Purchase a domain name from GoDaddy, an affordable registrar with over 500 top-level domains to choose from. Get a special discount for domain registration, web hosting, and more through GoDaddy. A unique domain name is what sets your website apart from the billions of other sites on the internet. However, it’s more than an address on the internet—the right domain name resonates with your audience, attracts organic traffic, and helps build credibility. But how much does one actually cost? Most domain registrars advertise their lowest price, which is often far from the actual, long-term cost. I’ll explain all the factors that add up to the true cost of a domain name so you can budget accordingly. ![]() The 7 Best Domain Registrars for Purchasing a Domain NameGoDaddy is a famous domain registrar, but far from the only one. Our research team identified several quality options, with each one rising to the occasion for specific needs.
We’ve also put together a comprehensive post comparing the best domain registrars that you can read to learn even more about your options and the domain buying process. Find Out How Much a Domain Name Costs in 7 Easy StepsFortunately, finding out the price of your domain name isn’t difficult if you know what to look out for. This way, there are no nasty surprises down the road. And I’ve broken this process down into a few easy-to-follow steps.
I chose GoDaddy for this demonstration for several reasons. First, GoDaddy is an ICANN-accredited registrar, so I know I’m dealing with a legitimate registrar. The registrar also offers hundreds of top-level domains (TLDs), which is perfect for price-shopping for a quality URL while keeping my costs down. Finally, I can also bundle related services with GoDaddy, like domain privacy and protection, web hosting, professional email, SSL certificate, and a website builder. Step 1: Choose a Domain Name with GoDaddyThe steps to finding out the cost of a domain name are similar, regardless of the domain registrar you choose. For our case, visit the GoDaddy website to get started. You can adjust the pricing to your preferred currency by scrolling to the bottom of the page and choosing your currency from the menu. ![]() Now’s the time to choose a domain name. You might already have one or a few options in mind. But, don’t worry if you can’t come up with a name on the spot—GoDaddy offers a free domain name generator on their site. Simply hover on Find a Domain on the main menu bar at the top of the page. Then click Generate Domains & Business Names. ![]() Now enter a few keywords related to your website or business in the provided field. Use any relevant combination of words, such as your name, industry, product, brand, or location. I used two keywords for this demonstration. The first is a fictitious name, Nicolas, and the other is the field of my made-up business or website (electronics). GoDaddy suggests some available domain names and prices. I only need to click the shopping cart button next to the domain name I want and start the purchase process, if one fits my needs. In my example, GoDaddy offers over 40 domain options, ranging from $0.01 to $24.99 for the first year. ![]() You can also use a different domain name or keyword phrase generator to find ideas, then plug that into GoDaddy’s search. For example, the Looka domain name generator provided a lot of different combinations of keywords, but not all of them were relevant to my search terms of “electronics,” “phones,” and “shop.” ![]() Whichever route you choose, gather up a few workable domain name options that resonate with your and your site’s goals. With multiple options in hand, you’re ready to check which ones are available for purchase. Step 2: Do a Domain Name SearchGoDaddy has a domain name search tool on their homepage. It’s likely to be the first thing you see when you arrive at their site. ![]() Remember that, though you’ve come up with domain name options, you still need to choose a top-level domain (TLD), also called a domain extension. Of course, the most coveted is the .com extension because it is authoritative, popular, and memorable. If my name were Amos, I could snag AmosHub.com for just 19 cents for the first year. However, the price shown so far isn’t final (and you can see that it’s heavily marked down from its normal price point of $20.17 per year). There are a few more steps to go through, and I suspect the price will increase. ![]() But it’s likely that your favorite domain name isn’t available in a .com, or is at least prohibitively expensive to secure. If AmosHub.com wasn’t available for the right price, I could try other TLDs. Extensions like .co, .site, or .store are popular and effective, or you can use more creative ones than that. Just keep in mind how important it is for someone to easily remember your full URL without being on your website. ![]() I only need to click the shopping cart button next to the domain name I want to purchase to continue on with the process. Now, let’s try another example. For the domain MobileBoutique, the .com extension is taken. My options are to find its owner and buy it or choose a different TLD. ![]() MobileBoutique.online could work, but it’s long and a bit of a mouthful. So, let’s say I must have MobileBoutique.com and nothing else will do. GoDaddy offers professional brokerage services to help me purchase the domain from its current owner. The broker will handle everything, including finding the domain owner, negotiating the price, and transferring the domain to me. ![]() I’ll need to pay a one-time broker fee of $69.99 if I choose this route. This price doesn’t include the cost of the domain. There’s also a 20% commission on the sale price. So, I might end up paying a good bit more for the .com version of this domain than any other extension. GoDaddy conveniently suggested a similar domain: MobileBoutiques.com. It costs $2,695, so I have a rough estimate of how much the current owner of MobileBoutique.com might value their own domain. You can see a massive price difference when purchasing an available domain versus one that’s been taken. There’s also no guarantee that the domain owner wants to sell. so I might end up paying the non-refundable fee, waiting for months, and still get a negative response. Since AmosHub.com is available for cheap and it fits what I want to do with my website, we’ll proceed through the rest of this guide focused on that domain. Let’s see how much it costs to own the domain by the time we complete the checkout process. Step 3: Decide If You Want Domain Privacy ProtectionI’ve added my domain to the cart and proceeded to checkout. Now come the upsells, starting with domain privacy protection. Most registrars, including GoDaddy, offer domain protection by default. So ensure you uncheck this option if you don’t want to incur the extra cost. ![]() GoDaddy domain protection starts at $9.99 per year. I’ve decided to include it in my purchase. It’s a small price to pay for the peace of mind it offers. I don’t want my private information to be available to the public. For example, aggressive marketers may find my personal information and spam my inbox, phone number, or website with unsolicited offers or products. Similarly, a cybercriminal could steal my identity, hijack my domain, and use it for illegal activities. Every registered domain appears on the WHOIS database. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—a non-profit that manages domain name systems, among other responsibilities—manages the database. The WHOIS database is a public record. Each domain entry includes the owner’s name, address, phone number, and email. You’ll also find additional details like the domain registrar, registration date, and expiry date. Purchasing domain protection means that your registrar replaces your personal WHOIS information with its own contact details. GoDaddy does this through a third party called Domains By Proxy. You can actually skip this step if you still aren’t sure whether the cost is worth it to you. I think it’s always a good idea to secure this while snagging your domain, but you can always purchase privacy protection later through your registrar. Step 4: Consider a Professional Business EmailThe next upsell is a professional business email that is attached to your new domain name. I’ve also added this option at an extra fee. This is totally optional, but it’s a nice extra if you’re starting a website that is related to a business venture of yours. A professional email, tied to your website’s domain, is great for gaining clients’ trust and projecting a professional business image. ![]() You’ll notice that GoDaddy offers a few different forms of this extra. You can just snag an email address for $1.99 per month, or secure one of two Microsoft 365 packages (which includes access to the suite of MS Office products and cloud storage) for a higher monthly add-on fee. Again, you can also purchase the business email after registering and buying your domain. There’s no pressure to commit to this during checkout. Step 5: Consider Purchasing Similar DomainsI was fortunate to find a .com extension for my preferred domain name. However, other variations like AmosHub.net, .co, and .org are still available. Therefore, a competitor could purchase these domains, confuse my clients, or steal my website traffic. GoDaddy offers suggestions for similar domains at a discounted price. I decided not to purchase the extra domains for now. It’s not a priority since my fictitious shop isn’t successful enough to catch an unfair competitor’s eye. But it’s something to consider in the future when my store grows. ![]() Consider also purchasing common misspellings of your domain name. For example, Google owns common domain misspellings such as Googlr.com, Gogle.com, and Gooogle.com. While not mandatory, it’s something to think about in the future when your brand gains momentum. It really helps ensure that anyone intending to visit your website ends up there, even if they misremember or mistype your URL. Step 6: Review Any Deals, Promotions, or DiscountsMy GoDaddy domain only costs $0.19 for the first year. However, the massive discount only applies if I lock into a two-year contract. Since that 19-cent price only applies to year one, year two will cost me the full, normal price of the domain. If you remember, I pointed that out a few steps earlier. AmosHub.com normally would cost $20.17 for a year. Since I must pay for the full two-year registration upfront, that means I’ll pay $20.36 at checkout to register and own AmosHub.com. When that two-year term expires, I’ll need to renew my domain each year after that. So, keep in mind what the renewal cost is likely to be so you can budget down the road accordingly. Remember also that each add-on service you choose also renews monthly or yearly. For example, my business email costs $1.99 per month, but I’ll have to pay for at least one year of the service, adding at least $23.88 to my checkout total. Be mindful of the renewal rate for this, as this service usually renews at full price ($71.88 per year). Similarly, domain protection will cost me $9.99 yearly. The point is that buying a domain name isn’t a one-time cost and it’s rarely just going to cost you what a registrar lists the price as. Instead, it is a recurring cost depending on your contract term. For example, GoDaddy offers yearly, two, three, five, and ten-year contracts. That’s something you can use to your advantage. It’s always a good idea to lock up a domain name for as long as possible (or, at least as long as you intend to run and maintain your website). Sometimes, you can get better savings with a longer-term commitment, too. Just keep in mind that you’re on the hook for paying the whole term up front at checkout. So, if I registered AmosHub.com for five years with the first-year discounted rate, I’d have to pay $80.87 today to secure it. But, for now, we’ll focus on a two-year contract, with two years of privacy protection and one year of professional email attached to my domain. My cost so far is $64.22 for the domain name and add-on services. Step 7: Factor In Additional Costs After Purchasing Your DomainUnless you plan to simply resell your domain name, a few more costs are involved after the initial purchase. It’s helpful to know what lies ahead so you can budget accordingly. Again, most of these are recurring costs, so keep that in mind. I’ll need to build a website for the domain name, if I haven’t already done so. The cost here depends on which design option I choose. For example, GoDaddy supplies a free website builder with every domain purchase. The builder is easy to use, so I can create a professional website without design experience. Alternatively, I can use other platforms that range from free to use (like WordPress) to a few dollars or more per month (like Squarespace). Or, if I don’t want to do any site building myself, I could hire an expert designer. Most professionals charge between $30 and $40 per hour or higher depending on their experience and expertise. GoDaddy also offers several professional web design packages to suit different needs. ![]() I’ll also need web hosting for my website. Again, I can purchase a plan starting from GoDaddy at $5.99 monthly, or choose another host like Hostinger (which tends to start around $2 or $3 per month). You’ll need to point your domain name to the hosting server if you choose a different web host from your domain registrar. It’s one of the main reasons I chose GoDaddy in this example, since I can get everything I need from the same provider, all at once, without it costing me an arm and a leg. Final Thoughts About How Much a Domain Name CostsThe true cost of a domain name is rarely as advertised. I found a terrific deal for $0.19, but additional costs and service made my actual checkout total $64.22. That’s before even factoring in extra, necessary services like website building and hosting. Therefore, the best way to determine the cost of a domain name is to list all the domain-related services you need. Then, compare the price of each service and choose only the essential services. Then, depending on your budget, purchase add-ons after scaling your website. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/how-much-does-a-domain-name-cost/
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If you want to start a blog, WordPress with Hostinger is your best bet. And right now, you can host your WordPress site with Hostinger for just $2.99. Blogging can be far more than a hobby. With the potential for ad, product, and affiliate revenue, industry and retail partnerships, and numerous other monetizable elements, building a blog audience is one of the best (and most scalable) ways to make money online. With fitness industries growing at a rate of 8.7% per year and the sheer number of products and services offered in the space, it makes sense to consider fitness blogging as a lucrative topic. In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about starting a fitness blog. ![]() The 3 Best Blogging Platforms for Starting a Fitness BlogThere are plenty of ways to start your online blogging journey, no matter what topic or niche you want to focus on. But we know these three options work best for the widest range of potential users:
Want to know more about our favorite blog sites and other options? Check out our full, in-depth post ranking the best blogging platforms. Start a Fitness Blog in 8 Easy StepsWhether you want to start a fitness blog for fun, as a side hustle, or as a full-time business effort, you’re going to want to get started on the right foot. By following these steps, you’ll be off to the races when it comes to starting a fitness blog.
This framework will get you set up on the right track, but there’s one extra step to take before starting our guide. We recommend opting for WordPress as your blogging platform, with Hostinger as your web host. You can start a WordPress account for free then secure hosting for cheap, or get them both in one optimized package from Hostinger without spending a dime extra. Whichever way you choose, take care of that initial account creation first and you’ll be ready to dive right into our step-by-step process. Step 1: Choose Your NicheBefore anything, you need to decide what fitness niche you want to target. It’s not smart to just start blogging generally about fitness and health without determining an angle you want to stick to when writing your posts. If you’re someone who works in the health and fitness industry, you may already have an idea of what you want to cover. But if you’re just getting started on your fitness blogging journey, you’ll need to do some research into the topics within the health and fitness space that interest you most (and will resonate with an audience). Think about your specific skills, passions, hobbies, and opinions—anything related to health and fitness that can be turned into content. Niching down can lead you to a broad category or a very specialized topic. Here are a few examples to help guide you:
Pick something you’re confident in writing about at length, so that you can position yourself as an expert in the field or a trustworthy advisor for readers. Step 2: Create the Foundation of Your BusinessOnce you know what topic you want to orient your blog around, evaluate your aspirations and goals for this project. To do this, ask yourself the following questions:
On top of answering these questions, you’ll want to determine your target audience and create audience personas in line with the topic you’ve chosen. These factors will help you define a clear strategy you can stick to. You’ll also want to start thinking about the visual look and feel of your blog. Step 3: Purchase a Domain NameThe process of purchasing a domain name is actually twofold—you must decide on a blog title and then purchase the domain associated with that name. You’re going to find that a lot of the best domain options for any given blog title are taken, unless you’re using some made-up language or playful misspellings. That’s why this is an entire step unto itself—the process of finding the right blog title that also matches an available domain name can involve a lot of searching on domain registrars, trial, and error For example, if your blog is called “Mountain Climbing Fitness,” you may need to purchase a different variation, such as MtnClimbingFit.com. Be aware that your best technique is to get a free domain name through Hostinger when you sign up for their WordPress hosting. You can search for available domains right within their checkout process. Having trouble coming up with a blog title in the first place? Embrace a uniquely modern trick to help you: ask ChatGPT. All you have to do is enter a prompt like “I need ten cool names for my fitness blog,” and it will generate domain name ideas within seconds. ![]() You can get more specific with it if the results aren’t distinct enough (try using the niche you came up with in Step 1), and you can play around with it all day long if you want. This is especially helpful if you’re having trouble coming up with a creative name that you can brand. ![]() Once you’ve decided on a blog title that has an available domain name, you can move ahead and scoop it up. And, like I mentioned before, it’s easiest if you wait until you secure your hosting to also grab that domain. You can check its availability on other registrars’ search engines before entering your final choice into the field at Hostinger’s first checkout page. Step 4: Design and Build Your Blog SiteThere’s another reason we recommend WordPress as the blogging platform of choice for this process (or any other blog topic). It’s easy and free to get started on. But, you’re still starting with a bit of a blank canvas. What should your blog look like? How do visitors navigate the site? What site elements will help create a positive user experience? It’s time to make the fitness blogging site in your head a reality. It’s time to design the thing. There are a few ways you can get through this step:
Designing a website yourself is the cheapest way, but it can be time-consuming and even a bit technical. If you’ve built websites with drag-and-drop builders, WordPress can be a little difficult at times. But if you’re comfortable with playing around with site design or you want to develop it as a skill, DIY website design is an excellent way to keep your creative control while keeping costs to a minimum. If you don’t have the time or experience to design your own website, you’re not alone. A lot of people who start blogs choose to cut design time down to minutes by using a WordPress template. WordPress themes are plentiful, helping you choose an appropriate design without having to do much work yourself. Some are free, but the more professional-looking options tend to cost a bit of money. These can cost as little as $13 or as much as $275 for options that are prebuilt with advanced features. And, you’re not going to be just stuck with the design as it comes out of the box. Tweak elements or change colors, placements, and almost anything else to make it your own. The main downside to using templates is the chance that someone else is doing the same thing with the same WordPress theme, making your new blog less original and unique. Fortunately, If you have a little extra cash to shell out, you can hire a freelancer or an agency to do the design work for you. This route is perfect if you want to stay connected with the progress and changes to your website while also getting a website that looks, feels, and functions just like you dreamed it would. Web designers can charge wildly different rates from one to another. Freelancers might charge anywhere from $15 to $100 per hour, while agencies will certainly charge more. Sometimes, that greater cost is worth it if you can benefit from the agency also helping you with branding, SEO, and marketing. Step 5: Create Your Blog’s Core PagesThe core pages of your blog are what most people will land on when they visit your site. These should provide a clear picture of what kind of content you’re producing. Generally, they consist of a home page, contact page, and about page, in addition to your blogroll. Your home page should be the main hub for your fitness blog. Here, you’ll want to include a brief introduction on what readers can expect from your blog posts, links to some of your best content, and any other info that would help guide visitors through your website. Your home page is the most important—it’s where people will create their first impression of your fitness blog. ![]() Your header and subheader should act like a hook, enticing readers to explore more while describing the blog’s purpose exactly. As you scroll down, categories or recent blog posts should be logically sorted so that readers can quickly find the freshest fitness and health information they’re looking for. ![]() Finally, add a footer with links to all of your social media profiles or other relevant information, so that readers can be informed about your values, stay connected even after leaving your website, or be reassured that their browsing data is kept private. ![]() Your contact page is where people will go if they want to get in touch with you. Include a brief description of what kind of questions people can ask and provide an email address or an embedded web form. Your about page gives readers insight into who you are, why you decided to start a fitness blog, and how your knowledge and experience make it valuable. This will let them know that they can trust what you are sharing on your website, while also allowing them to get better acquainted with who you are as a person. Once these core pages are built, you can start adding more content. Namely, your blog posts. Step 6: Plan, Create, and Optimize Your ContentAfter you’ve designed your site and set up the core pages, take some weeks or months to get in a regular rhythm of producing new posts for readers and aging your domain. It’s also a good time to experiment with content types (do you write more lists or guides?) and different forms of media like embedded video. That starts with smart planning. PlanningContent planning is an essential step in the creation process because it helps you to stay organized and on task. First, conduct keyword and topic research related to your fitness niche and use that to brainstorm post topics and angles. Find out what people who are looking for fitness and health information related to your blog’s niche like to read. You can mimic other successful or established bloggers, just don’t outright copy what they’re doing and writing. Then, create an editorial calendar. Set publishing deadlines for yourself and establish a routine output. Like I mentioned earlier, if you don’t have a lot of time to commit at first, you can start with one or two posts per week. But, the more regularly you post, the better. It will help you rise up search rankings faster. Now that you have an idea of what you want to write and when you want to publish it, think about blog post format. It’s smart to create outlines for common post types To make your blog posting process easier, it’s best to create templates for each type of content that you post. This way, you won’t have to start from scratch every time you create a new exercise guide for each muscle group or “How to Meal Plan” post for a new dietary consideration from scratch . Instead, you’ll have headings, subheadings, and structure figured out, leaving you to just plug in the meat of each post. Last, make sure to find relevant images and videos to use in your posts. Walls of text are appealing to very few people, so make sure to break up your posts with some good visual elements. CreationOnce you’ve planned out your fitness blog content, it’s time to actually create it. While this should be an enjoyable process, it can actually be the most difficult part in terms of staying motivated and focused since the pay-off is rarely immediate (except for the thrill of clicking Publish). Here are a few things to keep in mind:
OptimizationSome aspects of this guide have already touched on optimization. For example, using Yoast with your WordPress site gives you a tool that checks your content for search engine optimization and delivers tips for improvement. Also, techniques like updating old content and making sure to proofread are minor elements that can go a long way to staying on page one of Google for your fitness niche. Beyond that, keep these optimization tips in mind for each blog post you create and publish:
These activities help increase your fitness blog’s visibility, improving audience metrics (like unique visits and sessions) and search rankings. Once you’ve gotten a healthy (pun not intended) number of posts published, you can move onto the next two steps. Step 7: Install apps for extended featuresDepending on the platform you use to build your fitness blog, you may be able to extend its features with various plugins and apps. For example, WordPress offers a plethora of tools that can help you optimize your website, get found in search results, and add unique site elements. Just like with the templates, some are free to install and use and others will cost you some money to add it to your site. An essential plugin to consider is Yoast SEO. Yoast will help you optimize your fitness blog content for search engines and ensure that the content you post reaches its intended audience. But, as you build out your blog, you’ll find more opportunities where adding a plugin can solve a problem or enhance your blog site. You may want a tool that integrates your social media profiles with your blog posts or you may want to add a payment processor to book consulting gigs or classes related to your fitness blogging. The key is to find the plugins that best suit your fitness blog’s needs and enhance your audience’s experience of your website while keeping everything user-friendly and secure. Step 8: Promote and market your fitness blogThis is where a lot of the long-term work comes together. You’ll need to start spreading the word about your fitness blog, so people can find it, read your content, share it with others, and become faithful readers. Here are some ideas on how to do that:
Final Thoughts About Starting a Fitness BlogStarting any kind of blog takes a lot of work. But blogs in saturated niches like fitness can be even more challenging. It’s important to remember that success requires patience and hard work, but it can generate great rewards in terms of personal satisfaction and financial gain. Take the time to plan out your fitness blog carefully and create high-quality content on a regular basis. With consistent analysis, iteration, and improvement, you’ll be able to build an audience that will keep coming back for more fitness tips and inspiration. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-start-a-fitness-blog/ WooCommerce and BigCommerce are both extremely popular ecommerce platforms. There’s one key difference between them, though: WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin for existing WP sites. BigCommerce, on the other hand, is a full-fledged site creator that helps you build an ecommerce website from the ground up. If you’re not sure which one to pick for your ecommerce business, this comparison guide will give you the information you need to decide. ![]() WooCommerce and BigCommerce Compared to the Best Ecommerce PlatformsWhile BigCommerce made our list of the best ecommerce platforms, WooCommerce did not. But our favorite ecommerce platform for most people is Shopify because it’s powerful, versatile, and easy to use. Try Shopify for free for three days and pay just $1 a month for the next three months.
Take a closer look at each of these favorites in our list of the best ecommerce platforms. WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce High-Level ComparisonWhile BigCommerce is an ecommerce website builder, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. Technically, WooCommerce is free. But you can’t use it unless you plan to set up a WordPress website—or have one already. Which, of course, costs some money when you factor in the domain name and web hosting required to get that WordPress site live and accessible to visitors. WooCommerce also sports a steeper learning curve than BigCommerce, but it’s ideal for businesses that already know, love, and use WordPress. On that note, BigCommerce is the better choice for beginners. Its tidy packages include website templates, prebuilt online storefronts, included payment processors, and 24/7 support. It also allows you to integrate sales channels like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Facebook with ease. You can do the same (and, honestly, more) with WordPress and WooCommerce, but it can be a lot more work to integrate other channels that way. You’ll be able to manage every channel from within your BigCommerce dashboard, which is wonderfully convenient. Products and Services Offered By WooCommerce and BigCommerceWooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform offered as a WordPress plugin. You can either add the WooCommerce plugin to an existing WordPress site or build a new WordPress website through WooCommerce. ![]() WooCommerce offers unmatched flexibility. You can sell unlimited products, choose from the templates offered or build your own web store, and tap into hundreds of WooCommerce extensions and integrations for payments, marketing, fulfillment, and more, including QuickBooks, Stripe, USPS, UPS, MailChimp, and Klarna. Or, connect via Zapier to integrate with over 5,000 other apps. WooCommerce is perfect for those who need lots of customization options. ![]() BigCommerce is the better option of the two for beginners and smaller businesses who don’t want to spend a lot of time managing the health of their web store. But it can also handle enterprise storefronts, too, on its higher-octane (and higher priced) packages. You can read our detailed BigCommerce review to learn even more about what this ecommerce platform can handle. Company Health and Stability of WooCommerce and BigCommerceBoth WooCommerce and BigCommerce enjoy loyal followings, and that isn’t likely to change. The privately held WordPress parent company, Automattic, acquired WooCommerce in 2015. WordPress was founded in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Mullenweg then founded Automattic in 2005. So, WooCommerce will be staying put as one of WordPress’ preferred ecommerce platforms for the foreseeable future. Founded in 2009, BigCommerce is publicly traded under the ticker symbol, BIGC. Stock prices have been dropping steadily over the past five years, however, likely due to an increase in competition. But it’s still a highly rated SaaS product, and its community forum is bustling with activity. WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce Pricing ComparisonWooCommerce and BigCommerce approach pricing differently since the former is an extension of WordPress (a free platform in itself) and the latter is a standalone, all-in-one ecommerce site builder and solution. Since it’s a bit tough to just compare their costs apples-to-apples, we’ll break down the nuances of pricing and associated costs in the sections below. Pricing Structure of WooCommerce and BigCommerceWooCommerce pricing is far from simple. If you don’t already have a WordPress site, you’ll pay between $25 and $70 per month for WooExpress. Or you can get and build a free WordPress site, then install the free WooCommerce plugin and pay for extensions or upgrades as needed. That’s generally what makes pricing so unpredictable—extensions run a wide gamut from several bucks to several hundred dollars per year. BigCommerce has a more familiar and digestible pricing structure. Choose from one of three Essentials plans—priced at $29, $79, and $299 per month—with a clear breakdown of what you get with each plan. Or, you can go the enterprise route and speak with a sales rep for a fully custom package. Cost Comparison of WooCommerce and BigCommerceWooCommerce is ideal for companies who want granular control over their ecommerce storefronts. These companies will appreciate being able to cherry-pick WooCommerce extensions and integrations to cobble together an effective solution at a reasonable total cost. That being said, some storefronts that want advanced features may not love how pricey ecommerce-focused WordPress extensions can get. BigCommerce is far better (and more predictable) for smaller businesses that need to control their costs while still getting everything they need for their customers’ online shopping experience. There are no surprise charges and few added fees. Plans clearly list the features you’re getting and higher-priced plans offer good scalability if you outgrow their entry-level package. You get what you pay for and that’s that. Trials and Guarantees for WooCommerce and BigCommerceBoth WooCommerce and BigCommerce offer free or low-cost trials to help you decide if you like what you see. WooCommerce doesn’t offer a free trial because its basic plugin is already free to use on any WordPress site. Once you have WooCommerce integrated with your website, you can select extensions free for 30 days. These include tools like WooCommerce Bookings for appointment scheduling and features for utilizing gift cards and rewards programs on your web store. Be advised, though, that some of these plugins can run you as much as $250 per year, which adds up quickly if you use more than one. You can try out the BigCommerce platform freely on a 15-day trial period with no credit card required. After that, plans begin at $29 a month when paying annually ($39 when opting for month-to-month billing). WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce Core Criteria ComparisonWhen we researched the best ecommerce platforms on the market for our top list, we analyzed each platform across six core criteria:
Let’s see how well WooCommerce and BigCommerce stack up on these same criteria. Visual Website Builder – BigCommerce Wins![]() Unless your company is large enough to employ a team of developers who can build and manage your ecommerce storefront, you’ll want a no-code website builder. It’s fine if the builder also comes with coding capabilities, but these shouldn’t be the focus. BigCommerce won on this criteria point because its drag-and-drop website builder is so easy to use. It’s built right into the BigCommerce package—which can’t be said for WooCommerce. WooCommerce does have a drag-and-drop web builder for WordPress, but once you pick a WordPress theme, you’re locked in. The WooCommerce web builder won’t carry the storefront you’ve designed onto a new theme if you change your mind, leaving you to start over from scratch if you want to refresh the look and feel of your online store. Inventory Management Tools – Tie![]() Inventory management is one of the most important tools you’ll need in an ecommerce platform. You should be able to track as many items as you want and easily organize your stock. Low-stock alerts are a must-have feature, as well. Both WooCommerce and BigCommerce offer powerful, synchronized inventory management tools. With WooCommerce, you can pick exactly the inventory management extension you need for your business from many options. That gives you full control over unlocking advanced features you think will help your operation in the long run Or, install the free Stock Manager plugin to start for basic management and upgrade as needed. The plus side to BigCommerce’s inventory management is that it’s included with everything else in any plan you choose. You won’t need to shop around for a good fit—unless you want to go with a plugin that enhances the inventory management process and improves upon what BigCommerce’s native tool can do. WooCommerce and BigCommerce alike help you manage unlimited inventory across multiple sales channels, locations, and storefronts. Shopping Carts – BigCommerce Wins![]() These days, customers take shopping carts for granted. They expect high-quality carts are easy to find on any page and seamlessly take them through the checkout process. Both BigCommerce and WooCommerce come with excellent shopping cart capabilities. WooCommerce, again, relies on extensions for this feature, meaning you’ll have to wade through a lot of different choices to find an extension or plugin that fits your needs and requirements. The big problem is variability in extension quality. You may waste time on testing out some less-than-perfect solutions. BigCommerce’s native shopping cart feature is fantastic, offering full capability for mobile shopping, abandoned cart recovery, and more. Plus, you can sell more products with one-click buying through integrations with Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and PayPal One Touch. There’s not much to improve on here, so BigCommerce comes out ahead by delivering a built-in solution as good as just about any WordPress shopping cart plugin you can find. Payment Gateways – BigCommerce Wins![]() Payment gateways make it easy for customers to make secure purchases on your ecommerce storefront. And, when you offer site visitors more ways for them to pay (such as PayPal, Klarna, Apple Pay, and others), you’re likely to convert more curious browsers and shoppers into real customers. That’s why BigCommerce won this criteria point. It offers 50 payment gateway integrations that support purchases in more than a hundred countries. That breadth of payment options baked right into the platform closes a lot of gaps that could otherwise prevent international shoppers or those with intense payment preferences from converting. I think you’ll know what I’m going to say about WooCommerce here. It forces you to comb through a vast array of extensions to find payment gateways that support the preferences of your customers and work with the rest of your online store. This can be time-consuming, clunky, and expensive if you’re not careful. But more than that, it requires serious attention in terms of making sure these WordPress extensions are always updated to prevent security vulnerabilities from affecting your site and your customers’ sensitive data. Shipping Tools – BigCommerce Wins![]() Fast, reliable shipping allows you to make your customers happy, easily handle returns, and keep track of what’s left in your inventory on the fly. As with most essential features in BigCommerce, shipping is built right in. All plans also include real-time rates for major fulfillment providers like UPS, FedEx, and even international providers like Royal Mail. Select plans also help you with label printing and other aspects of the fulfillment process. WooCommerce offers more freedom in terms of integrating with shipping providers, but these WooCommerce extensions in particular tend to be mighty expensive. You’ll pay $99 per year to implement each of the extensions for USPS, UPS, and FedEx. That same rate applies individually to international or alternative shipping providers, like Canada Post or Fulfillment by Amazon. So, just to match BigCommerce’s built-in fulfillment solutions, you’re looking at a minimum spend of $594 per year on WooCommerce extensions just for shipping. SEO and Marketing Tools – WooCommerce Wins![]() Any ecommerce platform worth its salt needs SEO and marketing tools to help you promote your site and bring in searchers. How else will your customers find you? WooCommerce has a key advantage here. Its website platform, WordPress, consistently ranks as the top blogging platform in the world. With WordPress’s SEO and blogging tools, you’re already halfway to having everything you need to shout your WooCommerce storefront to the world without paying a dime. Then, you can enhance accordingly through free or paid extensions for tools like MailChimp, Trustpilot Reviews, Etsy, Facebook, Google Customer Reviews, and many more. Comparing WooCommerce and BigCommerce’s available marketing extensions and plugins to one another, WooCommerce clearly came out on top. It offers 112 marketing extensions compared to the 60 you can tap into on BigCommerce. You’ll likely get more capability on a BigCommerce Enterprise plan. But, when considering packages that are reasonable for a small or midsize business, the number of options available to you on WooCommerce gives it the edge Final Verdict – BigCommerce WinsBigCommerce is our winning ecommerce platform because it has so many essential and advanced features baked into the platform without the need to cobble together extensions to achieve a solution. With BigCommerce, setting up a new storefront from the ground up has never been easier. WooCommerce falls short on too many of our criteria points to come out as the winner, but it’s still an excellent choice (and, often, the preferable one to BigCommerce) for sellers who need granular control of their storefront’s features and functionality. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/woocommerce-vs-bigcommerce/ Hostinger is our top recommendation for most people because of its all-around versatility and reliability as a web host. Start your Hostinger web hosting plan for just $1.99 per month. Regardless of why you need a website, you need your web hosting provider to deliver reliability, ease of use, and affordability. HostGator ticks all of those boxes, plus offers its customers a free domain for one year, plenty of upgrade options, and a responsive customer support team. With web hosting plans for personal and business use, just about any website owner can get what they need from HostGator. Get over 60% your monthly rate when you sign up with HostGator today. The 9 Best Web Hosting ServicesWith web hosting services, one size certainly doesn’t fit all. Even though their offerings are largely similar, certain options rise to the occasion best for specific needs. HostGator made the cut of our top picks, but here’s a full rundown of our favorite hosting providers:
Learn more about these high-ranking web hosting providers by reading our full post reviewing all of them. ![]() Hostinger – Best Overall![]() Hostinger‘s affordable web hosting plans make it possible for virtually anyone to get their website up and running, then grow their site as their budget allows. The provider delivers rock-bottom rates for its shared and WordPress hosting, but doesn’t skimp on the resources you’re afforded. Even at its lowest price point, website owners get 100 GB of storage, 1 GB of RAM, and automated weekly backups. How Hostinger Compares to HostGatorHostinger and HostGator are relatively similar in terms of speed and uptime. In fact, both companies stand behind a 99.9% uptime guarantee and deliver speed optimization tools for WordPress and sites built on other platforms. ![]() The primary difference between the two comes in the form of security. Both providers have the basics, like SSL certificates and DDoS protection. But, Hostinger’s two-factor authentication, automated weekly backups, and around-the-clock security monitoring pull it slightly ahead. Also worthy to note is that Hostinger has its own version of cPanel known as hPanel. It’s designed to make managing advanced settings easier for any website owner. But, if you’re already used to cPanel, it might be inconvenient to acclimate to a different form of web hosting control panel. Hostinger’s introductory rates start between $2.99 and $3.99 per month for shared hosting, rising to $9.99 or $14.99, respectively, per month upon renewal. HostGator offers cheaper introductory rates, but not by much (around 30 to 60 cents less per month) when you lock in a three-year term. However, Hostinger’s WordPress-focused hosting plans are generally $3 to $4 per month cheaper than HostGator’s. Learn why Hostinger is one of the best web host providers for personal or business use. DreamHost – Best Value for Shared Hosting![]() Shared hosting is one of the most common forms of web hosting since it’s largely enough for simple and new websites. DreamHost is among the best providers in this category by making it easy to secure it for cheap without having to commit to years of service up front. Packages are incredibly affordable without lacking key features. Every DreamHost shared hosting plan comes with a free domain, unlimited traffic, a website builder, and a free SSL certificate. DreamHost also makes setting up a WordPress site easy, with a pre-installed and ready-to-go WordPress database, free migrations, and a setup wizard to get your site on the web as quickly as possible. How DreamHost Compares to HostGatorDreamHost has just two plans compared to HostGator’s three, so it might be a little more difficult to get exactly what you need from the provider without overpaying. That said, the upper-echelon plan is still highly affordable, considering that it comes with unlimited websites, unlimited storage, and unmetered bandwidth. Both providers have uptime guarantees to ensure that your site remains online and accessible to visitors. If you typically prefer phone support if something does go wrong, though, you won’t find it with DreamHost. The provider offers a knowledge base in addition to ticket and live chat support. With HostGator, you get 24/7 support via live chat or phone on any plan. ![]() DreamHost’s monthly pricing for shared hosting starts out at $4.95 per month, lowering to $2.95 per month on a year-long commitment. That’s similar to HostGator’s rates for a three-year commitment, but far less than what HostGator charges for month-to-month billing (which runs a full $17.99 per month). Read our in-depth DreamHost review to learn more. SiteGround – Best for Extra Speed and Security![]() SiteGround easily has some of the best tools for optimizing site speed and security compared to other web hosting providers. Built on Google Cloud, this provider taps into advanced technology to ensure that every user’s site loads instantly, whether visitors access it from the web or a mobile device. All WordPress sites on SiteGround, in particular, include an optimization plugin by default that automatically caches parts of sites and uses GZIP compression and lazy image loading for the quickest load times possible. SiteGround users see reliable uptime with the provider’s automatic health checks, which also help boost security. Sites are further protected from vulnerabilities and attacks through daily backups, firewalls, anti-bot blockers, and 24/7 monitoring. How SiteGround Compares to HostGatorSiteGround has many data centers spread across the globe in dozens of different countries, helping to maintain a speedy and positive experience for visitors no matter where they’re located. Contrast that with HostGator’s more limited distribution of servers and you have an easy choice between the two if your site gets a lot of international traffic. ![]() SiteGround’s control panel could also be a bonus for some users. I like how clean and simple it is to navigate. That’s not to say that HostGator’s isn’t easy to use, but beginners will particularly appreciate how SiteGround’s dashboard is laid out, making it easy to find and tweak just about any setting in a couple of clicks. One more thing that’s hard to beat: SiteGround’s customer support. When I tested it, it took a couple of hours to resolve my tickets, but I was impressed by their thorough commitment to getting a resolution before closing the ticket. HostGator has helpful and responsive support, too, but SiteGround seems to go above and beyond to help everyone’s site run quickly, regardless of a website owner’s technical expertise. HostGator has lower-priced plans than SiteGround on the whole, but SiteGround’s one-year term for its entry-level shared hosting occasionally is the cheaper of the two (as it is at the time of this writing). However, SiteGround offers substantially more for users in terms of security and speed features. Plus, its unlimited database creation on any plan might be enough to win over site owners with large, feature-rich web pages. Learn how SiteGround is an excellent choice for websites of all sizes and types. Bluehost – Best for New WordPress Websites![]() Ask WordPress users what hosting provider they prefer, and an overwhelming majority of them will probably tell you Bluehost. Bluehost is one of the three web hosts explicitly recommended by WordPress, too, because the two platforms play so well together. You can choose a WordPress-focused hosting package with Bluehost like you can with other hosting providers, but you’ll be getting access to one of the most intuitive site builders on the market, plus a boatload of included plugins and custom themes designed specifically for the WordPress platform. How Bluehost Compares to HostGatorBluehost does far more than just cater to WordPress users, although that’s a welcome bonus for many because of how widely used WordPress is as a content management system. Its theme marketplace helps website owners get a professional-looking website without shelling out for hiring a web designer. Customize the theme with Bluehost’s intuitive website builder and you’ll likely be amazed by how easy it is to whip up a quality site yourself. HostGator also has a site builder included with its web hosting, but it feels much more limited in terms of customization capability. ![]() One drawback with Bluehost is that it only offers free site migrations for WordPress sites. In contrast, HostGator is more inclusive, allowing you to migrate any site built through WordPress or using another MySQL database. With four plans to choose from, you can choose a Bluehost plan that fits your needs well in terms of resources and features. However, regular prices after introductory rates for Bluehost are slightly higher than HostGator’s, so be mindful of the extra strain on your budget after your introductory rate with Bluehost expires. Explore Bluehost’s top perks, like security, WordPress hosting, and uptime. A2 Hosting – Fast and Reliable Shared Hosting![]() A2 Hosting delivers the full array of hosting options, from shared hosting and VPS to dedicated, reseller, and managed WordPress hosting. But, it stands out most in its ability to bring top speeds to its shared hosting, a type of hosting that often gets bogged down by high resource usage among the website owners on those servers. Page, database, and object caching, plus features like image compression and condensed CSS whittle away at long loading times that you might experience on other hosts’ shared plans. And, if you’re willing to pay a little bit more, you’re able to access A2’s proprietary Turbo servers, giving you a speed advantage that your competitors on other providers will never be able to match. How A2 Hosting Compares to HostGatorThose higher-end Turbo plans use optimized servers that give you up to 20 times faster loading speed than traditional servers. Websites with a lot of traffic or heavy site elements (like videos or animated backgrounds) could benefit from the Turbo shared hosting packages, leading to more conversions and a lower bounce rate. ![]() A unique aspect of A2 Hosting is its commitment to eco-conscious web hosting. By committing to green and responsible business practices, such as using lower-energy equipment and recycling servers it no longer uses, A2 reduces the typical carbon footprint of running their servers. If that aligns with your business or site values, you can proudly display the green impact of using A2 on your website for visitors to see. Otherwise, you will find few significant differences between the two hosting providers, which both have multiple avenues for getting support, easy-to-learn dashboards, and high-level security. Shared hosting with A2 Hosting is priced pretty much neck-and-neck with HostGator, with the only main difference being the higher-priced Turbo plans from A2. Those start as low as $6.99 per month on a one-year or three-year commitment. Aside from its speed and reliability, you can learn all that A2 Hosting has to offer in our full brand review. InMotion Hosting – Best VPS Hosting![]() InMotion Hosting is an excellent option for VPS hosting, which gives website owners private access to their own resources on a server shared with others. VPS hosting can get pricey on some providers, but InMotion’s introductory rates help you get started affordably. Better yet, its renewal rates won’t cause sticker shock, either. Even though VPS hosting can require a bit more hands-on management, InMotion makes it relatively easy with its custom dashboard displaying server stats and quick access to resource migration. I like that you can set your server to take regular snapshots, letting you restore to a previous version whenever you feel it’s necessary. If you want to save some time and frustration, you can instead opt for InMotion’s managed VPS hosting. That lets the pros on their side handle all the dirty work, including setting up your VPS provision and handling site migrations, routine server optimization, and plugin and core updates. How InMotion Hosting Compares to HostGatorMany InMotion Hosting customers initially choose the company because of its generous 90-day money-back guarantee. They can pay for a plan, try it for the better part of three months, and get their money back if it’s not right for them. The industry standard—and what HostGator offers—is just 30 days. ![]() All HostGator VPS plans have two dedicated IPs and unmetered bandwidth. While InMotion Hosting limits its lowest tier VPS plan to 2 TB of bandwidth, all other plans get unlimited. Each successive tier of InMotion VPS also delivers extra IPs, all the way up to 10 on the top-tier plan. InMotion flat-out beats HostGator’s VPS in terms of pricing. It starts out with a wider range of plans (with a cheaper entry-level plan preceding a mid-range plan that’s priced comparably to HostGator’s entry-level VPS package), then continues impressing with lower pricing on renewals and long-term contracts. With InMotion, you can secure three years of quality VPS hosting for right around $25 per month, whereas HostGator only offers a maximum VPS contract term of one year (after which you’re getting the renewal rate of $79.95 per month). Find out how InMotion Hosting stands out among competitors in our detailed review. WP Engine – Best Managed WordPress Hosting![]() WP Engine has been a top WordPress hosting provider for years, and it continues to stand out with its team of WordPress experts that can help you with everything from migrating a WordPress site to keeping it secure. The WP Engine team is available 24/7 for assistance. Although managed WordPress hosting is WP Engine’s top offering, it also has lots of website-focused tools, like a plugin manager, a client management platform, and WooCommerce-oriented hosting packages. Still, everything is designed for WordPress, particularly for the purposes of making management of WordPress easy for anybody. How WP Engine Compares to HostGatorWP Engine plans include automated backups, threat detection and blocking, and WordPress site optimization standard. While that’s what you should expect from managed WP hosting, WP Engine’s thoroughness sets it apart from its competitors. Consistent site monitoring on WordPress alerts you if anything goes wrong with your code or databases that could affect your site visitors’ experience. The fact that WordPress experts are on standby at all hours to help you with anything WordPress related can be a huge help for WordPress website owners. Something you won’t find with HostGator is WP Engine’s Headless WordPress system through the use of the Atlas sandbox. As a result, you get massively more control over design, site content, development, site speed, and security. Plus, you can unlock features to deploy on your WordPress site that most other users have to code manually or implement via a third-party plugin. ![]() WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting is significantly pricier than HostGator’s, with plans starting at $20 per month. However, WP Engine’s capability and management goes way deeper. Plus, you’re getting an impressive introductory offer of four months free when you get started on a WP Engine plan. Explore the benefits of WP Engine to decide if it’s right for your site. Nexcess – Best for Ecommerce Hosting![]() Nexcess powers the websites of over 500,000 online businesses. With plans that cater to ecommerce sites and builders like WooCommerce and Magento, this hosting provider adds unique tools to its plans that keep ecommerce websites operating smoothly for customers. All Nexcess plans are managed hosting plans, so you’ll get extra help as you migrate, set up, and maintain your site. This comes at a slightly higher cost than some competitors, but it also gives many online business owners extra peace of mind that their website is in good hands. Nexcess also has plans for sites using Drupal, ExpressionEngine, and Craft CMS, as well as a proprietary web store builder. Their own StoreBuilder tool is a breeze to use, letting you design and publish professional ecommerce websites in no time at all. How Nexcess Compares to HostGatorAfter using both Nexcess and HostGator, the QuickSprout team found the Nexcess setup easier to get through, especially for setting up an ecommerce site. We also generally preferred the Nexcess website builder over HostGator’s. It offers more benefits for ecommerce website owners, like easy creation of detailed product descriptions and integrations with online marketplaces. ![]() Nexcess is also highly scalable. If you decide that its regular solutions no longer cut it, you can move to an enterprise-grade plan. HostGator offers VPS and dedicated hosting for more demanding needs, but they lack the sophistication of Nexcess’ higher-end offerings. Nexcess has individualized pricing depending on your preferred ecommerce site platform. Managed WooCommerce and WordPress hosting both start at $19 per month, with managed Magento plans starting at $31 per month. Nexcess’ StoreBuilder offering is also $19 per month, but you’ll get the first three months at a rate of just $5 per month. HostGator’s a lot cheaper, but they don’t offer the same depth of features and completely lack an option just for Magento-built web stores. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/hostgator-alternatives/ We recommend starting a blog using WordPress with Hostinger as it’s easy to tailor to your needs. Get started today for $2.59 per month. Not all blogs set out to accomplish the same things. And around a third of bloggers don’t make any money. That’s why you must consider what type of blog to start carefully. Choosing a blog niche that has an audience and fits your goals is the crucial first step to success. In this post, you’ll learn what you need to know about different blog types and which kinds of blogs are most popular and most profitable according to data. The 3 Best Blogging Platforms for Creating Different Types of BlogsWe used our wealth of experience creating websites and prior research to identify the top blogging platforms for creating any type of blog. Our top three picks are versatile enough to start you on the right foot, no matter what your goals for your blog are:
![]() What Types of Blogs Are There?Blog creators have a wide array of goals and objectives for their content, but there are four main categories of blogs in general. Let’s discuss each of those in a quick overview: 1. Personal blogs – These are journal-like blogs in which writers document their thoughts, opinions, tastes, or slices of daily life. It’s the way blogging started out on the early internet. Sometimes, bloggers keep their personal blogs private or only share them with friends and family, but nowadays more and more people use them as a sounding board, a place to share advice and experiences, or a way of building a community around a topic or shared interest. On Rising Shining, a mom documents her family life and experiences as a working mother: ![]() Personal blogs don’t have to be non-money making ventures. You can utilize affiliate marketing to monetize your soapbox or tie some blog posts to your online store or personal business when it feels appropriate. 2. Business blogging – Companies deploy blogs on their websites for a variety of reasons, from showcasing their industry expertise and raising awareness about their brand to generating leads for their sales funnel and building customer loyalty through content that promotes their brand values or growth. Nike’s blog, for example, engages the sporting and fitness community with inspiring stories and tips that are relevant to their many product lines: ![]() Business blogs are usually a section of a larger company website, but sometimes they’re standalone sites that focus on a specific product, service, subset of their customer base, or industry-related topic. Their content isn’t always fixated on driving sales, but it always serves to help the company’s sustainability and connection with customers new and old. 3. Personal brand blogging – On a similar note, these blogs are for industry professionals or solopreneurs rather than entire companies. Pros use a blog to raise their profile as thought leaders or influencers, which can in turn support their company at large. Or, they use the same approach to sell their own services as a consultant or digital products like ebooks and online courses. Entrepreneur Tim Ferriss’s blog is a good example of using a blog to promote your personal brand: ![]() Personal brand blogging is becoming more and more prominent as side hustles become a more common aspect of people’s careers and work. It’s also a great way to capitalize on social media traction and bring followers to your entrepreneurial ventures. 4. Niche blogs – Niche bloggers focus primarily or exclusively on one subject. That can be anything from broad interests like books and travel to hyperspecific subject matter such as how to use AI for content creation or testing out fitness gadgets. People often niche down in order to stand out from the crowd of other blogs and attract a loyal, dedicated audience that they can monetize in one way or another. Expert Vagabond is one of the top travel blogs with advice, tips, and guides on various locations around the world: ![]() Niche blogs can be a subset of any of the three previous blog types. You can focus on a niche for blogging about your personal feelings, attracting a specific type of customer to your business, or strongly associate your personal brand with the niche topic. In this era, finding a niche is necessary. There is so much content already out there on the internet about just about any broad topic, so niching down is important for gaining some traction and attracting an audience in the first place. Since this is an important qualification to consider when starting a blog, we’ll talk about some of the most popular niches in a little bit. Why Start A Blog?We’ve written extensively on how to start a blog successfully. If you want a good overview of the steps to take in order to get a blog off the ground, read our guide on how to start a blog. That takes care of the “how”, but what about the “why?” There are more reasons to start a blog than simply trying it out as a new hobby:
The 13 Most Popular Blog SubjectsIt’s important to look at the most popular blog niches when choosing what type of blog to create. You’ll not only gain inspiration if you don’t know where to start but also learn what types of blogs have the best potential for gaining a large readership. According to a recent RankIQ study, here are the types of blogs that get the most traffic: 1. Food – Some food bloggers share recipes and step-by-step cooking tutorials with video. Many focus on a specific cuisine or diet. You’ll also find some blogs that do restaurant and dish reviews, though those are usually quite localized in scope. 2. Lifestyle/moms – So-called mommy bloggers are incredibly popular and dad blogs have grown in recent years, too. You’ll find parenting tips and personal insights aplenty, along with product recommendations and project ideas for the kids. 3. Travel – Travel bloggers create country or city guides, even whole itineraries for other people’s trips to new places. There are lots of niches within this topic based on certain types of travel, such as solo adventures, luxury travel, or digital nomadism. 4. Arts and crafts – Arts and crafts bloggers create step-by-step guides for crafts projects, tutorials for getting started on a new hobby, and tips for sourcing materials. They can often be seasonal or based on a theme such as Halloween or Christmas crafts. You’ll find lists of ideas for inspiration and resources for readers to utilize to further their crafting ability. 5. Outdoors – Outdoors bloggers cover a range of sub-niches. You’ll see blogs focused just on specific nature activities like fishing, camping, hiking, and survival. They love to create gear reviews and offer accounts of their own outdoors experiences. Plus, you’ll see a lot of excellent photography incorporated into the blog content. 6. Beauty and fashion – Beauty and fashion bloggers are one of the biggest subsets of influencers on the internet. They set trends, review many products, and create tutorials on makeup, beauty routines, outfit coordination, and even finding unique looks. 7. Personal finance – This evergreen subject matter often covers topics like saving money, getting out of debt, building credit, preparing for retirement, and making smart investments. You’ll find expert advice and recommendations for credit cards, bank accounts, and financial services. 8. Homeschooling – Like parenting blogs, you see a lot of personal insights and stories here. Homeschool bloggers also share a bunch of resources for others to use such as curriculum ideas, study subject templates, and workbooks. 9. Pets – Many pet bloggers focus on one type of pet and it can even get more niche by zooming in on particular breeds. They create blogs with lots of advice and tips for pet care, health, and entertainment. You’ll often find product recommendations for toys, food, supplements, and subscription services. 10. Gardening – Some gardening bloggers share landscaping and home design guides and inspiration. Others are all about plant and flower care, garden maintenance, and small-scale subsistence farming. 11. Decorating – Decorating bloggers cover interior design trends and how to implement them in your own home. You’ll find room or theme-specific guides, tips for remodeling and renovation, and help with matching aesthetics to readers’ personalities. They create lots of shopping guides and product recommendation lists. 12. Health and fitness – Many health and fitness bloggers create nutrition guides and share healthy recipes as a subset of food blogging. But these blogs tend to go beyond food and cover exercise tutorials, workout routines, and tips for maintaining a healthy lifestyle overall. You’ll also find a ton of motivation and inspirational stories. 13. Tech – Tech bloggers review electronics, software, and the like, plus give their thoughts on emerging technology and trends. Here you’ll find lots of guides walking readers through how to use products or get the most out of them. In many cases, tech blogs are directed at businesses and industry professionals, but they can just as easily speak to end users and consumers. The 4 Highest-Paying Blog NichesFinding a profitable blog niche is likely high on your agenda. RankIQ also published a study that revealed the highest-paying blog niches based on the median monthly income for bloggers in each category. The topics may not surprise you, but the monthly revenue might:
Now, just because these four blog niches are able to deliver lofty, four-digit monthly income numbers doesn’t mean you should go chasing them. You should choose a niche in which you can become the go-to expert for your audience, like gluten-free cooking or personal finance budgeting for students. It’s too difficult to compete with all the other blogs out there as a generalist without unique expertise on a subject. Though some blog categories tend to make more money than others, remember that you can make money in any blog niche as long as your approach is strategic. Digital products may be popular in the niche you choose. Online courses, in particular, are high-ticket items when it comes to monetizing a blog. You can charge hundreds of dollars for a high-value course. Search an online course provider such as Udemy to see how many people actually sign up for courses in your category. For example, hundreds of students have paid for gluten-free baking classes: ![]() Set up a course on anything from plant care to drawing. Artist/blogger Nancy Hillis, for example, offers a range of courses and an advanced masterclass: ![]() Or, you can find related products or services you’d be able to promote and earn a commission from by tapping into an affiliate marketplace. For example, a quick search on ShareASale for the keyword “gluten free” shows a bunch of relevant merchants whose affiliate programs your nutrition or health blog could join. ![]() Another way to monetize any blog niche effectively is through premium memberships. Just be sure to offer enough value that users would be willing to pay to be a part of the community. For example, you might be effective enough at presenting yourself as an expert in your niche that people are willing to pay for extra content or a newsletter. Or, you might grow a thriving discussion board that users would pay to gain access to. Furthermore, when thinking about what type of blog to start, consider putting a business-to-business (B2B) angle on your blog. For example, you might focus on executive travel over consumer travel, or start a blog aimed at catering companies rather than home cooks. Software, products, and services aimed at businesses tend to offer higher commissions, and therefore offer a higher potential income for you. Getting two businesses to make a purchase might make you the same amount of affiliate income as getting 100 consumers to purchase. Whatever you choose, ensure your narrower niche will be profitable through research. Look into monetization opportunities of all kinds. This kind of research establishes whether there’s a paying audience in your chosen niche that you can tailor your content to and make money from. The 6 Proven Types of Blog ContentThe majority of blog content falls into well-established formats. These are already popular and familiar to readers, so they’re most likely to perform well and show up high in search results. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, so stick to these popular types of blog content, at least while you’re starting out:
Among these options, you must find the types of blog content that resonate best with your audience. Do this by looking at your competitors’ top posts or the blogs that inspired you to make one of your own. See what their audiences already engage with and take that as guidance for the content types to start with. After you’ve published some, monitor the data related to your posts as you grow. Find your own top-performing pages by analyzing metrics such as the number of views and time spent on the page and take note of any post types that are more successful than others. ![]() This removes guesswork to show you precisely what types of blog content your audience wants to see and gives you a roadmap for future content creation. Final Thoughts About Types of BlogsYou may want to start a blog to leave the nine-to-five and become an influential online figure. Or, you may just want to create a digital soapbox that occasionally earns you a bit of extra cash. Either way, you must think carefully about the type of blog you want to start. To ensure you choose the right type of blog, you need a solid understanding of what types of blogs perform well and make the most profit. And you have to put in the research to establish whether there’s a paying audience for what you intend to do and consider the best monetization strategies. We recommend using WordPress with Hostinger when you’re ready to set up your blog site. Then, figure out what topics you will blog about and what types of blog content you will create. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/types-of-blogs/ We recommend WordPress with Hostinger for most people because it’s easy to set up and it’s easy for beginners to use. Get started with Hostinger today for just $2.99 per month. Formatting a blog post is easy enough to do. But when you’re trying to piece together a lot of information from across the internet and other sources, it can feel a lot more complicated than it is. In this guide, we’re breaking down the best way to format any blog post in six simple steps, so you can confidently write posts that are optimized for search and easy for your visitors to read through. ![]() The 3 Best Blogging Platforms for Formatting a Blog PostWhen you’re formatting a blog post, it helps a lot if you’re already using a good blogging platform. It’s even better if that platform has an easy-to-use interface, drafting features, and access to plugins for checking SEO-approved formatting, like Yoast. Here are our favorite blogging platforms from the many options available to you:
To find out the pros and cons of each platform in detail and more information about blogging, read our full post reviewing the best blogging platforms and blog sites. Format a Blog Post in 6 Easy StepsWe’ve broken down the process of properly formatting a blog post into six simple steps. Follow our guide and your posts will be formatted well for SEO and general readability every time.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using WordPress as our blogging platform, as it’s the most popular choice on the market (and likely to be what you’re already using). Best of all, Hostinger gives you an easy path to taking care of web hosting on the cheap while also getting you up and running on WordPress if you haven’t set up your blog already. You can get started with Hostinger today for just $2.99 per month. Step 1: Get Started with HostingerBefore you actually format a blog post, it’s a good idea to get signed up with a blogging platform so you have somewhere to post your content and you can access some of the tools in this guide. Since we’ve oriented this guide around using WordPress, let’s show you how to get that set up through our favorite WordPress hosting provider, Hostinger. Head over to Hostinger’s home page, go to Hosting in the top menu, then click WordPress Hosting. ![]() Scroll down until you find the list of plans, then choose the best one for you. I would recommend starting on the WordPress Starter plan because you get a free domain and a lot of really versatile features, plus you can always upgrade in the future. ![]() Once you’ve determined your plan, click Add to cart. You’ll then need to select your hosting term period. The longer your plan’s commitment, the lower the monthly rate will be. Just keep in mind that you’ll have to pay the total upfront. That means if you opt for a three-year commitment at $2.99, you’ll pay $107.64 for your hosting plan at checkout. ![]() For new bloggers, 12 months is a good place to start. That way, you’re not committed to two more years if you abandon this blogging project after one year, but you have enough time to both get value from the hosting plan price and determine success. Fortunately, at the time of this writing, Hostinger’s monthly rate for WordPress hosting stays the same whether you choose a one, two, or three-year contract. From there, you just need to create your account by filling in your details, then enter your payment information to finish checkout. Once you’ve completed the purchase, you can then go to your dashboard to view your new account. This will come with a free domain that we’ll choose later and WordPress integrated automatically into your new site. Step 2: Do SEO Keyword ResearchSEO consideration should be a big part of your blog content planning in general. If you want your post to rank on Google, you’ll need to include SEO keywords in your title, intro, headings, and within your text, so doing some research before you start writing your post will really help you identify what types of headings you’ll need to use and how you’ll structure your post. SEO research can be a little bit complicated, so we’re not going to break it down in depth in this post (you can read our detailed SEO guide if you need help), but there are lots of free tools that can help you identify words in your niche that are high in search volume but low in traffic. I’d recommend using either Ubersuggest or Semrush’s free version if you can’t afford a paid subscription to an SEO tool. There’s also a tool called Yoast SEO that is extremely useful for editing and placing SEO keywords. It’s a plugin that you can add to WordPress, and when you upload your blog post as a draft, it can scan the post and let you know how and where your SEO can be improved. ![]() This includes things like telling you if you have used your keyword enough times (or too much) in the content, if your headings are using the right words, and how to structure certain aspects of your language to improve visibility in search results. This is one of the reasons I suggest you get signed up with Hostinger with WordPress before you format your blog post, because you’ll get access to Yoast at no extra charge as part of your Hostinger WordPress hosting plan. Step 3: Write Your TitleThe first thing your readers will see will be your blog post title. Now, this may be a little controversial. Although I’m including this as the third step in this guide, you can honestly write your headline at any point, including as the last step. Sometimes, it helps to get a clear view of your blog post as a whole before settling on a headline. Whenever you choose to tackle this step, your headline should be fewer than 60 characters long and needs to be relevant to the post while hinting at the value the reader will get from reading. A good way to do this is to use rhetorical questions or to use a headline with numbers that teases a list in the post. For example:
Rhetorical questions pique curiosity and cause readers to open and read the blog post to find the answer. With lists, people like numbers because they are comforting and definitive and lists are easy to read. Studies have found that odd numbers in headlines also get better results and click-through rates, so if you can create a list with an odd number, you’ll boost your chances of writing a great headline. ![]() Step 4: Write Your HeadingsThe key markers for your post that will help readers navigate the content and plan which sections will be valuable to them are headings and subheadings. A good example of headings in this very post is each numbered step. You can clearly see what each section is going to be about, which makes it easy for you to follow the guide and also come back to a specific section if needed. Your headings should ideally use your SEO keywords, and you want them to be concise and to the point. A lot of the time, it also will make sense to create a table of contents if your post is long, and you can use your headings to structure it (and link to the relevant sections in the post). That can help guide your thinking about the post’s overall structure and potential headings. What would make sense if you saw it in a table of contents? What is going to clearly tell the reader what each section is about? ![]() For main headings, keep them high level. You don’t want to create a heading for every single little thing. Instead, you want your main headings (usually formatted as H2 headings in word processors like Google Docs and blog post editors in platforms like WordPress) to feel like chapter titles. Then, for smaller breakdowns within a section, you can use H3 headings, known as subheadings. This just makes it easier for posts to be scanned by your audience and helps them move through the post easily, especially if you’re covering a lot of unique aspects of a topic, tips, or other items. Step 5: Finalize Your OutlineOnce you have your headings planned, you can start fleshing out your outline. Before your first heading, you should write an intro to the post. This should be short, between one or two paragraphs. The first sentence needs to grab the reader’s attention like your title does and introduce them to the rest of the post. After each heading, write your main body content for each section. Try to keep this digestible and easy to scan—between 3 or 4 paragraphs is a good rule. Break up large stretches of text with things like bullet points or images (more on this in a bit) when you can. Don’t go overboard with this but remember that it can be tough for people to just read a wall of text, so breaking things up visually with subheadings, bullet points, visual elements, or numbered lists can help. ![]() At the end of your blog post, you should write a short conclusion, summarizing the post and giving the reader a call-to-action or a parting thought that closes the post with a flourish. Some posts won’t include this and you don’t have to either, but it’s a good opportunity to include relevant links to your other blog posts or to invite readers to do something. For example, if you’re writing a blog post about the pros and cons of hiring your moving vehicle rental company, you might end the post with a quick summary and then an invitation to book a van. Your heading for this can just be something like “Conclusion” or “Summary”, but that can look a little unprofessional and simplistic. In this post, for example, you can see that we use the heading “Final Thoughts.” It sounds better and still lets the reader know that the post is coming to a conclusion. Step 6: Add ImagesWhen you’re formatting a blog post, you may want to add images or screenshots that support what you’re writing about. These can be a little messy, because it’s not always easy to make images look good in WordPress. You’ll want to be mindful of the theme you’re using and how blog posts display on your WordPress site, so you can get a good feel for the right width and proportions for images to use. You can get creative with the images you use, but make sure they’re relevant to the written content. You should have one main image for your blog post that appears above or just under your title called a featured image, which can also be used alongside your headline for blog category pages, on web pages, or within your blogroll. The other images in your post should also be relevant and valuable to the content, but can also be used to break up long stretches of text. You’ll notice at Quick Sprout when we use images, they’re usually graphs, charts, or screenshots that help you understand the content of the blog post. We don’t use random stock images because they’re just that: generic. They usually don’t add much value compared to custom illustrations, screenshots, and original photos. ![]() For example, if you are doing a step-by-step guide and you’re giving instructions on how to sign up for a piece of software, you could include screenshots for each key step in the process with annotations to help users follow along and complete the steps. You can also embed videos where it makes sense, but be aware that these can really slow down your site’s loading speed. Just try not to go overboard and weigh your site down to the point where it takes more than three seconds to load. Final Thoughts About Formatting a Blog PostIf you use the steps we’ve outlined in this guide, every post you write should be easy for readers to scan and optimized for search. Of course, remember that every post is different and it’s perfectly fine to get creative. As long as you keep the focus on making it simple for readers to move through your post and find valuable content quickly, everything else will fall into place. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-format-a-blog-post/ Our top recommendation for most businesses is TriNet because of its comprehensive, well-balanced approach to an all-in-one human resources solution. Get a custom quote to see how TriNet can help your business. To help you find the best HR software, we started with 34 of the most popular tools and cut the list to the top 17. How? We evaluated each platform across several key features, including core HR functions, recruitment, attendance, performance, payroll, compliance, and benefits. We did the hard work of figuring out what separates each brand to provide helpful and honest recommendations. In other words, you’ll be well taken care of by choosing any platform on our list. The Best HR Software: Our Curated Top PicksThese companies made the cut: TriNet, Gusto, Monday.com, Zenefits, BambooHR, Rippling, Paycor, Namely, SentricHR, Run Powered by ADP, Paycom, Fingercheck, Paylocity, Workday, Patriot, UKG Dimension, and Zoho People While all of the above are excellent tools for various situations, our favorite HR software options are:
Below, you’ll find full reviews of each of the 17 best HR platforms—with recommendations on who should use each one—and a comprehensive look at the methodology we used to determine our top picks. ![]() The Best HR Management Software Overall![]() As a startup or small business, your vision and passion revolve around building a world-changing product or service. But to make that vision a reality, you need to scale. Growth means hiring. And hiring inevitably leads to a harsh reality—more hands-on HR. TriNet feels your pain. They know that HR administration for smaller organizations can feel like a quagmire of paperwork and compliance issues, sapping your time, money, and sanity. That’s why TriNet provides an all-in-one HR solution built to support businesses as they grow. With TriNet as your partner, you can wave goodbye to HR headaches and refocus on running and growing your daily operations. TriNet’s comprehensive platform handles everything from payroll processing and benefits selection to performance management. Need affordable health insurance or retirement plans for your team? TriNet partners with major providers to supply options you’d never get access to on your own. Want to improve employee satisfaction or make sure your company stays compliant with the latest regulations? TriNet’s HR experts have you covered. One of TriNet’s biggest strengths, though, lies in its performance management tools. Using their simple interface, you can set goals with employees, check in on their progress, keep a running log of notes, and generate useful reports to gain insights into your team’s development. TriNet also offers over 500 online courses in various skills so your employees can keep learning, growing in their own capabilities as your company grows. While TriNet’s pricing isn’t clearly, publicly listed and you can’t pick and choose services from their range of offerings, this software’s many pros outweigh the cons for small businesses with an eye on growth. Think of them as your HR co-pilot, ready to help you navigate any situation so your focus can stay on what matters most. When you started your company, supporting human resources might have been far from your mind. But now you have the opportunity to build a culture and work environment that reflects your overall vision. With TriNet’s robust platform and team of experts, you have a strategic partner ready to lift the burden of HR from your shoulders so you can do what you do best—innovate, expand, and turn your business dreams into a reality. Is Human Resources Software Right for You?The functionalities that come with HR tools overlap with a lot of other types of software, from enterprise-grade business management solutions to specialized platforms for individual human resources functions and professional employer organizations that handle everything for you. There are also HR tools that come with additional features for advanced focus on employee development and talent and performance management. These are often referred to as human capital management (HCM) systems. Tools that cover the core elements of HR management but also include features for advanced automation and data management are sometimes called human resources information systems (HRIS). While the differences seem subtle, an HCM or HRIS is a strong choice if you value any of these advanced benefits and want a tool that brings more to the table. Our list of reviews below includes a full spectrum of HR tools—from specialized platforms and HCMs to standard, all-in-one human resources management software—so you can make the best choice for your needs. For most businesses that want to handle human resources in-house, we recommend a versatile HR platform that handles most of the core functions. These options are all reviewed in this post’s section on HR software that can do it all. Even if you don’t have a dedicated HR team, many tools on our list simplify each process, making human resources management approachable for non professionals who are in charge of facets of HR. We also have an entire library of free tutorials, articles, and guides to help business owners and administrators handle the day-in, day-out activities of managing HR. Some of our noteworthy resources include:
If your business is brand new, has complex needs, or needs a solution to fill existing HR gaps, tools that solve specific problems may be a better choice. The second half of this article covers a few of our favorite tools for unique HR situations. The Best HR Software That Can Do It AllThe software providers in this section provide HR management platforms with core human resources features, including automated workflows, onboarding support, self-service portals, and employee databases. They all also include payroll and benefits administration in some capacity. If you want a platform that can do it all, or you’ll eventually want one that can handle everything involving core HR, these are the tools for you. Gusto Review – Best for Streamlined Benefits and Payroll Administration![]() Gusto is the best HR and payroll platform for startups and small businesses looking to handle routine yet critical tasks without bulking up their HR department. This software eliminates the need for an overwhelming amount of paperwork and spreadsheets, automating everything from onboarding new hires to processing payroll and managing benefits. For small companies struggling to navigate the labyrinth of employment laws and regulations, Gusto provides peace of mind by calculating, filing, and paying all your local, state, and federal payroll taxes automatically. The platform also generates and distributes W-2s, 1099s, and any other tax forms required. With Gusto handling compliance, you can say goodbye to the headaches and potential legal issues that come with manually processing payroll. And its support for unlimited pay runs, flexible pay frequencies, and multiple rates allows Gusto to adapt to any pay structure. On top of payroll management, Gusto offers benefits administration on par with platforms built for much larger companies. In one place, you can provide health insurance, retirement plans, commuter benefits, dental and vision coverage, and more to your workers. With 9,000 plans from over 30 carriers to choose from, there are affordable and effective options for any budget. And, since benefits integrate fully with payroll in Gusto, the software deducts premiums and contributions automatically. For startups looking to attract top talent, robust benefits are a must. But administering them is usually complex and time-consuming. Not with Gusto. For managers wearing multiple hats in a workplace, Gusto provides a single, streamlined hub for all things related to HR. Get new hires off and running, track PTO, run payroll, and a whole lot more with just a few clicks. And the software takes even more off of your plate with its self-service employee portal that puts access and answers right at people’s fingertips so they can help themselves. While Gusto may lack some of the advanced features of enterprise-focused platforms, their simplified approach is a perfect fit for smaller companies looking to build the foundation for growth. By automating essential but tedious tasks that sap time and sanity, Gusto allows you to focus on expanding your business, not filling out forms. And with pricing that scales as you grow, Gusto is a platform you can build with for years to come. Want to learn more about Gusto? Check out our in-depth review. Zenefits Review – Best HR Software with Affordable Employee Scheduling![]() For small to midsize businesses, tackling employee scheduling and tracking time can strain limited resources. But, with Zenefits, even complex schedules can be created painlessly. Zenefits provides sophisticated yet intuitive employee scheduling features at a price that fits small business budgets. By centralizing scheduling, time off management, and time tracking in one platform, Zenefits eliminates the hassle of juggling multiple tools and ensures greater accuracy, compliance, and insight into your workforce. With Zenefits’ drag-and-drop schedule builder, creating and managing schedules is efficient and user-friendly. You can set employee shifts and work periods by role, accounting for skills and qualifications, or build individual schedules based on availability, paid time off, and shift preferences. Make adjustments in real time to handle last minute changes and let Zenefits automatically consider overtime calculations, break requirements, and other compliance needs. Plus, employees can request time off, see the full schedule, set availability, and get notifications on their mobile devices. Everyone stays in the loop, no matter where they’re working. Businesses managing complex schedules across locations or with remote employees will appreciate the much-needed visibility and control Zenefits provides. Gain insight into how schedules impact overtime and labor costs as well as the ability to set schedules that prevent employee burnout. With Zenefits, you never have to worry about accidentally scheduling someone on an approved paid time off day or struggling to find coverage for last minute shift changes. And by tying scheduling to payroll, the entire process—from creating the schedule to paying your employees—is seamless and accurate every time. Beyond scheduling and time tracking, Zenefits offers additional HR functionality for small businesses. Their AI-powered reporting provides data and insights for optimizing your workforce, while automated onboarding, document management, and a centralized employee database help organize all critical information in one place. Higher tier plans include extra features like compensation management, performance reviews, employee engagement tools, and an internal social network for enhanced communication and task management. Zenefits’ scheduling functionality alone provides an affordable solution for small businesses drowning in complex workforce management needs. Get a complete, centralized hub for managing your workforce at a fraction of the cost of other platforms. BambooHR Review – Best for In-Depth Reporting and Analytics![]() BambooHR is the best HR solution for established businesses looking to gain invaluable insights into their workforce. With BambooHR, you’ll have a smarter view of your employees and be able to optimize critical HR decisions. Managing a large volume of employee data across multiple platforms is like navigating a maze with no clear path forward. How can you unlock the potential of your HR data when it lives in disconnected silos? BambooHR provides a centralized employee database customizable to your needs so you can finally see the complete picture of your workforce in one place. Say goodbye to chaos and guesswork. BambooHR’s robust reporting capabilities put at your fingertips the data-driven insights you need to optimize your human resources processes. Create custom reports highlighting what matters most to your business or start with BambooHR’s library of pre-built report templates for headcount, turnover, PTO usage, and more. You can generate reports on any data you track, such as sales performance, employee satisfaction, or certification completion. For example, pull a report on sales representatives who recently completed advanced training—sorted by sales numbers or client satisfaction rates—in a matter of minutes. BambooHR lets you share insights in the way that suits your needs. Export reports to PDF, CSV, or a spreadsheet, or share reports directly within the platform using BambooHR’s granular user permissions. And, the API allows you to pull reports and data into other tools for further analysis. Interactive charts and dashboards provide a real-time view into critical metrics like time to hire or turnover. With these dashboards, HR managers glean insights into team performance instantly and employees get access to information relevant to their role. For businesses handling complex compensation structures or advanced workforce management needs, BambooHR’s reporting functionality is a must-have. You’ll also get custom automated workflows, PTO management, and document storage which each integrate fully with BambooHR’s reporting. Beyond that, your team can tap into the software’s mobile access, onboarding and offboarding tools, and full applicant tracking system. Add-on modules for payroll, benefits, time-tracking, and performance management mean potential extra cost, but you’ll only pay for what you need in the BambooHR ecosystem. One other notable drawback is that BambooHR’s features are currently limited to companies based in the United States. Gain the HR knowledge and visibility you need to unlock your full potential with BambooHR. Check out our full BambooHR review to learn even more about this human resources software. Paycor Review – Best Mid-Market Human Capital Management (HCM) Software![]() For midsize businesses eager to upgrade the HR experience and empower their people, Paycor is a top choice. With extensive experience and industry-leading technology, your business can trust Paycor as an HCM solution that delivers. Bid farewell to the avalanche of HR tasks burying your team and hello to a comprehensive platform built to engage employees and fuel growth. Paycor starts strong with a hiring experience tailored to your recruitment needs. Customizable workflows streamline the entire process from initial recruitment and advertising job openings to onboarding new talent. You can even leverage AI-powered sourcing for a diverse range of qualified candidates and then schedule interviews with ease. Once hired, Paycor’s automated onboarding ensures an amazing first day and beyond. For employees already in the fold, Paycor’s robust performance management features provide everything you need to engage your team. From 1:1 meetings and personalized feedback to customized learning paths, you have the tools you need to develop their skills and prepare for dynamic future demands. Plus, ratings, rewards, and recognition make it easy to call out achievements and spread positivity. With a solution focused on leveling up talent, your employees will feel invested in and poised to thrive. Tackle salary analysis and ensure fair pay with confidence using Paycor’s advanced compensation management capabilities. Peer benchmarking insights, auditing features, and interactive dashboards provide transparency into compensation data so you can make the right decisions for your business and the well-being of your workforce. As an HCM, Paycor delivers across all the key “people” pillars: talent management, employee engagement, performance management, compensation management, and continual learning. But you won’t be missing out on essential HR features like payroll, benefits, self-service portals, and a centralized employee database—Paycor delivers mightily on those fronts, too. While more expensive than options for small teams, Paycor packs in the value to make the investment worthwhile. If you’re serious about engaging employees and reaching new heights with the talent you have (and want to attract in the future), Paycor has the tools and support to get you there. See our full Paycor review for more information. Rippling Review – Best Solution for Combining IT, Finance, and HR Management![]() As a growing business, managing IT, finance, and HR all at once can feel like an insurmountable challenge. Disconnected systems, data silos, and tedious manual processes bog down your teams and prevent strategic thinking. Rippling provides an all-in-one solution to help midsize companies gain control and insight into their operations. This solution sits between basic HR software and complex enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. It covers more functionality than a standard HR solution by adding unique technology and finance management modules, but avoids the overwhelming scope and cost of traditional ERP software. The platform starts with a unified workforce management system to automate policies, tap into data-driven workforce insights, and handle approvals. From there, you can integrate HR, IT, and finance components tailored to your needs. The HR module streamlines hiring, onboarding, payroll and benefits management, employee learning, and more on a global scale. You can even outsource your HR with Rippling’s full-service PEO or maintain control in-house and support your own human resources department. Rippling’s IT solution simplifies device management, security monitoring, access control, and compliance to protect your systems and data. Monitor employees’ tech usage and automate offboarding to reduce risk when employees leave. Meanwhile, adding the finance module to your Rippling package helps your staff oversee corporate spending with automated expense management, plus handle receipt matching and reimbursement. With it, you gain full visibility into budgets, transactions, and employee purchases to optimize your financial operations. Plus, automated reimbursements via integration with Rippling’s payroll will save your finance team hours of manual work. As an all-in-one solution, this software revolutionizes HR workflows and data centralization so you can free your teams from repetitive tasks to focus on high-level initiatives. While more complex to implement than basic HR software, Rippling provides a robust, integrated experience for managing your workforce, technology, and money. For businesses struggling with disconnected systems and data silos, Rippling’s modular platform and full-service options offer a smarter approach to navigating growth. Automate and streamline operations across departments for a truly connected workforce. Want to learn more about Rippling? Check out our in-depth review. Namely Review – Best for Outsourcing Payroll and Benefits Administration![]() When you lack a formal HR department, the basics of payroll and benefits management can be a serious chore. Namely provides a straightforward solution to your struggles through their managed services for these routine HR functions. Experience the relief of HR outsourcing and the confidence of rock-solid compliance. Namely’s team of experts provides unparalleled support and guidance to make sure your payroll and benefits are processed and managed efficiently, accurately, and mindful of regulations. That way, you’ll fully eliminate headaches that arise from erroneous paychecks, missed tax deadlines, or confusion over healthcare regulations. Namely ensures you stay compliant and reduce risk with expert support at every stage, from plan design and underwriting to enrollment and claims management. Get help with the full spectrum of payroll and benefits management or just certain components, whether you want managed assistance just for payroll runs, healthcare options, retirement plans and more. On top of that, you and your team get access to their intuitive, user-friendly HR platform to handle essential tasks like onboarding, PTO tracking, and document management. Outsourcing to Namely’s professionals may sound expensive, but you can actually gain valuable cost and time savings by getting these tasks off your plate entirely. Instead of beating your head against the wall whenever it’s time to switch to HR administration, you can focus on growing your business because Namely has your payroll and benefits responsibilities handled. If you’re ready to break free from administrative overload, Namely is the solution your company needs and your employees deserve. SentricHR Review – Best for Building a Fully Customized HR Solution![]() SentricHR is an ideal solution if you want an approach to HR software that’s uniquely personalized to your needs. One-size-fits-all platforms can struggle to accommodate how you do business, but you don’t have to settle for an imperfect fit. The SentricHR team will work closely with you to understand your requirements and challenges. Together, you’ll build an HR software solution optimized for your organization from the ground up, plus set up a long-term partnership that allows your SentricHR platform to evolve with you through ongoing support and realignment with any shifting needs. A customized HR platform built with SentricHR can streamline your approval processes and workflows, reduce inefficiencies, and even save you money in the long term. Your employees receive a tailored experience that caters to them by reflecting your specific company structure, leading to higher satisfaction and retention. A customized platform can be a competitive advantage in your industry, enabling you to better serve both internal and external stakeholders. Pick and choose the features you need from SentricHR’s comprehensive suite, including document management, onboarding, and compliance as well as payroll, benefits, and analytics. Within each module, you can work with SentricHR to tailor the automations, fields, and workflows to match your business exactly. For example, create custom document templates with predefined fields, then set automated routing for review and e-signature. Once it’s set up, you can rest easy knowing your processes are always followed to the letter. Plus, you don’t have to pay for what you don’t use. SentricHR’s modular approach and customized pricing mean you only pay for the capabilities you need. While advanced customizations and one-on-one support do cost extra, the long-term efficiencies gained from a tailored and optimized HR solution can offset the initial investment over time. The only downsides are SentricHR’s interface, which could use a modern refresh, and additional per-check fees for payroll processing. If you’re ready to infuse your company with a competitive edge, SentricHR provides the agility and adaptability you need. Paycom Review – Best Comprehensive, Mobile-First HR Software![]() Paycom offers businesses an end-to-end HR platform built for modern, mobile workforces. Their solution provides the tools you need to efficiently manage teams, tap into employee potential, and strategically align your workforce, all within an intuitive mobile app experience. For service-based, retail, and field service-minded businesses, Paycom’s mobile-first design is a game-changer. Their feature-rich iOS and Android apps make it easy for managers and employees to stay connected and productive, no matter their location. Managers can oversee projects, communicate with teams, approve time-off requests, and monitor performance on the go. Meanwhile, employees get instant access to company resources like employee handbooks and training materials, as well as the ability to submit requests for paid time off, check pay stubs, and enter expense reports anytime and anywhere. Paycom’s platform is built specifically for mobility—others tack mobile apps onto their HR software as an afterthought. You don’t have to sacrifice functionality or ease of use for mobility. Paycom’s apps are full-featured and designed with a thoughtful interface that just works, whenever and wherever you need it. And its core HR software functionality is no slouch, either. With a robust set of features for managing payroll, benefits, compliance, and talent acquisition, Paycom gives you a comprehensive HR tool set. While Paycom isn’t as customizable as other tools out there—making it a less than ideal fit for larger teams or businesses needing a highly targeted solution—field-based businesses and workforces that rarely join together in an office setting will love this mobile-first HR platform. Check out our full Paycom review for a more in-depth look. Fingercheck Review – Best for Businesses with Hourly Employees![]() If you have a sizable portion of your workforce getting paid hourly wages, finding the right tool to manage schedules, time tracking, and payroll can feel impossible. Fingercheck, though, caters to businesses that rely on clock-in-clock-out workers more than salaried employees. It handles the entire employee lifecycle, from streamlining the hiring of workers to help you weather high-volume periods to seamless payroll processing that can factor in tips, exempt wages, and more. Fingercheck is particularly adept at handling seasonal and part-time workers in a way that many other HR platforms aren’t. Where Fingercheck really shines is in its scheduling module. With one click, you can create optimized schedules that assign shifts based on skills, availability, and employee preferences, which is a constant consideration when your workforce is largely (or entirely) paid hourly. Prebuilt schedules can provide an excellent starting point, saving managers hours of time. Real-time schedule updates keep everyone informed of the latest changes. The platform also supports employee requests for shift swaps and time off approvals through customizable admin workflows. With Fingercheck’s time tracking, you gain insight into employee hours with clock in/out functionality and real-time monitoring. Because it’s fully integrated with payroll, you can sit back while the software calculates wages, overtime, and deductions automatically for error-free paydays. From scheduling conflicts to time theft, Fingercheck provides the visibility and support you need to address issues quickly. You can also create professional and compliant employee handbooks with the click of a button, then distribute policies directly to employees through Fingercheck’s software to maintain transparency across your organization. While its reporting functionality could be improved, Fingercheck succeeds in delivering an intuitive solution for managing the critical yet complicated aspects of hourly employee scheduling, time tracking, and payroll. With this software, you can get ahead of staffing needs, gain transparency into labor costs, and ensure employees are paid accurately and on time, every time. Paylocity Review – Best for International Payroll Runs![]() As an organization with international employees or contractors spread the world over, managing payroll and compliance is one of your biggest challenges. Most HR tools don’t support payroll runs across borders, forcing you to cobble together different systems to pay and manage your workers. The administrative burden is enormous. Paylocity stands apart from the others with a unified, customizable platform built specifically for organizations with a global workforce. This software makes it easy to coordinate payroll for your international teams in over 100 countries. Pay global staff in local currencies and ensure fair compensation based on the average cost of living in each location. Paylocity analyzes local salary norms and statutory benefits to guarantee your international employees receive what they’re owed. The software automatically handles foreign exchange rates and tax withholdings for each country, even filing returns on your behalf to ensure you avoid penalties. Tired of fluctuating exchange rates and opaque fees eating into your budget? Paylocity gives you real-time visibility into currency conversions and transaction fees so you have control over costs. Its global payment network helps get funds to employees reliably and on schedule, too, no matter the payroll frequency. Don’t worry about compliance in unfamiliar regions any longer. Paylocity is an expert guide that knows local labor laws inside and out for all the locations they serve. Paylocity’s software suite also covers all your other essential HR needs in one place—talent management, recruiting, learning, benefits, and more. As the world becomes more globally connected, businesses like yours require a trusted partner to handle the complexity of international compensation and payroll compliance. Paylocity is that partner, with their localized expertise and robust, unified platform. If you’re ready to eliminate the headache of international payments management and focus on sustaining your worldwide operations, look no further than Paylocity. Want to know more? See our full Paylocity review. Workday Review – Best Enterprise Resource Planning in an HR Platform![]() Workday is a unified ERP solution built from the ground up for organizations like yours, offering a single, powerful system to help you optimize your workforce and manage every aspect of your entire business. This unified platform consolidates all of your core HR, financial, logistics, and customer data management needs into a scalable system that flexes where and when you need it to. With Workday, you can leverage an integrated HR ecosystem that syncs recruiting, onboarding, learning, performance, compensation, payroll, and every other human resources function you can think of—it’s that comprehensive. Even if you have thousands of employees, Workday makes human resources an integrated piece of the whole where every manager has everything they need. From built-in workforce analytics, forecasting, and strategy tools to financial insights, supply chain management, and a CRM, it offers a holistic view of your organization. Workday’s software utilizes machine learning to gain insights into each employee and tailor experiences to their needs. For your HR department, this means the platform offloads tasks to itself, like responding to questions or managing specific cases so your HR pros have more time for high-priority work. For employees, it results in an engaging experience where they have a customized view of company resources, learning opportunities, and growth paths. The benefits of Workday’s unified ERP approach are clear. Real-time visibility across your entire business allows for data-driven decisions and minimizing risks, while deep automation capabilities decrease manual work. And with it all coming in one integrated package, you enable a seamless flow of information across your entire company. While the initial investment in Workday is substantial, the long-term gains of productivity, reduced costs, data flow, and improved compliance can balance out the high price tag. It’s the only HR platform on our list that centralizes all of this, integrates your data, and unlocks workforce intelligence at such an advanced level. It’s the HR powerhouse you didn’t know you needed. Get with Workday and eliminate the hassle of managing data across disparate systems and enable your HR team to focus on high-value initiatives like enhancing employee experiences, developing skills, and driving strategic outcomes that really move the needle. HR Tools That Work for Specific SituationsIf you already have tools for some HR functions, but need additional features, you don’t necessarily need a full HR solution. The same is true if you have complex needs in specific areas. Or maybe you are on a really tight budget or have basic HR needs, making a complete HR suite inaccessible or overkill. The companies below offer highly specialized or low-scope HR solutions for various situations. However, we’ve only included a small sampling of the options available. See our methodology to learn more about the individual functions of HR software, where to find our top picks for specialized tools, and who should use them. Monday.com Review – Best for Simple Management of HR Tasks and Processes![]() HR professionals juggle countless tasks while navigating complex workflows and managing cross-functional teams. And they often do it behind the scenes, without complaint. But disjointed systems, siloed data, and inefficient processes will slow you down. Enter Monday.com, a project management-first tool that’s designed to streamline operations, optimize productivity, and gain real-time visibility across projects. But, in terms of HR, you can also customize dynamic workflows for every aspect of human resources management, including consolidating employee records, setting an onboarding process for new hires, running campaigns to attract top talent, and boosting employee engagement. Dozens of ready-made templates can help transform how you handle performance reviews, time-off requests, recruitment, and more. Monday’s intuitive interface lets you set up automated rules to keep HR action items on schedule. Gain insight into your team’s workload and progress through simplified reports and charts. The versatile functionality of Monday.com means you can use it for any HR processes you want to optimize. You can also integrate Monday.com with other HR tools to help shoulder the workload, since it isn’t a full-scale HR suite for payroll, filing taxes, keeping up with changing labor laws, or enrolling in the right benefits program. But, in combination with your existing HR systems, Monday can help you create a launchpad for improved communication, stronger collaboration, and enhanced operational agility. The future of work is here—and it’s visual, collaborative, and streamlined thanks to Monday.com. Check out our full review to see how it can transform the way your business manages projects. Zoho People Review – The Most Affordable Solution for Basic HR Needs![]() Small businesses need an HR solution that won’t break the bank, but will still help keep their team organized and supported through growth periods. Zoho People offers an affordable human resources toolkit built specifically for startups and small businesses. Their lean and scalable platform provides efficiency, simplicity, and affordability while covering all the key HR bases. Zoho’s entire software suite offers a modular approach that lets you select the tools you need, so you’re not paying for expensive features or components you’ll never use. Start with the basics like employee records, time-off management, and performance reviews, then add additional capabilities as your business scales without disrupting work or creating a significant financial burden. The starter plan for Zoho People includes an employee database, time-off management for up to five people, and basic performance reviews—all for free. That’s a steal if you’re a tiny operation that just needs the essentials. Paid plans start at just a few dollars per employee per month, with steep discounts for users who don’t need full access to the software. And there are no hidden fees or long-term contracts. Just straightforward, affordable pricing. As you upgrade to higher tiers, you can begin automating HR tasks like scheduling, time tracking, and feedback so you can spend less time on administration and more time growing your business. Features like mobile clock-in, geo-location, shift scheduling, and timesheet approvals help you more effectively manage workforce time and attendance. On top of that, unlocking built-in KPIs, competency assessments, and reviews can make performance management a breeze. While Zoho People lacks advanced features of larger HR systems and an all-in-one feel, their focused approach provides training, development, and growth opportunities for small teams at a fraction of the cost. Startups and small businesses that need an affordable HR solution to handle the basics will find an easy, cost-effective choice in Zoho People. Why delay implementing a simple, streamlined HR system your team will actually use? Get a customized solution for your startup or small business HR needs at a fraction of the cost of other HR software. Patriot Review – Best for Exclusively Addressing Accounting and Payroll![]() If you don’t have an in-house accountant, tax pro, or HR administrator, you need an easy yet comprehensive way to manage accounting and payroll. Thankfully there’s a better way than paying for separate systems for both. Patriot is a solution that seamlessly handles both sides of this equation, helping your business save time and money without worrying about inaccuracies or missed payroll runs. The accounting features, like cash vs. accrual basis, automated bank transaction importing, and financial reports, provide a clear snapshot of your business’s financial health. Meanwhile, the full-service payroll side of things handles tax calculations, payroll runs, and support for both W-2 and 1099 employees with ease, ensuring 100% compliance. Plus, gain real-time visibility into your financial performance through integrated accounting and payroll reports. Speed up decision making by having this accurate data at your fingertips. With costs up to 50% less than competitors, Patriot’s affordable plans make it easy to get the tools you need for simplifying your accounting and payroll. Choosing Patriot means you no longer have to fret about disjointed financial processes and spreadsheets. Get accurate, automated accounting and payroll in one integrated powerhouse. See our full Patriot review to learn more about its pros, cons, pricing, and offerings. RUN Powered by ADP Review – Best if You Only Need Payroll and Onboarding (for Now)![]() For micro-sized and small businesses bursting at the seams with ambition, onboarding and paying their small group of employees is of paramount concern. RUN Powered by ADP, the payroll accuracy and compliance pioneers, offers an HR solution tailored to your business’s lean and agile needs. With RUN’s software, you can automate, delegate, and accelerate both the payroll and onboarding processes. Starting with just the basics, RUN’s Bootstrap HR toolbox provides the essential features to get your house in order. For example, it calculates and disburses accurate paychecks, simplifies tax filings, and automates deductions for benefits and retirement plans if you bring those with you. And compliance updates ensure you never miss a beat with changing regulations. It even handles garnishments, special tax rates for employees in different locations, and year-end filings so you don’t have to worry about anything. As HR pros themselves with over 70 years of experience, ADP built RUN’s AI to flag potential errors and ensure 100% accuracy in every pay run. Onboarding new team members also becomes easier than ever. RUN reports your new hires to the government and guides them through all necessary paperwork before their first day. You can create custom onboarding checklists to ensure every new employee goes through the same process. RUN even includes integrated background checks—including SSN verification and criminal history—which provide peace of mind in your hiring efforts. With step-by-step guidance through every tool and process plus 24/7 support from certified payroll experts, even non-HR professionals will feel at ease handling essential tasks. Despite RUN’s lightweight feel, your entire team gets a self-service portal for accessing pay stubs, updating personal information, and more. Why pay for a Cadillac when a Honda Civic will do? With RUN, you only pay for the features you need right now. Adding insurance, time and attendance, performance management, and other functions is a click away when your company growth dictates the need for them. However, it’s important to note that there are no performance management features and automated labor law compliance only comes in at higher tiers. Keep that in mind as your operations grow to new heights. ADP knows you don’t want to just stroll to the next great stage of your business—you want to RUN. RUN is just one of ADP’s human resources solutions. Check out our full ADP review to learn more. UKG Dimensions Review – The Best Solution for Hospitals and Healthcare Systems![]() Hospitals and healthcare systems have to balance more priorities than most companies in other industries, including patient care quality, controlling costs, and handling dynamic schedules. The realities of healthcare and compliance requirements make this next to impossible to do without a solid HR platform. UKG Dimensions gets that. This brand offers a specialized workforce management solution and HR platform containing a built-in precision scheduler for patient care and shift orchestration, on top of industry-leading human resources features. With their pre-built add-ons, you can create accurate schedules based on forecasted patient volume, staff qualifications, and preferences while ensuring proper coverage and avoiding burnout. From varying shift patterns and dizzying arrays of employee types to managing multiple, busy locations, you get all of the coordination tools you need on top of a robust HR platform. UKG provides an easy-to-use system for employees to communicate their needs while automating schedules that maximize efficiency and work-life balance. As your patient experience guardian, UKG Dimensions helps coordinate care across departments and locations. Enhanced communication and visibility into schedules, time-off requests, and task management promote better collaboration between nurses, physicians, specialists, and support staff. Plus, you can automate workload distribution and patient-to-staff assignments. Because it integrates with most EHRs, you get the help you need with patient classifications and matching patients with the appropriate providers, too. UKG Dimensions also provides sophisticated analytics and reports that give unprecedented insight into your greatest expenses?your people. From optimizing labor to control costs, adjusting to volume changes, and ensuring safe staffing levels, the industry-specific solutions have you covered. While it comes with nearly everything you need, it doesn’t cover benefits management. The recruitment and performance management tools are also weaker in UKG than other tools on our list because that’s not the main focus. But this powerhouse is the only option on our list that can rise to the occasion for the uniquely intense HR needs of the healthcare industry. How We Determined the Best HR SoftwareWe started with a list of 34 tools, including ADP Workforce Now, Ascentis, BambooHR, CakeHR, Cezanne HR, Deel, Factorial, Fingercheck, Freshteam, GoCo, Gusto, HR Acuity, HR Cloud, Justworks, Monday.com, Namely, OnPay, Oyster HR, Paychex, Paycom, Paycor, Paylocity, Patriot Payroll, People HR, QuickBooks Payroll, Rippling, Sage HR, SentricHR, Square Payroll, TriNet, UKG Dimensions, Wave Payroll, Zoho People, Zenefits. We evaluated each one against the following criteria to cut the list down, identifying those that check all the boxes and those that are great for specific situations. At the end, we were left with 17 HR solutions that cover the entire category of human resources. Compliance with Employer Laws and RegulationsRunning a business comes with countless responsibilities, especially around managing employees. There are dozens of federal and state laws regulating how employers should handle payroll, provide breaks, withhold taxes, and much more regarding the management of their workforce. This includes laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), federal and state income tax withholding that varies depending on where an employee works, COBRA, and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) just to name just a few. Even businesses with a dedicated HR team can have trouble staying on top of everything without being overwhelmed. Despite that, compliance with these laws is absolutely critical, no matter how small or large your company may be. Failure to comply can result in costly fines, audits, and legal trouble. The good news is, technology has made it much easier for HR teams and non-HR professionals alike to keep their businesses in compliance. Much of the HR software we reviewed above provides an all-in-one solution to handle key tasks like payroll processing, paid time off tracking, tax withholding, and benefits administration according to applicable laws. With the right HR platform, you get peace of mind knowing that payroll is calculated properly, employees are receiving the correct benefits and paid time off, and all federal and state taxes are being withheld, paid, and filed on time. On top of that, these smart platforms stay up-to-date with changing regulations so you don’t have to. While no technology can replace human oversight and judgment, HR software goes a long way in reducing the burden of regulatory compliance, letting you focus on other things. If your industry is uniquely regulated, HR software that is supported by compliance experts can help further simplify the process of maintaining compliance and give business owners, HR professionals, and administrators greater confidence in managing their workforce. Recruitment, Hiring, and OnboardingThe process of finding and hiring new employees is complex and can easily become disorganized without the right tools to keep everything in order. HR software helps simplify these critical tasks for both HR professionals and non-HR managers alike. For example, using an applicant tracking system allows you to post jobs to multiple sites with one click and accept applications from candidates in a centralized place. Managers can then review, organize, and communicate with applicants efficiently through the software. Once you’ve found the right hire, onboarding new employees typically requires managing offer letters,background checks, payroll setup, and benefits enrollment across multiple systems. An HR management tool brings all these activities together in one workflow so nothing gets missed. Onboarding tools get them up to speed withcompany policies, payroll, benefits enrollment, and more before their first day. Businesses that use dedicated HR solutions for these purposes often see decreased time to hire, lower cost per hire, and improved new hire retention. The best HR software provides an end-to-end experience from recruiting through onboarding and beyond. In this roundup, all of our top picks contain features for at least two of these three areas, if not all of them. We’ve also published reviews of the best onboarding software and applicant tracking systems for those wanting to take a deeper dive into solutions focused specifically on one part of the process. While recruiting, hiring, and onboarding can certainly be messy and complicated, the right technology and tools can help create an organized, hassle-free experience for HR teams, managers, and new employees alike. Attendance and SchedulingMany businesses can benefit from smarter tools for scheduling, timekeeping and attendance management. For example, retailers with part-time workers often struggle with creating schedules that meet the needs of the business while also being fair to employees. Or, manufacturing companies have to account for shift work, overtime, and managing productivity on the floor, while healthcare organizations need to ensure proper staffing levels and that certification requirements are met for patient safety. Solving these complex scheduling and time-tracking problems is where human resource tools come in. HR software with integrated time and attendance systems or features like schedule optimization tools and time clock apps can simplify work for managers and business owners. They make it easy to create customized schedules that fit the needs of your workforce, track hours worked, calculate overtime and paid time off, and stay on top of attendance issues. With integrated timekeeping and scheduling, businesses can also streamline related HR and payroll activities. Data flows automatically into payroll, reducing manual entry and errors. Reports provide insights into labor costs, budgeting, and productivity. Many systems also sport features like employee self-service portals, task management, and integrations with other workplace tools. If you already have a comprehensive HR solution or have specific needs when it comes to attendance and scheduling, a tool that’s solely focused on this facet of HR may be a better fit. Check out our favorite time and attendance tools and the best time clock software to find the right one for you. Performance and Training ManagementThere are many tools and strategies to effectively manage employee performance, keep people engaged, provide impactful training, and enable continuous learning. However, juggling multiple systems and processes for each area of employee management can create extra work for HR teams and confusion for employees. Our recommendation for most companies is to adopt an all-in-one human resources platform that integrates options for performance management, engagement, training, and more. These unified systems simplify things by housing all people-related data and initiatives in one place. Employees get a single sign-on to access reviews, feedback, learning content, and communication tools while HR administrators get a holistic view of their people and programs. Most of our top picks above offer robust features for managing performance and developing skills, ranging from performance reviews and goal setting and tracking to peer feedback and online learning centers with videos and instructional courses. An HR suite with strong performance and learning features built into the software is an efficient choice that simplifies work and creates a great employee experience. With the right platform in place, organizations can ensure employees get the feedback, coaching, and development they need to thrive. If you already have a well-established HR system but want to focus on leveling up your employee engagement, performance, or training efforts, a specialized tool is likely your best option. Check out our top performance management recommendations, our favorite employee engagement platforms, the best employee training tools to learn more. Payroll and CompensationHR software that includes payroll and compensation features is what most people want.Your team needs to get paid—it’s one of the most important HR functions. So, it’s not a matter of if you need payroll, it’s a matter of how you get it and how it fits into your overarching HR system. HR software with payroll fully integrated means most, if not all, of your HR processes can be taken care of in one platform. It goes a long way toward reducing the need for manual data entry, thus minimizing errors and saving you time that you can spend focusing on other tasks. Plus, you can maintain greater consistency and accuracy in your data, which is crucial for payroll compliance and financial reporting. Having payroll functionality in your HR software also means a more unified user experience for both your HR managers and employees.No one needs to log into different platforms just to update their information, see their pay stubs, track performance, or onboard new employees. That’s why all of our top 12 picks offer payroll processing and compensation features in some form. If you already have a payroll solution, finding HR software that fully integrates with it can help achieve some of the same benefits as getting everything in one place. However, a dedicated online payroll tool may be a better fit if your business only needs payroll and onboarding features in terms of HR, or if you’re operating with a limited budget. In that case, check out our top picks to find the perfect standalone payroll software for your situation. Benefits AdministrationChoosing HR software that handles the nuances of benefits procurement and administration can solve many headaches for businesses. With an all-in-one solution, you’ll have access to a wider range of high-quality benefit packages that you can offer your employees. Software providers often employ benefits experts who can help you determine the right mix of plans for your company culture and budget.This can helps ensure you’re getting the most out of the platform and offering competitive, cost-effective benefits packages that can help you recruit and hire effectively The ideal HR software for your company handles both the administrative and strategic components of benefits management. With the software automating much of the paperwork and processes, you can focus on leveraging benefits plans to motivate your teams and support their wellbeing. Whether you should bring your existing benefits vendor into a new HR software platform or switch to the software provider’s partner vendors depends on your situation. If you have a long-standing relationship with your current vendor and they integrate well with the new software, keeping them on may make sense (or may dictate which software option you choose). However, HR software providers’ partners are often highly vetted, with competitive pricing and plans tailored to work optimally with the HR software. For many businesses, making this switch is the simplest and most cost-effective option. While we don’t discuss benefits in-depth in this post, check out the top employee benefits plans to learn more about our favorite HR solutions with the best benefits packages for different types of businesses. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-hr-software/ If you want to get into ecommerce blogging, WordPress with Hostinger offers the best combination of blog builder and web hosting for the job. Best of all, you can host your WordPress blog with Hostinger for only $2.99. Ecommerce sites should provide the necessary tools that make transactions quick and easy for customers and store owners alike. But most ecommerce sellers forget about the one part of their website that works for them 24/7: their blog. Blogging for ecommerce can deliver plentiful benefits, from marketing your products to new clientele to building a devoted fan base of lifelong customers. Let’s dive into how to get started blogging for ecommerce and what you can gain by doing so. The Best Platforms for Ecommerce BloggingEcommerce blogging should come as a part of your overall web store platform. Many ecommerce site builders also sport some degree of blogging functionality, but these three are the best providers that deliver well on both blogging and ecommerce features:
If you want to get a feel for blogging platforms in general, check out our full reviews of the three brands above, plus others. ![]() What is Ecommerce Blogging?Have you ever read an article about a new product and just had to buy it? What about tips and tricks for using a product or service? That’s what ecommerce blogging is all about—generating organic interest in your brand and its products or services through written content. It’s a way of marketing your online store through content that educates, entertains, and informs customers about what you do. You can use it to grow your customer base by targeting new markets and building relationships with potential customers, plus keep engaging loyal buyers with new content that keeps them aware of, engaged with, and purchasing from you. When blogging for ecommerce, you want to strike a balance between educating people about your products and services so that customers know what to expect when they buy from you and getting them interested in what they can do, achieve, or enjoy by purchasing your products. On a technical level, there are specific steps you must take to get started with ecommerce blogging, including customer research, topic development, and content creation. We’ll get into those details in a moment. Why is Ecommerce Blogging Important?As an ecommerce seller, you’re probably spending a lot on paid ads already. And while paid ads are great for encouraging short-term gains in sales, ecommerce blogging helps you build a more steady audience of long-term customers. It’s also a way to build trust with potential customers by showing them that you’re an expert in your field and that you understand their needs, pains, feelings, and passions. You can use your blog to educate customers about your products and services, as well as answer their questions before they even ask them. Most importantly, though, ecommerce blogging leads to more traffic to your online store, which translates to more conversions and sales. Companies with blogs see 55% more traffic than those without, and there are several reasons for this.
As a search engine, it’s Google’s job to provide its users with the information they’re looking for. Many people aren’t looking for products specifically. They often type a question or a phrase into Google related to what they’re experiencing at the moment, whether it’s a need for something or a problem they want solved. When companies write about topics related to their products, it gives them a better chance of appearing in searches and ranking higher in results. A blog can really speed up the ecommerce conversion process by quickly dispensing with an introduction to the business and its products and by drilling deeper into topics that are directly or indirectly related to the web store’s product line. How Ecommerce Blogging WorksEcommerce blogging is similar to most types of blogging, but it also has some key differences. Since an ecommerce storefront is selling products or services, blog content needs to be focused on the products and services being sold to a specific degree. You don’t want it to be too salesy or pushy, but you also can’t just write about anything without tying it back to your business or offerings. Here are the main steps that go into starting the ecommerce blogging process:
Beyond these basic steps, ecommerce blogging also requires some ongoing maintenance, such as monitoring analytics and updating older posts as they become stale or outdated in their information. Benefits of Ecommerce BloggingCreating an ecommerce blog comes with many benefits, some of which we touched on earlier. Let’s take a look at these advantages in-depth. Blogging gives your brand a personalityThe fastest and most effective way to show buyers who you are and what you offer is to tell your story. An ecommerce blog allows you to do this in an engaging way, while also providing helpful information and perspectives related to your products or services. By consistently producing remarkable blog content, your brand becomes recognizable and trustworthy. It’s a way to share with customers who you are as well as what values your business holds dear. When readers recognize themselves in your brand thoughts and values, they’re more likely to become a customer and ardent supporter of your business. Blogging is a non-intrusive method that helps build an unforgettable personality for your company while reinforcing its online reputation. You can pay less for morePaid search, Facebook Ads, and other types of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be expensive. And you only get results as long as you’re paying for the campaign. By investing in ecommerce blogging instead, you can save money while reaching more people. Blog posts work around the clock, whether you’re spending money on additional marketing or not. Since they sit in search engine results pages (SERPs), high-ranking blogs can garner traffic without requiring any further financial input than the initial outlay to create posts. Your SEO rankings will improveGoogle loves unique, informative content. And when your blog is regularly updated with relevant and keyword-rich posts, your chances of ranking higher in search results increase significantly. Not just your individual blog posts’ pages either, but also your root domain where your online storefront lives. That’s because you’ll be showing search engine algorithms that you’re keeping up with the latest trends and providing value to your customers. Higher rankings mean better sales numbersFor most online shoppers, the buyer’s journey starts with a search engine. 68% of buyers search for a product on Google before making a decision on what to buy. When you rank higher in the SERPs with informative, keyword-rich blog content, you make it easier for customers to find your business and its offerings. This means more visits to your store and a better chance of turning visitors into buyers. Readers see your products beyond a photo or landing pageIt’s tough to communicate the value of your products when you’re limited to product photos and descriptions. But blog posts give readers the chance to see beyond a simple image or landing page, allowing them to understand the value of the items within your store, including unique ways to use them and benefits they might not have thought about themselves. With blog posts, you can communicate information in a way that cannot be captured by photos or product pages alone. You can discuss problems, answer questions and offer solutions—effectively highlighting why shoppers should choose your products without the need for salesy language or intrusive marketing messaging. Strategies for Crafting a Successful Ecommerce BlogEcommerce companies big and small can use their blogs to drive more sales and build brand awareness. But, for your blog to succeed, it must be well-executed. Here are some strategies to help you get started on the right foot with ecommerce blogging. Create a detailed content calendarOne of the most important aspects when crafting an ecommerce blog is consistency. If you post regularly for a few weeks then don’t post anything for another week or two (or month), you’re going to lose some of your audience and some of your search ranking gains. You need a regimented schedule for posting that you stick to. A content calendar typically includes:
By creating a content calendar, you can ensure that your blog remains up-to-date and relevant at all times. This increases the chances of attracting customers through search engine results pages and other channels. Don’t worry about trying to post all the time as much as being consistent. It’s better if you always publish something new on Tuesdays and Thursdays for weeks on end than to post something on five in one week then only once in the next. Be mindful of the workload your writers and content managers will be taking on and set up a calendar that allows them to produce excellent content on schedule, week in and week out. Turn common content types into templatesSome posts will require original content with unique ways of presenting information or thoughts. But, for a lot of your content, you can turn their formats into templates that make writing similar types of posts easier and faster. For example, blog posts like “X Best (Keyword) for (Activity)” and “X Tips for (Topic)” can have formats with subheadings that you can use as a replicable outline for each post that uses that technique. This way, you can quickly write posts that meet your formatting and quality standards without having to start from scratch with each one. Embrace a flexible business modelWhile it may seem like larger corporations always have the advantage, they are also burdened with certain weaknesses. Within their corporate bureaucracies, agility and change aren’t exactly common. As a result, shifting focus for these companies can be an expensive endeavor riddled with red tape and paperwork. This process is far simpler for smaller businesses who don’t need to contend with all those barriers. When it comes to blogging as a smaller ecommerce seller, you can quickly change direction and update your content strategy to match the latest trends or preferences of your customer base. This gives you a significant opportunity to dominate search results, capitalize on current events and trends, and grow your online presence to compete with the big players in your space. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)With the rise of Instagram and TikTok, plus the growth of influencer marketing, customers are more excited and enticed by transparent and authentic communication from a brand and its customers than ever. 70% of consumers factor in user-generated content in their buying decision because they trust their peers and the social accounts they follow and interact with daily. User-generated content is a great way to showcase your products or services in real-world scenarios, proving the worth of what you offer and boosting sales from an authentic source. You can highlight or report user-generated content on your blog by creating roundups, testimonials, reviews, and feature stories—all ways of demonstrating the successful use of your products or services or the positive feelings surrounding your brand. Let engagement data dictate your content strategyIt isn’t 2010 anymore. Keyword research alone should not be the basis of your content marketing strategy. Instead, focus on what your customers and audience are already engaged with based on their current conversations, activities, interests, and needs. Customer data like this comes from several different places:
The questions your prospective buyers have, the comments your customers leave, the reviews they’ve written, and the conversations they’re participating in on social media are all indicators of what they are interested in. And that should be the focus of your ecommerce blog strategy. How to Find the Right Tools for Ecommerce BloggingDepending on your budget, your tech stack could be expansive or it could consist of a few basic tools. Before you start building your blogging strategy, you need the right set of tools to back up your efforts. Researching and selecting the right types of software can be overwhelming—especially if you’re not familiar with all the options available in the market today. Still, there are a few essential tools you need to get started:
As you grow your blog, you’ll probably want to add other tools to your tech stack. These include heat mapping tools, usability testing tools, social media management software, and social listening software. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different tools until you find the ones that work best for your business needs. Final Thoughts About Ecommerce BloggingBlogging is an essential tool for any ecommerce business. It can give you a competitive edge, help you connect with your customers, and increase sales. You may even be able to make money from your blog in addition to your ecommerce sales. The key to success is to create a blogging strategy that aligns with your business goals, uses the right tools, and focuses on creating content that resonates with your customers. Then, using that data to find out what makes or breaks an ecommerce purchase, you can develop content your audience will actually want to read (and convert from). via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/ecommerce-blogging/ Our recommendation for the best ecommerce analytics tool is Optimizely because it combines analytics and marketing into an all-in-one solution. Sign up for a free demo to see how Optimizely can work for you. Knowing who buys from your web store and what they do on your site can help you target their needs better, thus generating more sales and creating more lifelong customers. Ecommerce analytics tools collect data you can use to track customer behavior and learn more about their needs and preferences. We spent days researching dozens of the most popular analytics tools for ecommerce sites to find the best of the best and break them down into the in-depth reviews you’ll find below. The Top 5 Best Ecommerce Analytics ToolsThe best commerce analytics tools help you track customer behavior and website traffic to optimize your site for greater sales. Optimizely is our top recommendation overall because it seamlessly blends marketing tools with site-improvement features. Sign up for a free Optimizely demo.
Check out detailed reviews of each company below, along with the best matches for specific use cases that may be relevant to your situation. ![]() Match Your Scenario to the Right Ecommerce Analytics SolutionTools for ecommerce analytics can vary widely in their features and what they do best, so there are certainly no one-size-fits-all solutions. Here, we dissect a few specific needs for ecommerce website owners when they’re looking for an analytics tool and pinpoint the top two options for each use case.
You’re handling a high volume of salesBest Option: Kissmetrics Kissmetrics tackles your entire sales funnel, helping you save time when moving customers along through each stage of the buying process. However, it’s pricey for small businesses with more sporadic sales, so you’ll want a healthy baseline of revenue to justify the outlay. Another great choice: Optimizely Optimizely has some of the highest prices on our list, so it’s best for businesses making enough sales for the cost to make sense. Its product information management features cater to large ecommerce businesses with multiple product lines and a need for targeted customer experiences. When your online store processes hundreds or thousands of sales per day, you should consider:
You need an affordable solution for a new online storeBest Option: Google Analytics Google Analytics is completely free, despite being a powerful analytics tool. If you’re just starting out and want to get all the necessary data to build your store—like traffic, keyword analysis, and bounce rate—you’ll find it without paying a dime for Google Analytics. Another great choice: Crazy Egg Crazy Egg is free for 30 days, giving you plenty of time to test out its capabilities before buying. With plans starting as low as $29 per month, Crazy Egg remains an affordable solution for A/B testing, recording analytics, and tracked pageviews after the trial period ends. If you don’t have a flexible budget yet, choose a tool based on:
You want an analytics tool and a marketing tool in one solutionBest Option: Optimizely Optimizely doesn’t just track and show you data about your visitors. It also helps you use that data to customize your marketing strategy to your advantage. A/B testing, campaign planning, and built-in ecommerce tools all come in this single platform. Another great choice: Crazy Egg Crazy Egg is an alternative to Optimizely that works well for smaller-scale online stores that don’t want to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars per month. It analyzes the customer journey and marks potential problems in your sales funnel to help you home in on issues that could be affecting your sales. If you don’t want a separate tool for marketing, consider an analytics tool with:
You need to track customer behavior more than trafficBest Option: Kissmetrics Kissmetrics’ primary goal is to help ecommerce businesses learn more about their actual customers. Go beyond most viewed and purchased to see deeper insights like popular searches and which sites searches most often lead to a purchase. Site owners can create customer types to track lifetime value and shopping behaviors, then target customer journeys to match their buying needs. Another great choice: Optimizely Ecommerce business owners can use Optimizely to run A/B tests for marketing campaigns, capture customer insights, and change elements of their website for different audiences. Real-time analytics deliver on-the-fly insights about customer behavior and allow you to generate detailed reports that can be segmented for different types of customers. When you need highly targeted reporting, think about:
You want to make it easy to adhere to data privacy lawsBest Option: Matomo With more online privacy laws coming into play these days, it’s crucial to have as much control over your tracking data as possible. Matomo aligns with regulations like GDPR and CCPA by allowing you to track personally identifiable information (PII) without tracking those users across different sites, which goes against most privacy regulations. Another great choice: Optimizely Optimizely has various settings for users to control the cookies and other storage technologies used on their customers, helping sites comply with GDPR and other regulations. The company also has an in-house security and compliance team to keep itself and its users up-to-date and aligned with current privacy laws. To best protect your customers when tracking their shopping behavior, consider:
Ecommerce Analytics Company ReviewsAfter researching numerous ecommerce analytics tools, we found the companies below are excellent fits for a solid range of needs. Some are better for smaller operations, while others can meet the needs of the largest organizations. Continue reading to learn what each analytics tool does best and find which one could be the best fit for your needs. Optimizely – Best for Comprehensive Analytics and Optimization![]() Optimizely is not made for smaller companies with modest budgets, to be honest. If you don’t want to spend a lot on an analytics tool, this won’t be for you. But, the reason Optimizely is so pricey is that it offers a virtually endless array of features for ecommerce businesses that want a detailed picture of their sales funnel. Use Optimizely to set up A/B tests with a visual editor that requires no confusing coding or track full advertising campaigns from a single dashboard with full customization and segmentation. Then, use the data you collect to guide your strategy going forward. With content and digital management tools built in, Optimizely helps guide your website to be what your visitors want it to be. Ecommerce businesses can especially make use of tools that help you create personalized customer experiences on your site whenever they visit. What Makes Optimizely GreatOptimizely is so much more than analytics, which will obviously be more than what some ecommerce businesses need. But, combining deep analytics, optimization, a content management system, content marketing, customizable ecommerce elements, and so much more into one tool can save you money in the long run on other tools—which, combined, still might not even be able to replicate Optimizely’s power. Let’s say you own a pet supplement company. One customer segment of yours might be cat parents who are interested in cat-focused content and products. Optimizely taps into data for that segment to show you its most-consumed items on your page and suggests ways to develop personalized content, navigation, product pages, and more just for that audience. ![]() Optimizely also excels at A/B testing and site experimentation, its primary focus. Play around with the placement of site elements or test your entire customer journey to determine what steps in the process could improve to increase conversions. Experiments are conducted in real-time, so you can address and reduce shoppers’ pain points quickly. Pricing for Optimizely is kept under wraps until you speak with the sales team, as each customer’s plan is customized. However, it won’t come cheap. Even the leanest plans tend to run around $2,000 to $3,000 per month, according to customer reports. Kissmetrics – Best for Tracking The Full Customer Journey![]() Think of Kissmetrics as a somewhat scaled-back version of Optimizely with an emphasis on improving the customer journey. It offers basic traffic metrics to learn about your site as a whole, but it also drills down into insights like conversions, sign-ups, revenue by traffic source, and new and canceled subscriptions (and much more), giving you a better understanding of your customers. As such, Kissmetrics helps you decide what to change based on what your customers are doing. Are they dropping off at checkout without buying? Do they spend more when you offer a discount? You can answer these questions with Kissmetrics, then turn right around and optimize your web store with those answers in hand. You can also tap into A/B testing for site features and customer funnels on select plans. Any reporting goes deep in Kissmetrics, allowing you to view how key site metrics, test performance, customer statistics, and more improve or decline over time. When you see dips in your KPIs, it might be time to change your strategy. What Makes Kissmetrics GreatKissmetrics is an exceptional analytics tool for learning about your customers and what they do on your site. Website owners can search for specific customers to track their journeys from day to day or month to month and beyond. Sales funnel reporting also breaks down where customers drop off the funnel. Reports segment customers into populations, like first-time buyers and the highest spenders. Compare populations to see how your ecommerce properties and funnel might affect one or the other, or dig deep into one population. ![]() One potential pitfall is that Kissmetrics can be confusing to set up, even for seasoned marketers. The user interface is also more challenging to use than other tools, so it may take some time to navigate it efficiently. Kissmetrics for Ecommerce starts at $299 per month, billed annually. Large businesses might want to consider the Gold plan for $499 per month to get up to 10 users and 75,000 visitors tracked each month. Google Analytics – Best for Traffic Insights![]() Google Analytics is used by millions of website owners around the world to help them gain insight about their visitors. The tool dives deep into traffic, letting you know where site visitors come from, how quickly they move from page to page or off of your site, and where they go when they’re staying on your site. Learn more about the engagement you get from visitors by tracking what parts of your site are getting views and clicks. For example, keep tabs on which pages are most popular on your site to determine what content you should produce more of in the future to keep visitors coming back for more. The drawback that some users point out about Google Analytics is that it’s confusing to learn. It sports a lot of customization for tracking the data you want, making it a bit tough for non-marketers to get the hang of. That learning curve is made a bit more difficult by an interface dense with information and submenus. What Makes Google Analytics GreatAlthough Google Analytics mostly caters to site traffic data, it does report on some useful user behavior metrics, too. You can learn how long visitors are staying on a page, what users are searching to find your site in the first place, and how many pages people are visiting per unique session. Google Analytics comes with loads of customization capabilities, too. For example, you can create unique campaign URLs to track traffic and behavior for individual campaigns. Or, track custom events like a specific navigation sequence or when visitors click a CTA button. Users of Google’s tools, like Ads, Cloud, and Search Console, appreciate how well Analytics syncs to these other platforms to enhance marketing strategies. While Analytics gives traffic insights, Search Console digs into the keywords and search performance that led to that traffic arriving at your online store, for one example. They all play well together, right out of the box. ![]() Many businesses can get what they need from the free version of Google Analytics. However, an enterprise plan—Analytics 360—is available for larger operations with multiple websites or applications to track. Pricing is customized, but reportedly starts at around $150,000 annually. Want to know how to get Google Analytics working on your ecommerce site? Check out our guide instructing you on how to do that. Matomo – Best for Protecting Customer Privacy![]() Matomo is unique in that it’s an open-source analytics platform, allowing full transparency of its coding. Additionally, users get full ownership of the data they collect from their site’s visitors, whether they choose to host it on their own servers or on Matomo’s cloud servers. Although the highest level of control and privacy with Matomo comes with self-hosting your data, this can be challenging to set up for businesses without dedicated technical teams. Matomo isn’t very beginner-friendly unless you use its cloud servers. Still, if customer privacy is the top priority—whether you’re concerned about adhering to laws like GDPR or you’re building better trust with visitors through a transparent data collection policy—Matomo is an attractive option. Data gathered by Matomo isn’t used for other marketing purposes, so visitors don’t get tracked from one site to another. You can collect personal data like IP addresses and order IDs using Matomo, as long as you get consent from visitors to do so. What Makes Matomo GreatMatomo features cookieless tracking and does not send data to third parties, therefore letting you keep your customer data safe in one place. Simply letting visitors know that you use Matomo for private tracking—or, at the very least, notifying them that their data isn’t shared elsewhere—could be enough to swing some customers in your direction. ![]() Even though it prioritizes privacy and compliance, Matomo still gives you important information you need to know about your visitors. Unlike many other ecommerce analytics tools, Matomo only tracks real data instead of using data sampling techniques. The tool tracks metrics like events, site searches, and external link clicks so you can understand your customers’ behavior. To ensure compliance and transparency between you and your visitors, you can also use Matomo to gather tracking consents and opt-outs. Advanced security settings let you turn off tools or features to protect your customers further, like disabling live visitor profiles and masking IP addresses. Hosting Matomo on your own servers is free, while using Matomo’s cloud hosting will cost you at least $23 per month, increasing beyond that based on your monthly traffic. Subscribers get a 17% discount with annual billing. Crazy Egg – Best for Shopify Users![]() Crazy Egg isn’t just for Shopify businesses, but it does connect seamlessly with the platform to give you serious insights into your ecommerce website. After connecting Crazy Egg to Shopify, you can see visitors navigate through your store from product pages through to checkout, with video recordings that help you see where any issues might lie. This platform’s other bread-and-butter is its A/B testing tool that allows you to experiment with site elements to learn what to optimize on your web store. You’re also getting visual reports that display where people are clicking on your site alongside essential reporting functions like traffic analysis and referral source data. Setting up Crazy Egg on a Shopify site is quick and simple through an integration connection. You can see all your Crazy Egg data from your Shopify dashboard, so you won’t need to switch between tools to use it. What Makes Crazy Egg GreatAnother bonus for Shopify and other ecommerce platform users is Crazy Egg’s shopping surveys, which provide quick feedback from customers as they use your site. These surveys don’t interfere with your Shopify store’s user experience and take just a couple of seconds to answer, encouraging customers to give you useful feedback in the moment. ![]() Multiple authorized users can work on your Crazy Egg account without additional cost. Add users, like an SEO expert or a marketing lead, and manage their permissions through the Crazy Egg dashboard on your site. If you choose to switch your store to a different ecommerce platform in the future, Crazy Egg can stay with you. It integrates with other sites using plugins or code, and it works with non-ecommerce sites just as well as it does with online stores. Crazy Egg starts at $29 per month, billed annually, for unlimited websites, 30,000 tracked pageviews, and up to three months of video recording storage. Websites with more traffic can opt for plans of $49, $99, or $249 per month, billed annually. Quick Sprout Ecommerce Analytics Tools Related ContentLearning how to create a successful ecommerce website can take time. As you build up your online store, use the following resources to help you optimize and grow your ecommerce business smoothly. Ecommerce Analytics Guides, How-Tos, and More
Ecommerce ComparisonsEcommerce-Related Top Lists
The Top Ecommerce Analytics Tools in SummaryEcommerce analytics tools provide necessary insights to learn about your traffic and customers, what visitors do most on your website, and what areas of your site could improve. Our top recommendation is Optimizely, which effectively combines analytics and marketing tools to help you take care of potential optimization problems quickly. You can instead try Kissmetrics if you just want to dive deep into your customer journey or Google Analytics for a free solution that won’t cost you hundreds or thousands per month like the previous two. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-ecommerce-analytics-tools/ FedEx is a multinational company focusing on providing shipping, transportation, and printing services to businesses of all sizes. With FedEx, you can ship and track customers’ orders seamlessly and create a successful ecommerce operation. With additional products in logistics, development, and cross-border solutions, FedEx ensures you can deliver your products to customers reliably and affordably. Let’s dive into the highlights and areas for improvement for this provider of ecommerce fulfillment services. ![]() FedEx Fulfillment ComparedFedEx did not make it onto our top list of the best ecommerce fulfillment services, even though it is still a decent (and popular) option. ShipBob is, in our opinion, the best option for a wide range of business and web store owners because of its deeper order management features and express two-day shipping availability. Request a quote from ShipBob today for free.
About FedEx FulfillmentFedEx offers comprehensive ecommerce shipping and printing services for businesses of any size. Whether you need to reduce shipping costs, send out more packages each day, or give your customers a better turnaround time on their orders, FedEx aims to help you make the most of your ecommerce operation. Alongside FedEx’s ecommerce fulfillment services, its other offerings include a design and print marketplace, compatible business software, a developer portal, logistics tools, and cross-border solutions. FedEx Health and StabilityFedEx was founded in 1973 as a publicly traded company with its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee. As a multinational corporation, FedEx has multiple investments, including two diversity investments, which raised more than $175 million. However, FedEx only has one main investor, which is Matrix Partners. As of 2023, the FedEx corporation has more than 600,000 team members across all its global operating companies. With a 3.7-star rating on Glassdoor, most of FedEx’s employees are satisfied with its work-life balance, career growth opportunities, and salary. FedEx Fulfillment PricingFedEx’s main price point involves shipping costs, which is calculated depending on global clearances, packaging, order size and weight, and other considerations. FedEx Pricing StructureThere are a lot of variations in pricing across FedEx’s products and its shipping rates are based on several factors, including freight length, weight, fuel, and delivery area. That makes it hard to ballpark pricing for ecommerce fulfillment, since so much depends on what you’re shipping, where you’re shipping it, and any necessary extra considerations like delivery speed and insurance. However, offerings like its printing services are more predictable. Printing services are priced on a number-per-order basis. For example, you can purchase 100 custom business cards for $10 or get 100 custom-printed ear-lock mailers for your products for $146. FedEx Pricing ComparisonMost ecommerce fulfillment companies base their pricing on order weight and delivery area, just like FedEx does. For FedEx, if a shipment is greater than 12 feet, you will have to pay a starting fee of $600 per shipment, which increases to $1,200 for any order with a dimension of 20 feet or greater. Compared to other ecommerce fulfillment services, FedEx is certainly pricier. For example, ShipMonk bases its pricing on how many orders you will ship per month, and prices start at $3.00 per order for 500 or fewer monthly orders. ShipMonk also has additional fees for promotional inserts, extra items, and return processing—but the fees start at just $0.20. On the other hand, you can find fulfillment services that are even more affordable, such as Easyship. Easyship offers a full plan with 50 shipments per month and one team member entirely for free. Or, you can decide to pay a monthly price of $29 to get 500 shipments allowed per month. FedEx Trials and GuaranteesFedEx doesn’t currently offer free trials of its services, but it does have a money-back guarantee on select FedEx services for domestic and export shipments. FedEx Ecommerce Fulfillment Service ReviewFedEx stands out for its massive reach and shipping capability, with ecommerce fulfillment service that can integrate with your business’s other software and ship your products across the entire globe. You could benefit from FedEx’s ecommerce fulfillment platform if you are looking for a reliable service that can handle shipments to nearly anywhere in the world. If you want to scope out other excellent alternatives, check out our reviews of the best ecommerce fulfillment services. What Makes FedEx Ecommerce Fulfillment Service Great![]() Seamless returns process: FedEx ensures that if your customers need to return a package, they can do so with ease. There are three options for returns, including dropping off a package at one of 60,000 Drop Box locations, showing a FedEx QR code to a retailer and receiving a printing label in an instant, or creating a shipping label through FedEx’s website. FedEx also offers support for all returns, such as professional packing assistance and in-person service at all FedEx locations. Delivery manager: If you want to make the delivery experience easier for you and your customers, FedEx offers a delivery manager business toolkit that can help you do just that. The toolkit can offer support that will help you save money by reducing the potential for missing shipment claims, ensuring more packages are delivered on time, and offering automatic delivery notifications, including photographic proof of delivery. FedEx rewards: FedEx offers a comprehensive yet flexible rewards program that can help small business owners save money. New members can receive monthly bonus offers, earn rewards from big retailers, or request a refund or credit if a FedEx shipment arrives late. According to the FedEx website, you can save up to 40% on FedEx Express, 40% on delivery area surcharges, 20% on FedEx Ground services, and 70% on FedEx Freight services. Global services: With FedEx’s international shipping assistance and global trade manager, you can make international shipping a breeze. The shipping assistant allows you to tell FedEx about your shipment and then receive shipment information so you can start shipping immediately. Its global trade manager is an online tool that can help you find international documents, estimate duties and taxes, and find shipping advisories and country and territory profiles. Extensive integrations: You can easily integrate FedEx into your other ecommerce software through its developer portal, which allows you to access APIs, try out different APIs, and support your global presence. FedEx plays nicely with most major ecommerce platforms, accounting software, and even more intricate tools like CRMs. Where FedEx Ecommerce Fulfillment Service Falls Short![]() Slow delivery: Unfortunately, despite FedEx’s efforts to market itself as a fast delivery service, many reviewers would say otherwise. The main problem is scale. FedEx handles so many parcels every day that there is a wide variation in the quality of fulfillment in terms of on-time deliveries and accurate delivery estimates. It’s just a little harder to ensure that the fulfillment benefits you’re promising customers are actually met during shipping, while other providers can more assuredly guarantee delivery by a certain date. Unpredictable pricing: FedEx’s intricate pricing structure means it’s hard for small businesses mindful of their budgets to predict what fulfillment will actually cost them. A wide range of factors affect the ultimate cost, whereas other providers have simpler, more transparent pricing for shipping and related services. Poor customer support: FedEx also doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to customer support. Lots of reviewers have complained about the inability to get in touch with a representative, the difficulty in managing shipments and creating exceptions or delivery instructions, and a lack of acceptable resolution when something goes wrong with a shipment. FedEx Ecommerce Fulfillment Service ComparedWhile FedEx is a multinational powerhouse for ecommerce operations, the best fulfillment provider for most web store owners is ShipBob because of its omnichannel support and accurate two-day express shipping.
Final VerdictFedEx is a decent multinational ecommerce fulfillment service that can grow with your business. With FedEx’s rewards, seamless returns processes, and the opportunity to ship globally, FedEx can take your ecommerce operation to the next level. FedEx has been in the industry for 50 years, making it incredibly well-known and reliable when it comes to most of the company’s products. Even though its delivery times and customer support can be rocky, FedEx still has greater reach and capability than many of its competitors. However, if you’re looking for predictable pricing and better support for you and your customers, make sure to check out the options from our full list of the best ecommerce fulfillment providers. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/fedex-fulfillment-review/ |
Sean BrianWhile radishes deter certain insects naturally, they require similar growing conditions as carrots. Although the crops both have roots, radishes grow and germinate quicker, allowing carrots to continue growing in the soil space available when the radishes are harvested, Archives
April 2023
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