80+ Hosting Providers to Avoid

Updated August 2022
Endurance International Group (EIG) has been buying up hosting providers for years because that’s part of its business model. EIG is going for a blanket approach so that even if you are dissatisfied with one of their hosting companies, the odds are that you will end up on another one of their hosting companies of a different name. In the end, they get your money and you still get poor service.

Any EIG-owned properties are ones to avoid or move off of. They are known for poor hosting experiences because they will sell shared hosting accounts that cram way too many users onto a server which yields slower performance for everyone on the server. They have had a history of major outages, which echoed across all of their properties. They also have terrible customer support and service.

Many previously solid providers such as BlueHost and HostGator got bought out by EIG after building up a customer base. After being moved onto the EIG data center and switching over fully, site load times slowed, response times tanked, and competence of the support staff dropped significantly. The onus was now on the existing customer base to notice this and move themselves to another provider, which is not a quick and easy process generally.

As long as EIG is buying up more hosting providers, people will continue the everlasting dance of hopping between them trying to find quality service for their money.

EIG-owned Hosting Providers

• 2slick (2slick.com)
• A Small Orange
• AccountSupport (accountsupport.com)
• ApolloHosting.com (apollohosting.com)
• AppMachine
• AptHost (apthost.com)
• A Small Orange (asmallorange.com)
• Arvixe (arvixe.com)
• Athenix Corporation, Athenix Inc. (athenixinc.com)
• Berry Information Systems L.L.C. (berryinfosysllc.com)
• BigRock (bigrock.com)
• BizLand (bizland.com)
• BlueBoxInternet
• BlueDomino (bluedomino.com)
• BlueFur (bluefur.com)
• BlueHost (bluehost.com)
• BuyDomains
• CirtexHosting
• Cloud by IX (cloudbyix.com)
• Directi Web Technologies (directi.com)
• Domain.com
• DomainHost (domainhost.com)
• Dotster (dotster.com)
• Dot5Hosting.com (dot5hosting.com)
• EasyCGI (easycgi.com)
• Ecomdash
• eHost
• EmailBrain
• EntryHost (entryhost.com)
• Escalate Internet (escalateinternet.com)
• FastDomain (fastdomain.com)
• FatCow (fatcow.com, fatcowhosting.com)
• FreeYellow (freeyellow.com)
• Garin IT Solutions Co.
• Garin Technologies
• Globat (globat.com)
• Homestead Technologies, Inc. (homestead.com)
• HostADay (hostaday.com)
• HostCentric (hostcentric.com)
• HostClear (hostclear.com)
• Host Excellence (hostexcellence.com)
• HostGator (hostgator.com)
• HostNine (hostnine.com)
• HostMonster (hostmonster.com)
• HostV VPS
• HostGallo
• HostYourSite.com (hostyoursite.com)
• HyperMart (hypermart.com, hypermart.net)
• IMOutdoorsHosting (imoutdoorshosting.com)
• IdeaHost (ideahost.com)
• Impress.ly (impress.ly)
• Intuit Websites
• iPage (ipage.com)
• iPower (ipower.com)
• IX Web Hosting (ixwebhosting.com -> bluehost.com)
• JustCloud (justcloud.com)
• JustHost (justhost.com)
• LogicBoxes (logicboxes.com)
• MojoMarketplace
• MyDomain (mydomain.com)
• MyResellerHome
• MySocialSuite
• NamesDirect (namesdirect.com)
• NameZero (namezero.com)
• NetFirms (netfirms.com)
• NetworksHosting (networkshosting.com)
• Nexx (nexx.com)
• PowWeb (powweb.com)
• PublicDomainRegistry
• PureHost (purehost.com)
• ReadyHosting (readyhosting.co.uk, readyhosting.com)
• ResellerClub (resellerclub.com)
• Saba-Pro
• SEO Gears
• SEO Hosting (seohosting.com, seowebhosting.net)
• Site5 (site5.com)
• SiteBuilder (sitebuilder.com)
• Sitelio (sitelio.com)
• Sitey (sitey.com)
• SouthEastWeb (southeastweb.com)
• SpeedHost
• Spertly
• Spry (spry.com)
• StartLogic (startlogic.com)
• SuperGreen Hosting (supergreenhosting.com)
• TightHost (tighthost.com)
• TypePad (typepad.com)
• Unified Layer
• UsaNetHosting (usanethosting.com)
• vDeck
• Verio (verio.com)
• Virtual Avenue (virtualave.net)
• VPSlink (vpslink.com)
• Web2010 (web2010.com)
• WebDevHosting (webdevhosting.com)
• WebHost4Life.com (webhost4life.com)
• webhosting.info
• WebSiteBuilder (websitebuilder.com)
• WebstrikeSolutions (webstrikesolutions.com)
• Webzai (webzai.com)
• World Wide Web Hosting (wwwh.com)
• Xeran (xeran.com)
• YourWebHosting (yourwebhosting.com)

This list will continue growing over time, so make sure to bookmark this post and check back from time to time to make sure that your host hasn’t been swallowed up by EIG.

Why to Avoid GoDaddy

GoDaddy is fine as a DNS provider, but I would steer clear of GoDaddy as a hosting provider entirely. While it is not an EIG company, it is in a league of its own for poor hosting performance. Unfortunately for everyone, the marketing for GoDaddy has made it a household name and that name recognition often leads to people turning to GoDaddy for their hosting. I’m sure you’ve seen their commercials at this point. The incredibly cheap introductory prices also add to the allure.

The support staff is easily accessible, but they are entirely inept at actually being helpful when you encounter problems. What they are good at is pushing other paid services on you for things like upgrading your plan, paying for a security scan, paying for backup services, paying for an SSL certificate, or something else that I haven’t yet encountered. It’s amazing how many times you’ll find that their solution to your problem involves upgrading your hosting plan to the next level up. Their support team can be summed up as upsell salespeople.

I have also found the GoDaddy interface to be one of the more confusing ones I’ve worked with. The fact that they seem to be constantly changing the looks and layout has made it even more confusing over time. Their hosting control panel is also not using the standard cPanel or Plesk setup. They decided to invent their own and it is simplistic and slow to a fault. If you are going to make something custom, then you would expect that it would be better than the free options out there, not worse.

Slowness is not exclusive to the control panel either. Their server infrastructure itself is not set up in a way that offers proper speed. The slowness of the Control Panel requests and sites themselves is either showing that the database servers are very overloaded or the network connecting the database servers to the web servers has issues.

The sad truth is that the marketing of GoDaddy and the upsell strategy is enough for them to capture significant market share and make plenty of money. It’s enough money that they seem to be interested in continuing this practice instead of putting more money into making their core service into something that actually functions better and provides value for their customers.

Recommended Hosting Providers

While EIG has a far-reaching umbrella of hosting providers in its portfolio and GoDaddy has significant market share from its name recognition, there are still quality hosting providers out there that you can have confidence in.

Kinsta managed hosting provides superb support, speed, and scalability. The great thing about Kinsta is that it is not your traditional shared hosting service. Every WordPress site is kept in its own separate container along with its resources, so you never have to worry about someone else’s site issues affecting your load time. Its scalability handles traffic surges with ease and being built entirely on the Google Cloud Platform increases performance and adds redundancy.

I chose to host this site on Kinsta for its top reliability, support, and free CDN and SSL certificate. My top pagespeed scores are due in part to Kinsta’s hosting.

WPEngine is the established big brand in managed hosting. They were the first to feature many of the services that other providers offer today and continue to offer excellent readily available support. They have been expanding recently through acquisitions of some other big names such as FlyWheel and StudioPress. The StudioPress purchase now allows them to offer the Genesis Framework and Genesis child themes with any hosting plan purchase.

Siteground offers affordable and fast shared hosting with quality customer service. The customer support may not be the easiest to contact as they prioritize going through the FAQ first, but they are knowledgeable if you go all the way through to the ticketing system and get their advice. Offering extra features through additional plan levels, their plans can rival managed hosting at the top and they also offer dedicated and enterprise plans.