TL;DR
The best hosting solution for those seeking to target US-based web traffic is Interserver. Although it might not show the best HostingGuruReviews numbers, there is more to consider. This is especially true when it comes to targeted traffic.
Three Top Web Hosting in United States
Web Host | Features | Order |
---|---|---|
Interserver |
| Visit Interserver |
TMDHosting |
| Visit TMDHosting |
Hostinger |
| Visit Hostinger |
* Scroll down for each hosting performance stats and reviews.
1. Interserver
Interserver: #1 U.S. Hosting
Interserver offers server location in Secaucus, New Jersey and Los Angeles, California – both are strategic for those aiming for local traffic.
Interserver HQ: 110 Meadowlands Pkwy, Secaucus, NJ 07094, United States
If you’ve been searching for a US-based web hosting partner chances are you will have come across Interserver. Housed in Secaucus, New Jersey, the company was founded by partners well versed in the technology space.
What Makes Interserver Tick?
Although Interserver does a global business, a strong part of the appeal for those aiming for local traffic is their data centers. Interserver is perhaps the perfect choice for US-based web hosting with data centers in Secaucus, New Jersey and Los Angeles, California.
These dual locations are immensely strategic locations for a few reasons.
For traffic within the US, you serve either the East or West very quickly. At the same time, they are close enough to the seaboard to sufficiently support some international visitors as well.
Interserver has a good range of web hosting plans so there’s no concern about limited scalability here. Whether you need budget shared hosting, Cloud VPS, or even just data storage – they have a solution for it.
Key Highlights for United States Users
- Reputable and reliable services
- Great server performance
- Data centers in United States East and West Coast
- Price lock guarantee for VPS plans
- US-based support team.
Interserver Ratings & Performance
Interserver Pros
- 20-year track record in web hosting
- In-house customer support
- No price hike on renewal
- Cleans up hacked or exploited accounts
- Free website migration
- Cheap domain name registration
- Delivery of email is guaranteed
- Servers only filled to 50% capacity
- Free SitePad website builder
- Highly configurable VPS hosting plans
Interserver Cons
- Only US-based data centers
- Limited developer tools
- No free domain name
Interserver Shared Hosting Response Time
Learn more in our Interserver review.
2. TMDHosting
TMDHosting
TMD’s servers are located in Phoenix, Arizona and Chicago, Illinois. Being further inland off the either seaboard, either of these would be extremely good for serving inland-based traffic.
TMD Hosting HQ: 618 E South St, Orlando, FL 32801, USA
If you’re looking for a bigger partner to work with, TMDHosting has a relatively solid global presence. They offer users a choice of data center in the US, UK, Amsterdam, Japan, Singapore, and Australia.
Why TMDHosting for U.S. Websites?
TMDhosting’s servers in the US can be found in two locations, Phoenix, Arizona and Chicago, Illinois. Being further inland off the either seaboard, either of these would be extremely good for serving inland-based traffic.
The downside to this would be much higher latency for international traffic. However, if you are targeting that you can opt for their other overseas data centers. Regardless of your choice in location, you get a massive catalogue of web hosting plans to choose from.
Whether you’re a small business, commercial blog, or even eCommerce site, there will be something at TMDHosting that fits your needs.
Key Highlights for TMDHosting United States Users
- US-based servers in Arizona and Illinois
- Many free features including SSL and domain name
- Competitive pricing
- Broad product range
TMDHosting Ratings & Performance
TMDHosting Pros
- Unmetered bandwidth and storage
- Choice of seven global data centres
- Easy to use centralized dashboard
- Access to Weebly website builder
- Free SSL (Wildcard on Enterprise Plan)
- Free domain name
- 24/7 customer support
- Free white glove migration
- Perl, Python and other scripts available
TMDHosting Cons
- Limited free backups on files and database
- Free domain has no privacy protection
- Knowledge base could be improved
TMDHosting Shared Hosting Response Time
3. Hostinger
Hostinger
Hostinger offers ultra-cheap shared hosting. Single Shared Plan starts at $0.99/mo with free SSL and 10GB SSD storage.
Hostinger HQ: Jonavos g. 60C, 44192, Kaunas, Lithuania
Although not a US-based web hosting provider, Hostinger is a big name in the industry nevertheless. The company runs out of Kaunas, Lithuania and has been operating for more than a decade and a half now.
Why Use Hostinger for U.S. Sites?
If you want to keep things local, Hostinger offers hosting from US-based data centers as well. This is run out of Asheville, North Carolina (see Hostinger’s list of IP ranges). If not you get a good spread to choose from as well spanning literally all major geographic regions.
This single US location based on the East coast of the US means that of the top three US web hosts we’ve picked, Hostinger is relatively weaker. However, the company is large and brings to the table its own unique benefits.
A strong part of the Hostinger appeal lies in their ultra-budget plans. Whether you want to go for shared hosting or even Virtual Private Server accounts, the prices here are some of the lowest you’ll find.
Highlights for Hostinger U.S. Customers
- Server presence in North Carolina
- Strong budget-focused plans
- International reach
- Google-powered cloud hosting plan
Hostinger Ratings & Performance
Hostinger Pros
- Highly competitive pricing
- Seven different data centers available
- Good spread of hosting plans
- Free domain name on Premium and Business shared hosting
- User-friendly control panel (hPanel)
- Wide range of payment options accepted
- Git environment available on shared hosting
- Full root access and live chat with VPS plans
Hostinger Cons
- No auto-setup support for free SSL
- High renewal pricing
Hostinger Shared Hosting Response Time
Choosing a Web Host for US Websites?
When evaluating a web hosting service provider, details matter. To get the best bang for your buck, look past the price tag. You also need to consider other factors like security, customer support, and reliability.
Server Location Key to Meeting Latency Targets
For those seeking to meet visitor traffic within the US though, one factor does stand out more than others – server location. The US is rather special geographically, being a large landmass that’s relatively far from most other countries.
One example of this on an international scale can be seen in the distance from New York to Berlin – a whopping 3,965 miles (6,381 km). However, because of sheer size, even hosting within the US can result in considerable distance.
For example, the distance from San Francisco to New York is approximately 2,572 miles (4,139 km). All of this brings to focus the latency which could arise from data having to traverse such distances.
How Latency Affects Web Page Loading Speed
Latency is the time taken for data to get sent from point A to point B.
The longer the distance, the higher the latency. The higher the latency, the longer a visitor has to wait for the site to load.
When a visitor enters your website address into their browser, a request is made. That request travels all the way to your web server. Once your web server receives it, a reply needs to be sent, which travels back the other way.
Because of this, you need to place considerable thought into where your visitor base is mainly going to be, even if you get hosting with a server within the US.
What Else to Look for?
Besides the web host, consideration also has to be placed on your own site. The right tool for the right purpose, as they say. Using a spoon to try and carve wood may work, but there’s certainly something better for the job.
Because of this, knowing the type of website you’re looking to host as well as what you want to do with it can help you make the right choice. Once you are aware of these factors, match those areas with the web host to find the best fit.
For those targeting US-based traffic, it might also be prudent to seek a web hosting provider with in-country support teams. At the very least you can be assured that there will be minimal communication barriers.
If this isn’t possible the next best option would be a web host with comprehensive support channels, at least one or two of which needs to be available 24/7 in case they happen to be in a very different time zone.
Be aware though that smaller local web hosting companies may not be able to meet the same levels of service that global partners may have. Attention needs to be paid to fine-line items such as the Service Level Agreement to see what’s spelled out in black and white.
Conclusion
The three web hosts on our list as best for the US come with the distinction of not only using local data centers, but also being light on the budget. At the same time, they all have a broad range of plans, making them very agile and suitable for various needs.
Any of the web hosts on this list will do well for those targeting local traffic within the US, serve bordering countries well, and in a pinch, support global visitors as well.
About United States of America (USA)
The United States of America (abbreviated U.S. or U.S.A.) is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. The country has a population of 332 million in 2021 with California as the highest populated state (source). Country’s capital is Washington, DC.; other major cities include New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Web Hosting Buyers FAQs
Web Hosting is the service that allows you to store files where they can be served up as web pages on the Internet. A website owner uses web hosting space to store their website files. When a visitor types in the address of the website into a web browser, that request is routed to the web server software which then delivers the information needed for the visitor to view the website.
Domain names are the addresses of websites used by browsers to locate them on the Internet. Each domain name is made up of two parts, the name and the extension. An example of a typical domain name is Google.com, where Google is the name and .com is the extension.
A website builder bundles different services into one platform where users get to create, manage, and host a website in one place. Typically a website builder allow you to create a website with pre-built templates and implement advanced features (ie. processing payment) with ready-made plugins.
Storage space is the amount of server space available to store your files. Data transfer is the amount of data allowed to be transferred between your website and users. Bandwidth, often misused as “data transfer” is the speed capacity of data transfer.
Website performance is the speed and availability of your website. It is affected by various factors including website caching, hosting server capacity, DNS lookup speed, size of your webpage, server location, content delivery network (CDN), as well as website functions and configuration.
Learn how to improve your website performance in this guide.
The closer your web host is to your targeted traffic, the lower the latency (time taken for data to travel from server to your user’s computer) will be for your visitors.
Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are linked servers strategically placed around the world. They help websites serve static content faster to any location. Aside from performance improvements, CDNs also help improve website reliability and security.
Web hosting solutions are categorized into shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated Hosting.
In shared hosting, multiple (up to hundreds) of user accounts are hosted in one server. Users share the pooled resources including server CPU time, memory, and storage space.
VPS Hosting is the emulation of an entire server environment. Each virtual environment behaves like a blank piece of hardware. You can choose what Operating System to install, what applications you want to use and even the types of environments you wish to support within your VPS account.
Cloud hosting is a concept where traditional hardware boundaries are overcome by combining and pooling all resources into a big “cloudâ€. What is sold are slices of the cloud, depending on user needs. This gives cloud computing much greater potential in terms of scalability.
Dedicated servers are usually expensive and offer users the opportunity to keep all the resources of a single server for their own website(s). These servers can be rented from the web hosting service provider, or users who wish to use their own equipment can choose to simply rent space in a data center for it.
For U.S.-based shared hosting solutions – the average signup price ranges from $3 to $7 per month; for VPS – the average signup price ranges from $12 to $30 per month.
However, hosting renewal price is on average 160% higher than signup price. Learn more about this in our case study.
No. In most scenarios, your website will run fine with a shared IP address. In case you were just starting out and unsure – you can always purchase a dedicated IP address later and “add” it to your website.
SSL is an Internet security protocol that adds security elements to connections made between clients and servers. In order for this to work, the server needs to have a digital certificate – the SSL certificate.
In general there are three types of SSL certificates: Single domain certificate, Wildcard certificate, and Multi-domain certificate. To learn more, read our SSL guide here.