Over the past few years, blogs have gone from being just a hobby and a fun and fast way to let the world know your thoughts to becoming a powerful and effective online marketing and promotion tool. Blogs are more than just a personal journal now as more and more businesses and individuals are making blogs an integral part of their online presence. Blogs are used for a number of purposes like promoting goods or services, collaborating with coworkers, educating web users on various subjects, or simply sharing interesting pieces of information with a community. Regardless of the blog’s purpose, any blog requires reliable web hosting to be successful.

While many people may find free blog hosting like LiveJournal or Blogger sufficient for their blogging needs, many businesses and individuals do not consider free blog hosting as a serious option due to their numerous limitations and restrictions. Free blog hosting services do not allow you to have your own domain name and they lack many of the customization options available with paid blog hosting. Additionally, free blog hosting services are unable to accommodate large amounts of traffic, which is critical for resource-intensive blogs like popular blogs, corporate blogs, or blogs with media content.

Those who want to make a profit from their blogs will also find free blog hosting services insufficient for their needs. As a result, paid blog hosting is the only viable solution in all such cases. This article explores the benefits of paid blog hosting services over free blog hosting, describes the differences between blog hosting solutions and standard web hosting services, and shows you how to get the right blog hosting solutions you need in order to be successful online with your blog.

Benefits of paid blog hosting services over free blog hosting

While free blog hosting provides a blogging platform that includes blog software and hosting, both of which are free, it may be a good choice only for individuals who see blogging as a hobby. Free blog hosting has many limitations that render it unsuitable for businesses and individuals who plan to profit from their blog. The biggest downside of free blog hosting is that you get a generic URL with your blog.

If you ever plan to move to paid hosting, you will face several issues. One, your web host may not be able to migrate your existing blog to their server. And free blogs and free blog hosting services are less customizable, offer less control, and are a lot less reliable and secure than paid blog hosting services.

Paid blog hosting services mean you will need to pay for blog hosting space to host your blog and you will also need to install your blog software of choice like WordPress, b2evolution, or Movable Type. Although the software is free and some web hosts may even install your blog software for you, you will still need to update your blog software as well as backup and maintain your blog yourself. If you consider the many benefits paid blog hosting has to offer, it is well worth the price.

Benefits of paid blog hosting plans and blog hosting solutions include the following:

• Your own domain name that can be associated either with your brand or company.
• A fully customizable blog platform that can be extended with numerous free plug-ins and templates.
• Blog software that is regularly updated. New plug-ins and templates are also released and updated regularly.
• Full control of your blog as you get administrator rights.
• Ability to change the look and feel of your blog by redesigning the UI and coding your own modules and plug-ins.
• Plenty of hardware resources like disk space and bandwidth for top-notch performance.
• Maximum uptime only available with paid blog hosting.
• Ability to scale up as your blog popularity and traffic increase.
• Many free bonuses like unlimited domains, free software upgrades, 24/7 blog support, etc.

So if a personal domain name, high customizability, full control, maximum uptime, plenty of hardware resources, and solid service support are what you want for your blog, then paid blog hosting is exactly what you need. Paid blog web hosting is also a smarter choice over standard paid hosting as it offers features and benefits that standard web hosting lacks.

Blog hosting vs. regular web hosting

Although regular or standard web hosting may meet the needs of your blog, blog hosting is still the best hosting solution for blogs as blog hosting solutions cater to the specific needs of bloggers and include all the services you get with standard web hosting. Blog hosting also provides the hardware and software that are 100% compatible with popular blog platforms. And blog hosting plans typically include one-click installers of all popular blog applications like b2evolution, WordPress, TextPattern, and many others, which can be easily installed via a control panel with just a few clicks. You may also get options like free installation and free software updates with your blog hosting plan as well as free installation of essential plug-ins needed to run your blog.

If you already run a blog but want to change to another hosting provider, some web hosts will migrate your existing blog from either paid or free blog hosting to their shared or dedicated servers free of charge and without downtime. Blog hosting solutions provide enough hardware resources, disk space, and bandwidth to handle large amounts of traffic if you plan to run multiple blogs off a single WordPress MU installation or include media content in your blog, or if your blog quickly grows in popularity. Some web hosts may provide options like ability to host multiple blogs on one account, unlimited domains, unlimited MySQL databases, add-ons like hit counters, and other powerful features you can use to enhance your blog. With blog hosting services, you also get the option to scale up and move your blog to a dedicated server when you need it.

Get reliable blog hosting solutions from Certified Hosting

Certified Hosting offers a wide selection of blog hosting solutions like WordPress hosting, b2evolution hosting, Nucleus blog hosting, Textpattern hosting, Moveable Type hosting, and many other blog hosting services. All Certified Hosting blog hosting solutions are specifically optimized to run popular blog platforms so you get a 100% compatible solution for your blog.

Certified Hosting also offers free automated installation of your blog software of choice to help you get your blog up and running in minutes. All Certified Hosting blog hosting plans come packed with many great features like unlimited domains, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, free updates, free plug-ins installation, and free migration of your existing blog.

When looking for a reliable blog hosting solution, most people tend to only look at the price and features offered. Sure these things are important, but equally or maybe even more important are other aspects like web host reliability, uptime, money-back guarantee, and quality of support. In addition to great prices and lots of features, Certified Hosting offers guaranteed 99.999% uptime and 24/7 network monitoring with an expert service support team available to answer your questions around the clock.

Visit http://certifiedhosting.com/blog-hosting/ to learn more about blog hosting solutions we offer or contact our service representative today at 1-800-547-9995 (U.S. & Canada) or 1-909-498-4415 (worldwide).