According to the International Energy Agency, global data centers are estimated to consume an astonishing 1.5% of the world's total electricity. The average website produces 0.8 grams of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per pageview. A website with 10,000 monthly page views therefore makes 102kg of CO2e each year – equal to driving around 700km in a car.
All companies including the best 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. However, going green doesn’t mean we have to pay more or sacrifice performance. In fact, greener options are often more efficient and help to lower costs and increase the utilization of resources. The best green web hosting providers can save the planet without compromising the essential features as the best web hosting services. Here is our roundup of the best green web hosting companies for 2024.
The best green web hosting services of 2024:
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Best green hosting overall
There is a reason that GreenGeeks features at the top of our list as the best green web host. Where other companies deliver their green credentials as a part of their marketing, it's at the core of GreenGreeks’ 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 that he would make his eco credentials second to none when he set up the company in 2008.
As we can see from its official website, GreenGeeks has been recognized by the United States Environmental Protection Agency since 2009 as a Green Power Partner, and is a partner with One Tree Planted to plant one tree for every new hosting account which is created. GreenGeeks also works with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) in Portland, Oregon ("BEF" is a Green-e Partner). BEF helps calculate their yearly energy consumption, and it 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.
GreenGeeks 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 highlight 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!
They also provide managed VPS hosting plans for those who need some added capacities 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 GreenGeeks 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 GreenGeeks 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 170,000 customers across the globe. The company offers a wide range of services, from basic shared and WordPress hosting all the way through to VPS and Dedicated hosting for large scale clients. The base level Core plans for shared and Wordpress are both available in monthly, yearly, and three yearly plans each with their own price. The monthly plans are the standard rate of $13.49 a month, yearly plans are $2.49 a month, and three year plans are $2.99 a month. It’s worth noting that while buying the three year plan is more expensive each month, you never know what price increases will come in the subsequent years. If you’re confident that you’ll be staying with InMotion Hosting for a long time, it’s possibly worth paying the extra now.
The top Power and Pro shared hosting plans include live US based chat and phone support from helpful humans, 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% and reduced its carbon footprint by more than 2,000 tons per year since 2010 at its first-ever Green Data Center in Los Angeles.
What sets InMotion Hosting apart from others is its high quality US-based tech support around 24/7/365. Each member of the tech support team must 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 to 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% satisfaction guarantee and unprecedented 90-day money back guarantee on the shared hosting plans say a lot about the confidence InMotion Hosting has in its technology and people. The company’s data centers sit directly on the Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Amsterdam IXPs, 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, ranging from Super insulated data centers, high efficiency cooling systems, a move towards 100% renewable energy, ISO27001 to a commitment to future-proofing its infrastructure. All these help minimize carbon impact.
Read our full InMotion Hosting review
Best green sponsorship
SiteGround uses Google servers which have a 100% renewable energy match. If you want to have the green credentials, SiteGround is a good choice. The company was the winner of one Gold and one Bronze Stevie® Award in the Green Event and Customer Service category of the 20th Annual International Business Awards., which made it a 4-time Stevie Award Winner for Customer Service Excellence. It won the awards for supporting the Shackleton Mission which called for a new marine wildlife protected area of 4,000,000 km² in Antarctica.
SiteGround provides attractive web hosting options starting with the base level StartUp Plan which offers: one website, 10GB of storage, an approximately maximum number of 10,000 web visits, free email, SSL, daily backup and unlimited databases. Some of the add-on features are genuinely valuable, such as the free email migrator, which allows you to transfer over your old email system to the SiteGround platform, or the free WooCommerce set up option. The enhanced security of the web firewall and anti-bot technology is also very impressive.
Another nice essential feature is Add Collaborators, the ability to add extra people as website admins. This gives you the ability to assign extra tech and design support as you build and run your site, which is pretty rare in the shared web hosting space.
What's a little surprising is the fact that the promotional annual pricing offer of $3.99 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 users trying to manage their cash flows efficiently.
The higher level plans offer more sophisticated features, as you'd expect, which include 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.
Read our full SiteGround review.
Best green policies
Ionos is a modest hero of the green hosting world, formerly known as 1&1 Internet founded in Germany in 1988.. This full featured web host offers a complete set of services, including the bestselling Plus shared hosting from $1 a month with a 1-year term. We're also impressed with the Essential hosting plan with a promoted price $4 a month for a 1-year term, which comes with 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. All of the shared hosting plans offer free SSL, a free domain, free daily backups and recovery, free 24/7 support, and easy WordPress installation. Some features may sound modest, 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.
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’s indeed a solid initiative.
What makes IONOS outstanding as well is their commitment to sustainability. IONOS keeps their infrastructure climate-neutral and free of environmental trade-offs. . 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 more eco positives. Ionos employs a sophisticated equipment recycling program, which helps re-use old equipment and improves energy-efficiency 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.
IONOS operates a fully eco-friendly culture and encourages the employees to do their part. Remote working for employees and fossil fuel free travel are encouraged. All of its offices have high end video conferencing for collaboration to reduce travel needs. Trains are the recommended means of transport. 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 business, it's crucial to choose the best web host possible to ensure the required security, performance and value. HostPapa is one of such best web hosts. It is an award winning Canadian based operation which was founded in 2006, and now operates worldwide across fourteen countries.
HostPapa is committed to reliable hosting as well as high-quality customer support, even as it delivers competitively priced shared hosting plans. The base Start plan starts at $2.95 (renews at $8.99 a month) 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.
For web hosting and WP hosting accounts, HostPapa also provides the featured PapaCare service for website owners who want to focus on their business without worrying about the IT side of their websites.PapaCare starts from €8.95 per month. which customers can purchase for $9.95 a month. The service includes setup support, priority security, and ensured peak performance. Things can break while you run online business, from 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. It is powered by renewable green energy such as wind and solar energy resources. Since they started purchasing green energy, they have offset thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases.. 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 a US hosting provider dedicating to host business for 27 years,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.
DreamHost continues to provide best-of-breed hosting services in a range of areas. The Shared Starter scheme which is only available for new account registration starts at a standard price of $7.99 a month (the product has an introductory price of $4.95 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 automated WordPress migration, a website builder and a free SSL security certificate, and 97 Day Money-Back Guarantee. However, you'll have to pay extra for an email account as low as $1.67/mo.
A big feature is the offer of 100% uptime guarantee, 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, which makes them faster and cooler-running than legacy hard drives (HDD). Besides, SSDs consume less 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. Other professional services range between $59/month for website management to $399/month for social media marketing. https://www.dreamhost.com/pro-services/design/custom-web-design/
DreamHost uses renewable energy power sources, and employs power-efficient processors, and high-efficiency cooling infrastructures. These are all for reducing carbon impact and costs, but the green scene doesn't stop there. The company deliberately encourages environmental actions from employees. Remote-first working, extensive use of teleconferencing, a paperless office culture and no dress code add to the overall green approach.
DreamHost also supports open-source software such as OpenStack and the Ceph storage system. By supporting the open source coding community, DreamHost can improve its efficiency and resilience, which helps to reduce carbon impacts.
Read our full DreamHost review.
Green web hosting FAQs
What is green web hosting?
Green web hosting is a sustainable way of hosting websites in that it aims to reduce the environmental impact of the process. Web hosting companies rely on data centers to effectively store, manage, and distribute their customers’ data. However, running these data centers requires a lot of energy. In fact, approximately 1-2% of the world’s total electricity demand goes into running data centers.
This energy is usually generated by burning fossil fuels, which as we all know is detrimental for the environment. Green web hosting tries to minimize this damage by adopting eco-friendly measures. These include replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, using energy-saving equipment, offsetting carbon emissions, etc.
How can I tell if a hosting provider is really green?
If a hosting provider is green, they will definitely talk about it on their website. There will probably be a section dedicated to explaining exactly how their processes are green. Furthermore, they might also display their green certificate somewhere on the site.
If you want to verify whether all these claims are true, there are two ways to do that. First, you can use this Green Web Check tool from the Green Web Foundation. Just enter the link to your website, and it will tell you whether it's running on green energy or not. The second is to visit this Green Web directory (currently in beta mode), which has a list of all verified green hosting providers.
Does green web hosting really make a difference?
Given the current state of our environment, every small step counts. This is particularly true because the energy sector is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for roughly 75% of the total emissions.
Plus, as time goes by and technology advances, the emissions are only likely to increase. Even small developments like watching a video at 4K significantly increase energy consumption. Easy access to AI tools for millions of users has also dramatically worsened the crisis.
All this considered, it's more important than ever to switch to green options and minimize the impact as much as possible – and opting for a green web host provider is an excellent way to do that.
Is green web hosting more expensive?
It might surprise you that green hosting is actually cheaper than traditional hosting. A traditional hosting infrastructure consumes a lot of energy, making the process more expensive for the provider, who then passes on the cost to the user in the form of pricier packages.
On the other hand, running the same systems on renewable energy is cheaper for the provider itself, which is reflected in the pricing of the packages for customers. After all, every business wants to provide competitive pricing, and green hosting providers just happen to have more profit margin to generously discount customers.
What is the future of green web hosting?
Green hosting has all the potential in the world to be the next big thing in the web hosting space. As laws around environmental impact get stricter, an increasing number of companies are shifting to a green approach.
We are already seeing data centers being moved to cooler regions to reduce heating costs and data centers being consolidated to give the same results by using fewer resources. In the future, as AI gets more efficient, we might also see AI systems handling most of the mundane operating tasks in data centers to ensure the lowest possible emissions and costs.
Why do we need green web hosting?
The answer is pretty simple: to protect the environment from the growing technological advancements. Electricity has been around for many years, and so have greenhouse emissions. However, in today’s world, overpopulation, overconsumption, and technological advancement have drastically increased the amount of emissions to a level that our planet cannot handle. We are, in fact, already seeing its effects: increased global warming, melting of glaciers, and erratic rainfall, among others.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that there’s hardly any stopping technological advancements. However, for us to grow sustainably, we need a greener approach that allows us to grow and develop without harming the Earth.
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 passed 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.
