1. Best overall: GreenGeeks
2. Best green investment: InMotion Hosting
3. Best green sponsorship: SiteGround
4. Best green policies: IONOS
5. Best for green business: HostPapa
6. Best work culture: DreamHost
7. FAQs
8. How we test
The best green web hosting providers not only save the planet but also provide the same essential features as the best web hosting services without compromise. According to the International Energy Agency, global data centers are estimated to consume an astonishing 1.5% of the world's total electricity and web hosting companies are coming under increasing pressure from governments and customers to reduce their environmental impact, as the effects of the climate emergency take hold.
Going green doesn’t mean we have to pay more or sacrifice performance. In fact, greener options are often more efficient which helps to lower costs and increase the utilization of resources. The average website produces 0.8 grams of CO2e per pageview. To help bring that down, here's our roundup of the best green web hosting companies for 2024.
The best green web hosting services of 2024 in full:
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Best green hosting overall
There is a reason that the Green Geeks web hosting company features at the top of our list as the best green webhost. Where other companies deliver their green credentials as a part of their marketing, it's at the core of Green Geek's DNA. It claims to be the 'world's leading eco-friendly web hosting provider' and it's hard to argue with that. Founder Trey Gardner decided when he set the company up in 2008 that he would make his eco credentials second to none.
The result is recognition from the United States Environmental Protection Agency and a partnership with One Tree Planted to add one tree for every new hosting account which is created. It also purchases three times as many energy offsets (RECs - or renewable energy certificates) as it consumes, a feature it calls 300% Green Website. It's a strong demonstration of the company's commitment to the environment, since that's not a cheap proposition.
Green Geeks offers an excellent range of shared and VPS hosting services at great prices. The annual plans start at just $2.95 a month (rising to $11.95 a month from year two), which comes with 50GB web space, a free domain name in year 1, unlimited databases and free nightly backups. We particularly like the offer of managed WordPress sites, because that's an increasingly popular platform for startup businesses nowadays, and this will take the headache out of keeping them running. It should be mentioned that the server provisions are also very respectable in terms of performance. Even the lowest plans feature free caching and CDN, plus unmetered bandwidth. Impressive!
There's no dedicated server plan, which probably reflects the fact that the company doesn't see it as a very eco friendly option, but there are managed VPS hosting plans for those who need some added capacity for their websites. The two features which most smaller web owners will be grateful for are the free website migration and the 30 day money back guarantee. Both of these should give peace of mind to people thinking of switching.
From the name downwards, it's clear that Green Geeks is serious about its focus on the environment. There's only so much that any web hosting supplier can do to tackle the emissions problem in the IT industry, but Green Geeks has taken enough of a stand to show it matters.
Read our full GreenGeeks review.
Best green investment
InMotion Hosting is a private company which launched in 2001, and boasts some 170,000 customers across the globe. The company offers a wide range of services, from basic shared and WordPress hosting all the way through VPS and Dedicated hosting for large scale clients. The base level Core plan is only offered on an annual basis, at $3.49 a month, rising to $9.99 after the first year.
If you have the budget, this is one company where it definitely pays to lock in prices for as long as you can. The 3 year Power Plan for example gives you unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email addresses and free marketing tools including a website builder and advertising credits. Did we mention the phrase 'full featured?' All for just $4.58 a month for the 36 months. After that the price rises to $15.99 a month, which we feel is still good value.
The top Power and Pro shared hosting plans include live US based chat and phone support, which is something you don't often see in this market. We also like the company's refreshing approach to the environment. The website states that 'our core belief is that it's better to reduce than simply offset', which is a very powerful and valid approach. To prove this, the company cut cooling costs by nearly 70% at its data center in L.A., and has reduced its carbon footprint by 2000 tons a year since 2010.
InMotion Hosting has really high quality tech support. Each member of the tech support team has to undergo 280+ hours of training, and the company's expert team averages more than four years of professional hosting experience. The result is a raft of awards, ranging from A+ Better Business Bureau, G2 Leader and a Great Place To Work certification. This focus on quality is something that's not generally a part of the budget hosting market, so it's great to see it in action here.
The 100% guarantee and unprecedented 90 day money back guarantee on the shared hosting plans says a lot about the confidence InMotion Hosting has in its technology and people. The company has recently opened an Amsterdam data center to serve Europe, which joins the East and West coast US centers, but that's as far as geographic coverage goes.
Finally, it's hard not to be impressed with the sheer scope of the company's dedication to eco policies. Super insulated data centers, high efficiency cooling systems, a move towards 100% renewable energy, ISO27001 and a commitment to future proof its infrastructure to minimize carbon impact.
Read our full InMotion Hosting review
Best green sponsorship
SiteGround comes with some attractive options. The lowest level StartUp Plan offers one website, 10GB of storage, 10,000 visitors a month, free email, SSL, daily backup and unlimited databases. Some of the add-on features are genuinely valuable. Like the free email migrator, which lets you transfer over your old email system to the SiteGround platform, or the free WooCommerce set up option. We're also impressed by the enhanced security of the web firewall and anti-bot technology. These are great tools to have if you want to keep your website running happily for the long term.
Another nice touch is the ability to add extra people as website admins. This is pretty rare in the shared web hosting space, and gives you the ability to assign extra tech and design support as you build and run your site.
What's a little surprising is the fact that the promotional annual pricing offer of $2.99 a month on the base plan, flips back up to a hefty $17.99 a month after the 12 months is up. That's a large step up for any small business trying to manage its cash flow efficiently.
The higher level plans offer more sophisticated features, as you'd expect. This includes on-demand backups which the customer can create instantly, plus staging sites for testing new changes before pushing them live to the public. Premium plans also use the Google Cloud platform - good news for WordPress sites which are notorious performance hogs.
One nice difference with SiteGround is the use of a custom user friendly admin panel. Anyone who's struggled with cPanel or DirectAdmin will definitely appreciate the simplicity of the SiteGround dashboard. It's a dangerous thing for a hosting provider to do, because it can alienate a large number of tech snobs who revel in complex server settings and configurations, but it's perfect for those people looking for a quieter life.
There is the usual roster of default features on offer, including 24/7 tech support, with a 98% satisfaction rate, and domain and WordPress management for those who need extra hand holding.
SiteGround use Google servers which have a 100% renewable energy match and the company was a recent award winner in the Green Event and Customer Service category of the 20th Annual International Business Awards. It won the award for supporting the Shackleton Mission which called for a new marine wildlife protected area of 4,000,000 sq miles in Antarctica.
Read our full SiteGround review.
Best green policies
Ionos is a modest hero of the green hosting world, which may stem in part from its German roots. This full featured web host offers a complete set of services, including fast shared hosting from $1 a month for six months. We're also impressed with the $6 a month regular priced Essential plan, which comes with nice features like high speed page loading of 1.23 seconds. The company also boasts 99.9% uptime, using mirrored geo-redundant servers, as well as protection against DDos attacks.
The Essential plan comes with 10GB of storage, 10 databases, and 512MB RAM. It's a modest spec, but it's clearly optimized to the max with those page load figures. One really useful feature is a tweakable performance dashboard which lets you increase your server RAM on demand for a small extra fee. Great for coping with a viral post or special customer offer which is exploding your site traffic.
It's easy to get the feeling that the company takes its role as a web host seriously. As well as providing a range of WordPress plans from entry level to WooCommerce Agency hosting, Ionos devotes 5% of its resources towards helping the open source roots of the WordPress community. It's a great way to demonstrate care for the planet, as developing more efficient code helps reduce energy impacts in the long run. It may not sound much, but it's a solid initiative.
Some of the standout features of Ionos relate to its environmental position. The US data center runs entirely on wind power, and in Europe 100% of the electricity is from renewable sources. Not only that, priority is given to local and regional suppliers wherever possible. The company uses carbon offsets to maintain carbon neutrality in its operations.
There are other eco positives as well. Ionos employs a sophisticated equipment recycling program, which not only helps re-use old equipment, but also lets the company stay up to date with the most energy efficient products. The use of A.I. systems and new technologies like evaporative cooling help reduce the company's carbon impact significantly. For example a recent new air conditioning system resulted in a 15% increase in energy efficiency.
The company operates a fully eco friendly culture. Remote working for employees and fossil fuel free travel is encouraged. All of its offices have high end video conferencing to reduce travel needs. Trains are the recommended means of transport, and car-pooling, cycle commutes and EV chargers are also a standard part of the corporate culture.
Ionos strikes us as the kind of solid, no nonsense web hosting service which may not be as glamorous or showy as its neighbors, but which gets the job done.
Read our full IONOS review.
Best green host for business
For companies running mission critical businesses, it's crucial to choose the best web host possible to ensure the kind of security, performance and value that's needed. HostPapa is an award winning Canadian based operation which was founded in 2006, and now operates worldwide across fourteen countries.
The company makes a big play of its business oriented customer support services, even as it delivers competitively priced shared hosting plans. The base Start plan starts at $2.95 for a 3 year lock-in term, which provides 100GB storage, a two page website builder, one-click WordPress install and 10 email addresses.
Unusually, the company also offers a fully fledged email platform, including spam protection, autoresponders support, webmail and 10 forwarding accounts. This makes it an ideal choice for any business wanting to set up an online email marketing operation without breaking the bank.
The Start plan also provides a full range of ecommerce shopping carts, including Paypal and Presta Cart, as well as one hosted domain and 10 subdomains. It's solid value all round. One thing to note is there's no guarantee of server performance at this price point, and the plan explicitly states that your business is likely to be sharing the server with a lot of other sites. But this is pretty standard for the budget end of the market.
One of the nice features geared towards businesses is the provision of PapaCare. This is a full white glove support and management service add-on, which customers can purchase for $9.95 a month. It's designed to take the worry out of running the tech side of your business, rather like outsourcing all your web tech needs. The service includes priority security, performance and setup support. Anyone who's ever run an online business will know that things break, all the time. From silly things like plugins to major security hacking emergencies. Having this kind of deeply integrated support is worth the peace of mind.
In terms of green credentials, HostPapa was one of the first web hosts to promote and practice green hosting. Again, as with many similar operations, it relies on renewable sources for much of its energy, although there are no specifics on the percentage or energy mix. As well as using solar and wind, it makes heavy use of offsetting services. The company buys Green-e certified RECs from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to cover its annual electricity usage.
Read our full HostPapa review
Best green work culture
DreamHost is one of the world's longest running hosting providers. The company started operations in 1997 in Los Angeles, California and now hosts over 1.5 million websites for more than 400,000 customers across the world. What sets it apart from most of its peers is a focus on utilizing the best technology it can deliver.
The company's core hosting service continues to provide best of breed services in a range of areas. The Shared Starter scheme starts at a standard price of $7.99 a month ($4.99 for the first 3 months) reducing to $5.99 on the 3 year lock-in. For this you get one website and unlimited traffic, along with free WordPress migration, a website builder and a free SSL security certificate. Surprisingly you'll have to pay extra for an email account, something which some other hosts provide for free.
A big feature is the offer of 100% uptime - no 99.99% here - which is a testament to the company's faith in its redundant server policy. Your website will also be running on state of the art solid state disks (SSD) servers rather than older, slower hard drive computers. Solid state, as the name implies, means no moving parts - which makes them faster and cooler running than legacy hard drives (HDD). They're also low power, which is good for the planet.
Unusually, DreamHost can supply a complete custom website design and development service. If your budget permits, just $1499 will deliver an SEO optimized, five page WordPress website, complete with analytics, blog page and custom homepage. This is a great way for serious business professionals to present a top quality online presence from the get-go.
DreamHost uses renewable energy power sources, and employs state of the art processors, cooling and other software technologies. These are all designed to reduce carbon impact and costs. The green scene doesn't stop there. The company deliberately encourages environmental action from employees. Remote first working, extensive use of teleconferencing, a paperless office culture and other initiatives add to the overall green approach.
DreamHost also gives back to the community in terms of supporting open coding initiatives such as OpenStack, the Ceph storage system and other worthy causes. By supporting the open source coding community, the company can improve its efficiency and resilience, and so help reduce carbon impacts.
Read our full DreamHost review.
Green web hosting FAQs
What is green web hosting?
Green web hosting is the provision of web hosting services which include a commitment to environmental integrity. This can take the form of using renewable energy in data centers, or deploying more efficient technology and so on. The best green web hosts include an eco culture throughout the company, not just in the data centers. This will include fossil free travel, videoconferencing options and no commute policies such as remote working.
How can you tell if a hosting provider is really green?
The most dedicated green hosts will feature a special section on their site which outlines their green policies. They should also detail their carbon mitigation efforts, with stats, if possible. The very best will demonstrate sincerity by displaying their eco credentials and awards on the site.
Does green web hosting really make a difference?
The fact is that web hosting services consume a huge amount of the world's electricity production, around 1.5% or more. Every little bit that can be done to reduce that huge number also reduces the carbon emissions that come from fossil fuel electricity generation. The problem is made worse by the remorseless increase in the number of data centers we need. The current A.I. revolution is not helping, as more and bigger data centers come online to deal with demand.
Is green web hosting more expensive?
It doesn't have to be. More efficient computer racks, better software and intelligent air-conditioning should help reduce costs. Which in turn can be passed on to the customer. As with much of the environmental movement, going green typically leads to more efficiency and so to lower prices. Certainly our overview of the best green web hosts doesn't show any price premium that comes from a green shift.
What is the future of green web hosting?
Many of the largest data centers are being relocated to cooler climates such as the North of Sweden and other Scandinavian locations to tackle heating costs. We're also seeing an increase in data center consolidation to improve efficiencies. Probably the biggest change we're going to see over the next few years is a rise in the use of automated A.I. systems. These systems will manage and optimize all parts of the data center ecosystem, to ensure the lowest possible costs and carbon footprint.
Why do we need green web hosting?
Every time we use a service on the internet, we connect to a computer located in a data center somewhere in the world. Every single email, web chat, smiley, video, and Facebook comment consumes server electricity to store and transmit. Energy is also needed to keep these server farms cool. Imagine the heat coming from your laptop, and then scale it up to a huge warehouse level. This energy is mostly generated using fossil fuelled power stations, which means that the CO2e emissions are staggering. A 2021 report from the Helmholtz Centre in Germany put the global emissions from data storage and transmission at 97 million tonnes of CO2e a year, roughly equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Sweden and Finland combined. The upshot is that ensuring your web hosting service uses green clean electricity is a great way of helping to reduce carbon emissions. And every bit helps our planet and future!
How we tested the best green web hosting services
Testing the best web hosting services is far less complex than testing these same providers on just how eco-friendly it is. There's a green web check tool created by The Green Web Foundation where we put the URL of a web hosting company into its search directory, which then gives an instant result on the site's green status.
Although not all web hosting providers on our list past this test, it's a great tool to start off with when looking to make a quick decision about which green web hosting service to choose.
We found that providers such as GreenGeeks and HostPapa use green energy or compensation for its services.
We also carry out our tests on features and compare pricing as we do for the best web hosting and best website builder services on the market. We choose the top one based on the providers that tick the most boxes in terms of affordability, ease of use, customer support and useful add-ons.
