Windows Hosting: Top 5 Best Providers

If you’re wondering what Windows hosting is, it’s website hosting that uses a Windows operating system.

Windows hosting is the most compatible hosting solution for anyone with a website that also uses other Windows tools and languages, like Microsoft Exchange or ASP.NET. However, there’s a difference between using Windows tools and simply having a Windows computer – you don’t need to use Windows hosting just because you have a Windows PC.

If you’re short on time, we’ve put together this quick comparison table for you to scroll through and see what each provider, well, provides:

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Editor's Choice
HostGator	IONOS	GoDaddy	Hostwinds	Liquid Web
Overall rating 4.7	Overall rating 4.0	Overall rating 4.0	Overall rating 3.1	Overall rating 2.9
Starting from $4.95	Starting from $0.50	Starting from $6.99	Starting from $4.99	Starting from $13.30
Money-back guarantee 45 days	Money-back guarantee 30 days	Money-back guarantee 48 hours to 30 days	Money-back guarantee 60 days	Money-back guarantee 30 days
Free backups	Free backups	Free backups	Free backups	Free backups
Storage space Unmetered	Storage space 25GB – Unlimited	Storage space 25GB – 100GB	Storage space Unlimited	Storage space 40GB – 200GB
Bandwidth Unmetered	Bandwidth Unlimited	Bandwidth Unmetered	Bandwidth Unlimited	Bandwidth 10TB
Standout features High site speed Best Help & Support Unlimited bandwidth	Standout features Best site speed & uptime Best for ecommerce Relatively cheap	Standout features 2nd best server response time 24/7 phone and live chat	Standout features Free daily backups (cloud backups $1/month) 99.9% uptime guarantee Lots of tailored plans	Standout features 10TB bandwidth 24/7 live chat, phone, and email 100% uptime guarantee
Visit HostGator	Visit IONOS	Visit GoDaddy	Visit Hostwinds	Visit Liquid Web
See our HostGator review	See our IONOS review	See our GoDaddy review

As you can see, each of these Windows hosting providers offers some great features, but let’s break down the pricing, security, and other features of each of them.

Best Overall Windows Server Host

Editor's Choice

HostGator

Best Overall Windows Server Hosting

Excellent

4.7

out of 5

• Really secure
• 99.99% uptime
• Weekly automated backups

Paid Plans: $3.95 - $159.99 / month

Pros

• Unlimited domains
• Fantastic help and support
• 45 day money-back guarantee

Cons

• High renewal rates
• No free trial

Read Review

Visit Site

Pricing

With plans that are competitive and affordable, HostGator earns the “best overall windows hosting provider” title because it offers all types of plans and offers the best help and support to boot.

Pretty much every hosting provider on the market offers noticeably low introductory prices, which then get hiked up when you renew your plan. HostGator is no exception – you get 20% off your initial payment, which can cover between one to 36 months up front. 

The price range for shared plans that are for smaller and more personal sites, is $6.36 to $15.96 per month, when paid annually. But the wonderful thing about HostGator is there are lots of plans to choose from, here’s the complete chart to see HostGator’s shared Windows options:

HostGator also offers Windows hosting on its dedicated plans, which range from $109.97 to $159.99 per month when you choose an annual plan. But prices can be lower if managed, or high if a shorter term payment plan.

These prices might seem like a big jump up from the shared prices, but HostGator’s dedicated prices are on par with the rest of the industry. The reason they’re so much more expensive is because, on a shared plan, you literally share a server and its resources with other websites. However, on a dedicated plan, the server is entirely dedicated to your website and its files.

Security

HostGator provides a free SSL certification with all its Windows hosting plans, which ensures that your website is flagged securely. The HostGator support team conducts 24/7 server monitoring on shared Windows plans, ensuring you’re allocated relevant server resources, as well as automatic weekly data backups to keep your files safe. HostGator even uses the SpamAssassin filter to protect emails for your Windows site.

Features

HostGator scores a 4.7 out of 5 overall which is leaps and bounds beyond the other providers on the list! That’s in part due to its feature rich offering, so let’s take a look.

HostGator’s email features aren’t just secure, but robust, too: you get unlimited accounts, forwards, and autoresponders, along with 25 mailing lists – great news if you have a mailing list ready to go. This will all come in handy too for customer engagement and automating it to make it more hassle-free. 

HostGator’s Windows plans also integrate very well with other applications. If you’d like to, you’ll be able to host a BlogEngine blog, a WordPress blog, or even a Wiki site. You’ll also be entitled to HostGator’s free website builder and 4,500 free website templates, so that you can design your site with a base to start.

HostGator’s 24/7 phone and live chat support is a major plus, too. In fact, live chat received 32% of votes when we asked users how they would most like to receive support – beating email and online tutorials. In our experience, HostGator’s live chat has a quick response time and offers useful information.

More Information

• Get more information from our HostGator Review
• Check out How To Host a Website
• Take a look at our Web Hosting Comparison Chart

Best for Ecommerce

IONOS

Best for ecommerce

Excellent

4

out of 5

• Excellent uptime
• Really great pricing
• Best for ecommerce

Paid Plans: $0.5 - $35 / month

Pros

• Excellent site speed
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Great security features

Cons

• $50 set up fee
• Only offers 24/7 phone support

Read Review

Visit Site

Pricing

IONOS is a little trickier when it comes to Windows hosting plans than others on this list. Firstly, it only diplays 6-month rather than yearly plans, making it hard for us to compare against the other 12 month plans on the market. Secondly, it has plenty of add-on options once you click through to the plan of your choice, like so:

But IONOS does offer the ability to really customize your plan for an ecommerce site. You can get expert backups, a free SSL, unlimited bandwidth, and a free domain for the first year – making it simple to secure your site and keep it online and running. 

IONOS gets a little pricier for VPS and dedicated plans, especially dedicated. But compared to HostGator’s dedicated plans, which start at $109.98 per month, IONOS’ cheapest dedicated plan is a very affordable $47 per month.

Security

All IONOS plans come with an SSL certificate, malware protection, and DDoS attack defense systems. Plus, its dedicated plans come with site scans and a CDN to help protect your website from attacks – making it score well for security.

Additionally, its WordPress hosting comes with malware scans and phishing and spam filters. That makes IONOS a protective force in the hosting market.

Features

IONOS has really good value features, a provider that is ahead of the curve when it comes to site speed and uptime. This means your website will perform well and load quickly for visitors, an important SEO factor. IONOS has an overall score of 4 out of 5, placing it in the middle of all the providers we’ve tested.

It offers optional addon domains and unlimited external domains from third parties. One downside is that IONOS only offers the Plesk control panel, so if you prefer having cPanel then IONOS might not be for you.

More Information

• 1 & 1 IONOS Review: Take an in-depth look at IONOS and what it can offer you
• VPS vs Dedicated Hosting Comparison: See how these two advanced hosting types head-to-head

Best for Help & Support

GoDaddy

Best for help and support

Great

4

out of 5

• Daily backups
• Free SSL (for 1 year)
• 30 day money-back

Paid Plans: $9.99 - $20.99 / month

Pros

• You can use Plesk Obsidian
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Fantastic help and support

Cons

• Slightly high prices
• Poor site speed
• Windows users pay more

Read Review

Visit Site

GoDaddy Hosting plans use Windows Server 2019, which isn’t the most recent version, following the release of Windows Server 2022 in 2021. However, we like that you can install great apps like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, even on the cheapest plan. 

Pricing

GoDaddy Hosting prices start on the cheapest shared plan of $6.99 per month when you pay for the year. The shared plans go up to $14.99, which makes it a little pricier than builders like HostGator.

The dedicated plans for GoDaddy Hosting also leap to a price range of $259.98 to $559.98 per month (on a yearly plan). This is one of the more expensive hosting providers, but that’s because it’s a powerhouse name due to the builder.

GoDaddy provides these Windows hosting plans that are a lot more reasonable, but you’ll need to commit to three years with GoDaddy:

GoDaddy has a really reasonable price range of $5.99 to $12.99 per month for its Windows hosting, if you pay a three year term with them. 

When renewed the price then bumps up to between $9.99 to $17.99, but that is still relatively good for Windows hosting.

Security

On the cheapest GoDaddy plan you get 24/7 network monitoring, an FTP (rather than an SSL), plus DDoS and virus prevention. So with GoDaddy you’ll feel safe and sound.

On the Windows plans too, GoDaddy offers fraud, virus, and spam protection along with email encryption to keep sensitive data safe.

Features

GoDaddy is joint middle of the road in its overall score, gaining a score in testing of 4 out of 5. GoDaddy Hosting provides free daily automatic backups, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain for the first year, and unlimited external domains. Which is great news if you’d like to add domains to areas such as your email address!

It also offers 24/7 live chat and phone support. So the GoDaddy team will be on hand to help you no matter the time of day.

More Information

• GoDaddy Hosting Review: Learn all about why this hosting provider can help you

Best for Custom Made Plans

Hostwinds

Best for Custom Made Plans

Great

3.1

out of 5

• Super scalable
• Great security features
• 99.99% uptime

Paid Plans: $4.99 - $328.99 / month

Pros

• Free expert migration
• Daily automatic backups
• Free SSL certificate

Cons

• No free domain
• No money-back guarantee
• No phone support

Visit Site

Pricing

Hostwinds has a whopping 10 Unmanaged Windows VPS plans between $10.99 and $376.99 per month. Once again these are not yearly prices since Hostwinds Unmanaged Windows VPS plans are already fairly good value for money.

Just when you think you can’t get more custom made plans, Hostwinds also has 10 dedicated plans. Not only are your options plentiful but these dedicated prices are pretty good compared to competitors.

If you’re wondering what Hostwinds offers in terms of storage and bandwidth in these Windows hosting plans, let’s take a look:

Hostwinds offers 99.99% uptime and nightly backups on all the Windows plans.

Security

Get extra firewall protection with Hostwinds’ Windows VPS plans, protecting you from malware attacks. Hostwinds also offers an SSL and 24/7 monitoring to keep things secure.

Features

Hostwinds has unlimited subdomains, free expert migration, and allows you to use Softaculous as well as cPanel. What that means is for the tech-curious of you out there, you’ll be able to use Softaculous to install or upgrade applications more easily. This will save you a boat-load of time watching files install.

Hostwinds is not the most feature dense host, but considering how scalable it is, it’s still a fantastic option for Windows hosting.

More Information

• Best Dedicated Hosting: Is your website rapidly expanding? Then dedicated hosting might be what you need.

Best For Fast Data Transfers

Liquid Web

Best For Fast Data Transfers

Good

2.9

out of 5

• 100% uptime
• 24/7 live chat & phone
• Great speed

Paid Plans: $15.83 - $832.5 / month

Pros

• 10TB bandwidth
• High core and thread count
• Great help and support

Cons

• Custom quote pricing
• Doesn't offer a free domain

Visit Site

Pricing

Liquid Web’s price range for its Fully Managed Windows VPS plans is $90 – $160 per month, when you pay for the year. That’s quite high compared to competitors, but it does start with 4GB of RAM and a huge 10 TB of bandwidth. Which means that you’ll have plenty of RAM storage for your website files and ideal for those with higher website traffic requirements.

The Windows hosting plans for Liquid Web are:

Security

Liquid Web has the tools needed to prevent a DDoS attack, which is an attack that affects your traffic. You also get network monitoring and a CDN.

The Liquid Web Windows plan can also come with a Windows Virtual Machine, which is secure cloud hosting.

Features

Liquid Web compared to HostGator’s overall score of 4.7, comes in with a below average 2.9, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good features.

Liquid Web comes with a whopping 100% uptime guarantee, which means your website won’t have any downtime. Its cheapest VPS plan comes with 10TB of bandwidth and between two to eight cores. The dedicated plans also come with some of the highest core and thread count of any provider we’ve tested – meaning your data will be quickly transferred.

Lastly, the Liquid Web Windows plan comes with 24/7 customer care, every day of the year.

More Information

• Best Cloud Hosting: Learn all about what cloud hosting is and how it benefit you.

As you can now see, Windows hosting isn’t the most common type of hosting out there. But if you run your site with any Microsoft applications, then it’s the right type for you. If you’re looking for the best of the best then HostGator is our overall winner based on the research we’ve done.

It got the top spot due to its affordable offering and winning the best score for features, helping your business expand without overspending. Let’s take a look at your top five choices again: 

If you’re on the hunt for an ecommerce power house then IONOS might work for you. Or if you love having the choice of plans and moving up incrementally as you go then Hostwinds could be what you’re searching for.

But overall our research rates HostGator as the best Windows hosting provider. We hope that this article helped you find the best one for you, and let us know in the comments if you have any questions!