5 Best Hosting for Travel Agencies
Brick-and-mortar travel agencies no longer have the same authority and appeal they had back in the days when everything wasn’t at one’s fingertip. Today, your favorite vacation is just one click away, thanks to travel agencies going online. In the competitive landscape of websites dedicated to travel, it’s important to pay attention to the type and quality of the hosting you choose for your online travel agency business. Many travel websites also have a strong eCommerce component, not only advertising their travel packages and allowing users to book them, but also pay for them online. In this context, a reliable and safe hosting environment is just as important as having a visually appealing website with a good usability quotient.
Most travel agency sites choose WordPress as their content management system, which is understandable since WordPress is a particularly feasible option both from a financial and usability standpoint.
Before I go into details on teaching you how to choose a hosting provider for a travel agency website or blog, here is my list of hosts that I recommend:
| Company | From | ||
|---|---|---|---|
# 1 |
 |
$3.95 / mo |
|
# 2 |
 |
$3.99 / mo |
|
# 3 |
 |
$3.95 / mo |
|
# 4 |
 |
$1.99 / mo |
|
# 5 |
 |
$3.95 / mo |
Building a Travel Agency Website with WordPress
It doesn’t matter if you choose to build your website on your own or outsource it to a freelancer, whichever way you decide to approach the issue, it’s good to bear in mind that by choosing WordPress you’re both expediting the entire website building process and making sure you’ll be able to manage your WordPress travel agency website alone as well.
WordPress can help you achieve different kinds of functionalities required by travel websites such as site search capabilities, booking functionality, the possibility to incorporate image galleries, maps, etc. You can achieve all these via WordPress plugins. WordPress is a good option for your travel site even design wise, since there are many ready-made WordPress travel themes like Love Travel, Traveler, Travelo or Tour Travel, each with the possibility to customize it according to your specific needs.
Choosing to build a travel agency website with WordPress also makes it easier to find a good hosting provider as well, given that WordPress is compatible with most web hosting accounts and several hosting companies have hosting plans specially devised for WordPress.
How to Choose a Hosting Provider for a Travel Agency Website?
If you go with WordPress for building your travel website, the above question turns into ‘’how to choose a hosting provider for WordPress?” instead. However, there are some mentions that must be made. If your travel agency website is not just a simple business site, but also includes an eCommerce element as well, a shared hosting plan that would be the default hosting plan for most WordPress sites will not suffice just for the simple reason that payment processing requires a PCI compliant hosting that includes a dedicated IP and an SSL. If this is not the case, and you’re not processing credit card transactions, a robust shared hosting plan is a good start. It’s always preferable, however, to choose a hosting plan that gives you the opportunity of scalability. This means that at any time you need to upgrade your existing plan, you can do so seamlessly. The best hosting companies will no doubt give you that opportunity so you can easily manage your changing resource needs.
Apart from reliability, security, stellar support and server resources, the freebies offered by hosting providers are also an aspect to take notice of. For example, the plans of some hosting companies may be slightly higher or don’t come with the promise of unlimited bandwidth or storage, but they include freebies such as free advertising credit, content delivery network, spam protection, free daily backups or cPanel.
To help you explore your options, we’ve reviewed the best hosting companies for a travel agency business site so you can make informed decisions regarding the hosting provider you should go with. The reviews below focus mainly on these providers’ shared hosting plans, however, all provide higher tier hosting plans as well, including VPS, dedicated, WordPress managed hosting, and so on.
Best Hosting for Travel Agencies
We’ve chosen to review 5 of the best hosting companies for online travel agencies, and the ones that made it to our list are certainly the biggest names in the hosting industry either because of their reliable hosting services, affordable prices or complex hosting plans.
BlueHost
BlueHost is already synonymous with quality WordPress hosting, and it’s the preferred hosting provider of many WordPress site owners. Their shared hosting plans are some of the most pocket-friendly plans on the market delivering core features that are indispensable for a reliable hosting experience.
The three shared hosting plans at BlueHost currently cost $2.49/month (Basic plan with 1 free domain, 50 GB website space and unmetered bandwidth), $4.45/month (Plus), and $6.95/month (Prime) respectively, and come with the following core and advanced features: hosting for unlimited websites, unmetered bandwidth and unlimited storage, 1 free domain, $200 in advertising credit so you can spend it on advertising your travel agency site, spam protection, domain privacy and backup.
Optimized hosting for WordPress is also available starting at $19.99/month with the added benefit of an IPv4 address, higher speeds thanks to the content delivery network included, as well as more security with SiteLock Pro. If you need a more robust hosting plan, higher tier WordPress hosting plans and VPS plans offer a more complex hosting environment for your online travel agency business. All plans come with 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 support.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion hosting is marketed as a business hosting, however, their shared hosting plans are on the affordable end of the pricing spectrum, so they’re worth checking out. All plans come with a whopping 90-day money-back guarantee, which is certainly the highest in the industry. InMotion is known for providing fast hosting with an abundance of premium features.
Their shared hosting plans include the Launch, Power and Pro plans, which cost $4.19/month, $5.39/month, and $8.99/month respectively. The three plans differ in the number of websites you are allowed to host on one account, the number of MySQL & PostgreSQL Databases, and the e-commerce readiness of the hosting account. All three plans include the following features: real-time spam filtering, application roll-back, WordPress pre-installed, SSH Access, business-class hardware, WP-CLI for WordPress multi-site installation, free backups, no-downtime website transfers, free domain, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space.
VPS and WordPress hosting plans come with even more features so you can have all the tools necessary for successfully managing your hosting whatever your needs may be. InMotion is a premium-level hosting that is suitable for travel agency websites whether or not they are built with WordPress.
HostGator
HostGator is certainly not a new name in the hosting industry. Their experience and expertise have made it possible for them to withstand the test of time and continue to provide affordable and easy to use hosting plans. While their conveniently priced shared hosting plans are their most popular products, HostGator also have WordPress optimized hosting plans, VPS and dedicated hosting plans. They offer a 45-day money-back guarantee on all plans.
Two shared hosting plans are available at HostGator, the Hatchling (starting at $2.43/month) and the Baby (starting at $3.48/month) plan. Both plans come with unmetered disk space and unmetered bandwidth, but only the Baby plan makes it possible to host unlimited websites. Other notable features include: OpenSSH, instant backups, audio-video streaming, unlimited MSQL databases, instant setup, free credit on Google AdWords and Bing/Yahoo to promote your travel agency site, latest cPanel, and many other amazing features worth checking out.
If you feel that a shared hosting plan no longer meets your requirements, you’ll be able to upgrade to higher tier hosting plans for added functionality, security and reliability.
iPage
iPage is very popular with WordPress websites given their advantageous pricing and excellent freebies included in their plans. Their popularity and overall good hosting service is also reflected by the many positive reviews they have received from customers and web hosting review sites.
iPage has a single shared hosting plan, the Essential plan, that is a veritable all-in-one plan. Currently, it only costs $1.99/month instead of the regular price of $11.95/month, and includes $500 worth of bonus features like Google AdWords credit, free security tools, Bing advertising credit, JustCloud cloud storage (1 GB), free website building tools, etc. Strictly hosting related features include unlimited disk space, scalable bandwidth, unlimited domains and MySQL databases allowed. In terms of designing and building tools iPage offers mobile optimized site builder, vast CMS compatibility, 1-click WordPress install, as well as hundreds of templates and themes. The Essential plan also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, 24/7 support, and vDeck control panel.
iPage’s two WordPress optimized hosting plans as well as their VPS and dedicated hosting plans all come with outstanding features and competitive pricing so you can easily switch to a higher hosting plan if and when your travel agency website needs it.
GreenGeeks
If you’re an environmentally conscious person or business and you’re looking for a hosting provider who shares the same values with you, GreenGeeks is the cleanest hosting provider you can find. Their services are powered by 100% renewable energy, and they provide award-winning hosting services.
GreenGeeks’s shared hosting plans are not varied in the sense that they have a single shared hosting plan and a WordPress optimized hosting that both cost $3.96/month. However, these plans are all-encompassing delivering you everything you need in a single hosting package.
Thus, their most important features include: free website migration, unlimited space, transfer, free domain, free marketing credit, real-time security scanning, 30-day money-back guarantee, Fantastico & Softaculous Script Installer, unlimited MySQL databases, 1-click WordPress installation, e-commerce ready hosting environment, SpamAssassin protection, etc. The WordPress hosting also includes WP-CLI & SSH (Shell), enhanced security (e.g. Brute Force & DDoS Protection), better performance with CDN, and Git pre-installed.
While the green energy powered hosting company seems like a novelty, GreenGeeks was actually founded in 2006, and they have been perfecting their services ever since, which is also proven by the many awards they have received along the years.
Conclusion
Now that you have an overview of the best hosting providers for your online travel agency’s website, you can make an informed decision about the hosting provider and the plan to choose. At the beginning, you can choose a shared hosting plan and as your business gets more traction, you can switch to a hosting optimized for WordPress or a VPS hosting. A good hosting company like the ones discussed at length above will give you the possibility to switch to a higher tier account and easily cancel your existing account.
