Congrats on deciding it’s time to purchase your first hosted blog. This is a huge deal. Purchasing your first hosted blog can be just as daunting as buying a new vehicle because there is much to consider.
Of course, you want the hosted plan that will work for you and at a competitive rate. This is where I can help. I’ve purchased several sites throughout the years and made a few errors.
However, I will guide you through this purchase to make it as easy as possible to ensure you make a great, informed decision and start on the right foot with your first hosted blog.
In this post, I will discuss what you need, what hosting plan is perfect for your beginner site, and how much it will cost.
What Do You Need When Purchasing Your First Hosted Blog?
Purchasing your first hosted blog can be daunting because there are add-ons, and you may need to know what they are or if you need them. Trust me; we’ve all been there when first starting.
Hosting
Hosting is vital to your blog. This will allow your blog to be online. Think of it as your cell phone carrier. You pay them so that you can have phone service. That is what hosting is.
Some big hosting companies are Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy, SiteGround, etc.
A common misconception among beginners is if you want a WordPress blog, you must host through WordPress. This is incorrect. You can pay much lower prices through one of the hosting companies I’ve mentioned above.
Domain
Your domain is your website address. Unlike the free-hosted blogs where you have your domain such as bloggingin123.wordpress.com, your domain would be bloggingin123.com because you are self-hosting it.
Domain Privacy Protection
Domain privacy protection is where your information is hidden. What do I mean by that? When you register your domain, you can go to a site called who.is. Purchasing domain privacy protection will protect your information from being public. It will have your hosting company’s information instead.
Why is this beneficial? With this protection, you won’t get unsolicited emails, calls, or letters from anyone.
While it may not be vital to some (if your information is already out there), it might be critical if you want to be anonymous.
Site Back-Up
Backups are vital to your blog. Why? For instance, I let my blog lapse when it was time to renew due to personal reasons. I never backed up my site ever. I had my blog posts written in the cloud, images in the cloud, but nothing else.
So, fast forward to now, and I am still putting up posts that used to be on my site, and it is a real pain. I wish I had a backup rather than starting over and doing this entire thing again.
However, most hosting companies provide a backup in your plan, but that isn’t enough. According to FatLab Web Support, you should not only have your on-site (hosting) backup but also venture off to having an off-site (not your hosting company) backup for security reasons.
What Hosting Plan Is Perfect for a Beginner Blog?
A common question yet to be answered is what hosting plan is perfect for a beginner blog. Many sites will spam you with every hosting platform and tell you to choose this one or that one because they are affiliated with that and get a commission.
Shared Hosting Vs Dedicated Hosting
When you go to any hosting company, they have two options; dedicated and shared hosting. You may notice the increased price difference between them.
First, shared hosting will be okay if you start as a beginner blogger. I typically recommend getting the cheap shared hosting plan because, most of the time, it has enough disk space to get started because you won’t be using tons of gigabytes just yet.
The reason why it is called shared hosting is that you are sharing servers with other sites. That doesn’t mean they get to log in and see your information. It is just hosted on the same server through the hosting company.
As for dedicated hosting is one of your dedicated servers. Dedicated hosting is excellent for those with more than one site, who need more space, and who have a lot of traffic.
How Much Will It Cost You When Purchasing Your First Hosted Blog?
Now, the fun part is here. I get to talk about how much this will cost you. Remember, this will strictly be your domain, hosting, domain security, and site backup. This won’t include if you choose to get a logo done, a website theme, and other design elements.
For ease of this post, I will break down the cost for the four big hosting sites, GoDaddy, SiteGround, HostGator, and Bluehost. There are more out there, but as long as you follow my advice above, you can also get the same plans on those.
For the below scenarios, we will pretend to purchase bloggingin123.com as our domain.
How Much Will It Cost Me To Use GoDaddy for My First Hosted Blog?
If you were to purchase bloggingin123.com from Godaddy for a year with domain privacy protection and hosting, the price would be $30. The plan used here is the starter plan with email. It is their cheapest plan available.
Which is not bad at all. As you may see, I didn’t add the site backup. As I previously mentioned, most hosting plans include a free site backup. However, at the end of the article, I’ll add the top 3 site backups FatLab Web Support recommended and their cost.
How Much Will It Cost Me To Use SiteGround for My First Hosted Blog?
If you were to do the same over on SiteGround, the price would double to $65.87. This is again for their cheapest starter plan. The difference between GoDaddy price and Siteground price is that if you look, you are getting your domain for $0.01, while on SiteGround, you are paying $17.99 for the domain.
How Much Will It Cost Me To Use HostGator for My First Hosted Blog?
Again just like SiteGround, HostGator will be double what GoDaddy will cost. The cost here is $66.47, the same cheap plan (hatchling shared server plan) with domain privacy. However, unlike Siteground, HostGator gives you your domain name for free.
How Much Will It Cost Me To Use Bluehost for My First Hosted Blog?
With the domain privacy protection, the basic hosting plan over at Bluehost will cost you $47.28, which is a bit more than GoDaddy but less than the other two. A lot of other sites recommend Bluehost for your first hosted blog, but any of them will genuinely work.
I used Bluehost when purchasing my first hosted blog and didn’t care for it. It was always offline, which doesn’t do you any good when trying to run a successful blog, but they have improved over the years.
What About Off-Site BackUps?
As mentioned above, FatLab recommended you do off-site and on-site backups (included in your hosting plan). They had three recommendations.
They will cost you:
- UpdraftPlus: They offer a free version; you can view what it entails here. If that one doesn’t work for you (it should if you are starting), you can get the premium version starting at $70 a year.
- VaultPress (Jetpack Backup): costs $1 for the first month, then $10 after. It is billed annually.
- BackWPup: They offer a free version but also a premium version that starts at $69.
However, since this is your first hosted blog, I recommend starting with one of the free versions because it should do what you need. As you grow, I would re-evaluate your backup situation and get a premium version if necessary.
Not Ready to Purchase? You Can Blog for Free Too
If you are not ready to commit to purchasing your first hosted blog because you don’t know if you are going to stick to it, have money issues, or are still too scared to take the plunge, do not fear. There are sites where you can blog for free and still make money!
I wrote a great post outlining the top 3 sites that allow you to blog for free and have monetization programs. This is a significant first step prior to starting your site because, as I said in my 8 things you should know before starting a blog post, creating a blog is a lot of work!
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