People of faith (much like yourself) are often found searching the web for information on church website hosting—and it’s a topic that can definitely be confusing…
What is the best church website hosting company? How can I choose a reliable (and affordable) church web host? How can I be sure my church hosting company embodies faith-based values, and doesn’t host my site on servers with immoral content?
These are all common questions that people tasked with running or building a church website have asked. The truth is that the answers can get pretty complex—and unfortunately, there are a lot of less-than-moral people and websites out there who will recommend whichever hosting company pays the highest commission rate, not what’s actually best for their visitors (sad—we know).
But the good news is—that’s where we come in! Web Hosting Buddy has been around for years and years—and we’ve made a name for ourselves because of our honest take on the hosting industry (something that’s quite rare these days)!
So, if you’re a person of faith who’s struggling to find a good, honest breakdown of church website hosting companies, you’ve absolutely come to the right spot!
With that said, you’re under no obligation to purchase any hosting that we recommend—but if you do purchase hosting using our links, we might get a commission. We’re up front about this, and we’d be blessed if you did, because it helps to keep content like this being published free of charge! 😊
Alright—are you ready to get the 100% truth about church website hosting? The good, the bad and everything you’ve ever wanted to know? OK—let’s jump in!
The Problem with Most Church Website Hosting Companies
Often times, when people of faith are looking for church website hosting, they first search for companies that align with their faith-based values…
This approach totally makes sense—why wouldn’t you want to partner with (and support) businesses that share your core faith values?
The problem is that web hosting industry is insanely technological, resource-intensive, and dominated by companies that can actually afford to rent the servers, employ the support personnel, and stay on the cutting edge of technology (which includes being able to keep out hackers, keep websites secure, fast-loading, etc.).
What does this mean? Well, it means that the smaller, “mom and pop” faith-based web hosting companies are often incredibly behind the times in their hardware, offerings, support, and pretty much everything that has to do with web hosting. The hard truth is, they just can’t compete with the larger companies.
So, when you choose a smaller, faith-based hosting company, you end up paying more and getting less.
We wish that wasn’t the case—but the web hosting world has become so commoditized, it’s really just a fact of life now.
So, Does This Mean I Have to Choose a Secular Hosting Company?
Well, yes and no. What it means is, unless you want to be paying a lot more for a lower quality service, with poorer support and security, you really need to look at some of the most successful web hosting companies for your church website.
One of the most important things to understand, is that there are web hosting companies that, while they don’t identify as outwardly faith-based, do employ a large number of people of faith—and they also have rules that prohibit immoral content on their servers.
So, if you want to find the best church website hosting for the money (but also partner with a company that has good morals and values, does active charity work, etc.), we’ve got a few recommendations for you!
Church Website Hosts – Our Picks
As mentioned above, it’s totally possible to choose a company to host your church website that embodies faith-based values even though they don’t identify as outwardly so.
All of the hosts we’re going to mention below do active charity work, prohibit many types of immoral content on their servers, and are amazing hosting companies!
Let’s jump in and take a look at them!
#1 Bluehost
Bluehost is one of our absolute favorite hosting companies, and they present a value that’s incredibly hard to beat. With our Bluehost coupon, they’re only $2.95/month which is an amazing deal for what they offer.
One of the best things about Bluehost is that they offer 24/7/365 US-based telephone support—which is practically unheard of at the $2.95/month price point (and is also super helpful if you ever find yourself in a jam trying to troubleshoot issues with your church website).
On the moral front, Bluehost is a company with solid values! They DO NOT allow ANY websites on their servers that host adult content—not even artistic images with nudity. They also prohibit gambling websites, deceptive marketing websites, and sites that promote violence or other various immoral material.
Bluehost’s parent company is also involved in charity work which includes mentoring and community activities to help create the next generation of small business and nonprofit leaders.
#2 SiteGround
SiteGround has long been one of our favorite hosting companies, and for good reason—they are blazing fast, super reliable, and have incredible support. We always say that there’s almost nothing they do poorly!
With our SiteGround discount, you can get their web hosting for $6.99/month, which is a great deal for what they offer (although it’s a bit more expensive than Bluehost). We’ve found their security and reliability to be top notch, and their hosting to be blazing fast. They even have a WordPress plugin (if you’re using WordPress for your church website) that really speeds things up (it’s called SiteGround’s “Supercacher”).
In terms of being a moral hosting company, SiteGround employs a variety of people of faith, and also prohibits websites that contain adult content or nudity, illegal content, threatening or obscene material, as well as material that is fake, misleading, or encourages violence. SiteGround is also very active in their charity work, and you can read about that here.
#3 WP Engine
If your church website runs on WordPress, WP Engine is definitely worth considering, as they’re one of the top WordPress hosting companies in existence today!
Sure, at $22.50/month (with our WP Engine coupon code: webhostingbuddy20) they’re definitely more expensive than Bluehost or SiteGround—but what you’re getting for that price is incredible. They pretty much do WordPress better than anyone else at that price point, and have super cool features like easy backups/restores (if you ever have a problem with your church website, it’s super easy to revert it to previous versions).
WP Engine is also super fast, secure, and really (if you’re willing to spend the money), one of the best options for hosting a WordPress website today.
As far as faith and morality goes, WP Engine does not allow sites on their servers that display various types of adult content, harassment, fraud, hacking, or any illegal activities. They also do not allow websites that promote theft or gambling either. WP Engine also runs a “Give Back Committee” that works on supporting volunteering and donating to various causes.
Should I Choose a Faith-Specific Host for My Church Website?
This is a question that we come across from time-to-time, and it’s a fair one. The question is this:
Should I choose a faith-specific web hosting company? For example, if I’m a Christian, should I choose a Christian web hosting company?
The answer to this question (in our opinion, of course) is no—you shouldn’t, regardless of what your faith background is…
Why? As we covered in detail above—if you choose a small, faith-based hosting company, you’re going to be making massive sacrifices on quality, support, pricing, and reliability!
And the good news (as we’ve also outlined above) is that you can still choose an amazing hosting company that embodies faith-based, moral values and practices, even if they don’t identify as outwardly faith based.
What About Church Website Builders? Which One is the Best?
While we strongly recommend building and hosting your own website for a variety of reasons, there are some companies that are known in in the “website builder” space as being reliable and solid choices.
These companies are:
- Squarespace
- Wix
- Weebly
It’s true that it’s somewhat easier to build a church website on one of these platforms (vs. hosting your own website), but we aren’t fans of this approach (even thought it’s a little quicker) for the following reasons:
Lack of Customization
This is a big problem with church website builders because in order to make things simple for the largest amount of users, they severely limit the customizations you can make. Sure, you can change colors and other simple layout items, but you’re not going to be able to do some of the coolest, most stunning things that are possible with a website, simply because they don’t allow it.
Lack of Control
If you want to run a certain script or make something conditional based on user actions (such as email lists, photo galleries, post sermons in special file or video formats, etc.) you might be severely limited on a church website builder, because as mentioned above, in order to make things as simple as possible for the largest number of people—they limited the scripts and other things that you can control.
Lack of Uniqueness
Another common complaint about church website builders is that they suffer from a lack of uniqueness—in other words, a lot of the websites end up looking the same. Do you really want your church website to look like everyone else’s who’s using the same builder? Or do you want it to be unique and stand out? We’d opt for the latter, and that’s why we don’t typically recommend website builders (church or otherwise).
Ultimately, we think it’s a much better idea to learn a little but about web hosting, how web servers work, and use a popular platform like WordPress to build your own church website. This gives you the maximum amount of control over your site, even though it can be a little more work in the beginning.
Putting It All Together – Choosing the Best Church Web Hosting
At the end of the day, only you can make the right decision for which church website hosting company is best for you and your congregation.
And we completely understand the desire to do business with, and partner with church website hosting companies that align with your faith-based values.
We do think it’s important to be honest about the fact that many of the secular hosting companies are a better choice in terms of support, features, performance, and pricing—while at the same time embodying faith-based values, even though they don’t outwardly identify as faith-specific companies. And not a lot of faith-based church website hosting companies will tell you this—and even worse, some aren’t even aware of how far behind they are vs. the larger hosting companies.
In summary (and in our opinion), Bluehost, SiteGround, and WP Engine are great choices for companies that have a good moral compass and also offer a great service!
Gentry