7 Best Web Hosting India 2023 – 95 Test Sites Hosted + Speed Data Revealed

WRITTEN BY

Daren Low

UPDATED

September 27, 2023

If you’re looking for reliable web hosting, you’ll quickly notice how much confusing information there is out there. A bad web host can easily bring down your website, so it’s important to choose wisely.

To help you fight through the noise and find the right host for YOUR website in India, we’ve created this handy guide from our research and first-hand observations. Since Bitcatcha’s inception in 2014, we’ve personally purchased and set up over 95 test sites on different hosts, and have monitored their performance since.

Personally, we believe the BEST web hosting provider for India is Hostinger, for reasons we’ll discuss below. But no two sites are the same, and we’ll also explain what you need to consider when choosing YOUR host – including cost, customer support and server speeds.

7 Great Web Hosting Providers For India

 

#1

Best overall value web hosting

Hostinger

5.0

  /5

Jump to details

#2

Best WordPress hosting for US audiences

DreamHost

5.0

  /5

Jump to details

#3

Best for WordPress blogs

Bluehost

5.0

  /5

Jump to details

#4

Best web host for small business websites

HostPapa

5.0

  /5

Jump to details

#5

Best unlimited web hosting

A2 Hosting

4.0

  /5

Jump to details

#6

Largest international hosting

GoDaddy India

4.0

  /5

Jump to details

#7

Best local web hosting

BigRock

4.0

  /5

Jump to details

1. Hostinger IN

https://www.hostinger.in/

World Speed Score

A+

Speed In India

3 ms

Price (INR)

₹223 /mo

Key Features

• 100GB SSD
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free domain & SSL
• hPanel
• Localised support

“Premium features & excellent speeds at very affordable prices, especially for beginners & startups!”

VISIT HOSTINGER

Hostinger is proving themselves more and more to be a very well-balanced host. They’ve grown to provide premium-level performance and support at prices that are surprisingly affordable.

We think Hostinger deserve the #1 spot because of their attractive introductory prices and the fact that you’re able to host from Mumbai itself – as close as it gets!

Why is this a winning combo? Because users can enjoy premium-quality hosting at an affordable price… whilst hosting from a datacenter from Mumbai, or nearby Singapore – which is a great option as the most well-connected spot in Asia! We’ve yet to find another host that can offer a better package to India websites.

Pros and cons of Hostinger

Hostinger performance

While we were messing around with our Hostinger India test site, we realized that these guys produced ridiculously fast response times when pinged from India! We did some comparisons and tested Hostinger against the other web hosts, and concluded that these ingenious Lithuanians deserve to be on the top spot in this list.

We set up a test site from their new Mumbai data center to test their speed results in the Asian region, and they blew us away! The requests from Singapore, Bangalore and Japan were all responded to very quickly at below 70 ms, which is super fast.

Bangalore in particular, got their response in 3 ms, which is outstanding! If your audience is based in or around India, they’re set to enjoy zippy speeds.

That said – they also have a data center in Singapore, which is another excellent option if your audience is in this part of the world, since Singapore is one of the most well-connected hubs of the region.

What we liked about Hostinger India is that it doesn’t matter if your customers are based in Asia, America or Europe; their servers produce pretty fast response times in most regions.

Hostinger’s plans come with further features to boost your site’s loading speed. To name a few, there’s their very own Cache Manager, LiteSpeed cache, NGINX caching, PHP7 support and WordPress optimisation.

Hostinger customer support

“Fun” is not a word we’d usually use to describe a support team, but our experience with Hostinger’s support truly was fun! Their live chat widget is always on display on the bottom right of the dashboard, which makes connecting with someone very easy.

They also included the ability to send emojis, gifs, and files, which may sound useless but is actually very helpful in conveying our frustrations to the team.

They also serve over 20 countries in their native languages, with plans to add more, showing that they truly do care about communicating with their clients.

Hostinger pricing and features

Pretty much all Hostinger’s plans come packed with lots of premium features for a very low introductory price – especially if you opt for their longer 2-year or 4-year plans.

Do note, Hostinger doesn’t offer free daily backups, which isn’t that surprising given the price point. They do include free weekly backups, which serves our needs just fine.

They also managed to one-up most of the competition by offering 1 free domain name on all plans except for their cheapest. Recently, they’ve introduced Hostinger Website Builder into the their ecosystem and renamed it as Hostinger Website Builder. It’s beginner-friendly and specially designed to get your site up easily, fast and hassle free!

Overall, Hostinger provides excellent value, especially for entrepreneurs and new online business owners that are concerned over cash flow. With such solid results, impressive response times and excellent support system, you really can’t go wrong when you host with Hostinger.

Hostinger in action

2. DreamHost

https://www.dreamhost.com/

World Speed Score

A+

Speed In India

194 ms

Price (INR)

₹218 /mo

Key Features

• Unlimited SSD
• Unlimited traffic
• Free domain & SSL
• 97-day money back
• WP recommended

“World-famous hosting service endorsed by WordPress and with an 100% uptime guarantee.”

VISIT DREAMHOST

Another international player we can’t ignore is DreamHost. These are one of the biggest and most experienced hosts around. Headquartered in California, DreamHost has served over 400,000 customers and 1.5 million sites, to date!

We do wish they had some data centers closer to Asia BUT if most of your audience is near the US – definitely check DreamHost out! It’s pretty hard to beat.

Pros and cons of DreamHost

DreamHost performance

Speed-wise, DreamHost is seriously impressive. Thanks to their use of speed-boosting SSD servers, they scored a solid A+ ranking on our speed tests. Check out that impressive worldwide average of 118.4 ms!

Something important to note is that DreamHost has only 2 data centers – both of which are based in the US. As expected, speeds got significantly slower when serving regions further away from the North American continent. We noticed the average response time for Asia is 203.75 ms, with Bangalore pinging back 194 ms. Whilst these speeds aren’t ideal, it’s only really a problem if most of your website audience is based in this part of the world.

BUT, if your website is mostly serving audiences in the US or Europe, we’d say DreamHost is one of the best hosts you can pick from. After all, their average worldwide speed is actually the fastest out of all hosts on this list!

DreamHost customer support

DreamHost offers a range of different support options, including live chat, a ticketing system, a forum, call-backs, and a pretty great knowledgebase.

From our own experience, the live chat option is quick, with responses that came in under 15 minutes even during peak time. We read many other reviews reporting that issues were generally solved within the day, and the tech team gave out thoughtful solutions. Our own experience agreed!

DreamHost themselves say that their support team are all highly trained experts in WordPress. Each employee is in-house and part owner of the company.

If we had to nitpick, we could complain that the operating hours of the live chat are limited to 05:30 – 21:30 Pacific Time. Given that’s 18:00 – 10:00 in India Standard Time), it’s not ideal. The good news is, you can still submit a ticket, browse the forum or dig into the knowledgebase at any time of day.

DreamHost pricing and features

DreamHost offers two tiers of plans – we’d recommend the Shared Unlimited if you want more resources to play with.

Our tests with DreamHost have left us convinced they’re especially awesome if you plan to host a WordPress site. They’re actually 1 of only 3 web hosts who are ‘officially’ endorsed by WordPress. They include lots of 1-click installations, free templates, and even throw in a nifty drag-and-drop WP Website Builder to get your WordPress site up quickly.

DreamHost’s other features also leave us happy:

What’s also definitely worth mentioning is their money back guarantee. Whilst most hosts offer a standard 30-day money back guarantee, DreamHost takes it to the next level by extending it up to 97 days!

In all, we think DreamHost offers everything that a WordPress site owner could ask for, especially for beginners or those who just want a great and fast website up, ASAP.

DreamHost in action

3. Bluehost IN

https://www.bluehost.in/

World Speed Score

A+

Speed In India

330 ms

Price (INR)

₹218 /mo

Key Features

• 10GB SSD
• Unmetered transfer
• 1 website allowed
• Free domain & SSL
• Free site migration

“Great worldwide speeds, low prices, localized support.”

VISIT BLUEHOST

Bluehost was formed in 2003 and quickly went on to becoming one the top web hosting brands in the market. They’re especially popular in India, but does their popularity equate quality? Let’s find out.

Pros and cons of Bluehost

Bluehost performance

Bluehost’s data centers are based in the US, and they’ve got pretty good pings (below 200 ms) from most of the world with a worldwide average of 153 ms. One problem though – they could have done better in Bangalore, with a 330 ms score.

However, this is destined to improve as they will be setting up a server in India in the near future.

Plus, we’ve got to keep in mind that by building an online website, we’re expecting audiences from all over the world, not just India. In this aspect, Bluehost performs pretty damn well!

Bluehost customer support

We like using Bluehost, and a big plus for Indian websites is that you’ll get localized support because you’ll actually be speaking to a dedicated Bluehost India team. You can reach out via live chat or give them a call on the phone. They also have a pretty robust knowledge-base filled with useful tutorials and guides.

Bluehost features and pricing

Bluehost is actually a super popular choice among many bloggers and affiliate marketers. They come at a very impressive low price (especially compared to HostPapa and A2).

Features offered by them are quite solid, with 10GB of SSD storage, free SSL, SEO services and a free domain included in their Basic plan. Not bad at all!

Overall they offer very solid features, and are fast all around the globe – a great choice for small blogs and online businesses on WordPress.

Bluehost in action

4. HostPapa

https://www.hostpapa.in/

World Speed Score

A+

Speed In India

115 ms

Price (INR)

₹292 /mo

Key Features

• Free domain & SSL
• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited SSD
• 24/7 support
• cPanel

“A value-packed and cheap hosting solution with solid support!”

VISIT HOSTPAPA

Coming up next is HostPapa, an independently-owned company based in Toronto.

They’ve been selling web hosting since 2005 but claim their top executives have 70+ years of combined experience in the industry.

That said, HostPapa only comes second on our list since it only has servers in the US, Canada and Europe. If only they had a server nearer to India!

Pros and cons of HostPapa

HostPapa performance

As we’ve touched on, if your site is targeting audiences in Asia, the ideal scenario is to host from a datacenter based in Singapore. That’s because they’re a hub for subsea cables and can offer the best speeds and stability to the Asia region.

BUT, even so, we still think HostPapa is a great option for Indian websites. And our speed test results agree.

To investigate HostPapa for ourselves, we set up and hosted a grand total of 3 test websites.

We ran each site through the speed test tool and were really happy with the results! The best response time pinged from Bangalore was 115 ms. Even though this was hosted all the way from Amsterdam, it’s impressively fast for Indian audiences.

HostPapa’s worldwide average response time was 143 ms. That earns this host a solid A+ rank.

To sum it up, HostPapa’s servers respond quickly for ALL your site visitors – whether they’re based in India, or elsewhere on the planet.

HostPapa customer support

We’ve dealt with customer support from all the hosts listed here today, and HostPapa’s team didn’t let us down.

Their award-winning ‘PapaSquad’ were super efficient. We reached out to them many times when writing our review and they replied almost instantly every time.

Plus, you can request a free 30-minute 1-on-1 consultation on anything hosting-related. It’s a handy way to resolve any questions or doubts and is pretty cool – not many hosts bother with this.

Lastly, it’s always great when a host has a useful knowledge base. HostPapa’s is pretty extensive and full of helpful videos and tutorials. In all – very beginner friendly!

That said, HostPapa does lack localised Indian support as you’ll be chatting to their overseas team. If you prefer to speak to a customer service rep that shares a similar culture, you might prefer a host who offers localised support teams.

HostPapa pricing and features

In all, we think HostPapa offers great value for money. Its plans are really cheap, but you’re still getting a solid product.

Its Starter plan costs just ₹292 /mo (for a 3 year commitment) and even then you get a ton of value. You’ll get a free domain registration, free site migration, 100GB of disk space, ‘unlimited’ bandwidth, Cloudflare CDN, free SSL… the list goes on.

For their Business plans, HostPapa sweetens the deal even more by throwing in more unlimited goodies. That said, the lack of free automatic backups is also a little bit of a letdown, and their uptime guarantee can be a little suspect.

In all, HostPapa offers awesome value, speed and support. Sure, we wish they had a datacenter in Singapore, and we’d like to see more speed enhancing software (e.g. caching tech). But at least we can see from our speed test that HostPapa is still very fast.

HostPapa in action

5. A2 Hosting

https://www.a2hosting.in/

World Speed Score

A+

Speed In India

163 ms

Price (INR)

₹739 /mo

Key Features

• Unlimited SSD NVMe
• Unlimited bandwidth
• A2 optimised WP
• Free site migration
• 30-days money back

“A reliable web host with unlimited bandwidth and storage. Go with their Turbo Boost plan!”

VISIT A2 HOSTING

This American web hosting company is quite well known for their superb Turbo servers and their awesome A2 Optimization feature.

Customer support can be improved, but once you connect to them, they’re a solid web host with excellent features!

Pros and cons of A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting performance

While they’re not the fastest web host around, they still managed to get A+ in our server speed tests.

Using their Singaporean data center, pings from Singapore came in super quick at 6 ms, 67 ms for Japan while Bangalore scored a very respectable 163 ms. The response times for the rest of the world dipped into the hundreds, but they’re still faster than your average web host with a worldwide average of 173 ms.

A2 Hosting customer support

Now this is where we have a slight problem with A2 hosting – their live chat Gurus are actually good at what they do. It’s just that they can be a little difficult to reach. Once we got through to a Guru though, they managed to effortlessly solve our problems!

A2 Hosting features and pricing

Like HostPapa, A2 Hosting also offers free SSL for their customers, a feature that is easily implemented but isn’t done yet by some web hosts. Their NVMe SSDs combined with their Turbo servers make them a force to be reckoned with, and their A2 Optimized software makes setup a breeze.
 

A2 Hosting in action

6. GoDaddy India

https://in.godaddy.com/

World Speed Score

A+

Speed In India

111 ms

Price (INR)

₹119 /mo

Key Features

• 30GB SSD
• Unmetered transfer
• 1 website allowed
• 1GB database
• PHP7 supported

“Pretty decent if you do not mind no frills web hosting”

VISIT GODADDY

Our experience with GoDaddy India was equal parts “cool!” and “meh!”. For each thing that made us happy, they managed to create an equivalent problem that pissed us off. Let’s have a look at what we’re dealing with.

Pros and cons of GoDaddy India

GoDaddy India performance

One of the cool things we liked about GoDaddy India is their speed – They’re actually pretty fast!

Although they weren’t very transparent about the location of their datacenter (we clicked “Asia” but it never told us where in Asia the servers are located) it is obvious from the server speed test that it’s based in Singapore, with a whopping 10 ms.

Pings from Japan came next at 71 ms and then interestingly, Bangalore at a very speedy 111 ms. Needless to say, GoDaddy India is perfect if you’re targeting the local Indian demographic.

The web host did pretty well also in other parts of the world, only dropping to 337 ms all the way in Sao Paulo. Overall, GoDaddy India’s worldwide Average is 171.1 ms, and that’s good enough for an A+ ranking!

GoDaddy India customer support

Well, they’re good at what they do, fairly experienced and you’ll get connected pretty fast. Not as fast as Hostinger nor HostPapa, but they get the job done. Nothing to shout about – it just works.

GoDaddy India features and pricing

GoDaddy offers a range of plans targeted at different users.

But for WordPress sites? This is where we’ll start ranting a little bit.

GoDaddy would be the perfect web hosting for India if only they had some fine-tuned apps for WordPress, but we got a big bag of nothing. All of the other hosts offer some sort of convenience for users via apps, so to get nothing is a little disappointing.

Another thing we’re quite annoyed about is their UI – they’ve customized their own interface but we feel that they could have done a better job in making it more intuitive.

It took us 30 minutes just to find the right place to retrieve our DNS correctly, and navigating through the UI felt a little forced and unnatural.

If you’re looking to implement basic SSL for your websites, you’ll be disappointed to find that GoDaddy India has no free SSL. You can pay for it, but you’ll be bitter knowing that this is something you can easily get with other hosts for free.

Having said all that, we think GoDaddy India is actually good if you’re looking for no frills web hosting targeting India’s consumers at cheap pricing, but if you’re expecting top of the line features or anything extra, it’s best to look at other web hosts.

GoDaddy India in action

7. BigRock

https://www.bigrock.in/

World Speed Score

A

Speed In India

106 ms

Price (INR)

₹139 /mo

Key Features

• 20GB SSD
• 100GB transfer
• 1 website allowed
• 300+ 1-click app
• cPanel included

“A local brand with decent speeds in India at low prices.”

VISIT BIGROCK

BigRock! The myth, the brand, the legend!

We’ve heard a lot about them and they seem to be quite popular in India, so we decided to get an account with them for this list, just to see if they live up to expectations.

But before we get on to the praises/ rants, let’s have a look at the test results first.

Pros and cons of BigRock

BigRock performance

With a worldwide average of 190 ms, Bigrock is clearly the slowest web host on the list. Speed wise, they’re ideal for fast local pings as they’re the only web host on this list with a datacenter in Mumbai.

If you want to attract an international clientele though, BigRock might not be the best choice, with scores of 226 ms from US West, 241 ms from US East, 130 ms from London, 343 ms from Sao Paulo and 309 ms from Sydney.

The only countries we saw doing well outside of India was Singapore at 62 ms and Japan at 133ms.

BigRock customer support

We signed up for BigRock’s starter plan after seeing how popular they are with the locals in India, expecting decent service and ease of use but the experience we went through was… a huge disappointment.

First off, the system didn’t send us the required information to log into our account. No login info, no DNS to set up, absolutely nothing.

So we contacted their live chat for help but they can’t do anything about it without a login, so we were asked to call BigRock’s international support number (at our own cost, mind you) to sort this out.

So we called and followed the automated instructions, patiently pressing the keys we were told to press… then the call dropped.

So we tried again.

And the call dropped. Again.

We tried calling them a grand total of 3 times and the call drops at the exact. Same. Moment.

We consulted the live chat team to see what else can be done.

We asked them if they can transfer us directly to the relevant team – they cannot.

Can they cancel our account – they cannot.

This was quickly becoming the worst encounter we’ve ever experienced with a web host of this caliber.

At 5pm, we sent an email to the address that the livechat team kindly provided, and they replied at 6pm with the information we needed to finally login and set up our test site.

Needless to say, we weren’t too happy about the entire ordeal.

BigRock features and pricing

Here’s an overview of what BigRock has to offer:

BigRock is cheap, but they really need to buck up. Speed wise, they’re doing okay despite the lack of PHP7 and SSD. They don’t haven’t yet implemented SSL so users might run into trouble in the near future when Chrome updates their system. 2022 Update: They now offer SSL with their plans!

They definitely need to provide more features for their users, and their UI needs to be updated – it looks like they designed it in the 90s and fired their designer halfway through.

We can’t provide screenshots because we only managed to access the client area once during sign up – we’ve been locked out of it ever since, and the “forget password” feature just doesn’t work. We’ve tried it numerous times, nothing has ever appeared in our inbox or spam folders.

BigRock in action

How We Choose the Best Web Hosting Provider For India

Here are some things we always look for in an outstanding web host:

Why You Should Trust Us

Here at Bitcatcha.com, we’ve got decades worth of combined experience in networking and IT. We’ve been investigating web hosts since 2014. To date, we operate a total of 95+ test sites that are hosted across various hosting plans, from 45+ different web hosts.

Once we set up our test site, we run it through our Bitcatcha Speed Test Tool (as seen on LifeHack and HuffPost) to check each hosts’ server speed. These results help to inform our reviews and comparisons. For more details, see how we review our web hosts.

Should You Pick Local Or Go Global?

So your web store or business is focused in India. What are your hosting options?

Ultimately we recommend a global host that covers India for better customer support and facilities.

Which Web Hosting Type Is Best For Your Indian Site?

Still with us? We’ve covered a lot, but now let’s dive into the types of web hosting to find the right one for you. First, consider the type of site you want to build.

For a professional blog or affiliate marketing, go for a web host with dedicated WordPress support, 1-click WordPress installs, and optimization. Hostinger and DreamHost are great options, or try a Managed WordPress web host for a more hands-off experience.

If you’re setting up an online store, prioritize security features, fast servers, and payment integrations. Hostinger is our top choice for eCommerce web hosting.

 
For a personal website, look for a cheap and easy-to-maintain provider with reliable support. Hostinger, DreamHost, or HostPapa offer shared hosting plans with excellent site builders.

If you have a digital portfolio with large files, consider a shared web hosting service like A2 Hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Remember, web hosting isn’t one-size-fits-all. Find a host that meets your specific needs. Shared web hosting is recommended for beginners or those on a budget. As your site grows, you can consider upgrading to VPS hosting or cloud hosting.

Verdict: Which Is The Best Web Hosting For India?

After intensive testing and experiencing the pros and cons of each brand, we personally feel that the International web hosts (Hostinger, Dreamhost, HostPapa) are your best bet.

They are consistently fast with a reputation of being reliable, and their customer support will help you in any way they can. Plus, both Hostinger and Bluehost offer the benefits of a localized support team, and start at very affordable prices.

However, if you want rock-bottom prices, then BigRock and GoDaddy India will suit your needs just fine, especially if you’re targeting the local Indian demographic. They’ve got very fast local pings, but you’ll be giving up features and helpful customer support.

To us, poor customer support is a deal-breaker, but if that’s not a problem for you, then go right ahead.

That wraps up our top 7 web hosting brands for India!