You’re looking at getting a new website for your dental practice and have a domain. But you must get your website online to buy a domain for your practice.
Dental web hosting can get confusing; many options speak this technical mumbo jumbo that no ordinary person will understand, right? The struggle is semi-real.
Owning a dental practice is a sensitive job regarding the procedures you carry out and your tech stack (the technology you use to enhance your dental practice).
You’ve been searching around for a while, wondering what you need. But, there are some fundamentals you need to be aware of when choosing the right dental website host company.
It would help if you considered things like:
- Speed
- Reliability
- Security
- Support
- Ease of use
- Accessibility
- Price
And a whole bunch more. The good news is we’re here to help make that decision-making process easier for you.
This guide will break down and remove the overwhelming feeling of choosing the right dental website hosting for your practice.
Whilst you’re on your journey of choosing the right hosting for your dental practice website, it’s safe to assume you’re looking to create one on your own.
Commonly, if you’re using an agency like Design Co Studio, we’d include website hosting in our dental website design package. View dental website design services.
So what dental website hosting do you need, and how do you choose the best option for your dental practice?
The rated choice for dental website hosting is Siteground. It wins by the following attributes:
- Speed
- Intuitiveness
- Ease-of-use
- Affordability
Before you start creating a website, you must understand website hosting and how it will help design, build and manage your website.
Website hosting stores and accesses website files and data on virtual computers (servers).
Think of it like renting space on a virtual computer.
You can think of website hosting as a virtual landlord that gives you an online home. You type your website’s domain name into your web browser, and the hosting provider gets the files from your website and displays them on your device.
1. Choose a web hosting provider:
Ensure that the web hosting service you choose offers the hosting you require. Several types of hosting are available, such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting.
- Shared hosting: The sharing of resources and servers among multiple websites.
- VPS hosting: Splitting a physical server into virtual servers, each with its own operating system and resources.
- Dedicated hosting: Setting up a dedicated physical server for your website gives you complete control over its configuration and resources.
2. Upload your website files:
Hosting providers allow you to upload your website files or use their website builder to upload them to their servers.
Using FTP is the most common method of uploading your website files.
More often than not, if you’re using a website builder like WordPress and a pre-made template, you do not need to worry about uploading files to your website. This can be done from within WordPress itself.
If you’re considering using Squarespace or Wix, you, in fact, do not need a hosting package at all. It’s included with your subscription.
You may decide which website builder you need for your dental practices; check out our guide on choosing a website builder. It will help you make informed decisions for your following dental office website.
3. Make your website live:
Your customers can access your website online by typing your domain name into your web browser once your website files are uploaded to the hosting provider’s server. If your website is live, everyone can access it, and your web hosting provider ensures that your website remains available to visitors.
Let’s get right into it; building a dental website can take time, so we want to make these preliminary decisions quickly and effectively.
It’s important to note that these dental hosting options are listed in no particular order. Still, ultimately, we will highlight our preference based on our professional opinion.
Whilst this article focuses on hosting for dental practices and dentists, fundamentally, not only can dentists use this guide, but the principles of selecting a hosting also remain right across.
Siteground is one of the most powerful website hosting providers we’ve come across; in fact, Design Co Studio use Siteground to host and manage client websites all the time. They’re our go-to provide for several reasons, which we will cover below.
In today’s climate, Siteground hosts over 2.8 million domains and is among the highest-rated WordPress hosts. Whether you work during the day or are a night owl, Siteground provides 24/7 support, ensuring you always have what you need. And we can’t fault that – we need them sometimes too.
Speed
Your website will load faster thanks to SiteGround’s SSD drives and NGINX servers. As a result, you’ll see an improvement in user experience and ranking in search engines.
Reliability
You can rest assured that your website will always be accessible to your visitors with SiteGround’s 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Security
As part of SiteGround’s security services, you will get free SSL certificates, daily backups, and proactive server monitoring.
Support
The SiteGround customer support team can resolve any issues you might be experiencing via live chat, phone, or ticket support, available 24/7.
Ease of use and accessibility
Easy-to-use tools and an intuitive interface enable you to easily manage your website with SiteGround, including installing WordPress applications in just a few clicks.
Price
As of writing this article, Siteground pricing favours many dental practices. They have a core offering of three website hosting packages that ensure your dental practices’ speed and security.
Startup Package: hosts 1 website, £1.99/month
GrowBig Package: hosts unlimited websites, £3.99/month
GoGeek Package: hosts unlimited websites, £5.99/month
Packages also provide a free SSL certificate, protecting your website.
Hit the button below and head to the “WordPress Hosting” page in their navigation.
GoDaddy
There are many dental websites hosting using GoDaddy; GoDaddy actually has something special on its website; if you’re not keen to dive deep into creating a website using a content management system like WordPress or other CMSs like Squarespace or Wix, GoDaddy has a built-in website builder too so you could get your domain and build your website on one platform.
For this article, we’ll assume you are building a WordPress website and considering GoDaddy as your host.
GoDaddy provides four critical WordPress hosting plans. Each of these is designed for the size and scale of your business. One thing to note is that at any time if required, you can always upgrade your hosting should you need to take things to the next level.
Basic:
If you’re just getting started, the basic package is a good first step
The basic GoDaddy package starts at £2.99/month on an offer and renews at £7.99 as a monthly fee.
Deluxe:
Provides SEO tools to get your started and for optimising your content. Whilst a tool is available within the platform, SEO is still complex.
It still takes a lot of time and effort, especially in a competitive field like dentistry.
Sometimes, you need help from a dental marketing expert. At Design Co Studio, we provide dental SEO services for dental websites. View SEO Services.
If you’re considering the Deluxe GoDaddy hosting package, which starts at £5.99/month on offer and renews at £11.99/month
Ultimate:
Suitable for those who want to upgrade their website security and need more storage. Storage may be required if you add much video content or high-resolution images.
Though, for best practices, we recommend optimising your images off-site rather than on-site. Under-optimised images can negatively impact your SEO because they will slow down the load speed of your dental website. View the complete guide on photo and video optimisation for your website.
The Ultimate hosting package with GoDaddy starts at £9.99/month on offer and renews at £16.99/month. Includes unlimited bandwidth.
WooCommerce
The GoDaddy WooCommerce package is only great if you plan to launch an online store and sell products on your dental website. It’s not typical for a dental practice website to have an online shop linked to it, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad idea.
Finally, the Woocommerce package from GoDaddy starts at £15.99/month on offer and renews at £24.99/month after the first year.
Each plan consists of the following:
- A free domain for the first year (value £7.99/year)
- SSL included for the first year (value £74.99/year)
- Business email hosting for the first year (value £19.30/year)
It’s a good idea to note all your requirements for what you need for your business and dental website before selecting a random package.
Let’s tap into some key benefits of using GoDaddy as your dental website hosting provider.
Flexibility
Whether you have a small personal website or an e-commerce site, GoDaddy offers a variety of flexible hosting plans that can meet your needs.
Support and Reliability
Your website can be accessed 24 hours a day via phone, live chat, and email with GoDaddy customer service.
Ease of Use
It is easy to set up and manage a website using the GoDaddy interface, which makes it an ideal choice for beginners.
Security
Your website can be protected from hackers and cyberattacks with advanced security features offered by GoDaddy, like SSL certificates, daily backups, and malware scans.
Pricing
Small businesses and individuals can use GoDaddy’s hosting plans at competitive prices.
WP Engine
Here are several benefits and drawbacks to using WP Engine as a WordPress website host for businesses and individuals, including:
Pros
Managed Hosting
The fully managed hosting offered by WP Engine ensures that your website is always up-to-date and secure using backups, updates, security, and optimisation.
Speed and performance
A fast loading time and high performance for your WordPress website are ensured by WP Engine, which can improve your website’s user experience and search engine rankings.
Security Features
WP Engine’s advanced security features protect your website from cyber-attacks and data breaches, such as daily backups and malware scans.
Scalability
WP Engine offers scalable plans to scale your website if your business grows.
Cons
Higher Cost
WP Engine’s managed hosting services can be more expensive than other hosting providers, which may not be affordable for small businesses or individuals with a limited budget. For a single-site dental website hosting, you’d look at £16/month billed annually. Otherwise, if you want the flexibility of shifting any time, the monthly fee to pay for the host is £19/month.
Limited Plugin Compatibility
The plugins you use on WP Engine’s hosting platform have strict guidelines, which can limit the functionality of your website.
Technical Knowledge Required
Even though WP Engine handles most technical issues, you will still need some technical knowledge to set up and troubleshoot your website.
Overall, WP Engine is an excellent option for a dental host but might also be overkill. The limitation in plugins immediately makes adding additional functionality a bit difficult. In other words, you’ll need to start looking at hiring a developer.
My advice, it’s optional.
BlueHost
A quick case study: I have a super duper sceptic client about his domain and hosting. He’s hosting 6-7 websites with BlueHost and has no techy mind. Yet he still comfortably maintains and manages his own hosting!
What does that mean for you? BlueHost is going to be a breeze! But it can be rocky on the other side, so let’s go further and see the pros and cons of using Bluehost to help you make an informed decision.
Pros
WordPress-specific hosting
A WordPress hosting plan offered by Bluehost includes easy installation and management of WordPress sites.
Reliable and Fast
Bluehost’s good uptime and fast loading speed can improve your website’s user experience and search engine rankings.
Ease of Use
Whether you are a technical novice or a seasoned pro, Bluehost’s user-friendly interface makes creating and managing websites easy.
Support
Bluehost’s team can quickly resolve your website problems via live chat, phone support, and email.
Pricing
Bluehost prices itself competitively with similar providers. For a dental practice just getting started or if you’re looking to create your own dental website, then Bluehost could be a good option for you. Below we’ll highlight the pricing plans available for WordPress hosting.
Basic Plan
The basic plan is a great stepping stone to getting your website live if you’re a solo dentist or have a single practice.
The package offers:
- A single website hosting
- 10GB of storage for your website files, including images and videos
- You have access library of themes and templates to choose from.
- Free SSL certificate for the first year
The basic plan starts at £2.45/month billed annually and renews at £9.13/month billed annually.
Choice Plus
The next level up is the Choice Plus package. Explore the key features.
- This gives a layer of added security
- 40GB storage for files, images and videos
- You can host an unlimited number of websites
- Free SSL certificate
- Website backups
- Anti-virus scanning
- Yoast SEO to help improve your dental marketing
- Web address (domain) privacy
The Choice Plus plan starts at £4.53/month billed annually and renews at £16.60/month billed annually.
Online Store
Suppose you’re considering running an online store for your dental practice. In that case, the online store package features many tools that can help enhance your dental marketing and your dental clinic website performance.
Key features:
- 100GB storage for files, images and videos
- A free content delivery network (Ensure that your dental websites pages load quickly)
- Themes and templates to help you get started with your dental website design
- An exclusive store theme that behaves and functions differently from your typical dental website design. It’ll focus more on checkout, basket, product categories, descriptions and more.
- Website analytics
- Free SSL
- Website backups
- Malware scanning
- Yoast SEO for improving dental marketing (you don’t need to be a dental marketing expert to use this)
- Exclusive Ecommerce Plugins
- Unlimited product upload facilities
- Secured online payments
- Schedule appointments
- Book appointments
- Shipping labels
- Gift cards
- Wishlist
- Customer account creation
Pro
The pro plan is similar to the Choice Plus plan but better optimised and powerful.
The Bluehost Pro plan consists of the following:
- 100GB storage for files, images and videos
- Unlimited website hosting
- A free content delivery network, ensuring your servers deliver your visitors the pages they want to see with lightning speed.
- Free domain for 1 year
- Optimised CPU resources are for a dental website with a higher traffic volume; if you have a low server spec, you could experience delay with page loads and server performance. For higher traffic-based websites, consider the pro plan.
- Customisable themes and templates
- Free SSL
- Backups
- Malware scanning
- Yoast SEO – dental marketing t00l
Cons
Upselling
The upselling practices of Bluehost can be frustrating to some users, especially for people who want their products to be kept from being up-sold.
Limited Resources
If your website has high traffic, you may experience slow loading times or downtime when using Bluehost’s shared hosting plans.
Security
Although Bluehost offers some security features, such as SSL certificates, it may not be as secure as other hosts.
There we have it, four of the best hosting providers for your dental websites. Whether you’re a dentist looking to do lead generation, be found online, or show off your treatments, having the right website host can impact performance and SEO in many ways.
Slow and underperforming websites can deter potential patients from finding what they need, let alone just landing on your website. Many dentists under look the consideration of a good website, but this guide has been put together to help you make better and more effective decisions.
