mobile device usage.

This site is built on Drupal 6, which has no responsive Web design facilities available. I either have to develop everything myself, or upgrade to a newer version of Drupal. However, there are so many customizations to the site, that upgrading is a huge undertaking, complex, frustrating, and annoying.

Using an online website builder means that you are always up-to-date for free. You never have to learn anything technical because it is always handled for you. Unlike CMS systems that eventually always do require specialized skills and knowledge to operate.

Hopefully, by matching up the website builder with the type of business it is best suited to, you'll be able to start a website in no time at all.

7. Choose a Web Host (if Required)

Assuming, for whatever reason, you have decided to go with a custom designed website that requires hosting, then you will need to take an additional few steps to get online. Namely, finding a hosting service & plan to suit your needs.

What is Web Hosting?

A Web host offers an online file system, database, bandwidth and other facilities that are required to operate a website online. This is distinct from the website itself.

Hosting companies offer different packages to cater for different website requirements. Important considerations are:

  • Server resources (i.e. memory, processor speed, dedicated server, VPS, shared server)
  • Bandwidth
  • Connection speed
  • Location
  • Up-time
  • Support

In general, you should opt to pay a bit more for quality support and up-time guarantees because these will help to ensure that your blog or website doesn't suffer from down-time.

Different Types of Web Servers

In general, a Web host will put many websites and blogs onto a single server - shared hosting. This is what happens with low cost packages (usually a few dollars per month).

The server shares its resources to serve webpages from all of these sites. This provides a cost effective solution for serving many websites at once, but leaves each website with limited resources and susceptible to problems experiences by other websites on the same server.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) provides a better solution by dividing up the server into non-negotiable chunks. This guarantees each website a certain amount of the server's resources and provides a far more reliable and robust solution for only a small increase in cost - usually a few tens of dollars a month.

Dedicated servers, as the name implies, are dedicated to a single website. The entire server - with all it's memory, CPU, etc - serve one site. This provides greater resources to serve busier or more popular sites, but also incurs higher costs - sometimes several hundred dollars per month.

Often, high quality Web hosts will offer managed dedicated servers. Managed servers are monitored by technicians so that website owners don't have to worry about software upgrades and other server maintenance issues.

Here's a roundup of the best hosting plans categorized by the type of server hosting and cost...

Best Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the cheapest option available, and you can often find this type of hosting available for only a few dollars per month. In general, however, it is better to opt for slightly more expensive plans if you value support and reliability.

Also, if you think that your blog or website might start generating reasonable volumes of Web traffic, it may be better to go with VPS from the start.

Rank Plan Price Server Support Reviews* Value**
1 SiteGround shared hosting $4+ 1-click setup. 99.9% uptime guarantee. Free domain. Money back guarantee. 24/7 support. 8 84%
2 Yahoo! Small Business $3+ $75 ad credit. Free domain. Money back guarantee. 24/7 phone support. 7 77%
3 Webhostingpad $2+ Unmetered bandwidth. Free domain. $200 free marketing credits. Money back guarantee. 24/7 U.S based support. 6 72%
4 iPage $2+ Free domain. Free, exclusive security suite. Site building tools. Money back guarantee. 24/7 phone support. Calls answered in under 2 minutes. 6 71%
5 Netfirms $3+ Unlimited bandwidth. Free domain. $150 online advertising credit. Money back guarantee. 24/7 support. 6 70%

Best VPS

VPS offers a cost-effective middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting.

A VPS server can have more than one account, but the server's resources are divided up into set chunks - which means that your account is guaranteed a certain minimum level of resources and bandwidth (unlike shared plans).

Rank Plan Price Server Support Reviews* Value**
1 IX VPS $55+ 1.5TB+ transfer. 50GB+ storage. cPanel. 2 dedicated IPs. 768 MB+ RAM. 24/7 live chat support. 8 82%
2 HostGator VPS $20+ cPanel. 10GB+ storage. 250GB+ transfer. Full root access. Semi managed. 24/7 support. 8 80%
3 GoDaddy VPS servers $30+ 3 dedicated IPs. 1GB+ RAM. 40GB+ storage. 1TB+ transfer. Intrusion prevention. Network monitoring. Security. 24/7 phone, email, Web support. 7 79%
4 myhosting business VPS $46+ 1.5GB+ RAM. 1.2TB transfer. 80GB+ storage. Free domain name. 24/7 managed support. 6 70%
5 1&1 Virtual Private Servers $30+ 2GB+ RAM. 50GB+ storage. 1TB+ transfer. Server monitoring. 24/7 support. 6 70%

Best Dedicated Server Plans

Dedicated servers are the most reliable type of hosting, and generally offer the best in performance and reliability. Hosting companies also tend to prioritize support requests from dedicated server clients, so you also benefit from a greater level of qualified human technical expertise.

Rank Plan Price Server Support Reviews* Value**
1 HostGator dedicated server $175+ Intel Zeon 2.3GHz. 10TB transfer. 4GB memory. 500GB RAID drives. 24/7 premium support. 24/7 server support. 8 83%
2 SiteGround premium managed dedicated servers $300+ Quad core Intel Xeon. 5TB bandwidth. 4GB+ RAM. 500GB+ SATA drives. Managed. Active server monitoring. 24/7 prioritized technical support. 9 81%
3 WP Engine premium (WordPress only) $100+ Baked in CDN. Unlimited transfer. 30GB+ storage. Fully managed. 9 80%
4 GoDaddy dedicated servers $80+ Intel 2 - 4 cores. 5TB+ transfer. 2GB+ RAM. 320GB+ drives. 24/7 technical support. Server concierge. 24/7 network monitoring. 7.5 79%
5 NEXCESS dedicated (WordPress & Magento) $135+ Dual - quad cores. 1.5TB transfer (more available for purchase). 2GB RAM. 500GB+ drives. 24/7 technical support. Managed server options. 7 75%

Best Specialist Hosting

WordPress is so popular that it warrants a section of its own specialist hosting services that do nothing other than pursue the art of perfecting WordPress hosting. Currently there is one dominant player in the market...

WP Engine

WP Engine WordPress Hosting
Unlike the other two companies that offer a huge range of plans and services, WP Engine focuses their offering on high quality WordPress hosting. Because speed, reliability and performance as such critically important factors for business websites, it makes sense that services like WP Engine would find a market with corporate clients.

Here's something to think about,

57% of users will leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Faster sites, literally, do better.

It makes sense for organizations using WordPress to go with WP Engine because their entire value offering is centred around making WordPress faster, more reliable, and more secure. In fact, their EverCache server technology can deliver WordPress pages in 15 milliseconds. Even if you aren't 100% convinced that page speed is as important as I say it is, what about security?

For corporate websites, security is absolutely essential. A hacked site can be devastating for your brand and revenue stream. That's why WP Engine promises to scan and fix any hacked sites they find for free.

WP Engine only offers one type of WordPress hosting, that comes in 3 pricing tiers:

  1. Personal ($29 per month)
  2. Professional ($99 per month)
  3. Business ($249 per month)

Any enterprise that values speed, reliability, security, and expert technical support has little alternative. WP Engine is a must have for WordPress based sites.

6. Design Considerations

Designing a Web page is a skill that takes into account who is going to see that page, what they want, and what actions you want them to take. Most people think that Web design is about writing HTML code, choosing colors, page layout, and so on. It's not. It actually has more to do with marketing and strategy than anything else.

Being able to deliver the right content to the right audience so that they convert (i.e. take an action you want - sign up, buy something, leave a comment, etc) is what it's all about.

Before Starting

There's absolutely no point in working on a new landing page if you don't already know the answer to the following questions...

1. Who is this page for?

Are you looking to reach out to people who want to buy something? Are they after information? Are they in college? School? Retired? Professional? Wealthy?

Who your audience is plays a big role in the type of content you need to supply - not to mention the way it is laid out and presented.

2. What is Their Intent?

At any one time, a single person may be in the mood to buy something, watch a funny video, get into an argument about differences of opinion, and so on.

Knowing who you want to reach out to is not the same as knowing when to reach them with your message. User intent is something big brands ignored as they rushed to build up Facebook likes and Twitter followers as social media grew.

The result?

They got almost no return on investment from the millions of dollars spent on social media marketing campaigns - because people on Facebook weren't necessarily looking to buy their products while using social networks.

3. What Information do They Need?

Even if you can reach the right person at the right time, you're still not going to have much success if you don't provide compelling information. Someone who is doing research over what service to use is not looking for the same information as someone who has decided which service to use, but wants a step-by-step guide to getting started.

Marry your content to the user's intent for the highest possible conversion rates.

4. What Action Should They Take?

Talking of conversions, even if you get all three of the previous steps right there's no guarantee that visitors will take action. In order to improve your chances make absolutely certain the page is easy to understand and that conversion points are clear and prominent.

Don't hide conversion points in obscure places, or behind ads. If you have a page that is designed to get someone to take an action, then make that page all about that specific action.

Layout & Presentation

This is where most people start the process of designing a Web page. They agonize over shades of color, background images, font styles, and so on. Yes, making your pages attractive and easy on the eye is important, but most good website builders have responsive templates and themes that do 99% of this work for you already.

Don't get bogged down in technical issues and minute details. In general, what you are looking for is a page that caters for the three types of online personality:

  • Early adopter: Wants bite size chunks of info, and then dives in
  • Curious: Wants a bit more detailed information before trying something new
  • Cautious: Wants to know everything before making a move

To do this can be quite tricky because there is only so much information you can provide before a page starts looking like a dense, complicated academic paper.

The solution is to:

  1. Provide a clear, concise overview with conversion points
  2. Add more detail lower down the page
  3. Provide links to more in-depth information at the bottom of the page

There's a list of great Web page designs at the bottom of this article if you want some examples of how this is done.

Measure & Refine

It's important to realize that no matter how well a page is designed there is probably room for improvement. Think of Web page design as a cycle rather than a linear process. In other words, expect to come back to the page and tweak it again and again.

Assuming you utilize some sort of analytics software on your site, you'll be able to see who comes to a page, how long they are there, and what happens. If most people are leaving without converting then you need to do some research into whether or not the page attracts the right people, does the content match the user intent properly, and are the conversion points easy-to-understand (and find).

Great Web Page Designs

Well, that's the theory behind us. But what does a good landing page actually look like? The answer is almost anything, depending on what it is designed for.

Let's take a look at a few good designs that can help inspire you to improve your own pages and hopefully help increase profits.

Shopify

Shopify Web page design focused on getting visitors to sign up for a free trial
It should be pretty clear that the focus of Shopify's landing page is to get users to sign up for a free two week trial. They've got a great tagline. They offer proof of past success in the form of an endorsement from an existing customer.

And, most importantly, all they require is an email address to get started. So it's really easy to use.

Further down the page there is plenty more useful information for people who aren't immediately convinced (i.e. curious and cautious visitors).

YouTube

YouTube's page design encourages exploration of their video catalogue
YouTube's landing page is intended to help users explore and find videos they are interested in. After all, the more people watch videos, the more revenue YouTube can derive from ads. What's interesting about this page is that it learns what users like and shows them related videos.

However, they are starting to push ads above their content, and this will, in time, degrade the user experience.

Mashable

Mashable designs their page to draw readers into their latest content
Mashable wants to suck readers into their best articles, so they lead with the hottest news and make it easy for their readers to access it. But, recognizing that not everyone will be interested in one article, they also provide a few links to other hot topics above the fold.

Further down the page, their content is categorized by what's hot and trending. This is a great feature because it gives visitors a good indication of what the most interesting stories are. The only problem? A great big ad at the top of the page pushes their content down, making it necessary to scroll down on slightly smaller screens.

So hopefully you have seen how different landing pages have different designs based on their audience, what those users are after, and what those websites want to get from them.

So that's the end of our beginner's guide to creating a website as quickly and easily as possible. Hopefully, you are now confident enough to get started on the right track - saving time, money, and plenty of effort in the process. Are there any other tips you would add to this guide? Have you recently built a website using one of the leading website builders mentioned here?

Share your Web development and design experiences in the comments.

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Well managed 404 "file not found" errors can turn potential problems into great opportunities that help you get the most from Web traffic that might otherwise slip between the cracks.

Even if visitors are trying to find content that no longer exists, a good 404 error page can direct them to the information they are after and lead to a conversion - just like any other good landing page.

Makes sense right? Just because a visitor is after a non-existent page (perhaps they have been directed to a mistyped URL from another site) doesn't mean we can't try give them what they're after anyway.

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