Since I changed the web hosting company of my sports blog from GoDaddy to HostGator, the speed improvement in page loading times has been substantial. Although GoDaddy is the best registrar online and I would never think to register any of my other blogs or sites with another company, the HostGator's hosting plans and service are somehow better and is considered one of the best hosting companies. Therefore, while I suggest GoDaddy for domain registration, I recommend blog hosting with HostGator hosting company.

I have registered more than 10 domain names with GoDaddy and used a couple of their hosting plans for some years along with some advertising parked pages. The last ones were more or so dead money, since a couple weeks after I bought the service (contract for a year), I discovered the free parking hosting companies in the web, which are considered better than most. Anyhow, my web hosting plans were pretty good and I had no complains. I also had no interest in a free hosting company, since you don't have full control over your site, you are obliged to add specific advertisements and besides, I wanted to look more professional.

However some time ago I witnessed delays in loading times especially of the front page. My main blog (that is my Sports Blog) began to get heavier adding more pages continuously, was converted from html to php with the help of Joomla and was receiving more traffic day by day. Imagine that 20 seconds were needed for Mozilla (or Internet Explorer) to begin loading the front page, only to proceed after the "Website found, waiting for reply...". When the same situation aroused with another site of mine, I started looking for alternatives regarding the web hosting, although my 2-year hosting plan with GoDaddy had 10 months more until its expiration and it was already paid for.

2.5 months after the domains' transfer to HostGator, I can honestly say I am more than happy. Without changing anything important during the domain transferring, the loading times were a lot shorter. Generally from what I've read online from other users and webmasters, a very good combination for your blogs is to have the domain registration done by GoDaddy and the web hosting by HostGator.

At this point I'd like to say a few words about Greek domain registration and hosting companies since the majority of my blog readers come from Greece. If you are interested in ".gr" domain registrations then there is no alternative other than the Greek domain registrars. If however you search for the best ".com" domain registration, then I can find no good reason not to look into the international domain registrars and specifically GoDaddy, since it will cost you half the price in comparison with the Greek domain registrations.

And as far as web hosting concerns, the money saving opportunities are even more. Inspiration for this post was a recent discussion with a businessman friend of mine, who trusts well-known and established Greek hosting companies. The price difference between a Greek hosting company and an international one is significant and if that isn't enough to make you look into the international market, you should compare what you are buying with your hard earned money. I can simply mention that at this moment the hosting of Jimmakos.com costs about $8 per month and I have 1000GB bandwidth and infinite disk space under my disposal. Oh yes, I also have infinite SQL databases, infinite domains, infinite email accounts...