Best Real Estate Website Hosting? (Blazing Fast Speed)
If you are setting up a real estate website for your business, you are likely going to include the IDX feature which allows your real estate agent site to connect to the MLS and serve property listings and search functionality.
But a downfall of real estate IDX websites is the IDX integration tends to slow down your websites page load times. And a slower website is a problem because users expect fast page speeds and so does Google when ranking your pages in the search results.
Slow websites can cost real estate agents thousands of dollars in commissions. Potential leads exit your website and you miss the opportunity to do business with them.
So what can you do to ensure your real estate IDX website loads fast?
Choose a web hosting company that is blazing fast.
What is Website Hosting?
Before I dive into my top choices for best real estate website hosting companies, let’s first educate you further on what website hosting is so you understand the techy side of things behind the scenes for your IDX real estate website.
Start off considering your competitor Joe Schmo’s website that ranks locally for different real estate terms like “Homes for Sale in Houston”
You’re probably wondering how his website even exists and it’s because of a web hosting service that is providing space on the internet for websites.
Web hosting services work by storing your website files in high powered web servers (computers) that are connected to a very fast network.
Then when someone enters your website URL (known as a domain) into their browser search bar, the internet connects to the web server holding your website files and transfers the information from them, back to the person’s computer. A DNS helps make sure the right server is connected to so the right website is loaded for the user.
This person can then surf your web pages on your website. Each web page is made up of HTML, CSS, images, videos and these files are stored in a folder (known as the server) which gets hosted by the web hosting company.
A simple way to look at it is that your real estate website is renting server space and technology owned by the hosting company to allow your website to be live on the internet.
Which Website Hosting Company is Fast & Reliable?
There are many different web hosting service companies to choose from. But we’ve already touched on the importance of picking a blazing fast web host so that your web pages load quickly and don’t cost you commissions!
If you do initial research of website hosting companies for real estate IDX websites, 3 of the big names you’ll hear are BlueHost, GoDaddy, and HostGator.
Bluehost is our recommended web hosting company as they offer very fast website hosting. We also recommend Siteground which is another web hosting company I use for many of my current websites.
I DO NOT recommend cheap website hosting plans like GoDaddy or HostGator.
While they may appear cheap, you also get cheap service and poor web hosting speed. Spend the extra money (a few extra dollars per month) on a professional, high speed hosting company like Bluehost or Siteground.
Why We Love Bluehost (Fast Hosting & No Downtime)
I personally use BlueHost for my websites and 100% recommend them as the top web hosting service if you are considering starting your own website.
BlueHost is great for managing their servers to keep your website live and avoid downtime! When you pick a less reliable web hosting company and experience down time where your website goes down, this can cost you thousands of dollars in lost customers & sales.
Bluehost is also great for must have features like back up, security, customer support, bandwidth, speed, and much much more.
You don’t have to worry about it at all because it’s all done behind the scenes. Once you sign up for your Bluehost hosting account and connect your domain name to your Bluehost DNS servers, you’re good to go!
Learn more about Bluehost’s $5.95/month plan
Why We Love Siteground for Real Estate Websites
Siteground is another top choice for real estate website hosting to keep your IDX website loading quickly.
Siteground is considered a top 5 hosting company by 20+ review websites when I did hardcore research before I started using them in addition to Bluehost.
What you’ll love about Siteground is they have 99.99% up-time which gives you a reliable website that won’t crash unexpectedly.
Customer service is great, assisting you when you need to get set up initially. They also offer free CDN service and a free SSL (security) certificate.
If you’re migrating from an existing website host, they’ll move your real estate website over to Siteground for free for you, taking hassle and technical headaches & frustration out of the picture.
Learn more about Siteground’s $5.95/month plan
How Difficult is Web Hosting to Set Up?
Getting your real estate website hosting set up is a quick and easy, 5 minute process.
- Head over to Bluehost’s website here
- Choose the Plus Plan for $5.95/month
- Decide if you need a new domain or have an existing URL
- Enter your personal information
- Uncheck unnessary add-on services (that cost extra)
- Enter credit card information
- Click submit!
To start a real estate website for your real estate agent business you’ll need to purchase web hosting.
Visit this link to be taken to BlueHost’s website or this link to visit Siteground’s website.
There are multiple plans to choose from. We recommend the Plus Plan ($5.95/month) with Bluehost and the GrowBig Plan ($5.95/month) with Siteground.
These plans allow you unlimited domain URL’s under one hosting account so you can create multiple websites which can be a useful marketing tool like if you need a website built for each listing you get as a realtor.
These plans also give you unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certificates and many other features.
But most importantly, they allow for more visitors on your website without bogging it down which means a faster loading website!
After picking the plan that fits your needs and budget, you’ll be asked to provide your existing domain name you already own or if you’re starting from scratch, make up a new domain URL and see if it is available or taken.
On the checkout page, enter all your information and then uncheck the add-on services they try to upsell unless you feel you need them. We can show you in future articles and videos how to use free WordPress plugins to replicate these same features.
How to Choose Your Real Estate Website Domain URL?
When buying hosting for your real estate website, you’ll need to let your hosting company know what your website URL is, known as a domain name.
Read here about domain names if you want to understand the technical knowledge about them.
We recommend using your own name as your URL to brand your real estate agent business. But you can vary it by adding additional words.
Here are some examples:
- JohnSmith.com
- JohnSmithTeam.com
- AgentJohnSmith.com
- JohnSmithHomes.com
Be careful using the word Realtor in your Domain Name because it could be a trademarked word.
Domain Names are very inexpensive. They typically cost $10 to $15 per year depending which domain registrar you purchase from.
We recommend purchasing your domain name from Namecheap as opposed to GoDaddy, but you also can purchase your domain at the time you create your hosting account on Bluehost or Siteground.
The hosting company will be the registrar for your domain name and you’ll renew it through them each year which keeps things simple if you don’t want to manage domains on Namecheap and hosting on Bluehost as two separate accounts and billing.
Bluehost also offers your first domain name for FREE when signing up for your hosting plan, which is a plus.
What’s Next After Buying Hosting for My Real Estate IDX Website?
Once you’ve finished purchasing web hosting and selecting your free domain, you’ll need to begin building your website using a content management software.
WordPress is the software I use and recommend.
You’ve likely heard of them already and if you’ve done your research you’ve compared WordPress vs SquareSpace vs Wix websites. WordPress is used by almost 35% of websites worldwide.
It’s the dominating software and it’s open source so coders can continually create new prograns, plugins, themes, and add-ons to make the WordPress community even better.
With a WordPress website, customization and fancy real estate features are endless.
You can do things like create subdivision pages with lot maps that people hover and information populates.
You can integrate lead capture forms into pages to build your real estate CRM on autopilot.
You can embed video tours of properties into your website pages.
And much more…
How Do You Get WordPress?
WordPress comes free when you purchase web hosting so no worries about cost. You’ll login to your BlueHost account and see a WordPress icon on the main page to click on and install WordPress to your website.
It will ask you which domain you want to install to, so click on your real estate domain and wait for the email confirming it has completed installation.
They’ll also send your login info to sign in to the WordPress website dashboard to begin customizing your real estate website.
Then begin designing your real estate website! I recommend the Avada Theme which is user friendly with IDX real estate websites. Avada is a page builder style website theme. More on that in other articles and videos.
Overall, I hope today’s guide on Real Estate Website Hosting brought you value and helped you better understand the online world of building a real estate website.
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