Choosing the right website hosting is an important decision for a photography studio. The wrong decision can lead to slow website speeds, overpaying for unused features, or worse. The right one provides reliability, good performance, and ease-of-use balanced with a good price point and the option to scale as site content and traffic grow.
Whether you want to sell digital photographs, showcase your portfolio, or set up stock images, there is a website host that will help you accomplish your goals. While there are many different hosting companies out there, this article will focus on the pros and cons of the following hosting providers:
- Bluehost
- WPEngine
- DreamHost
- SiteGround
- A2 Hosting
- Hostinger
- InMotion
- HostGator
- How to Shop for Hosting
Important note: Before you get started, make sure you’re in the right stage of your decision process. Be sure you’re searching for a website host and not a website builder. Choose a website host from the options below when you’re looking for a host for your website built on custom code,WordPress, Joomla, or other content management system. On the other hand, look for a website builder, when you’re looking for all-in-one solutions like Squarespace, Wix, Format, or Smugmug. We break down the best website builders for photographers in this other article.
Spoiler/Recommendations
The article will detail the pros and cons of various hosts below. However, if you’re short on time and want to skip to our recommendations, then here they are. If you have the budget and you’re hosting a WordPress site, then we recommend going with WP Engine. You’ll pay a bit more than most of the other options but the simplicity, reliability, and performance is worth the price tag for most photography businesses. If you’re not ready for the higher price points, we recommend starting with a shared hosting plan from Bluehost, which provides a set of robust features for a great price.
Bluehost
Bluehost is often rated as the best web hosting for photographers and for good reason. It delivers on all the essentials that a photographer may need on a website. You get value for your money, excellent uptime, and the customer support is impressive. If your site is built on WordPress, this will be even better for you since WordPress recommends it as their top host provider.
Pros of Bluehost
- Low price for the first year
- Sufficient storage
- Good uptime
- Unmetered bandwidth
- You can install WordPress with one click
Cons of Bluehost
- Only US-servers
- No month-to-month shared hosting options
- Average site speed
- Migration fee – Bluehost charges a fee to migrate from another hosting.
- Backups – you must set up your own backups
Pricing and Features
- Offers a $2.95 monthly plan.
- They have a guaranteed 30 day money back option
- Offers free backup.
- Offers a free domain.
- They offer a 50GB disk space but also have an unlimited disk space
WP Engine
If you’re operating a WordPress website and you have a decent budget to spend on hosting, our recommendation is WP Engine. While there are plenty of cheap hosts out there, the performance, features, speed and reliability of WP Engine is hard to beat.
Pros of WP Engine
- Optimized for WordPress users for great performance
- Offers migrations from old host.
- Free SSL certificate
- Easy staging setup so that you can develop features and test plugins on separate site without affecting the live site
- Performance tracking and reports
Cons of WP Engine
- More expensive than most options
- Only optimized for WordPress
Pricing and Features
- Managed Hosting at $25/month
DreamHost
If you are a photographer and are looking for the best hosting site for recoveries and back up, then Dream Host is the website for you as that is one of its outstanding features.
Pros of Dreamhost
- Free daily backups, whether you use VPS or shared hosting
- Great hosting features
- Supports different types of hosting
- Great contact support service that is always available
Cons of Dreamhost
- You cannot reach them on the phone. However, their support team can call you.
- Shared starter plan does not include free email
- No Windows-based servers
Pricing and Features
- It offers a $2.59 monthly plan
- It has a 99.95% uptime
- Money-back guarantee
- Offers free back up
- Offers a free domain
- It offers a 50GB storage space, but you can pay for unlimited space
- Good features for security
- Unlimited data transfers
- WordPress staging for your test website
A2 Hosting
A2 hosting web offers an array of hosting packages, including a dedicated plan for photographers. What sets it apart from other website hosts for photographers is the in-built gallery software options such as Piwigo, a photo gallery software built and backed by an active community, Coppermine, a feature-rich and easy-to-use photo gallery script, and more. Also, the c-panel-based server makes it easy to set up the website on your own.
Pros of A2
- You can choose your data center location.
- Offers advanced security options
- Excellent image hosting tools
- It has a sturdy infrastructure that can hold large media files.
- It has more than sixteen software tools, which are all unique and will assist you in making better use of your photos.
Cons of A2
- Does not have a free plan
Pricing and Features
- $3.92 monthly plan
- Unlimited storage space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Offers free content delivery network
- Offers a free domain
Hostinger
Hostinger is known for its low pricing and transparency. Their single shared hosting, which is probably not enough for most photographers, starts at $0.99/month for the first year. Yes, that is cents, not dollars. However, even their Business Shared Hosting, which is our recommended plan for photographers if they are going with this host, is still only $3.99/month for the first year and $8.99 at renewal
They publicly display their server status to show that their uptimes are consistent. If you have ever built a website using WordPress, you will have an easy time building a website with Hostinger.
Pros of Hostinger
- It offers you the flexibility of controlling your server.
- Allows you access to different site-building scripts and tools
- It offers an option of a $0.99 plan for a single website. The only con is that this option offers you 10GB storage and limited bandwidth.
- Solid State Drive (SSD) hardware
- 99.9% uptime
- Cache manager
Cons of Hostinger
- Does not offer a free content delivery network
- Does not offer a free plan
- No dedicated hosting plans
- It has a limited storage space
- No phone support
Pricing and Features
- Offers a $2.89 monthly plan
- Offers 20GB storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Offers a free domain
- Offers a custom domain use
InMotion
InMotion is another website with good hosting for photographers. It is efficient and affordable with quality features that photographers may want from a hosting web. Inmotion offers multiple reasonably priced options, including shared, dedicated, reseller, virtual private server (VPS), and WordPress plans. They also boat great technical support and a 99.9% uptime.
Pros of InMotion
- It has some of the best hosting features
- Best value for your money
Cons of InMotion
- Its money-back guarantee policy is a lot longer than any other hosts
Pricing and Features
- Offers a $2.49 monthly plan
- It has a 90-day money-back guarantee policy
- Has a 99.97% uptime
- Offers free back up
- Offers a free domain
- Has unlimited storage space
HostGator
Hostgator is among the best hosting for photographers due to its renowned storage space. If you have a photography website or plan to get one, you know how essential it is to have sufficient space. You can always be assured that you can display your higher resolution images without worrying about running out of space.
While Hostgator offers multiple plans and options, including quality cloud, reseller, VPS, and dedicated server packages, its shared hosting plans are where they excel.
Pros of HostGator
- Free unlimited storage space
- Great help and support
- Great uptime
Cons of HostGator
- Does not offer a free domain
- It does not offer free backups
- No Windows-based VPS hosting
Pricing and Features
- Offers a $2.75 monthly plan
- It has a 45days money-back guarantee policy
- A 99.99% uptime
- Has unlimited storage
How to Shop For Hosting
When deciding on which hosting service is right for you, focus on the following features:
Pricing – Find the right features that you need without overpaying. Note that the cheapest plan for any of these hosts will most likely not be enough for a media heavy photography website.
Hosting Space – We like Bluehost.com for its unlimited hosting space for your website. If you choose an option that does not have unlimited hosting, do some quick calculations to ensure that you’ll have enough on your desired plan.
Monthly Bandwidth – Given the fact that we photographers have very bandwidth intensive sites, you will want to find a hosting solution that has quite a bit of monthly bandwidth. 300GB is definitely enough for most new photographers, however you will begin to eat through this fairly quickly when you start to grow.
Email Accounts – Choose a plan with a free email account. However, you will probably never even use 100 email accounts, as some offer. So while there is a difference here, it won’t be a difference that will matter to most of us.
3rd Party Applications – Choose a host that provides the 3rd party application you need like WordPress. These software packs allow you to get more into advanced web functionality without necessarily having to know all the nitty gritty details on your own.
Multiple Domain Hosting – First, what is multiple domain hosting? Multiple domain hosting means that you can have multiple websites all running off the same hosting account. Yes, that means that if you have a blog, a website, a portfolio site, a learning site, etc all of them can be hosted on one single Bluehost.com account rather than having to sign up a new hosting account for each domain.
Streaming Video and Bandwidth Throughput – While some hosts report unlimited bandwidth, pay attention to the bandwidth throughput. This means that even though bandwidth is unlimited per month, they only allow a certain speed of download at any one time. Thus preventing you from being able to stream video and slideshows through your own site.
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That is useful information…. We offer wedding photography in Turkey http://www.7renkajans.com and will look into this further.
Hey, i think photographers should use dedicated service because it is fast and easy to run. checkout here.. https://dedicatedwebserversite.wordpress.com/
I am using Prophoto on my WordPress website http://www.linrucommercial.com… and blog http://www.linruphotographyblog.com . Both are hosted by Bluehost and the combination of the three works a charm!
Good info
I have used Hostmonster more than 8 years. I THOUGHT my service was unlimited but recently I learned that there is a max of only 200,000 files I am permitted and to expect sluggish service after 50,000 files are uploaded. Also, my images have a file size limit that I am permitted to upload… suddenly this doesn’t seem so unlimited… but they did offer me a few package upgrades at an additional price.
So, I am researching Bluehosting and the file maximums. I am also researching setting up my newly acquired server to host myself from my home/office.
Hey are using WordPress for your blog platform? I’m new to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and create my own.
Do you require any html coding expertise to make your own
blog? Any help would be really appreciated!
A blog regarding technological know-how: earthboundelements.com
[Florencia]
Photography is an art, technological innovation, and exercise of developing long lasting images by recording mild or other electro-magnetic rays. So in that case your service is much useful for anyone.
[…] SLR Lounge to Bluehost. If you’re not convinced, we compare them side by side in this SLR Lounge article. We had been happily using Bluehost for various websites; but we never got around to using it for […]
[…] and the features, it is a definite no brainer. Feel free to comment with any questions or concerns! Click here for an article comparing Bluehost, GoDaddy, and […]
Has anyone ever used fatcow for web hosting? ive been thinking about using them since they seem to be a good deal, but havent heard much about them
This article 18 months old and completely out of date, in my opinion.
Both Bludomain AND GoDaddy allow you to run multiple sites on the one hosting account…
I have changed from Bludomain to GoDaddy, for flexibility and hosting features, and I am extremely happy with my choice.
Fiona, on July 15th we released a completely new review, which is still featured on the homepage. In the review, our review selects Go Daddy as our new top host. We forgot to make note of it on this article. But, it has been added now. Thanks.
Just wanted to give an update for 2011!
I’ve been with blueshost.com for 9 months now and couldn’t be happier. Glad I moved away from Godaddy. I had a wordpress site that that would take 20-35 seconds to load on Godaddy’s servers and with bluehost servers it takes a second or two.
Godaddy’s admin backend is atrocious! It’s a mess! Not user friendly! Not intuitive! Hope you get my point!
Bluehost uses cPanel as it’s admin backend as it’s the web standard and works beautifully and easy to work.
Best,
John V.
I use Bluehost for my photography website and I love it. I really like how it has unlimited bandwidth and a free domain name!
Hi Roberto:
Thanks for the information on your past experiences. I can definitely see how that would get very frustrating. This article is based on our experiences (as well as the experiences of our extended network of designers, photographers, and programmers) with the hosting service; and we always appreciate additional insight.
Sorry I disagree… They have no respect, sometimes they blocked my account for no reason, and then hours later trying to contact they said it was because a URL Shortening script running in one of my domains that they consider Spam… Wow, why don’t block only that domain? Why don’t even warn me before (or after blocking my account) I discovery trying to access my sites and getting a shallow message posted instead of the content. By the way, read well the contract, they say it is unlimited but they limit the file count…
Good luck,
Roberto
thanks for the info Aaron… I hope they resolved this issue by now. If anyone has experienced this personally (and recently) please let us know!
I also use Bluehost, but there’s one caveat for client proofing on your site. Bluehost only allows 50,000 files on your server, even though there’s unlimited space. They will shutter your WHOLE SITE if you go over 50,000 files. APhotoEditor wrote about this a while back: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/05/14/bluehostcom-is-suspending-photographer-accounts/
Left a similar comment on your post about how to use GoDaddym then I saw this one…
Don’t use GoDadddy Hosting!
Go with
http://dreamhost.com
http://hostmonster.com
http://bluehost.com
http://hostgator.com
Seriously, run away from GoDaddy, especially if you expect to hire someone to work on your site.
They are next to impossible to use and will cause HUGE headaches for any WordPress installation. So bad that I refuse to work on anything hosted there. It is worth paying to switch hosts.
It will you cost you more in the hourly time they spend dealing with GoDaddy then it would to throw away your GoDaddy plan and switch to a better host.
All the sites I mention above have similar starting points – about $7/month for “unlimited” everything. However…
ANY of these ‘unlimited’ plans have limits. Read the small print. As @JohnV pointed out, most don’t want you using it for file sharing. They also limit some called ‘inodes’ (basically there is an inode for every file, image, every thing stored on the server and most will limit that). But any of them will handle a site with say 1,000 viewers a day?
I would also recommend not using BluDomain hosting. Their support is pretty rough and access to your files and settings is limited.
-Marty
I’ve been with Fatcow hosting for almost 10 years. Their service is awesome and completely unlimited. Not to mention they run off green energy. They’re cheep too! it’s like 40-60 a year.
Just wanted to give an update!
Moved to BlueHost.com last week as the upload/download times with my Godaddy.com hosted sites just became unbearable. Also I was building a Joomla site via the Godaddy servers and had many slowdowns and freezes during the build… With encouragement from Pye and a Joomla developer I respect I signed-up to bluehost.com and couldn’t be happier. The upload/download speed during web development is incredibly fast, it’s as if I was developing locally on my home computer. Sheesh! I can’t believe I put up with godaddy.com for so long. I think I just got used to the slowness.
To update the question: “What’s bluehost’s policy on FTP file sharing/storage?”
I read the fine print. Even though you’ll have unlimited bandwidth and webspace, BlueHost does not allow you to use your server space as a backup or storage area. I’m sure it can be done within limits and not abused and it looks like Pye has no problem with sharing files with clients as he mentioned in the above post. If worst comes to worst I’ll just create a private webpage and link the files for clients to download. Probably easier than clients FTPing anyway. But I don’t think this will be an issue if done respectfully to BlueHost as they seem pretty tolerant.
Also I got a free domain for life out of the deal.
Best,
John
JohnV, currently most our sites reside on Bluehost (the remaining few on Godaddy). We do a lot of FTP file sharing/storage for company files as well as host our own streaming video for wedding slideshows.
They have never had an issue with this type of usage, which is actually quite heavy usage being that our slideshows, tutorial files, images, and company files are uploaded/downloaded quite a bit.
However, I am sure if this is taken to extremes, like sharing pirated files or something, I am sure they would take some sort of action against your account.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Dmark for the info. Guess to get around that we could make a hidden webpage with download links of the files.. but shouldn’t have to.
What’s bluehost’s policy on FTP file sharing/storage?
Not so sure about GoDaddy being the best for photographers..
I’ve personally been delivering files(jpegs, images files, etc) via my ftp with GoDaddy for years now. I was recently told/threatened by tech support that this is against Godaddy policy and that it may result in account deletion. That’s apparently all they could even tell me without consulting legal.. long story short, I talked to 4 tech support agents(1 of which was a call back a week later) before I got a clear answer on the subject. Yeah…
Anyway.. to recap: Although we’re paying for the ftp server, space, and bandwidth, we still aren’t allowed to zip up 2 jpegs, place them on the GoDaddy ftp, and send the link to our clients. That simple, logical and very normal use of the ftp server is in direct violation of their TOS, and will result in account deletion.
All files placed on the ftp must be published. Using it as a file repository in any way, shape, or form is strictly disallowed.
Ridiculous.
-Dmark
Thanks for getting back to this so quickly.
Yep you are correct the 25 database driven website limit could be a deal breaker for some. Being a WordPress and Joomla developer this could be an issue but geez it’s $7.00 a month so if I host more than 25 websites/blogs I’d be more than happy to add another account.
I don’t do a lot video so that’s not an issue for me, but I can see it being so.
I’ve only used Godaddy’s tech support once and it was OK… nothing spectacular.
You probably should still update the numbers from the article though.
With that said… I am looking for new hosting as I miss cPanel and godaddy does not have this. Godaddy has some dang awful GUI backend implementation. Pretty sad in terms of usability.
Best,
John V.
Godaddy.com allows unlimited number of websites on one hosting account for $7.00/month, it has been that way for a long time and not a recent change. I’ve been using godaddy.com for many years….
I went to godaddy.com to check other info…
The godaddy.com data you provided in the above article is for the Economy Plan at $5.00/month not the $7.00/month.
Here’s the $7.00/month plan:
Hosting Space 150GB
Monthly Bandwidth 1500GB
Email Accounts 500
3rd Party Applications Yes
Multiple Domain Hosting Yes
Streaming Video ?
Hope this helps!
John V.
Hey JohnV,
Thanks for your additional info. Your information is correct for the most part regarding the $7 a month plan. However, there are several notes which still makes Bluehost.com a far better option for hosting, and here they are:
1) You are right that we used the $5 Godaddy plan in the comparison. However, while Godaddy’s $7 and up hosting packages allow for “unlimited” domains. There is a major restriction, Godaddy limits you to 25 SQL databases, therefore effectively limiting you to 25 database driven websites.
2) There is no throughput restrictions on the Bluehost accounts. Meaning you can host and stream your own video from your website. As per discussion with Godaddy tech support, you must upgrade to a virtual dedicated server (starting at $30 per month) in order to stream videos.
3) Bluehost accounts include a free domain name registration for as long as you have the account. So, as long as you are hosting through Bluehost, one of your domain names will always remain free saving you $10 a year.
4) Application installation through Bluehost.com is much quicker than Godaddy.com. Godaddy will often require you to wait 1 hour or more after installing an application in order to have those server changes take effect.
5) There is a major difference between quality of tech support between Godaddy and Bluehost. Bluehost tech support is easy to access, friendly, knowledgeable and very helpful. We found virtually the opposite experience with Godaddy.
This article was written based on personal experience between the two companies. We currently still have several websites hosted on Godaddy, however eventually we will be moving everything over to Bluehost.
Hope this additional info helps.
Just an FYI — right now bluehost has a promotion for $3.95/month!!!
by far bluehost.com and hostgator.com are the most affordable, and have the best turnaround support when needed on the market – mediatemple and wowrack are also very good!
I agree with you, Hostgator has great prices and amazing customer service. You can also use this coupon and get 25% discount on hosting.
COUPON CODE: hostgator2012discount
I’ve got accounts with several hosting companies and I’ve worked with many more on client accounts. By far my favorite is Bluehost. They are the fastest to set up and their control panel is simple and easy to use. I’ve literally had sites up and running within 5 minutes of signing up.
What is the best hosting service for photographers?: As photographers, we have multiple websites,… https://slrlounge.com/2010/01/what-is… #photography #tog
@Pyeman I love westhost! Never problems and great CS!