If you are starting a new blog in Kenya, you need a cheap and reliable web hosting company. You also require a company you can stick with for a long time without transferring to another hosting firm.
What exactly do you consider before deciding whether a particular hosting company is good or bad? Well, you need to look at the following factors:
- SSL Certificate (security of your website)
- Customer support
- Uptime
- Loading speed of a site
- Refund Policy
- Hosting costs
- Types of hosting available
- Resources available
A good web hosting company should be cheap. In fact, the average price of hosting a new blog in Kenya should not exceed Ksh 2,500 per year. In addition, the company should provide efficient customer support. To know whether your hosting provider has good customer support, visit their social media pages and see how they respond to clients. Alternatively, contact them via Live Chat and get to know their response rate and tone.
The ideal hosting company should also have 30-day money back guarantee. This feature allows you to apply for a refund in case you feel that the company does not offer good services. If the company doesn’t have this feature, don’t buy their services.
Since the blog is new, the hosting company should provide SSL certificate. A blog can be hacked any time, when SSL certificate is installed, it protects the site from being hacked or infected with viruses and malware.
Finally, you should know the amount of resources allocated for every plan. Some companies allocate so little such that when a site starts growing, it gets suspended because it exceeds the allocated resources. A good hosting company will not suspend a site, it instead upscale the resources to accommodate the unexpected audience.
A new site does not need a lot of resources. Dedicated Server and VPS are some of the plans you should ignore because they aren’t relevant for new and small sites. The best plan for a new blog is shared hosting. Below we give a list of best shared hosting plans for new blogs created in Kenya.
- Kenya Website Experts
Kenya Website Experts is the most popular web hosting company. It offers various categories of hosting .However, the best ones are shared hosting plans. There are 4 types of shared hosting plans: Starter, Standard, Bronze and Gold. The cheapest plan is Starter which costs Ksh 2,100 per year, this is the best one for new blogs. To start hosting, click on this link to visit Kenya Website Expert’s website. Create a free account and choose the plan.
Payment is made via MPESA after you have selected the plan and generated an invoice.
Later one when your blog grows, you can upgrade to more advanced plans within the company(see more plans here)
- Among the best features for shared hosting plan are:
- Enough bandwidth for a new website(300GB-unlimited)
- Enough disk space(30GB-Unlimited)
- Free SSL Certificate
- cPanel account
- 30-day money back guarantee
- Enough memory capacity(500MB)
- Unlimited email accounts
- 24/7 customer support
You will certainly enjoy the services offered by the company.
- HostPinnacle
HostPinnacle is cheap, reliable and excellent in terms of services. You won’t regret after joining them. The company registers domains for new blogs, it offers hosting services as well as web design services. To host a new website at HostPinnacle, you require as little as Ksh 1,500 per year. HostPinnacle is cheaper than Kenya Website Experts but their services are equally the same as those offered by giant hosting companies like Kinsta.
There are three main plans suitable for new blogs, Starter, Standard and Executive. HostPinnacle recommends Standard plan but I would advise you to start with starter plan that costs Ksh1,500 per year. To start hosting,visit HostPinnacle website via this link and create a new account.
You will be guaranteed 99.99% uptime, free SSL certificate, free daily backups, unlimited number of websites to be hosted under one plan, free domain registration and unlimited bandwidth.HostPinnacle is simply the best.Create a free account here and start hosting
- Safaricom Web Hosting
Safaricom is an ideal web hosting company for new blogs in Kenya. The best thing about them is that they have their own servers.
There are five plans provided by Safaricom, they include:
- Lite
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Premium
For a new blog, Lite plan is the best and it costs Ksh 1,300 per year for .co.ke domains and Ksh999 per year for .com domains. As your blog grows, you will be able to upgrade to Bronze, Silver, Gold and finally Premium.Safaricom hosting works best for small and medium websites—if you anticipate traffic between 1,000 and 500,000, the company will provide the best services for you.
- Skyhost
Skyhost is also a popular web hosting company for new bloggers. It has an array of hosting services, including web design and SEO services. Their basic/shared hosting plans are the best. We shall list all the three plans alongside their features for you to choose the best.If you want to register a new blog,go for Bronze plan that costs Ksh 2,499 per year(click here to see all the plans)
Here are the plans for shared hosting at Skyhost:
| BRONZE | SILVER | PLATINUM |
| Ksh2,499 per year | Ksh5,499 per year | Ksh10,499 per year |
| Unlimited Email Hosting | Unlimited Email Hosting | Unlimited Email Hosting |
| 2GB RAM | 4GB RAM | 4GB RAM |
| 35GB Cloud Storage | 50GB Cloud Storage | 100GB Cloud Storage |
| 350 GB Bandwidth Per Month | 500 GB Bandwidth Per Month | 1TB Bandwidth Per Month |
| Free SSL Certificate | Free SSL Certificate | Free SSL Certificate |
| 24/7 Phone Support | 24/7 Phone Support | 24/7 Phone Support |
| Free Migration | Free Migration | Free Migration |
| SELECT THIS PLAN HERE | SELECT THIS PLAN HERE | SELECT THIS PLAN HERE |
Payment can be made through MPESA, Bank transfer or PayPal.
- Truehost
Truehost is popular because it offers free hosting services for starters. Once you buy a new domain, your account will be placed under free hosting for one month, this gives you time to determine whether Truehost is ideal or not.
After the one-month free hosting is over, you can decide to leave or stick to the company. The best plan to choose after the free one is Gold which costs Ksh3,499 per year.
Truehost is a bit expensive in relation to other local hosting companies.
- Bluehost
The last web hosting company we shall recommend is Bluehost.I know there are bloggers who would like to get more than 1 million visits per month, the truth of the matter is,most local hosting companies won’t sustain that kind of traffic. The best thing to do is to join Bluehost and grow without any much trouble. You will be paying as little as Ksh395 per month.To start hosting,visit Bluehost via this link and create a new account, then choose the starter plan that costs Ksh265-Ksh395 per month.in a year, you’ll pay less than Ksh4,200 but you will be assured that your site won’t experience downtime.
