If you are an entrepreneur or a freelancer, where would you prefer to host your website and business emails, google cloud or other web hosting services?
I have used Google cloud, Google Workspace and Dreamhost web services to host my websites and emails and in this video, I am going to share with you my honest review. Which of these hosting services offers the best value for money?
I will approach this blog review by looking at each service value for your money.
Pricing
How much does it cost to host websites and business email addresses? What features do I get for each listed price? Owing to many service providers in the marketplace, filtering your options using the pricing approach can really save time.
To get this right, you must have basic knowledge regarding web hosting in order to understand the features listed on the pricing table. E.g when they say, Free SSL certificate, what does it mean? Is this among the things you are looking for? With this in mind, let’s begin with Google cloud services.
Google Cloud and Google Workspace
In order to use Google Cloud Services as an online business owner (with emails and website), you need to subscribe to 2 separate services; google workspace for business emails, file sharing, meetings and more and Google Cloud for hosting your website. These two products are purchased separately.
For google workspace, the pricing starts from $6 per user per month. What this means is that you can add one domain(purchased elsewhere; google doesn’t sell domain names) which is main and other domains as aliases. In the main domain, you can only create 1 business email which is treated as a user. Other emails under the same domain or other domain you add are treated as aliases which means you need to login to the main email address to access the other emails.
All your emails will be delivered to the same inbox. This is not really good if you have employees who you want each one of them to have their independent business related email address.
One cool thing about Google Workspace is that you have access to many other google services including 30GB of storage space for the starter pack. Also email deliveries to your inbox are fast. Still on the emails, if an email is sent to you via a wordpress website page, it will not be delivered to your inbox.
I guess it’s filtered as spam. Sadly it’s not even delivered to the spam folder. It’s totally lost. To fix it you need to follow a very long procedure. To avoid trouble, I decided to embed Google Forms on my WordPress site to avoid problems.
If you have to host your websites on Google Workspace, you are only limited to having your website designed with Google Sites or Blogger.
If your website is designed with WordPress or other web design services, then you will need to go for the Google Cloud. This is a separate google service for hosting all other tech related services like websites, apps, SaaS apps and more.
You pay based on your usage which varies from time to time. For example, I have a small WordPress website and on my first month after all the discounts, I got billed $12, which I find very expensive considering this is only one WordPress website with less than 1000 visitors a month.
Also this bill has discounts already applied. Without discounts, I will have paid $40 for the one month. This is expensive compared to other hosting services. But the speed is unmatched. It’s very fast.
It’s important to note that google cloud requires that you have some experience designing with cloud services. Setting up requires that you fill and complete several admin modules before you start a project.
So, in other words, on a normal month, this service alone will cost $46 when you include google workspace for emails. Is this amount within your budget? Remember it may be even more for Google cloud depending on your usage.
Now let’s compare this with Dreamhost web hosting services.
DreamHost Web Hosting Services
When you subscribe to Dreamhost, you get everything under one package for the shared hosting. In this I mean, you get unlimited business emails for you and your staff, host unlimited websites and more. This is all offered in one place. You don’t have to pay separate bills for the services compared to google products.
Setting up email addresses and websites is easy. Dreamhost has almost every web design installer like wordpress, drupal, Joomla and more readily available on their cpanel. All these installers are free to use once you purchase a package from them.
Unlike Google, Dreamhost hosting services sell other products like storage and document services separately. In fact they actually resell google products. This does not change anything because you can access the same products for free when you have a gmail account. Same case with Office360, you only need a Microsoft user account.
Now, when it comes to cost, there is a huge variation. If you are a new customer, you get the service at a discounted price. For existing users, you pay $13.99 per Month or $155 a year for the shared hosting. They have no hidden fees. This is a friendly price to anyone running an online business.
Also, emails sent to you by users via the contacts pages of your website are delivered to your inbox. This is another win.
Summary of the Comparison
| Service Comparison | Google Cloud and Google Workspace | Dreamhost |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Expensive – Its not fixed.You can pay up to $46/month for 1 website and 1 user account for emails. | Cheap – From $13.99/month for shared hosting. |
| Email Hosting | Business emails are billed per user. Billed extra for additional users. Free email aliases. | You get unlimited business emails Included in the main package. No aliases. |
| Website Hosting | Free hosting for google sites and blogger sites. Hosting other sites like wordpress is billed according to the disk usage which can be expensive. | You host unlimited websites. No limit on the number of websites you can host. |
| File sharing and storage | Upto 30GB and free file creation tools | No file sharing services or file creation tools |
| Customer service | Automated support for starter package. Very difficult to get help unless you reach out on their X page. | 24/7 customer support services |
| User experience | Google workspace- Very easy and user friendly. Google cloud – Takes time to understand and use.Needs experienced cloud engineer. | Very easy to use once you have everything set up. |
| Speed | Very fast. 0 downtime. SSD disks. | Very fast. SSD disk storage. |
Conclusion
As you can see, website hosting service providers like Dreamhost still wins in terms of cost, user experience, customer service, and email hosting. Google is still expensive for users with static websites. They need to find a way to merge google workspace and google cloud if they desire to serve small business owners like myself who need both email and web hosting services in one place.
With this said, I hope you found this article helpful. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
You can reach out to me via the contact us page.
Up until next time, bye bye and take care.
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