The first and most crucial choice we need to make is selecting the appropriate hosting on which to host the website or application. It may be crucial to many aspects of how a web page works. Several content management systems (CMS), including Drupal, one of the top solutions of this kind, are available from various hosting services.

Why is choosing the right hosting important?

The correct hosting company will ensure that the website loads swiftly, improving SEO in the process. Security is a key factor that a reputable service provider will take care of; application files will be appropriately secured on the server. A significant factor that may affect the decision when selecting a hosting service is the technical assistance provided by a hosting provider.

Best hosting for Drupal. The most important selection factors

Drupal requires three elements: a server for pages (Apache, Nginx), a database (MySQL) and a PHP engine. Good hosting services allow you to set up all these elements, together with the installation of Drupal and its basic configuration, with just a few clicks. It's worth paying attention to a few elements when choosing a hosting:

• Drupal version – it's a good idea to use the latest stable version. Currently, Drupal 9 definitely meets this requirement.
• Documentation – description of how to handle the Drupal installation process. This way you can tell if it's easy, intuitive and fast.
• Support – in the event of problems or insufficient knowledge it may prove to be very helpful.

Drupal hosting providers

Selecting a hosting provider can be challenging and time-consuming. There are numerous choices, each with advantages and disadvantages. Leading international companies as well as more obscure ones provide Drupal hosting. There are several providers listed on the Drupal.org website, but not all of them. Because of this, we've put up a list of the top hosting providers below.

ASPHostPortal

ASPHostPortal is a specialist Windows ASP.NET hosting provider that also provides Linux shared hosting plans plus cloud hosting, reseller hosting, email hosting, and associated services such as domain registration.

This company markets itself as the “#1 Recommended Windows and ASP.NET Spotlight Hosting Partner in the United States,” and it hosts more than 50,000 websites. It has been in business for over a decade, and it has 12 data centers across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia. Its website is in English.

The entry-level “Host Intro” Windows shared hosting plan includes 1 GB of disk space, 10 GB of monthly bandwidth, and hosting for one website. This plan doesn’t include any databases or email storage. The next “Host One” shared Windows plan offers 5 GB of SSD storage, 60 GB of monthly bandwidth, two MSSQL databases, three MySQL databases, 500 MB of email storage, and hosting for unlimited databases.

In terms of Windows cloud hosting, the Tier One plan includes 2 GB of SSD disk space, 20 GB of monthly bandwidth, one MSSQL database, one MySQL database, 200 MB of email storage, up to 250 MB of RAM, and hosting for unlimited websites.

There are four shared Linux plans. The least expensive “Intro” plan includes 5 GB of SSD storage, 15 GB of monthly bandwidth, three MySQL databases, unlimited email accounts, and hosting for three websites. The more expensive Linux plans come with additional features including website turbo speed-up, free on-demand backup, SEO, and Cron optimization.

The following features are common across all shared hosting solutions:

• Free software installation
• SSD storage
• 24/7 antivirus scanning
• Nightly data backups
• DDoS attack response
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Support for free SSL

ASPHostPortal operates 12 world-class data centers situated in Washington D.C., Toronto, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Melbourne, Chennai, and Sao Paulo. These state-of-the-art facilities have redundant, high-speed network connections, as well as advanced cooling and fire-suppression systems. Certified administrators and network engineers are available round-the-clock, 365 days a year to provide support and maintenance.

100% website uptime is assured by DNS failover that monitors customers’ websites for failover from multiple geographic nodes. When a website fails to load, ASPHostPortal will automatically change the DNS records to reroute traffic to a backup IP address or server. This is a paid monthly service.

PlanetHoster

PlanetHoster is based in Paris (France) and Montreal (Canada), and it has been providing web hosting services since 2007. This hosting provider has served over 60,000 customers and 100,000 websites using its hybrid cloud infrastructure. The PlanetHoster website is in English.

Features and Ease of Use

PlanetHoster offers two paid website hosting solutions: the “World Platform” shared hosting and the “Hybrid Cloud” managed hosting. It also offers the free “World Lite” hosting plan.

The “World Platform” paid plan includes unlimited disk space and monthly bandwidth, and an unlimited number of databases, email accounts, and websites.

The standard configuration is 8 CPUs, 16 GB RAM, and 16 Mbps I/O, but customers can customize their hosting from a minimum 1 CPU and up to 24 GB RAM and 24 Mbps I/O. Crucially, you can distribute your total resource pool across entirely separate hosting accounts running on independent infrastructure.

In addition to the flexible resources, you also get the following features:

• A free domain for life
• Dedicated SSL for each domain
• SSD storage
• LiteSpeed available
• 14-day money-back guarantee
• Free website migration
• Website builder
• Daily website backups
• Anti-DDoS

Unlike many hosting providers that charge extra, PlanetHoster provides basic Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates for free with every hosted domain. These certificates include automatic installation and renewal.

Before you commit to a paid plan, you can try out the free “World Lite” hosting plan. It offers you 750 MB of disk space, two FTP accounts, two email accounts, two MySQL databases, an SSL certificate, and unlimited parked domains. You also get access to the SiteBuilder module, and you can choose between the French or Canadian data center.

Artehosting

Founded in 2001, Mexican provider Artehosting offers regular and cloud-based shared hosting, cloud VPS, dedicated servers, and reseller hosting packages. The company began as a bootstrapped startup but now operates out of four data centers in the United States and Mexico. It currently has customers in 16 countries around the world (and growing!). Artehosting’s services are available in Spanish.

Features and Ease of Use

Artehosting offers several different types of web hosting, including shared, SSD, WordPress, cloud-based VPS, and dedicated server plans.

The regular shared hosting plans come with either 100GB, 500GB, or 1TB of HDD storage space. All of them also include unlimited data transfer, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited MySQL databases/FTP accounts. You’ll also have a pretty decent amount of server resources with one CPU core and 1GB of RAM, though unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to go any higher even if you get a better plan.

SSD hosting plans come in Basic, Premium, and Business levels. These range from 30-100GB of disk space and include unlimited data transfer, email accounts, and databases.

If you anticipate needing to scale rapidly in the future, there’s a “Power Pack” add-on that’ll upgrade your shared hosting plan to a cloud-based platform. This allows users to quickly add RAM or vCPUs as needed. The process requires just two clicks and takes less than two minutes. Customers can add between one to six vCPUs and 2-32GB of RAM.

Hosting plan features include:

• Free domain with yearly contracts or longer
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Website builder included
• LiteSpeed Web Server and NGINX
• Artehosting’s Security Shield, which comes with 24/7 anti-hacker monitoring, malware protection, two-factor authentication, and monthly security audits

Hosting customers also have the ability to access Artehosting’s website builder for a small monthly fee. This is a drag-and-drop editor that includes the ability to add common features like  image galleries, a blog, and an e-commerce shopping cart. The website templates are fully-responsive as well. To top it all off, the service comes with a full builder demo, video tutorial, and 24/7 technical support.

Best Drupal hosting – summary

All the hosting services presented here have common features. It can be said with certainty that currently the most important one – from the client's point of view – is the ease of use, so that non-technical users are able to find their way around the interface and documentation. Another common trait is the speed, which will have an impact on how fast and user-friendly adding new content to the page will be. Additional support may also prove to be extremely useful. If it's provided by specialists in a given field, it may save a lot of time. We've been dealing with hosting for Drupal websites for years, so we'll be happy to advise you on choosing the best option for your web page.