Want to go green with your web hosting plan?
Then you must check out these 5 best Green Web Hosting services of 2023 to host your website!
The world of web hosting is not immune to fleeting trends and technologies. While some of the ever-changing trends are highly useful for website owners, many others are complete hogwash and do nothing more than increasing the cost of your hosting services.
Then there are a few trends that have the ability to entirely transform the hosting industry. Green web hosting is one such trend. If you are looking for a way to do your bit to help the environment, a reputable green web hosting service can be an excellent choice for you.
In this article, I will discuss top 5 green web hosts for 2023 and help you choose the right hosting plan for your site.
Best Green Web Hosting Companies of 2023
Let’s check out the top 5 best green web hosting providers with their features and pricing.
1. GreenGeeks
The name GreenGeeks should be enough to help one realize that the company is serious about being eco-friendly. Founded in 2008, this US-based web host claims to be the “World’s 1st Green Web Hosting Provider.” While this might be a tall claim, there is sufficient evidence on their website to support it.
The leading environment-friendly web host puts back 3x the electricity it consumes back into the grid through renewable energy sources. It works with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to make this possible.
Talking about their hosting services, the company has five different data centers. It offers Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting, WordPress Hosting, and Reseller Hosting.
Even if you go with the cheapest Shared Hosting plan, you get features such as unlimited web space, unmetered data transfer, free domain for 1st year, free SSL, free CDN, free nightly backups, and a lot more.
Key Features
- 300% green energy match
- Value for money hosting plans
- Free SSL, CDN, nightly backup, domain for 1st year, and other benefits
- Free website migration
- 30-days money back guarantee
- 24×7 live chat, telephone, and email support
- Free website builder
GreenGeeks Pricing
Shared and WordPress Hosting
- Lite- $2.49/month
- Pro- $4.95/month
- Premium- $8.95/month
Dedicated Hosting
- Entry Server- $169/month
- Standard Server- $269/month
- Elite Server- $319/month
- Pro Server- $439/month
To get maximum discount from GreenGeeks, make sure to follow upcoming GreenGeeks Black Friday Cyber Monday Sale 2021.
2. A2 Hosting
While you might have definitely heard about A2 Hosting if you’ve been using hosting services for some time, you might not know that the web host is carbon neutral for more than 12 years. It is strange that the company talks about its green initiatives only on its ‘About’ page of their website and not the homepage.
To begin with, A2 Hosting has partnered with Carbonfund.org for its energy offset scheme. Apart from this, the company has also taken a number of eco-friendly measures, ranging from allowing the staff to telecommute to using coffee mugs to reduce the use of disposables.
A2 Hosting is already a renowned hosting provider that is popular for its wide range of budget-friendly offerings. It offers Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Reseller Hosting. The cheapest Shared Hosting plan from the company comes with 100GB SSD storage, free website migration, unlimited transfer, unlimited email accounts, free SSL, and 24×7 support.
Key Features
- Carbon neutral since 2007
- One of the most popular web hosts
- Wide range of budget-friendly plans to choose from
- Cheapest plan comes with free SSL, unlimited transfer, website builder, and other benefits
- 24x7x365 support
- 99.9% uptime commitment
- Turbo servers in more expensive plans
A2 Hosting Pricing
Shared and WordPress Hosting
- Startup-$2.99/month
- Drive- $4.99/month
- Turbo Boost- $9.99/month
- Turbo Max-$14.99/month
Managed Dedicated Hosting
- Sprint- $141.09/month
- Exceed- $207.49/month
- Mach- $290.49/month
Check Out A2 Hosting Plans
3. InMotion Hosting
InMotion is another popular web host that is making great strides in being eco-friendly. Founded in 2001, the US-based web host focuses on minimizing its energy consumption.
For instance, it has a green data center in Los Angeles, USA, which uses an innovative cooling solution that circulates the outside air inside the data center and does not entirely rely on air conditioning.
This initiative itself has helped the company reduce its carbon footprint by 2,000 tonnes every year. Apart from this, the company also has a partnership with ‘Trees for the Future’ to plant trees across the world.
Moreover, the company is also very popular for its shared and VPS hosting, which is not only budget-friendly but feature-packed as well.
The cheapest Shared Hosting plan from the company includes 10GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, free email address, 2x speed and performance, marketing tool, free SSL, hack and malware protection, automatic backups, and DDoS protection.
Key Features
- Multiple initiatives to reduce power consumption
- Feature-packed and budget-friendly hosting plans
- Cheapest shared hosting plan comes with DDoS protection and hack and malware protection
- 24×7 support
- Free domain for 1st year
- Free website builder
InMotion Hosting Pricing
Shared Hosting
- Light- $2.49/month
- Launch- $4.99/month
- Power- $7.99/month
- Pro- $12.99/month
WordPress Hosting
- WP-1000S- $4.99/month
- WP-2000S- $7.99/month
- WP-3000S- $10.99/month
- WP-4000S- $15.99/month
4. HostPapa
Another hidden gem when it comes to green web hosting is HostPapa. The web host purchases something known as ‘Green Energy Tags’ from a green energy supplier.
The supplier is responsible for calculating the total energy consumed by HostPapa’s operations.
Once this calculation is done, the suppliers of the green energy supplier then pump 100% of equivalent energy generated from renewable sources into the power grid.
By doing this, the company has been able to remove thousands of tonnes of harmful greenhouse gases that damage the environment.
As for their hosting services, they offer Shared, VPS, WordPress, and Online Store Hosting. The cheapest Shared plan from HostPapa can be used on two websites and comes with free domain registration, 100GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, 99.9% uptime guarantee, Cloudflare CDN, SSL, website builder, and 30-days money-back guarantee.
Key Features
- Purchases ‘Green Energy Tags’ to pump renewable energy back into the grid
- Cheapest shared hosting plan can be used for 2 websites
- Free SSL, CDN, website builder, one-on-one training, and website transfer
- 24×7 support
- 30-days money-back guarantee
HostPapa Pricing
Shared and WordPress Hosting
- Starter- $3.95/month
- Business- $5.95/month
- Business Pro- $12.5/month
VPS Hosting
- Mercury- $19.99/month
- Venus- $59.99/month
- Earth- $109.99/month
- Mars- $169.99/month
- Jupiter- $249.99/month
5. iPage
iPage is a popular web host that is part of the extensive Endurance International Group, which also owns other hosting brands like Bluehost, HostGator, BigRock, and many more. iPage uses the carbon offsetting method to make its operations eco-friendly.
For every KWH used by the company, it purchases 200% of Renewable Energy Certificates to offset the same. So, rather than being just carbon neutral, iPage has gone a step further by contributing twice the amount of renewable energy.
iPage offers the standard set of Shared, Dedicated, WordPress, and VPS Hosting. It has one of the cheapest Shared Hosting plans which includes a host of great features, such as unlimited websites, unlimited storage, free SSL, free standard email address, free domain for 1st year, free website builder, and 24×7 support.
Features of iPage
- Offsets energy consumption by 200% for every KWH of energy used
- Single shared hosting plan to make the selection easier
- One of the cheapest yet feature-packed shared hosting
- 24×7 support
- Free domain for 1 year
- iPage website builder
iPage Pricing
Shared Hosting
- Go Plan- Starts at $1.99/month
WordPress Hosting
- WP Starter- $3.75/month
- WP Essential- $6.95/month
What is Green Web Hosting?
In the last few years, the internet has grown beyond our expectations. As per a study, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created on the internet every single day. All of this content, be it blogs, social media posts, videos, or audios, is hosted on the servers.
If you have a website, you might also have a hosting provider who does this for you. All the data available on your website is hosted on the servers of your hosting provider, mostly in their data centers. As the amount of data is rising, so is the need for physical servers and bigger data centers.
The problem with servers is that they need to be kept in a cool and controlled environment at all times. All the cooling equipment required for these servers consume a lot of electricity and also release significant amounts of CO2, which is not really optimal for our environment.
This is where green web hosting gets into the picture. In simple words, it is a greener, cleaner, and environment-friendly way of hosting websites. The ultimate goal of such web hosts is to provide optimal hosting services while also ensuring that they keep their carbon footprint to a minimum.
Benefits of Green Web Hosting
Needless to say, the most significant advantage of using a green web host is that it is an environment-friendly way of hosting your website. As the world is now getting in terms with the impact of environmental degradation, businesses and even consumers are becoming highly considerate of their decisions.
By subscribing to the hosting services of one such eco-friendly web host, you are definitely taking a step in the right direction and encouraging others to follow.
How Does Green Web Hosting Work?
There are a few different ways in which such green web hosts work. Two of the most common methods are carbon offsets and using renewable energy.
In the carbon offset method, the web hosts generally receive a certificate that mentions the amount of greenhouse gases that has been reduced by the service provider by opting for environment-friendly measures.
In the renewable energy method, the web host uses energy produced from renewable sources, such as solar, water, or wind. Green web hosts that use renewable energy are generally provided a REC (Renewable Energy Certificate) by their energy providers. The same can usually be found on their websites.
Things to Consider While Buying Green Hosting
Apart from the standard features and hosting specifications that you check and compare when selecting a web host, you need to do a bit more when choosing a green web host.
Now that you have a brief understanding of what is green web hosting, let us have a look at the things you should watch out for while selecting one for your website-
1. Green Initiative
The most vital consideration is the green initiative of the web host. After all, it is because of their eco-friendly functioning that you are considering a green web host. And a web host is not a green web host just because their website says so. Take a close look at how the service provider is helping the environment.
Check out whether they are using renewable energy or carbon offset method, or has taken up other initiatives such as planting trees and plants in and around their data centers. Using energy-saving equipment and energy conservation are some other methods in which such web hosts help the environment.
Note that no matter what their initiative is, there should be adequate proof about the same on their website. Most green hosts have their certificates available on their websites.
2. Energy-Efficient Software and Hardware
As the world of technology is expanding, we now have better and more energy-efficient software and hardware solutions.
Talking about software, there are now several options that come with power-saving mode and other features, such as deduplication, storage tiering, and compression, that helps reduce the storage space the server data needs.
With regard to hardware, the web host should be using SSD (Solid-State Drive), which is more energy-efficient than the traditionally used HDD (Hard Disk Drive). Some other measures are using CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioning) fan units and VSDs (Variable Speed Drives) that help save energy.
3. Other Eco-Friendly Initiatives
Many of the green web hosts also contribute towards global eco-friendly initiatives. By doing this, they play their role in making the world a safer and more environment-friendly place.
If green web hosting is a way for you to live a more eco-friendly life, you can consider web hosts that are part of such initiatives.
What is green hosting?
As per Wikipedia, Green hosting or eco-friendly hosting is internet hosting which involves green technologies like Carbon offsetting, powering a data center directly with renewable energy, planting trees, plants, and grass around and over Data Centers to help reduce environmental impact.
Which is the most environmentally friendly server platform?
Above are some of the best green hosting companies that offer the most environment-friendly server platform.
Why green hosting?
Green web hosting is the most eco-friendly choice of internet hosting services that helps to take care of the planet along with your business by ensuring your business website’s sustainability.
Go Green with the Best Green Web Hosting 2023
We are already very late in realizing the environmental consequences of our actions. But as it is said, better late than never. Being eco-friendly is more of a lifestyle choice, and it is high time that we change our habits and choices to pave the path for healing our environment.
By using a green web host, you will be making a small yet vital contribution to making our world a greener and safer place.
Now that you know what they are, how they work, and how to select the best green web hosting provider, I hope that you are ready to make a decision. Start your green hosting journey with GreenGeeks today!