When you are launching a new website or blog, you need to have a great theme. Not just any old theme either. It should reflect how you want your website to be perceived. It should also be responsive so it looks great on all mobile devices. Also SEO-friendly, blazing fast, up to good coding practices, and ad-ready.
Below I have highlighted the 5 of the best responsive themes for 2020. These themes are all responsive, clean and attractive, and ready to go out of the box. They are fast, coded well, and ready for your search engine optimization efforts.
1. Schema
Schema is one of the popular WordPress themes that integrates because of its integration with the Elementor page builder. It is ultra-SEO friendly because of how it utilizes the various rich snippets available. It is HTML5 and CSS3 ready, and loads quickly. Perfect for blogs and magazine style sites. Very customizable with lots of shortcodes and useful widgets.
The Digital theme is a premium WordPress workhorse. It is very clean and modern looking. It comes with 2 header layouts that 9 different body layouts that will get you the look of popular websites that you want quickly. It is a very fluid responsive theme giving your viewers a unified experience between desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. It is SEO-friendly, AdSense optimized, and coded for speed.
The Clean theme was designed for website owners that want a clutter free looking site or blog. It is very elegant and minimalistic in its design. Because it is very customizable, it can be used for a website or blog in any niche or industry. Because of its responsive design, it looks great on all devices, including its 4 pre-built sliders that are great for highlighting your most important content.
The Local Citation theme was built with local businesses, corporate websites, and enterprise entities in mind. It is very unique and elegant with a striking color scheme. It is one of the fastest loading WordPress themes out there. It also comes with easy to implement rich snippets for your SEO, and fluid responsive for any device that your visitors are using to access your site.
The Scribbler theme was designed for bloggers to quickly make the website their own. It comes with multiple headers and blog layouts. It was made to let you quickly change how your content is being displayed. It is also speed optimized, AdSense ready, and works amazingly well with Gutenberg and Elementor. It has advanced typography options that can be changed with a few clicks with all Google fonts. Translation friendly so you can write in any language.
I hope you enjoy checking out these top 5 responsive website and WordPress themes. After building websites since 2002, I know how frustrating it can be to make your theme look exactly how you want. Not only are these themes clean, responsive, and fast; but they are also very easy to customize.
So you are wanting to build your very first website, but you aren’t sure where to find the best web hosting for beginners?
No problem, I know exactly how you feel. I remember when I built my very first website. It was clear back in 2002! I was so excited to get something online. I had spent months learning HTML and was tired of not having a website of my own.
While I was so excited inside, I was also totally petrified. I had no idea what web hosting really was, how to set it up, and how to keep it going without getting hacked and things like that. Plus, I did have a lot of money at the time, I was working my way through college.
Sound familiar?
Well guess what…if you feel that way, it is TOTALLY normal. When you are a beginner, taking the first steps can often be the hardest.
When you are launching a website for the first time, there are only two things that count:
Easy
Affordable (cheap)
The tricky thing is that not everything that’s easy is cheap, and not everything that is cheap is easy (or worth your valuable time.) It’s a good thing that you found this web hosting review, because I am going to help you find the middle ground.
How can I do this for you?
Well, it’s simple. I have built or supported hundreds of websites over the last 18 year. For myself, clients, and friends/family. I have seen so many web hosting companies, and dealt with their support. I am also a seasoned IT Professional, and have helped support a data center with over 1,000 servers running in it.
Even more importantly though, to make open and honest web hosting reviews, I setup a WordPress site of my own on 10 of the most popular web hosting companies so I can see how they really operate. I keep track of how fast they are, how often they go down, how good their support is, etc.
Based on everything I have seen and heard, here are the Top 3 Web Hosting Plans for Beginners:
Affordable plans with knowledgeable support and easy-to-use site builder – starting at $0.99/month
Hostinger is the best place to start for beginners. Their basic plan starts for less than a dollar a month! It comes with plenty of bandwidth and disk space for a new website.
Their drag and drop website builder is a great way to get to get a site up and going. They also have an incrediable one-click WordPress installer that I used to get our WordPress site up in less than 10 minutes. All their plans all full-featured with everything you need.
One of the things I like about Hostinger the most is that they are an new and innovative player in the web hosting space. Their control panels are modern looking and very easy-to-use compared to others I have tried. It really makes life running a website so much easier.
Their support is top-notch and available via chat 24/7/365. I asked them a very technical question once and got an answer back within moments of sending it over to them. It was very impressive. Some of the other web hosting companies I have tried had to scramble for the answer, or not even answer at all. Ouch!
All Hostinger plans come with a free SSL certificate, which is very important for trust with your website visitors, and ranking in Google/Bing as well. Their servers are very quick, too. In our ongoing testing of Hostinger, I am getting 1,610 ms page load speed and 99.78% average uptime.
Long term, I recommend getting the Business plan with Hostinger. With this plan you get more features like unlimited websites and email addresses, faster CPU/RAM resources, a free domain registration, and daily automated backups (very important).
Pros
Free SSL on all plans
99.9% uptime guarantee
SSD hard drives on all plans
Best in class control panel
Cons
No phone support
Free domain registration only available on upgraded plans
Long-term track record and officially recommended by WordPress – starting at $3.95/month
Bluehost is the best overall web hosting company that I have tested and compared for features. They don’t offer prices as low as Hostinger, but out of the gate you are going to get a lot more.
Bluehost has gone out their way to make the WordPress experience easy and pain-free. This makes a lot of sense since WordPress is by far the most popular website platform, and one I highly recommend. Their one-click installer is very well thought out and works flawlessly.
Once you have WordPress installed, it is very easy to manage from the Bluehost control panel. It is also very easy to manage other aspects of your account like billing, email addresses, etc. Once you are familiar with managing your website, you can get deep into the management with the ever classic cPanel administration was well.
If WordPress isn’t quite your cup of tea, they also have a really great website builder. It is drag and drop and comes with a lot of different themes. Anyone can quickly find the colors and look/feel to match their niche or industry they are trying to serve with their website.
Bluehost has been around for a long time, and does have an official recommendation from WordPress. A large part of their success is due to the quality of their support. Their data centers are world class and servers are very fast. Our testing site on Bluehost is getting 1,216 ms page load speed and 99.95% average uptime.
All their plans come with a free SSL certificate that is easy to install, and a free domain registration. All plans also come with unmetered bandwidth and fast SSD storage. I recommend their Choice Plus plan because it comes with unlimited storage and automated backups using the CodeGuard tool.
Emphasis on support and performance – starting at $0.99 for 3 months
SiteGround is a another web hosting company that is officially recommended by WordPress. They try to stand out of the crowd by placing extra emphasis on high-quality support and high performing web servers. They also charge a premium for it. They are one of the more expensive providers, so you have to weigh which is a more important benefit to you. Price vs. support.
SiteGround has a very extensive knowledge base with thousands of articles about hosting a website, and about WordPress. They are very thorough and up to date. They also tout their “no hold time” support line where you can get support over the phone. They also tend to help with WordPress specific questions than other web hosting companies.
They have developed software solutions that are supposed to make their hosting faster than others. However, this hasn’t really shown to be the case in our testing. They haven’t shown to be a stand out as far as speed goes. Our testing site gets 993 ms page load speed and 99.98% average uptime.
SiteGround has a very nice control panel, but it hasn’t been updated in awhile and can be a bit tricky to navigate. They offer you cPanel administration, and it was very easy to get a WordPress website installed on their platform.
I like how every plan comes with free SSL certificates and daily backups. These are both very important to running a successful website, and often get overlooked by beginners. All plans offer unmetered bandwidth and their basic plan offers enough resources for approx. 10,000 visitors per month.
Overall, SiteGround is a solid web hosting company. They are a bit more expensive, but they offer the additional support offerings. Perfect for someone who is looking for more guidance in their journey and is willing to pay extra for the benefit.
Breaking News: Starting in April 2020, SiteGround is no offering three months of their StartUp package for only $0.99. They are making this offer to help people get online during the COVID-19 challenges.
Pros
Affordable COVID-19 introductory price
Excellent customer support
Extensive online tutorials
Fast SSD storage and servers
Cons
Few unlimited options – such as storage, etc.
More expensive than others
Final Verdict – Which One is the Best Web Hosting for Beginners
All three of the web hosting companies listed above are fantastic web hosts for beginners. They all meet both criteria that are important for someone just starting with their website. Easy and affordable.
Deciding which one out of these three really depends on you. People’s preferences for features, levels of support, and their budgets will always widely vary.
So, to help you in your final decision, here is a quick summary of which type of beginners each of these web hosting providers is best for:
Hostinger is the best for someone who wants a cheap and stable web hosting platform.
Bluehost is best for someone who wants to build a WordPress site easily out of the box.
SiteGround is ideal for a beginner who wants to pickup the phone whenever they have a question and is willing to pay extra.
Overall, Hostinger and Bluehost are the two best web hosting providers that I recommend for beginners. They are have great prices, their support is top-notch, and they will give you everything you need to get your website started as soon as you sign up.
Thank you for taking time to read our review. If you have any questions or comments, then don’t please leave a comment below.
Most site proprietors are losing cash if their site is down or individuals leave since it is moderate. At an absolute minimum a web facilitating supplier ought to have the option to give 99.95% uptime and burden pages in under 1 second.
We are playing out a running month to month trial of Hostinger’s speed and unwavering quality with a straightforward WordPress site as a testing guide. Here is a connect to that site:
So far the uptime has been a bit disappointing, the speed however is exceptionally fast. Below is a breakdown of the performance.
July 2019 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 881 ms Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.90% average load speed: 823 ms Sep 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 858 ms Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,199 ms Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 1,526 ms Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 736 ms Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 775 ms Feb 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 838 ms Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 882 ms Apr 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 800 ms May 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 789 ms June 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 873 ms July 2020 average uptime: 99.55% average load speed: 2,537 ms Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.07% average load speed: 3,383 ms Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.85% average load speed: 3,099 ms Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.83% average load speed: 3,661 ms Nov 2020 average uptime: 98.22% average load speed: 1,929 ms Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 868 ms Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,630 ms Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 2,455 ms Mar 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 2,535 ms April 2021 average uptime: 99.75% average load speed: 2,393 ms May 2021 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,583 ms June 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 850 ms July 2021 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 818 ms
Statistics from custom Pingdom health checks
Quality of Support
I like the assortment of choices that Hostinger offers to get help. Their online Knowledge Base is very inside and out and simple to utilize. To get to a help operator, you can utilize their visit, call toll-free, or open a help ticket.
The quickest way for me to judge the quality of support is to connect to their agents via chat and ask a simple question that most data center operators should know off the top of their head:
“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”
To start off the UI is very impressive and allows you to surf the Knowledge Base while you wait.
Right off the bat it took me thirteen minutes to connect to an agent. Agent Tautvydas took two minutes to partially answer my question.
Then another four minutes to refer back to the knowledge base. At that point I decided to thank the agent and not waste anymore time.
Keep in mind this web hosting company is very cheap, so you almost get what you pay for. The agent did not answer the questions all the way. But to be fair the Knowledge Base was impressive so was the UI.
Affordability
Hostinger is probably the cheapest web hosting compaines out there, $.99 a month, keep in mind you still need to pay $8.99 per year for a domain, as the cheap option does not come with a free one.
This a good value considering all the freebies.
Just remember these prices are for 4 years of service upfront. The prices are a bit higher for 12 months. In fact you have the option for four years, two years, one year and month to month.
Remember these costs are limited time early on offers and the do offer a thirty day return on all buys.
Here is a copy of my receipt for one year:
Available Plans, Pricing, and Details
Single Plan
The SinglePlan from Hostinger starts at $.99/month. This is a great plan as it comes with almost everything you need to start a site. Keep in mind you will have to pay for a domain name. You can register a domain with Hostinger for $8.99/year or use your own domain registrar.
Premium Plan and Business Plan
The Premuim Plan and Business Plan, both come with free domain registration, and unlimited MySQL Databases.
The main difference between the Premium Plan and the Business Plan, is the free SSL certificate, and daily backups on the Business Plan. Otherwise it just scales up in terms of space and speed.
Business Plan
The Business Plan starts at $4.09 a month. This has the same features as the Single Plan and Premium Plan with the free business email accounts, Easy Website Builder, 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, 24/7/365 Support and Powerful Control Panel.
The biggest advantage is that you will be given more memory and processing power as other sites they host.
The biggest advantage is that you will be given more memory and processing power as other sites they host.
Plan Feature Comparison
Plan Features
Includes Domain: Not with the Single Plan, this costs $8.99 for a domain per year.
Easy Setup Process: Complete an easy two-page registration form. The form will also give you the option to install WordPress at the same time.
Admin Dashboard Experience: Control panel is very clean and easy-to-use. Uses cPanel for site administration.
3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Mojo Marketplace for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.
Other Plans
Hostinger offers VPS Hosting and Cloud hosting.
Do We Recommend Hostinger?
Yes we do recommend Hostinger as your hosting provider. Right out of the gate they do offer some decent features for a beginner.
Right away the $.99/mo is great considering all the things that come with it: 00GB bandwidth, 10GB storage, website builder, and 1 email account. Not to mention the free Domain for a year and one free site transfer.
However the $.99/mo has to be locked in for 48 months, and it renews at $7.99/mo. Another thing to mention is that Hostinger does not have cPanel. They have their own version which is actually easier to use. If you are accustomed to using cPanel you might find it a bit distressing.
