HostingpillIs Bluehost Pricing the best in the business, despite having expensive renewal rates?
Some of you may even be considering purchasing it or migrating to it from another host.
If you want an overview of Bluehost, you can check out my general review of it here.
But here, I’ll be focusing on a specific aspect of Bluehost:
Submit a short but detailed review and get FREE link to your website.
A website that’s continuously down can drive away customers and create a negative brand image. The problem gets worse if you’re not able to detect downtime and communicate with your customers quickly.
Luckily today, you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to automated, 24/7 monitoring tools. Not only can they pick up when your site goes down, but they quickly alert you with crucial information. Some devices even allow you to create status pages to keep your users updated on your services’ availability.
However, the range of options makes it hard to choose the best solution for your online presence.
Thanks to their affiliation with Atlassian, StatusPage is a popular choice. However, it’s not the best choice for everyone and has significant shortcomings depending on what you need.
That’s why we’ve collected some of the top alternatives to help you pick the best one for your needs.
StatusPage Alternatives
StatusPage is a tool created by digital solutions provider Atlassian. Its main goal is to help you communicate the status of your services to customers.
Usually, support teams get flooded with tickets during incidents or service outages. Through clear and immediate status updates, StatusPage helps to limit duplicate tickets. You can provide ongoing updates via email, text message, in-app message, and more. It makes uptime-related internal and external communication a breeze.
You can display the individual status of different components within your service. For example, you can show the status of third-party integrations like PagerDuty. With Uptime Showcase and Public Metrics, you can display your historical and real-time record.
Everything comes in intuitive and modern dashboards that are super easy to use.
Some of StatusPage’s big-ticket clients include DropBox, DigitalOcean, and Intercom.
But, StatusPage only helps you handle the communication aspect of incident response. You’ll need to integrate with other tools for actual uptime monitoring and incident management. DataDog, New Relic, and PagerDuty are just some of its supported integrations.
This comparison will focus mainly on services that can replace StatusPage as an uptime monitoring platform.
With that in mind, we’ll look at some of the top StatusPage alternatives.
BetterUptime is an all-in-one infrastructure monitoring platform. It’s capable of replacing many tools or integrations within a single service. On top of a public status page, you also get uptime monitoring and incident management.
Depending on your plan, you can get status checks as fast as 30 seconds from 30 to unlimited monitors. On top of uptime, BetterUptime also has heartbeat, SSL, and DNS server monitoring.
Using BetterUptime, you can send alerts by email, SMS, Slack, phone calls, push notifications, MS Teams, or even Zapier.
The built-in incident management allows you to view entire incident timelines. Handling incidents is simpler thanks to post-mortems and smart incident merging. It also helps teams cooperate thanks to on-call scheduling and collaboration tools.
BetterUptime also integrates seamlessly with over 200 third-party tools. This makes it easy to use in your existing stack or to build a new stack around it.
Decathlon, IBM, and Huawei are just some of the big brands using BetterUptime.
BetterUptime is slightly pricier than StatusPage, but that’s not surprising. You get all StatusPage’s functionality plus that of entire other suites of tools. And, it’s still affordable compared to most direct competitors starting at $24/month.
Unlike StatusPage, BetterUptime also offers a free basic plan for hobbyists or testers.
BetterUptime is one of the best alternatives for StatusPage. It will broaden your incident management capabilities and with uptime monitoring, diagnostics, and team-based incident
ServiceUptime is a no-nonsense remote website uptime monitoring tool. The pricing plans work on a credit-based system. If you pay for the Start plan, you get enough credits to check your uptime every five minutes using three monitors for one month.
You can adjust the number of monitors or frequency from your dashboard. If you run out of credits, you can just top up more. This is useful for those who prefer working on an ad hoc basis where they only pay for what they use. Prices start at $5.95/month for 5-minute checks from 3 monitors.
ServiceUptime can also check a number of ports, such as Web Page, ping, Web Servers, POP3/SMTP Servers, IMAP Servers, DNS Servers, etc.
Although it doesn’t support out-of-the-box public status pages, you can use tools to display status information on your website pages.
ServiceUptime provides statistics and reports to track your uptime over certain periods. Statistics are also retained indefinitely.
ServiceUptime is purely an uptime monitoring solution. It doesn’t feature any built-in incident response or integrations with third-party tools.
Uptime.com checks your website’s status every minute from worldwide locations. Each time, Uptime.com uses up to 100 different checks, including real user, API, and other custom checks. While the frequency stays the same, you unlock more types of checks with higher-up plans.
Free users can only monitor their websites from US-based locations. However, paid customers can access European or even globally located monitors as well.
Useful add-ons include:
You can also generate public status pages or even SLA reports for accountability. And, get a number of scheduled reports and customizable dashboards with each plan. Reports and statistics are stored for up to 2 years.
Uptime.com’s pricing starts at $16/month but goes up quickly with higher-tier packages. For most businesses, the Basic plan will be too restrictive. However, it’s a solid option for advanced monitoring and reporting tools.
SiteUptime checks your website at 2-minute intervals from 11 different locations across four continents. To limit false positives, SiteUptime confirms every downtime detection from a different location.
SiteUptime is one of the more affordable options with $10/month and $20/month plans. There is also a free plan, but checks are limited to 30-minute intervals. Email, SMS, and call alerts are available. You can monitor web, email, or FTP servers with all plans. Ping monitoring and error details are reserved for paying customers.
You get a limited number of SMS and call credits. This can be topped up at $0.20 per SMS/call. Additional monitors also cost an extra $2 each. You only get either 3 or 6 monitors with the paid plans, so you’ll likely want to invest in more.
SiteUptime does provide status pages, but they are much more basic than those of StatusPage or BetterUptime. The API also doesn’t allow you to do much except manage your monitors.
Host-tracker.com is another simple website monitoring solution for webmasters and businesses. It runs availability checks for HTTP, SMTP, TCP, ping, and more from 140+ locations. You can also use it to see if your site is blacklisted. You can also check the response rate, page speed, and when your domain or SSL certificate will expire.
There are no free plans or trials, but pricing starts at a low $14/month up to $99/month. Depending on your plan, you can check between 10 and 150 sites each minute. You can also register between 10 and unlimited contacts. While most alerts are unlimited, SMS credits are limited ($2 for 100 SMSs).
You can even manage Google Ads by turning them on/off with your website availability.
Unfortunately, Host-tracker doesn’t provide pre-built status pages. However, you can expose this information to your customers using the API.
Like ServiceUptime, Host-tracker.com only does uptime monitoring. It also doesn’t feature any third-party integrations.
| StatusPage | Better Uptime | Service Uptime | Uptime | Site Uptime | Host-tracker | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public pages | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Private pages | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audience-specific pages | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Integrations | 23+ | 200+ | None | 19 | None (API) | None (API) |
| Customer Support | -Ticket support |
-Email -Phone (Business and Enterprise) -Product Strategy and Success (Business and Enterprise) |
-Email/ticket -Account manager + Premium support (Enterprise only) |
-Email/ticket | ||
| Built-in uptime monitoring | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in incident management | No | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Alerts Notifications | -Email -SMS -Webhooks |
-Email -SMS -Slack -MS Teams -Push notifications -Zapier Webhooks |
-Email -SMS (limited credits) |
-SMS -Call |
-Email SMS -Call |
-Email -Telegram -Slack -Skype -Hangouts -Voice Call -SMS(limited credits) |
| Pricing | $29 – $1,499/month |
Free – $120/month |
$5.95 – $29.95/month |
$16 – $95/month |
Free – $20/month |
$14 – $99/month |
As you can see, there are many tools out there that can help you better run a successful online business.
With the right tools, you’ll be able to:
Most of these alternatives provide one or more of these features. However, an all-in-one solution like BetterUptime features them all built-in. Using only a single service helps manage your budget and keep things simple in complex digital ecosystems.
While most tools are great at what they do, costs and complexity can quickly escalate once you start integrating more than one service. For example, StatusPage won’t be of much use without a monitoring solution behind it, like Pingdom or DataDog.
Regardless, this list should help put you on the right track if you know your needs. By being informed, you’ll be able to choose the best-fit, most cost-effective solution.
Hostwinds is a company that I’m willing to bet a lot of you don’t know much about.
You may have heard of it…but even so, Hostwinds isn’t super famous to a lot of people. Even among people who are familiar with hosting.
And that’s not surprising—Hostwinds was founded in 2010, which makes it a younger hosting company compared to some bigger names that are close to the twenty-year mark.
But the deeper you get into the hosting world, the more you’ll find Hostwinds has a strong reputation.
WordPress is an open-source platform that makes building a website as easy as just a few clicks. Because WordPress is open-source, it’s always updating and changing.
However, it’s these very same benefits that also lead to many vulnerabilities within the platform itself.
More than 70% of WordPress websites today are vulnerable to hacker attacks.
Why is WordPress such a popular choice for hackers? In reality, there are a number of compelling reasons:
Thinking about getting into blogging? Great for you! BUT where to find the right Blogging Resources? We’re sure you already have a few good ideas to boot your new WordPress site with that custom theme.
But this is the content business. Folks with a few good ideas get tired fast. What you need are streams of resources that could feed your blog daily.
Getting a website up and running today is not complex. What’s more in demand is consistency. It’s been said again and again that search engines take your site seriously if it’s updated regularly.
But before we get into it, what exactly are resources for bloggers?
Infact, writing itself could be a challenge when you’re busy juggling between different hats to get your website ranked and properly optimized. So here is a list of the best essay services for times when you want to have one less thing to worry about.
Back when it started, Huffington Post used to upload a new article every 58 seconds. That easily comes in at around at least a couple thousand posts per day.
Now, of course, you might not be able to achieve such a feat. But it’s an example of what turned HuffPost into the content conglomerate that it is today.
Mind you, no article can tell you what to write, but we can tell you what you could write. Hence, without pressing more, let’s get into the best blogging resources and tools that you could dig through to get some great content ideas.
One more thing, I’m going to distinguish each resource by category because I know not everyone likes to learn about Visual Marketing. Okay, let’s get into it…
BLOGGING RESOURCES AND TOOLSJump to read specific sections by clicking on the following links
BlueHost is one of the most fast-growing web hosting services right now. If your objective is WordPress then BlueHost could be your answer. BlueHost has in-house WordPress experts that could guide you as well as troubleshoot issues. Our BlueHost Review could help you put things in perspective.
We recently talked about Interserver in our Interserver Review. To put it in a nutshell, Interserver is a fast and affordable hosting service that although has an iffy uptime, could delight you with customizable higher-end hosting plans including dedicated and VPS.
GreenGeeks is not only affordable but also one of the few eco-friendly hosting services. You have unlimited SSD storage, unlimited data transfer, unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, a free SSL certificate, and much more. Hence, not only for Geeks. We have proper uptime numbers in our GreenGeeks Review if you want to learn more.
DreamHost has won multiple PCMag’s Editor Choice awards. DreamHost is another viable option for WordPress users. WP hosting starts at $2.59/month with free migrations and a site builder. DreamHost talks a big game but don’t go in with a short description so why not check out our DreamHost Review.
Trello is popular among everyone from small venture offices to web developers and remote designers. Its Kanban-style listing view is very easy to learn and manage. You can attach documents, assign members, create/add tags, track activity progress, and much more.
Evernote has been highly regarded by critics as the productivity tool/app. Ideas can come and fly away easily, which is why Evernote gives a lot of accessibility options to jot down ideas quickly.
Everyone knows why we need this. Instagram gets at least 1 billion users per month. The main appeal from its onset was to promote lifestyle trends. Whether you’re into cake crafts, wacky fashion, travel buff, or techie; there’s something for everyone.
This might pop up a lot due to the massive ocean of information and opinions that Reddit contains. It’s safe to say that at least 80% (or more) of all blog writers go to Reddit to get their copy. r/NonZeroDay, r/personalfinance, r/EatAndHealthy are few subreddits for lifestyle enthusiasts.
Describing it simply as an online text editor would be an insult. It offers much more than your typical text processor. It has a minimalist UI, features you need, dashboard outlines and much more. The cost of looking professional is $6/month or $70/month if you need a year.
Informal writing has increasingly become the norm. Writers have found ways to incorporate tacky slangs and slurs to improve user engagement. UD is updated daily with thousands of such synonyms everyday. So don’t hold back when it comes to updating your vocab.
Named after the poet himself, Hemingway makes your sentences shorter so they look like poetry rather than an essay. Since a lot of people tend to skim through blog posts, shorter sentences deliver the most information in the least time.
It’s working on this article right now. Grammarly has become an essential tool among all kinds of writers. You can have word suggestions, grammar corrections, auto-correct, and even an emoji rating feature on your overall tone of the article. Even the free version is a must-have.
Considering you have a Google account, it is the one tool that most people already have. Like most analytical tools, Google analytics paints a clear picture of your site’s traffic, points of sale, CRM, a clean dashboard interface, etc. Definitely give it a shot.
An open-source analytics framework that lets you monitor your app/site usage. The best thing is that you can either download OWA or even simply use it from your browser. You can also incorporate it into CMS like WordPress or MediaWiki.
Bitly is more than a link shortener. After shortening a URL, Bitly lets you efficiently share and monitor that links performance, for example, it generates reports on the number of clicks generated, where your traffic is coming from, geographic presentation of your traffic, etc.
Probably one of the simplest analytical tools out there. It essentially lets you monitor competitor sites, and provides you with their traffic and rankings. You can basically input any app or website and get relevant data reports with intuitive visuals.
Plus, there’s also a browser extension for it.
A popular, no-nonsense website performance evaluator that grades your site from rank A to F. Basic operation is simple, you just input the URL and get the report data which includes PageSpeed Score, YSlow Score, loading time, page size, requests, etc.
This one might be aimed at nerds more so. WebPageTest offers over 40 testing locations along with support for multiple browsers and even mobile support. Advanced settings include multiple runs, FTTB, caching, compression, and much more.
Probably the prettiest one, Dotcom-monitor is very similar to WebPageTest but only exceeds in the way that it offers multiple location tests to run simultaneously which in turn saves a lot of time.
It is the easiest & fastest tool to use but won’t give all the nitty-gritty insights as the others. Since Google made it, the scoring system is custom made and offers results for both mobile & desktop. Another one for the toolset.
Pingdom is a unique paid monitoring service. It offers 2 plans for both external and internal monitoring like transaction monitoring, shareable reports, uptime monitoring, user experience monitoring, etc. If paid isn’t your thing then there are some pingdom alternatives as well.
Pixlr is a simple online image editing tool now turned into a robust mobile app. You can upload images quickly and edit seamlessly. Want to edit that screenshot? Done. Want to include a few symbols? You can. Want to highlight a phrase or hide your IP? No problem.
It’s much like Pixlr except it is paid but also packs much more functionality as well, like collage, fancy font support, color correction, social media templates, and much more. You can also take a free trial before deciding to pay.
Font Squirrel offers a huge library of free (& paid) fonts to use in your blog, ad campaign, logo design, brand, etc. There’s also a Webfont generator which allows you to convert fonts to upload them to your website, and also a font identifier to extract font names from images.
Ever look at those fancy long infographics on some websites and think what if you could make your own? PiktoChart does exactly that for you. You can input your data, customize visuals, and add it to your website, presentations, or posters. It is paid but you can get started for free.
Every blogger and their mom knows about WordPress. It is only the biggest website builder ever made. WP has millions of themes & plugins and an ever-growing community of passionate people. Hence WordPress has given people the power to be independent.
Vidyard is an online video creation, hosting, and sharing platform for businesses that want to explore video marketing. So the way it works is that you download the extension for your browser, the extension contains custom screen and cam recording features, and you’re all set.
This is for folks who would like to dabble in Podcasts. Audacity is an open-source audio recording and editing program that can record high-quality audio with the highest bitrate.
It’s not only limited to podcasts, but you can also record high-quality audio for a video presentation as well.
Zoom is today what Skype was back then. It became popular due to its ease of use and intuitive operation. It has recently gained a lot of traction due to the rising remote work culture but in essence, it is a great tool for webinars or marketing demos.
Keyword In can help you create those long-form keywords that people use to initiate actions like ‘buy x phone’, ‘where is x location’, ‘how to x’, etc. Keyword In is very simple to use. You can select different match types, use modifiers, and input optional keywords.
Soolve is an old website that looks like an amateur project but actually is easy to use and fast. It has a weird UI, you can input words in the middle search bar and the suggested keywords show up all around the page. You can even check out top keywords, save suggestions, and even download the ones you want into a CSV file.
This tool can create permutations from custom keywords. The site looks very archaic but that does not take away from its utility. You can input keywords into 3 keyword list boxes and the one in the bottom displays the permuted results.
At this point, it should be clear that Google has really good resources and Google Trends is no exception. You can simply type into the search bar with any topics or keywords and get related articles and analytics. Monitoring tools are dime a dozen, but these might be worth your time.
BuzzSumo is another analytical tool that displays articles with social media engagement. You can type in words or keywords to look up a specific article’s Facebook & Reddit engagements, Twitter and Pinterest shares, number of links, and overall engagement.
Feedly organizes all your social media feeds into one place for easy management. It has an AI assistant that filters articles to your liking, share your insights with a team with complete privacy. There is also a mobile app that puts the entire experience on your phone.
Canva is really popular among social media users who’d like to design their custom banners and logos. You can design your own logos, posters, fonts, business cards, and even resumes and flyers. There is also a graph maker, photo editor, and mobile app making Canvas a one-stop-shop.
CoSchedule makes it easy for individuals as well as teams to interact with efficacy. You can incorporate your entire blog into CoSchedule to publish articles to all your social media routes right away. There is a great inbuilt feature that ranks your articles with the most engagement.
Sked Social is targeted towards Instagram users. With its content queue, you have captions, tags, and prepped photos at the ready. There are also features like a visual planner, social media calendar, advanced analytics, bulk posting, and much more.
TweetDeck is scheduling for twitter. You can manage multiple accounts from one spot and schedule content with one click.
This is the best course on blogging on Udemy right now. Being a bestseller, it has a 4.6 rating and over 20,000 students enrolled. You’ll learn to build a blog from scratch, discover your niche, develop a content strategy, create your email list, promotion strategies, etc.
If you’ve already started your content writing journey, then this one might be for you. This course has the nitty-gritty tactics to make your content viral with catchy headlines, persuasive copywriting, doing robust keyword research, improving your writing workflow, etc.
Copywriting simply means creating brand awareness, followed by a call to action. But there is a ton that goes behind the scenes. This course goes in-depth about how to create a good internet sales pitch. With over 30,000 students, this course is one of Udemy’s best.
Being motivated and bringing your best to every article is undeniably tough. You will have days when turning on the computer is going to feel like a chore. On times like these, you need a few tips/tricks to keep your mind on the job and where this course will guide you.
This is an email marketing software i.e. managing your email campaigns becomes way simpler. The way it works is that Constant Contact triggers your email, social media, and SEO all from one place. It has drag-n-drop functions, smart e-Commerce tools, analytics, ads, and much more.
SendinBlue holds an important place in everyone’s marketing toolbox. SendinBlue has SMS marketing and chat features along with the usual email marketing tools which set it apart from others. It also has tools to create facebook ads, signup forms, transactional emails, etc.
MailerLite offers a 14-day trial to all the premium features and also offers a demo to showcase its email campaign and automation tools. The pricing model is based on the number of subscribers you might have, for example, if you have 1-1000 followers, you get a free plan with a 12000 email limit.
But as you grow your user base, you will be charged accordingly, for example, if you get 1000-2500 followers then the price for unlimited emails is $15/month.
Benchmark is another tool to grow your audience with effective email campaign tools. Even the free plan offers unlimited contacts and 250 emails per month. The features include a drag-n-drop builder, HTML editor, photo editor, templates, A/B testing, RSS email, and much more.
If the name doesn’t hint at it, Campaigner is a powerful email marketing tool that could boost your email strategy with an intuitive visual builder, conditional workflows, conversion triggers, and behavioural triggers. You can also send customized messages to your customers with dynamic content to make an unique impact.
MailJet could be an essential for both marketers as well as developers. For marketers, you have a great email builder for creating engaging and responsive emails, contact management and track your analytical progress.
For developers, you get a custom email API, SMTP Relay, and full-fledged documentation to cover all the comprehensive information. If the above options don’t feel right then we have a few more options for you in our best email marketing list.
Typeform is a simple survey and questionnaire tool that lets you get insights into your demographic. Beyond your basic brand surveys like customer satisfaction and brand awareness, you can also create employee engagement surveys, employee satisfaction surveys, churn, etc.
Zoho Survey offers some unique tools for you to create a more customized survey form rather than just grab a template. Drag-n-drop tools like rating scale, dropdown choice, ranking, slider scale, multiple choice, etc. will provide you with detailed customer feedback.
Survey Planet has been preferred by some big name brands like Amazon.com, Oracle, etc. due to its simple and intuitive UI. You can get custom themes for your questionnaire, have a responsive layout, choose multiple languages, branching questions, and much more.
SurveyGizmo is a critically-acclaimed survey tool for all kinds of professionals. It is a paid service but the free account offers 3 surveys with unlimited questions so you can test it thoroughly.
Apart from surveys there are additional tools like risk assessment and employee experience to understand your business better.
If you’ve been messing around with surveys before, you know Google Forms. Google’s simplistic survey solution is very popular among bloggers. There’s no sign up or trial account required (unless you don’t have a google account), you simply go to the site and click on ‘New Survey’.
Google’s survey engine uses simple html transcription to convert questions into survey forms.
Kalium is a great-looking theme for all kinds of bloggers and writers. It features a page-builder, multiple portfolio items, coming soon/maintenance pages, SEO optimization, multi-lingual support, grid layout options and much more. The cost is $60 including all future updates.
Typology is by definition a minimalist theme for bloggers who like to prioritize content before anything. There are multiple page layouts available for your home screen and all the other items in your navbar. Plus, there’s also an e-Commerce store. The cost is $59 including updates.
CheerUp is more attuned for all the foodies out there writing delicious food blogs. Not only limited to food, CheerUp features templates for all lifestyle related content like travelling, fitness, fashion, beauty, etc. There are about 1000 variations inside every template and the cost is $59.
Webify offers all-in-one professional-looking themes for your business, blog, magazine, portfolio, etc. The templates are highly optimized and include smooth animations/transitions. There are native plugins available as well. The theme costs $59.
If you might’ve guessed by the name, food bloggers are a priority here. It might look simple but it is great for beginners looking to settle into blogging one step at a time. The best part? It’s free! If you’re looking for more options, we have a collection of the best WordPress themes.
Linguix is like Grammarly with more premium features but free. You can add the extension to your browser and get word suggestions, corrections, writing snippets, templates, etc. The Linguix website also has a grammar checker if you need instant help with grammar.
Beyond spelling and grammar correction, Grammarly also has a plagiarism checker. It utilizes ProQuest databases that can fetch information from millions of websites. You can also upload text files onto the site easily.
The site is true to the word. It is one of the most accurate fact-checking tools out there. The only con is that you can only check 1000 words at a time which could be a pain sometimes but the amount of accuracy it offers is hard to parallel. A must have tool for SEO enthusiasts.
A simple handy tool to make sure you are up to the best standards of internet writing. You can choose several languages and even choose between different dialects your text might have.
Pixabay is a great resource for free stock images. You can get an image quality from 800 pixels to up to 2K. Along with images, there are vector graphics, illustrations and videos available too.
Unsplash has a really good collection of high quality images with a good level of saturation. You can find a lot of images here that might be great for lifestyle and fashion blogs.
Pexels is another great website for people looking for royalty-free images. You can discover backgrounds, wallpapers, events, nature, food, people, and much more at top-notch quality.
StockSnap has an enormous library of some of the best stock photos out there. You can search by your specific category or you also discover something randomly. The only con is that some images wouldn’t be available and you’ll be redirected to shutterstock but it isn’t that big of a deal.
Exposure is a simple stock photo site that has some high quality images available to download without any hassle. With the search bar, you can simply type in a keyword that you’re working with and instantly get dozens of pictures relevant to your niche.
There’s a good chance you might’ve heard of Buffer by now. It is considered by many as the tool for authentic social engagement. Companies like Shopify, Huckberry, and Spotify have put faith into Buffer. It has a scheduler, post analytics, custom reports, instagram tagging, and much more.
AddThis offers a set of free tools for your website. These tools offer customizable share/follow buttons, link promotion, improve bounce rate, and email list building. AddThis also offers AMP for mobile readers and support for all CMS and e-Commerce tools. If tools don’t get you very far then check out these tips on promoting your blog.
MailChimp is another popular content distribution tool. It is a premium service but there is also a free account available that gives you basic templates, surveys, websites, 7 marketing channels, custom domains, marketing CRM, and easy automations.
If you have a spare budget, MailChimp could be worthwhile.
According to a few marketing statistics, nearly half of all businesses barely get by on social media marketing. Hence, Emma offers an email marketing venue to engage with your audience. There’s no free plan but the cheapest one gets you a drag-n-drop email editor, segmentation tools, lightbox signup forms, API access, built-in integrations and much more.
As the name goes, YoastSEO improves your website’s chances to rank higher. YoastSEO triggers traffic from Google and Bing as well. It offers faster page indexing, Google preview, flesch reading score, internal linking suggestions, redirect manager, and much more.
WPforms is a drag-n-drop form builder for WordPress. If you frequently conduct surveys, make newsletters, need a payment form or simply want a great-looking contact page then WPforms has over 100 templates to help you out. It is easy to use, mobile-responsive, and spam-protected.
Like WPforms, Beaver Builder will help you build entire WordPress pages. The templates are unparalleled by any other service, there’s also customer support, and complete control over your page content due to the division between page builder and the theme.
Affiliate programs are the best route to income for a blog. If you have a product that goes with your blog then getting it out there is what this plugin will do for you. You can track analytics from all your associated websites and monitor how many clicks were generated from each.
If you want more must-haves in our toolbox, then here a few handpicked ones.
AffJet is a performance monitor for all your affiliate links. AffJet centralizes all your affiliate networks in one dashboard so you don’t have to login to each one separately. You can prioritize which links require promotion, which ones you need to double-down on, and which ones procure commission.
Zeropark is for people who want to manage their own affiliate ad campaign. You can place your ads inside the top-rated apps, push notification ads, pop-ups, and full-page domain ads. Other than that, the campaign setup is fast, large inventory of tools, and optimization.
Believe it or not, Facebook is still relevant and it draws a lot of traffic everyday. MobileMonkey has a lot of tools geared towards Facebook but the best one is the Facebook Messenger ads. You can create a chatbot, drip campaigns, autoresponders, do giveaways, build an email list, and much more.
AdThrive improves the performance of ads on your website. It optimizes the ads through proper analytics that show which advertisers perform the best. You can also optimize video and display ads for monetization.
This is a WordPress plugin as well as a website that generates relevant titles for your choice of keyword. You can enter your keyword idea and select a category from the dropdown menu that best defines it.
Of what you might think of the name, FateJoe is a blog post headline generator that creates catchy titles with just one keyword. You can use the site for getting ideas for blogs or get inspiration for niche articles like howtos, listicles, and guides.
A simple tool by name, a lot of help when put to use. Title Generator can come up with over 700 words for not only articles but email headers, list-type articles, ad campaigns, and much more.
HubSpot has a fantastic blog idea generator that simply works on nouns. Just enter any viable noun that would define your article and the site’s algorithm will fish out all the related titles/ideas that you could use.
Have a lot of tabs that keep hogging space on your screen? Tab Wrangler lets you close all the tabs that aren’t your priority at the moment but let’s you have them right when you need. It is also worth having to save space on your RAM.
It is very easy to lose time on the internet. You could start with something important and still end up checking Facebook. StayFocusd does what it says. It lets you restrict and allot time to specific websites so that you can get out of your own way.
BuzzSumo’s chrome extension is a minimized version of the website. It provides instant engagement statistics for any page that you’re viewing. It includes Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit shares, as well as page actions like viewing backlinks and page authors.
MozBar gives you instant site metrics without leaving your browser window. You can use it with Google and check all the link metrics and data on each individual website. The link analysis feature lets you further learn about a website.
Maybe you really like a website and want to know who it belongs to, maybe a website violated some internet guidelines and you would like to report them, in that case this tool would let you know about a website’s ownership details.
In a lot of cases, you won’t need the PRO version but if you can get it, Kraken’s Image Optimizer is the best out of all. Regardless, the free version offers 3 optimization settings from lossy to expert, supports extracting images from a zip file, Google drive, Box, and Dropbox.
PNGGauntlet isn’t an online tool. It is a program that needs to be downloaded but the upside is that it is much faster, there is no limit on files, claims to only shed weight rather than quality, and converts JPG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP files to PNG.
TInyPNG is geared towards developers and WordPress users that need a quick-to-use tool at hand. Which is why there aren’t any fancy settings to tweak. You just simply upload your .jpg or .png files, get the output and get on with your work. It utilizes a lossless algorithm that maintains the quality as much as possible.
Yet another simple tool to have in your toolset. Just click on ‘Choose file’ and upload the image you want to compress. It claims to shrink about 80% of the original bulk file size.
Many professional video editors have left Premiere Pro for Davinci Resolve. Why? Davinci has a multi-layered intuitive interface, intelligent modes, seamless media import, facial recognition, not to forget much lighter on your cpu. The best part? It’s totally free!
Lightworks is another free alternative but don’t let the word free be misunderstood. This is an industry-level software that has been used on productions such as The Wolf of the Wall Street, Pulp Fiction, Hugo, etc. It has its own unique editing workflow that even supports 4K.
If you have an underpowered PC and have minimum editing requirements then ShotCut is your answer. It is probably the easiest to use video editor, but has some pro features that are worth checking out.
Okay so blender isn’t exactly a video editor. It is a full-fledged 3D modelling and animation software but it does have import and editing capabilities. If you can push through the initial learning curve, blender could be your best tool for editing.
Every cat video you’ve ever seen might’ve ended up here. The amount of people that frequent it daily, proves that TV has certainly been surpassed in entertainment. The interface is straight forward. It has advanced editing controls post-publishing and live-streaming features.
Vimeo is pretty much the next best thing to Youtube. A lot of people end up here due to Youtube’s rigid copyright laws. Hence, Vimeo offers more freedom in terms of social media sharing, its video editing tools are much advanced than Youtube’s, and there are collaborative tools as well.
BitChute is fairly new and yet another attempt at rivaling Youtube. The main motive behind its creation was to out-live Youtube’s frequent changes in user policy. It also appears to be a Youtube clone but completely ad-free and seems to be steadily growing in popularity.
If Youtube is a hamburger and Vimeo is like french fries, then Dailymotion is pretty much like tacos. It is much less regulated but it is the platform for marketing people who want to get their video up and going quickly. If dailymotion isn’t your thing then you should check out these video hosting sites.
On the internet, there can be no shortage of tools to explore and find. We dug up a good amount to try and found the best tools/resources that are sure to grow your website and traffic.
Got ‘em all? Good.
Now there is only one thing left to do: Go and put them to good use.
If you found this article helpful or have any thoughts that you’d like to share or have any insights on any of the tools mentioned above then do leave a comment down below and let us know.
Think it’s easy to figure out? Squarespace pricing has 4 plans, each comes with a set of features that you may or may not require in your website.
You want a website that looks amazing, but doesn’t take too much technical skill on your part to create and manage.
A website builder sounds like the right thing for you, and of them, Squarespace is looking pretty good.
But while Squarespace emphasizes itself as an all-in-one, easy solution, are things really that simple?
Is it too good to be true?
Don’t worry, friend. In this article, I’ll dive deep into it.
You’ll get to find out how simple the pricing is, where the hidden expenses may come from, and ultimately what Squarespace REALLY costs and what it means for you.
Sound good?
Cool. Let’s start with an overview of the pricing plans themselves:
Squarespace has four pricing plans, or tiers. They have names, but I’ll mostly refer to them in this article as their placement on the tier list (ie., “first tier”).
The best way to explain is to just show you how Squarespace presents them:
Note that this is not a full list of features—just the basics.
Now, just to clear something up before we go on with the rest of the article:
Those prices assume you pay annually. The “per month” price is a bit misleading in that sense. If you pay month-to-month, these are the prices:
Now that you’ve got a sense of the basic pricing structure, let’s get into some of the details:
One of the biggest selling points for most website builders, including Squarespace, is that they provide most of what you need out of the box.
But does that mean that the price you pay is also simple?
In general, yes.
Technically speaking, this is all that Squarespace costs alone, bare minimum:
But realistically speaking, there are other expenses you may make that increase your total.
These may come from third parties, and apply to site-builders in general, not just Squarespace specifically.
It varies greatly person-to-person, but the REAL cost of running your site on Squarespace may amount to something like this:
I’ll get more into these additional costs later, but the short version is that your Squarespace site may, at BEST, only cost your payment plan’s figures.
But more likely, it will bring additional charges after the first year, and you will spend more money on additional tools to boost your experience.
Let’s take this step by step:
Do you need ecommerce features? In other words, the ability for visitors to purchase things from your site.
If not, the first tier should be fine for you.
If you DO need ecommerce features, any of the latter three tiers would be good.
But for choosing among those last three tiers, the difference mostly comes down to how many commerce-related features you want.
For example, while the second tier has basic ecommerce, the third tier has a lot of good stuff too:
For example, a point-of-sale app that lets you sell in-person; accounts for customers; better analytics and merchandising; and secure checkout on your own domain.
The third tier is good for those who don’t need to go all-out in their ecommerce features, but would like to get just those handful of extra ecommerce features I mentioned above.
If you want more than what the third tier offers by default, but you don’t want to fully upgrade to the fourth (and final) tier, don’t worry!
You can add extensions as needed to your account, particularly at the Basic Commerce tier.
But if you want the full list of features, this is what the final pricing plan would get you, that you CAN’T get on the previous tiers:
Things like abandoned cart recovery (which automatically emails customers who abandoned their checkout process partway through), subscriptions, etc—these are powerful features.
Now, with ecommerce needs covered, let’s rewind:
Suppose you DON’T have interest in running an online store, but you’re still looking for more than what the first tier offers.
If that’s you, you might wonder if there’s a good reason to upgrade.
While most of the extra features between tiers are related to commerce, it might be worth upgrading to the second tier for the following:
These are good simply for having a more professional and robust site, even if you don’t plan on selling things.
So those features would be the other reason for a person to upgrade tiers, ASIDE from commerce.
I briefly listed some of these in the section on how much Squarespace costs, but let’s talk about them in a little bit more detail.
I’ve said it before, but if you use G Suite through Squarespace (“professional email”), it costs extra.
In short: if you’re on the entry-level pricing plan, you have to pay for it right off the bat.
If you’re on any of the higher pricing plans, you get G Suite free for a year, but pay for it afterwards.
So that’s one cost that appears to be free but isn’t.
I also mentioned their email marketing feature earlier.
The email marketing feature is useful, especially if you like that Squarespace is an all-in-one solution.
But it’s definitely NOT free. It even has its own pricing plan:
So those prices are what you’d pay for built-in email marketing (annually—there are monthly prices as well).
However, you can still use a third party email marketing software integrated with Squarespace.
You’ll have to double-check the extensions available, but at least Mailchimp is available as a premium integration.
On that note, you will also need to pay for integrations/extensions if you want to use them.
As these are tools from third parties, they each have their own pricing plans. Some may be free, or have a freemium model (a limited free first tier but mostly paid features).
It’s pretty common for website builders and online store builders (like Wix and Shopify) to also integrate with popular third party apps.
HOWEVER, total site costs can quickly rise when adding extensions, so it’s important to be mindful of them.
And lastly, the domain name:
If you pay for Squarespace with annual, up-front payments, then you get a free domain regardless of which tier you have.
BUT, it’s only free for the first year. After that first year, it will renew at the “regular rate”—this is about the rate you’d pay if you purchased it normally through Squarespace.
It’s also what you’ll pay if you register a domain on Squarespace while paying monthly.
The regular rate varies. But generally, it’ll be at least $20:
To be honest with you, this is more expensive than what most domain registrars charge.
But Squarespace is offering good domain name features, plus ease of use—so the calculation may be worth it for many of you anyway.
Anyway, those are the “hidden costs.” To be fair, Squarespace is forthcoming about them. But they are still frequently overlooked by people.
To compare Squarespace with competitors, let me quickly explain how these companies compete.
Squarespace is a website builder that features ecommerce features.
Ecommerce is a very important component of Squarespace, but it’s still an all-in-one solution for website management in GENERAL.
Wix is very similar to this. It’s an all-around website builder that features ecommerce features prominently, but is still an all-in-one solution.
Then there’s Shopify. Shopify is specifically a builder for online stores. It’s also an all-in-one solution, but for ecommerce.
They are all very similar in their focus on design, ease of use, and being generally great out-of-the-box platforms.
Wix’s pricing plans look like this:
The main differentiator between tiers here, are the levels of storage, and extra apps or features.
Wix also has another set of tiers just for ecommerce sites:
In this sense, Wix has more complicated pricing than Squarespace.
However, Wix’s pricing for its four regular tiers is super similar to Squarespace’s.
The difference is that Squarespace’s last 3 tiers include the features that Wix has in its special ecommerce tiers. And, Squarespace doesn’t limit storage at any tier.
So overall, Squarespace is more generous with pairing features to price than Wix.
You can check out this full comparison I wrote about them here if you want to learn more.
Now, Shopify is simpler in its pricing than Wix, and even Squarespace, because it’s more focused:
With Shopify, the default is to pay monthly. However, you can lower the prices shown above by paying annually or by paying for two years (which discount 10% and 20%, respectively).
Even when you compare these to Squarespace’s month-to-month payments, Squarespace is significantly cheaper.
Squarespace STARTS at $16 a month ($12 a month if paid annually), which is just over half of where Shopify starts.
And Squarespace’s HIGHEST tier doesn’t even come close to Shopify’s MIDDLE tier.
Okay, I’ll be fair to Shopify:
Shopify is zeroing in on ecommerce features more than Squarespace. The basics are the same, but Shopify does have some extra features:
For example, Shopify is stronger in shipping features and extensions, and offers abandoned cart recovery for its first tier, compared to Squarespace only offering that tool for its last tier.
To sum up: if you just need the big tools of ecommerce with your all-in-one site builder, Squarespace is cheaper than Shopify.
And if you want a store with great design, Squarespace may also be better.
If you’re trying to go all-in on ecommerce features, however, Shopify may be a better investment.
For more on Shopify and Squarespace, check out this deep dive comparison.
Now, there is one other competitor I didn’t mention above, because it’s a beast of its own: WordPress and WooCommerce.
Basically, WordPress is a content management system, or CMS. It’s categorically different from Shopify or Wix, at least for most people.
WooCommerce is a mega-popular ecommerce plugin for WordPress.
WordPress is more expensive than a site builder in some ways, but it features less of a built-in easy design component, and customization tools are more dependent on the themes used.
Here’s the simplest outline of how WordPress sites add costs:
Do you see how complicated that all is? WordPress in general involves more moving parts, even with the simplified commercial version.
So a WordPress site CAN be cheaper than Squarespace, if you go out of your way to prioritize your costs only. But WordPress sites frequently run into the hundreds or even thousands.
So the price range is much more variable, and WordPress itself is more complicated (at least the free version is).
The honest answer here, is that it doesn’t actually matter TOO much.
Registering a domain through Squarespace is fine if you don’t want too much hassle. It’s also nice to not have to pay for the first year (assuming you’re paying yearly).
However, that renewal price is likely going to be upwards of $20.
Personally, I find it more flexible to use separate registrars: it’s easier to switch the platforms I use to manage my site by simply disconnecting or reconnecting my domains.
Additionally, it’s easier to ensure your domain renews at a lower cost when using a registrar.
While it’s not too difficult to connect a domain to any platform, it IS an extra task many would prefer to avoid, however.
Firstly, it’s not that much more expensive. Web hosting plans look cheap at first, but often renew at significantly higher prices after a year.
Many also have add-ons that renew at cost, like Squarespace. Plus, the low price you see is often only low if you commit to two or more years, so it’s pricey up-front and less flexible.
Secondly, ease of use costs money. If you scroll up again, you’ll find that Squarespace isn’t really pricier than its site builder rivals.
Thirdly: Squarespace’s ease of use overlaps with its focus on design. Web hosting focuses less on the design aspect of building a site and more the technical side.
Fourthly, Squarespace doesn’t limit your resources the way traditional web hosting does.
Squarespace has a 14-day free trial.
Meaning, INSTEAD of paying for a plan first and then requesting a refund within a certain period of time, you just make an account for free and start using the service.
You won’t be asked to register your payment info at all, until your free trial expires and you decide to pay for the service for good.
Let’s wrap this up, folks.
Overall, Squarespace pricing is pretty good. There are a few negative points about it, however, mainly in the form of extra costs after the first year.
Even if you just use the pricing plan without third party extensions, domains and G Suite will renew at cost after being free for a year.
Additionally, accessing a larger range of ecommerce tools involves paying extra for Squarespace’s email marketing toolset and/or paying for third party extensions.
However, when we compare Squarespace to its competitors, we can see that it’s not so bad:
Squarespace is more generous with its storage and ecommerce tools than its primary competitors, while still retaining overall low prices.
Furthermore, paying for third party extensions on a site-builder is nothing unique to Squarespace: it’s equally common on Wix, Shopify, WordPress, and others.
So looking at things holistically, Squarespace is still offering a great deal for the price!
But you don’t need to take my word for it if you’re not convinced.
Just try out Squarespace yourself to find out—it’s free anyway!
Today we are going to review WebHostUK.
But let us present you some context:
Regardless of what most people would say, selecting a hosting service is very easy. Just google the term ‘Best Hosting’ and you will get a million results on what could be your favourable choice with the best price & features.
But we know that you’re here because you don’t like your choices to be dependent on a single google search. People like to do their well share of research before making a final decision, especially in Britain where people do expect low prices but not at the expense of ethics.
Therefore, when we first heard of WebHostUK, we couldn’t get ourselves around the name because it sounded too typical. But then we got around the website & do have a few words to share.
Accuweb is one hosting service that looks quite bloated at first with how its website looks.
But as things went deeper, things were certainly a bit more simple.
The main thing to learn is that Accuweb is rich in variety.
You get a LOT of options from a service THIS unknown.
Well, a lot of them could just be from resellers.
How could you know?
Nobody can go through the trip of trying everything out so how do you know?
Well, we took the duty of trying out a very marginal part of Accuweb to give you a brief look at it.
So here’s our Accuweb Review for your consideration.
Accuweb Hosting offers plans from $3 to $11.
The cost relies upon which sort of hosting plan you need or require based on your initial idea and you can see the refreshed evaluating table (refreshed week by week) underneath.
AccuWeb Hosting’s plans carry a lot of punch in a small package:
To put it plainly, they have basically any feature bundle you might actually require, and their plans can be tweaked for whatever stage your business is in right now.
AccuWeb guarantees care-free cancellation of service, and there’s a money-back guarantee (not counting the cost of Plesk).
You’ll in any case need to present a help ticket in the event that you need to redesign or minimize your current plan, however, as there’s no alternative to do it straightforwardly from your admin platform.
Do take note that Premium Windows VPS plans can’t be redesigned or downsized in light of how the groups are coordinated, and HyperV VPS plans can’t be minimized.
They’ve decided to separate their plans from the group by offering a liberal measure of unadulterated SSD stockpiling with each plan.
Additionally, they accompany an SSL certificate, free day-by-day reinforcements, and the LiteSpeedWebServer to guarantee quick page stacking speeds.
Record the board is clear with the included cPanel establishment (SolidCP or Plesk for VPS hosting plans).
You can introduce more than 300 applications in a single tick with the assistance of Softaculous, and you can even have their group introduce the applications for your endless supply of a hosting bundle.
Their uptime rating is superb, with a 99.9% uptime for sure.
AccuWeb Hosting’s VPS plans are profoundly configurable, which clarifies why they’re a mainstream decision for clients on the lookout for VPS hosting.
Their Windows VPS hosting plans are especially appealing since there is no additional expense on the off chance that you pick a Windows permit rather than a Linux establishment.
Their common hosting plans aren’t excessively decrepit, by the same token.
Curiously, they give free hosting to PC and frameworks designing understudies, however, there are a couple of measures that should be satisfied before understudies are qualified.
The free understudy hosting bundle is completely highlighted and even accompanies 25 email accounts.
AccuWeb Hosting gives nonstop help through live chat support, email, phone, a broad information base, and surprisingly a blog with short articles clarifying the different specialized components of hosting.
At the point when I tried their live chat, I was connected with a help specialist in less than 30 seconds. He was personal and informative, responding to all my technical inquiries easily.
Our recommendation with AccuWeb Hosting is, to begin with, a less expensive arrangement.
You can generally expand later on.
Accuweb Hosting can assist you with the movement to a more costly plan.
The increment in guests commonly takes longer than anticipated and you shouldn’t pay a ton of cash until the need emerges.
Obviously, your necessities may fluctuate, but if you do make up your mind about AccuWeb Hosting, you know where to go.
Accuweb’s customer support isn’t positioned as one of our top web hosts.
In any case, that can likewise be a consequence of Accuweb Hosting being a little, under the radar, hosting supplier.
There are benefits to a little hosting organization – as a client, you are more imperative to them.
As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments down below.
Looking for FREE VPS? You are at the right place.
But first, listen to this:
A VPS (Virtual Private Server) offers you the sweet spot between shared web hosting and dedicated hosting.
Over the past couple of years, VPS hosting has gained a lot of momentum and many web hosts have now started offering free VPS hosting.
We conducted extensive research and compiled this list of free and paid VPS hosting providers.
When you search about CMS-Hosting hybrid services, you would often come across something like WordPress or Joomla Hosting.
Joomla is yet another choice of open source content management system to publish web content. It is considered as the second most used CMS after WordPress.
Joomla was first launched on 17th August 2005 and is written in PHP.
To its credit, Joomla supports over 8000 free and commercial extensions.
