Tips for finding the best church hosting plan for your religious website
With the vast number of hosting companies to choose from, here are some guidelines to help you find the best church web hosting plan.
- The first thing to consider when searching for the best church hosting company is to look at how your church website is constructed. Is is a static HTML website built by an HTML editor like Dreamweaver? Or is it powered by a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal?
- If your church website is created using a CMS or even a blogging platform like WordPress, you're in luck. The five hosting plans shown above all include easy installation of all the top CMS and blogging platforms. It's point-and-click easy to install and configure the proper software to start building your site.
- If your site is built using good old HTML and a HTML editor, you're in luck with that too because all the hosting plans shown will have no problem handling your site. The best church hosting plan for HTML sites would be any of the hosting plans above.
- Most of the featured hosting plans also include some form of website building utility that you can use to build your site. So if you don't even know what HTML means, it's no problem. The website tools allow you to choose a pre-made template and start building your site just like if you were using Microsoft Word.
- The most likely reason for setting up a website for your church is to provide a way for your parishoners to stay current on church news and possibly even provide a calendar of events, photo gallery or other interactive content. For these features, WordPress makes it very easy to install "plugins" that do all the work for you. WordPress is a full-featured blogging platform, but don't let that scare you. It is used by thousands of churches already to power their websites. As stated earlier, WordPress is included in all the featured church hosting plans featured above.
- Spreading the Word is the best thing you can do with your time, so finding a user-friendly church hosting plan is a high priority. All featured hosting plans come with an easy-to-use hosting administration interface so you can spend less time with tech support and more time adding content to your church website.
- Your church website needs a domain name first, which is what users type into their browser to find your site. Believe it or not, most of the hosting plans shown come with a free domain name. You won't have to pay to register the domain name each year, which normally runs about $12 annually.
- If you plan on having multiple groups having websites on the same church hosting plan, you can use "sub-domains" to achieve this. So, for example, if your main domain name is www.mychurch.com, you could have a completely separate website for your youth activities at www.youth.mychurch.com. Or you could also set up a different site as a sub folder on your domain such as www.mychurch.com/youth/.
If you're not tech-savvy or just don't have the experience needed to find the best church web hosting plan, don't fret. All the plans shown above are hand selected by our staff to include the tools you need to get online with as little tech knowhow as possible. The hosting plans are easy to set up, each to administer, and are reliable so your site is always accessible.
