Almost a full two years past, I stopped using HostGator because it was out of my budget. I had three months left on my account after having been with them for six years, three before the industries price hike and I wasn’t willing to shell out more for a service that wasn’t willing to offer Let’s Encrypt SSL when everyone else, including Bluehost, was getting it. SiteGround was one of those companies that made adding Let’s Encrypt easy to add on and renew before I saw Bluehost implementing their version, which is given a different name. SiteGround is the host I recommend for my clients now over HostGator but I still have a lot of respect for HostGator because they have wonderful tech support. I’ve never been dissatisfied with them even when working as a consultant.

My options were slim as someone who likes to tinker with my code. There was SiteGround but it was out of my budget. Then there was Google Sites but I couldn’t manipulate the look there as much as I wanted to (I’ve created many of those) and the new Google Sites is not ready yet for consumers (unless you upgrade to G Suite). And finally GitHub Pages but I had so much learning invested in WordPress and my consulting services and my personal website revolved around it a lot. But during that time, I had been looking at Javascript and jQuery more while learning the basics of the language in the SoloLearn (a great app for learning those basics very quickly, that’s my perspective as a visual thinker and practical learner).

I didn’t want to jump ship right away between WordPress and GitHub Pages, because I wasn’t fond of learning Jekyll especially running it locally to build the site and push it to GitHub Pages. That was before they had the theme picker and included the auto-build. I decided to look around for a different solution before my three months were up. That’s when I found Asura Hosting and promised the contact on my former Twitter account in a private conversation that I would write a review since I had found not very many out there to convince me to trust this new host.

Let me say up front that I did have many technical struggles whereas in the past, moving between hosts was much smoother possibly because those hosts were more forgiving in how they ran technically. In other words, it wasn’t the people on the host that was forgiving but the backend software. When I was on HostGator, I had a WordPress install with CGI scripts that belonged to HostGator but when I pulled those over they conflicted and my site went down. I still had much to learn about servers. That’s when I discovered how friendly their tech support team was and quick was the turnaround time too. They even explained the additional tech workings all to me, when I saw it above what I had learned in college. Although it’s hard to find where exactly they exist physically as a company from their website, you’ll see Arizona on the invoices, you’ll learn that Supreme is all you need to run a WordPress site, you’ll eventually clue in that they are using a cloud service, and they will tell you that you need to keep WordPress updated otherwise they will take down your site. I had no problem with all that and it was similar to my research of DreamHost with their policies that you couldn’t leave a site outdated or use your hosting for your personal files (online storage). I have assured them that I like to keep everything updated and secured.

After getting the bugs figured out, I had another problem pop up on my site, which I resolved with tech support and then a few other problems after I decided that I wanted to change my domain name to this current domain. It required a lot of patience on my part and asking them to kindly make the updates when I saw it was broken on my end and I suggested other ideas that they should bring up for future customers so it could make the transition smoother.

Occasionally, my site goes down and it usually seems to be down when I want to write a new post, when it’s late in the evening (EST), or when I’m in the middle of editing, so I chuck those up to low traffic, platform updates, or the technician in me giving them a chance. If you’re a technical tinker and practical learner like me, then this 89.99% uptime as it seems (this is from my starting experience and I will say that it seems to have gotten more stable in uptime) for a server is just fine. But if you’re looking to have your website up without fault or you are too impatient then stick with other hosts. Another technical issue was that I couldn’t install WordPress from FTP as I usually did, so I had to use the cPanel to do it, but I went back and hardened the install. Those are most of the cons of this new service.

SiteGround was my target because of their offers, one of those included having an easy install and renewal of Let’s Encrypt. I also needed a low price that would always be the same over the years. On HostGator, I paid $145 for the first three years, then about $250 for the next years, then that price hike came along and I had to quickly give away about $350 for the next three years. I didn’t want to do that again. DreamHost offered a low entry price that looked too good to be true and if you dug further on their website, there was a higher price for the following years. I do think they offered multiple websites on one account but it was too much for me.

Asura Hosting is a new service I’m starting to appreciate for all their pros.

• Unlimited SSD Storage
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unlimited Databases
• Let’s Encrypt SSL easy install and renewal
• Low Price always, no surprise hikes (that’s what they confirmed)
• Multiple website domains hosting on one account with Supreme
• So far friendly and quick tech support by email or by ticket
• Modify my own php.ini for that extra space needed by WordPress
• WP-CLI support
• Use SSH for connections
• Unlimited email accounts and forwarding (needed one)
• CloudFlare integrated
• Anti-DDoS Protection
• As I see more pros, I will add them here

If you are on a slimmed-down budget but you still want to have your own WordPress website self-hosted, here is what I am currently paying for mine. I pay every two years for hosting and every year for a dedicated IP address.

• Annual Dedicated IP (needed for SSL): $12
• Bi-annual Asura Hosting Supreme: $48

If you are interested in giving Asura Hosting a try, I recommend that you write a review as I have done within a year from starting to host with them. Link back to this article, I would appreciate seeing a pingback. Please use my Asura Hosting affiliate link so I can get credited for sharing their company with you (my credit is not part of your total cost).