By: Michael LevanduskiNetwork Technical Engineer
By: Michael LevanduskiNetwork Technical Engineer
If you’re a video streamer looking for a hosting provider, there are a few features to prioritize which will make all the difference. While some of the options on this list have lower-priced plans, it’s good to have at least a virtual private server (VPS) plan to handle the amount of data streaming requires.
Hosting providers that use solid-state drives (SSDs) will give you the best speeds, while providers with reliable uptime can ensure that your website is up and running when you plan to stream your content. Look for a top-tier content delivery network (CDN) for professional live streaming quality.
With these things in mind, we’ve picked some of the top hosting providers for video streaming. Use the chart below to compare our top picks for the best streaming hosts of 2024:
| Hosting service | Best for | VPS plan price | Best features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kamatera
| Best overall streaming hosting Why it’s best: Excellent value for the money and highly efficient hosting services | $4 per month |
|
| A2 Hosting
| Best support for a streaming host Why it’s best: Every time I needed help, live chat quickly responded with well-informed answers and fast solutions | $39.99 per month |
|
| Bluehost
| Best streaming host for scaling up Why it’s best: Bluehost goes out of its way to make it easy to scale as needed | $39.99 per month |
|
| DreamHost
| Best streaming host plan variety Why it’s best: Offers VPS, dedicated, and cloud streaming hosting | $13.75 per month |
|
| Liquid Web
| Best streaming hosting bundle Why it’s best: Liquid Web’s VPS hosting bundles combine 10TB of bandwidth, SSD disk space, and RAM with site remediation, protection, and more | $25 per month |
|
Publishing audio and video content online requires significant resources. If you publish streaming media on your website, you need to select a web host that supports this content and does it well.
If you produce audio and video content, you may need a web host that supports streaming media — not all do.
In addition, you’ll need a host that can cope with potential traffic spikes without downtime, and it must support the type of content you intend to publish or distribute.
Is your website the next YouTube? Pandora? Spotify? You need streaming hosting if you aim to provide video or audio-on-demand to your site’s users. If you plan to stream movies, music, or video or audio files of any kind, streaming hosting will keep that media running smoothly with fewer snags and interruptions.
Selecting the right streaming host is vitally important. The five critical features are reliability, bandwidth, storage, speed, and server power.
Kamatera’s web hosting solutions start at just $4 a month, a rock-bottom price for a VPS plan. Granted, this is for the lowest spec options. However, you can choose every option to customize your VPS to your needs, choosing the amount of RAM, storage, bandwidth, and even server location. This is great for making small, incremental increases as your audience (and hosting needs) grow.
Like all top web hosting providers, Kamatera offers comprehensive customer service via various mediums such as a blog, FAQs, live chat, support tickets, phone, and email. There are three departments: sales/account management, technical support, and billing/accounting. The technical support team is accessible around the clock, while the other two are open during business hours, depending on their base location.
A2 Hosting offers a variety of options ideal for streaming, including managed and unmanaged VPS hosting, as well as dedicated hosting.
Certain plans are built on the Wowza streaming engine, a media server specifically designed for streaming services with ultra-low latency. Wowza has a lightweight HTML5 and Flash video player but supports others. But these plans require a bit more technical aptitude.
A2 Hosting provides you with a lot of flexibility, including choosing between managed and unmanaged hosting. Its TurboBoost add-on feature lets you access speed-enhanced servers for even faster load times.
Bluehost uses world-class technology to provide the resources to stream audio and video. These include SSD hardware, dual quad processor performance servers and customized Apache web servers and support for multiple databases.
Its three VPS plans let you quickly and easily scale up resources as necessary. Its base Standard plan starts with 120GB SSD storage, 2GB RAM, and unmetered bandwidth, with higher tiers adding 240GB SSD storage and 8GB RAM.
Regardless of your hosting type, Bluehost includes several key free perks, including a domain name for the first year, an SSL certificate, a worldwide CDN, and three different webmail solutions. If unsatisfied, you have 30 days to get a full refund.
One of Bluehost’s primary perks is how easy it is for customers to scale up resources as needed. You can add more VPS, shared, or dedicated hosting services quickly and continue to manage all their servers from one location. Customers should note that an independent audit of web host speeds found that Bluehost came in at 1,176ms.
DreamHost offers all three types of hosting most useful for streaming — VPS, dedicated, and cloud. All Dreamhost plans support HTTP media streaming, and its website includes easy instructions for how to set up streaming on your website.
If you want a scalable, managed hosting solution, you can choose from four VPS hosting plans, which give up to 8GB RAM and 240GB SSD storage. Dreamhost’s dedicated servers are also fully managed and let you select the amount of RAM and SSD storage needed. Those who prefer root access can opt for one of Dreamhost’s three cloud hosting plans.
As long as you comply with Dreamhost’s unlimited policy, there are no caps on the amount of traffic your website can receive. Dreamhost also promises security features like 24/7 server monitoring and DDoS protection.
Liquid Web has several hosting choices, allowing your resources to expand as your business grows. Customers can choose from various VPS, dedicated, or cloud hosting plans.
Liquid Web’s VPS hosting bundles are a good value, combining 10TB of bandwidth, SSD disk space, and RAM with site remediation and protection, premium business email, and free daily back-ups.
For those who need more resources or want more control over their servers, Liquid Web also offers dedicated and cloud hosting services. With these types of hosting, you can choose a Linux or Windows operating system.
Liquid Web’s servers are high-quality and designed for speed with built-in SSD disks and CDNs. Support is available 24/7/year-round via phone, chat, and email.
One of Liquid Web’s key selling points is that customers can register up to 30 domains for free. It also lets you choose between Windows and Linux operating systems and several control panel options. However, this comes with a higher price tag.
