If you run an eco business or are ‘building back green’, you need to make sure every aspect of your operation is causing as little harm to the planet as possible. That’s why you need eco website hosting.
Think of where your business website is stored. It will be in a massive data center with huge servers demanding a great deal of energy use.
The servers run 24/7 and must operate in a cooled environment to run properly. That uses vast amounts of energy, too.
In fact, it is estimated that data centers account for 2% of global electricity use - just as polluting as the airline industry.
Data Center pollution is expected to grow to 14% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2040.
Clearly, responsible web hosting companies should be trying to offset this energy use in some way.
What is greener website hosting?
Green, sustainable or eco friendly web hosting tends to translate as the hosting provider proactively taking actions that involve carbon offsetting or renewable energy usage, to reduce the environmental impact of their servers’ energy consumption.
They can use renewable energy to power up the servers, so instead of relying on fossil fuels, they generate electricity from wind, solar, tides and geothermal heat.
Companies can also buy carbon credits - a permit to emit carbon dioxide a long as action is taken to offset their carbon footprint.
Other efforts can be made as well, such as planting trees for every order - we will look at each case in turn.
This article will focus on basic hosting and look at what we at greengreengreen believe are the three best web hosts for your eco friendly blog or business.
Two of them market themselves as dedicated eco hosts, the other is recommended by WordPress as one of the best hosts to use, and has significantly greened-up its services to meet modern-day demands.
Bear in mind that they all offer much broader services for more advanced needs, so please check out the various plans.
Eco Web Hosting
Although this UK-based company is smaller than its rivals, it scores highly among those who use it, and offers impressive green credentials.
Eco Web Hosting publishes monthly sustainability reports as proof of its work to protect our natural world. For example, in April 2021, the company planted more than 7,900 trees around the world, including in Haiti, Indonesia, Nepal, Madagascar, Mozambique, and the United Kingdom. It also funded two Gold Standard projects in Thailand and Honduras.
Carbon offsets come by way of working with tree-planting organisations for each website hosted.
The company adds: “All our websites are hosted on extremely energy-efficient servers, and we are always finding new ways to improve our efficiency.
“Our staff works together to run an eco-friendly business, including working remotely and using green energy suppliers.”
The recommended Professional plan compares favourably with the entire hosting market when it comes to cost, and offers a wealth of features. If you’re not sure what they all mean, don’t worry, the customer service team is quick to answer any queries, and offers live chat, too:
- Up to three websites
- 50 GB SSD space
- 100 GB monthly bandwidth
- 10 × 1 GB MySQL databases
- 50 × 10 GB mailboxes
- Library of popular tools (including WordPress)
- Let’s Encrypt wildcard SSL
- Global CDN included
- 2 trees planted every month
- Free domain
GreenGeeks
Calling itself the “World’s #1 Green Energy Web Hosting Provider,” GreenGeeks formed way back in 2008 and was recognized a year later by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a Green Power Partner.
GreenGeeks works closely with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) in Portland, Oregon, which calculates the company’s yearly energy consumption and carbon footprint.
It then puts three times as much energy as it has consumed, back into the grid, via renewable sources.
GreenGeeks says: “This matches the energy we consume, as well as two other companies our size. This is our commitment to the environment and to our customers and has been since the beginning.
“We have a great team and great service which is why we have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and why we are also highly ranked by many third-party web hosting comparison sites.”
So let’s give an example of a GreenGeeks hosting package. Again, they compare well across the market for price. Most popular is the Pro deal, in which you get:
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Web Space
- Unmetered Data Transfer
- Unlimited E-mail Accounts
- LSCache Included
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free Domain Name for First Year
- Free Nightly Backup
- Free CDN
- WordPress Installer/Updates
- Unlimited Databases
- 300% Green Energy Match
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Siteground
Officially recommended by WordPress for quality of service, SiteGround has an excellent record of keeping websites live and working speedily. But what about its commitment to sustainability?
SiteGround partners with external facilities to host the data, and made the decision recently to transfer everything to the Google Cloud platform.
SiteGround explains: “Google’s data centers match 100% of the energy consumed by their global operations with renewable energy, and maintain a commitment to carbon neutrality.
“Choosing such a leader in energy efficiency as our infrastructure partner is something that we are very proud of.
“Efficiency is another key factor of green web hosting. Simply put, every website operation is managed and executed by its hosting server processor, and requires CPU, RAM, and storage resources.
“The heavier your website is, the longer its server processor and resources are in use, the more electricity it consumes.”
Eco efforts away from website hosting also place SiteGround in a powerful position. For example, the company built its new headquarters in accordance with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) requirements.
They also encourage their employees to lead a more eco friendly lifestyle, offering company e-cars, e-bikes and free e-charging stations.
SiteGround bans plastic water bottles, containers and water coolers in the office - instead it installed water filter dispensers.
And for every order made they plant a new tree, much as greengreengreen does in its Partner service.
Best seller is the GrowBig plan, which allows the following:
- Unlimited Websites
- 20 GB Web Space
- 25,000 Visits Monthly
- Unmetered Traffic
- Free SSL
- Daily Backup
- Free CDN
- Free Email
- Managed WordPress
- Out-of-the-box Caching
- Unlimited Databases
- 100% Renewable Energy Match
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
How to design an eco friendly website
There are decisions you can make yourself to make your website environmentally friendly - or friendlier at least.
The more complicated your site design, the more energy it consumes each time it loads up.
So pay great attention to your site loading time - it is never a good idea anyway to have a slow-loading site, as browsing web users tend to have a short attention span, and Google ranks fast-loading sites higher.
Whether you design the website(s) yourself, or have an expert or team working on the task, don’t be drawn in by the fancy bells and whistles and avoid the use of too many widgets, scripts, videos and images.
And remember - when you’re working on the site or looking through it, in your home office or in the workplace, try to make sure you’re being powered by renewable energy.
That’s how you make a greener website.
