10 Best Web Hosting Services for Musicians and Bands

Bands, musicians, DJs, and music instructors can all benefit from an online presence. You could be the next Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, or Daft Punk – if people don’t hear you, you’ll never get discovered. Fortunately, getting online is easier (and cheaper) than ever before.

There are hundreds of music hosting services out there ready to help you build a website from scratch, but few of them offer the tools you need for a complete web site for musicians. I did the research and came up with a comprehensive list of hosts that actually have what it takes. 

If the hosting service you’re using doesn’t match your needs, it can become an obstacle in the way of your growing popularity. On the other hand, with the right web host for musicians on your side, you can do much more than keep fans updated and give clients a way to contact you.

From selling merchandise and music, to event calendars, newsletters, and even exclusive videos, the best website hosting for bands is versatile in terms of content. It also needs to load your page fast despite the degree of complexity.

At the same time, you don’t want to worry about spending too much on your website, at least not until you’ve set up a couple of solid revenue streams. Being an up-and-coming musician or band is hard enough as it is.

This does mean that you’ll have to invest a bit of time into creating and maintaining the website. Don’t worry, though: no coding skills will be necessary. With the hosts on my list, everything is drag-and-drop, quick, and simple.

Best Web Hosts for Musicians and Bands

With most of the world either locked down or under travelling restrictions due to the COVID pandemic, landing a gig can be tough. In some areas, gathering restrictions have rendered musical events practically non-existent. But this doesn’t mean the demand for great artists has gone away. The world needs artists now more than ever before.

This is a great opportunity to get your home base up and running. The right web hosting for musicians enables you to sell merchandise, encourage fans to share your creations, make it easier for clients to book you, and give members of the community a way to interact with you, as well as with one another.

Just think of it as an awesome side-project that brings value to your individual or band career.

So, what is the best website hosting for a band?

In my search, I’ve focused on the services that will help you keep costs to a minimum, on the one hand, and give you the platform you need to set up alternative revenue streams, on the other.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s the short version of my list:

• Wix – Versatile website builder with dozens of turnkey templates for the music industry.
• Squarespace – Good builder with high-quality templates and out-of-the-box storefront.
• Bluehost – Cheap WordPress hosting with the option to purchase premium support.
• Weebly – Service of choice for small businesses, with a website builder that is very easy to use.
• A2 Hosting – Versatile VPS plans that let you host everything in one place, from website to music and videos.
• InMotion Hosting – High-value WordPress hosting with excellent performance throughout the US.
• SiteGround – Good value hosting plans with great overall performance and collaborator tools.
• Bandzoogle – Music-specific website builder and hosting, all in one place.
• Music Glue – Good solution for musicians looking to set up direct-to-client sales. Used by premium artists.
• Bandcamp – The leading host for independent musicians who want to sell merch or music.

These are the services that let you create a stunning web site for musicians in an easy, fast, and cost-effective manner. I’ve prioritized affordability, performance, and versatility above all else, but if your budget is not that tight, some hosts also offer managed services.

Although managed hosting isn’t necessary for music hosting, it can make things much easier. Such plans will help unburden you of website maintenance tasks by performing updates and backups on your behalf.

The idea of creating a website may sound intimidating, but I assure you that this is no longer a developer-only job. Platforms like WordPress make it easy to create a sleek website without writing one line of code. WordPress is not only free, but also the most popular content management system (CMS) on the Internet.

If you need additional functionality or a custom look, you can buy out-of-the-box WordPress themes (entire websites) and plugins (bits of software you can “plug” into your website) to take care of that.

Most of these hosts include either a drag-and-drop website builder or pre-made themes to help get you started, which removes the anxiety of a blank slate. There are tutorials on everything, from website content to website security, customizing individual pages, and more.

1. Wix

Wix has all the qualities to help you make the best website hosting for bands. Best known for its straightforward site builder tool, Wix quickly evolved into a one-stop-shop for web design. It has everything from hosting services to a DIY logo-maker, personalized SEO plans, and professional business email.

More importantly, there are tons of templates you can rely on for inspiration when bootstrapping your own website. A big plus are the tens of ready-made websites for the music industry. There are designs made specifically for solo artists, DJs, bands, or record labels.

Wix offers affordable hosting plans, as well as a domain registration service if you don’t already own a domain name for your website.

To top it all off, Wix gives you a free domain for a year on certain subscriptions, generous storage to fit all your media, and unlimited bandwidth throughout. Bandwidth, in particular, is pretty important for websites with photos or music players, since they require generous resources in order to run properly.

Although Wix’s platform does not run on WordPress, it has all functionalities to be considered the best website hosting for musicians, and then some.

Best-In-Class Website Builder

The Wix Editor lets you start from scratch or choose from hundreds of ready-made websites to work with. In terms of band website hosting, it doesn’t get any better than this. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to create a stunning music website.

The Wix ADI (artificial design intelligence) tool can whip-up a custom template specifically for you. All it needs is for you to answer some questions related to your website and it will generate a beautiful landing page in a matter of minutes.

The ADI is aimed at beginners who don’t want to bother with editing options, text fonts, colors, and whatnot. If you want a bit more creative freedom, you can easily convert the ADI site to be customizable in the standard Editor.

Even without the AI on your side, the builder tool lets you create a multiple-page website complete with calendar, image galleries, and more. You can even add an out-of-the-box shopping cart to start selling merch today. Now we’re rocking.

If you need a bit of perspective on the entire project, the Smart Tips feature will help you along. It’ll tell you what you should do next and, as a bonus, there’s a tutorial for more information.

Comprehensive Web Hosting for Musicians

Wix has a range of website hosting plans, from basic ones that will cost you several dollars a month to full featured, business ready plans. The best part about the hosting service is that it includes everything you might need for your band website.

The Business Unlimited version comes with unlimited bandwidth, 35GB of storage, up to 10 hours of HD video on your website, free domain name for a year, and more. These are just the basics. If you want the website to reflect your artistic image, you can use the Wix Logo Maker to either come up with a unique emblem or stylize your current one.

If you haven’t done this before, there’s a generous Google Ad coupon included so you can start advertising your platform online.

For this plan, Wix also throws in Visitor Analytics and the Site Booster apps. Analytics give you more specific information about your website’s visitors, such as where they come from and how much time they stayed with you. The Site Booster immediately lists your business in top tier directories, such as Google and Yahoo, and helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

The value you get from these hosting plans is excellent, which is why Wix is one of the leading choices in terms of best web hosting for musicians.

Professional Ecommerce Features

The Unlimited and VIP business hosting plans come with pro ecommerce features. You get access to a customizable storefront, checkout, and cart sections. You won’t have to worry about selling your merchandise across the world because there’s in-built multi-language support and currency conversion.

Do you want to build a channel to give audiences access to premium content? Set that up in a heartbeat with subscriptions. Different products or regions have different shipping costs? There’s an option for that too. So long as you have the merch, the possibilities are endless.

For established artists, ecommerce is a must. Have your fans make wishlists of their favorite products and expand your store accordingly. Then, host giveaways to increase your visibility. If you were worried about an unsteady income due to pandemic restrictions, Wix will help you unlock alternative streams of revenues with a solid web site for musicians.

2. Squarespace

Squarespace comes in a close second to Wix in my best website hosting for bands list. Don’t get me wrong: Squarespace is an excellent service. However, Wix has the upper hand in some respects.

For instance, there are fewer templates on Squarespace and you don’t have access to an impressive app marketplace, although to be fair, neither of these features are mandatory for successful music hosting. What really matters is that both Wix and Squarespace make it possible to create responsive, polished, and mobile-optimized band websites with ease.

Some musicians prefer Squarespace because it emphasizes design aesthetics and quality over quantity. One look at some of its world-class templates and you’ll know what the hype is all about. I mean, if it’s good enough for Keanu Reeves and John Malkovich, it’s good enough for me.

Squarespace might not be designed with music websites in mind, but the team has a couple of templates for bands and musicians up and running. Although you can get roughly the same functionalities with Wix, the builder is more flexible.

A major pro for Squarespace is the unlimited bandwidth and storage, which means you can be more liberal with your media. Still, there’s only so much information you can include on your website before it starts slowing down.

Solid Website Builder

The Squarespace website builder could use a bit more customization. You can add predefined sections to different pages as you see fit, but there are limits to what can go where.

Don’t worry, though: the service has all the important content covered. You can add social media feeds, calendars, simple text blocks, contact forms, and more. The layouts are designed in such a way so as to keep things aesthetically pleasing – overcrowding is impossible by definition.

Overall, the builder might not be able to accommodate all your creative ideas for your music website, but it will definitely give you a pleasing end result.

It’s true that tools like the Wix Editor give you more power, yet this isn’t always a good thing. I’ve seen my share of cluttered, difficult to navigate Wix websites. Boundaries, such as those that come with Squarespace, are actually a good thing in some cases.

Focus on Ecommerce

Few prioritize ecommerce when asking themselves what is the best website hosting for a band. However, if you or your band are established artists, this host’s store functionality will enable you to do great things and should be an important part of your decision.

To set up your storefront on Squarespace, all you have to do is click a few buttons and you’ll be ready to take orders. You’ll have to add some products for that, but all in good time.

To spare you some hassle, the storefront will be automatically created to look pretty much like the rest of your website. The layout enables a bit of product page customization, but, as is the case with regular content blocks, there isn’t that much wiggle room.

Squarespace’s user interface for the back of the store is clean and easy to navigate. Behind the counter, you have inventory management tools to help keep things neatly organized and sorted.

To give customers a better understanding of each product, you can create rich displays that include videos and images. Once a visitor has browsed around, you can also encourage them to view other items through related product suggestions.

Integrations with Third-Party Services

One of the best parts about designing your band’s website on Squarespace is the fact that you can use plenty of third-party software. This ability plays an important role in best website hosting for musicians.

For our purposes, the Audio Collections takes the front-row seat because it makes it possible to add your music to the website directly. The player will show off your album art, while file metadata will help auto-complete information like artist and song name.

If you’re already using social platforms to keep in touch with the community, you’ll be pleased to know that Squarespace lets you simultaneously post to Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. You can also pull content from these into any section of your music website, which can make up for an awesome sidebar.

We shouldn’t discard G Suite integration, Dropbox file sync, or Amazon Associate support either. There are more platforms you can connect to, but their usefulness depends on your particular circumstances.

3. Bluehost

If you’re looking for one of the most affordable ways to get online, Bluehost should be one of your top choices regardless of what type of website you’re trying to create.

Unlike Wix or Squarespace, there’s no premium builder tool or one-click storefront setup, which makes things slightly more complicated. It’s a trade-off you’ll have to make in order to lower your monthly costs. Even so, we can work with what we have.

If you’re not versed in frameworks like CSS or PHP, you’ll have to go with a powerful CMS to help you publish content without code. Because of the way you can build on it, but also due to the sheer size of the community behind it, I recommend WordPress.

To create your music website, you can pick either of the shared WordPress hosting plans on Bluehost. They come with the latest version of WP pre-installed and automatic updates for the platform, which is always a welcome addition.

If you need help creating your website or something’s not working right, you can contact support and someone will walk you through the issue.

Keep Costs to a Minimum

The top tier shared WordPress plan on Bluehost costs roughly as much as the entry-level one with Wix, and you get significantly more value with Bluehost. Your account can support unlimited websites, there’s unmetered SSD storage, and a free domain name for one year to boot. To make the most of shared hosting, you’re better off with a yearly contract.

WordPress is similar to the builders I’ve talked about so far. However, it doesn’t come with all the advanced functionalities of Wix or Squarespace, not out-of-the-box. For instance, although you can create custom posts and pages, there’s no drag-and-drop editor that lets you do it in an instant.

Basically, you’ll have to put in a little more time for your band’s website. Even though the best ones cost quite a bit, you can purchase a WordPress theme and edit it to your liking. This makes it a good alternative for band website hosting.

If you want to add more functionality without spending too much, there’s a huge marketplace of plugins ready to do anything you wish. There are plenty of free options, but the best plugins always come with a small fee.

WordPress Experts with Blue Sky

If you can afford it, you can get expert WordPress assistance from Bluehost in the form of Blue Sky. It’s a monthly subscription, so you can give it up later on or any time you feel like it. On the basic subscription, you get on-demand ticket support, design guidance, and assistance with backups.

The idea behind this premium WordPress support is that you’ll be able to launch a web site for musicians much faster. Experts will give you recommendations in terms of the best plugins and themes for your particular scenario.

Should something unexpected come up in the process of creating and publishing your band’s website, someone’s there to help. You’ll basically get guidance on anything related to your website, from mobile optimization to SEO, security, and even WordPress code.

Just keep in mind that while Blue Sky makes things faster, it can also increase your costs.

WooCommerce for Your Store

Although you don’t have an in-built store to activate with a few clicks, you can use the free WooCommerce WordPress plugin to achieve pretty much the same thing. Unlike with Wix or Squarespace, you will have to design your checkout, product, and card pages accordingly, but there are tutorials to help you do this.

The good news is that you can easily setup secure payments through most payment methods, such as PayPal, Google Pay, or credit cards. You can also enable automatic tax calculation so you won’t have to do it manually every time a purchase occurs, integrate the store with Facebook or Google Analytics, and more.

You basically never have to worry about coding, because WooCommerce is designed to allow you to run your ecommerce business without developers. Through it, you can sell anything you wish, from music to merch, and more.

That said, if you want more complex functionalities, such as bookings or memberships, you’ll have to buy some of the paid extensions.

4. Weebly

Weebly is one of the leading website builders for small businesses, and with over 40 million websites, they’re quite good at what they do. If you want to harness your band’s business potential, you need some of the best web hosting for musicians, and this is one of them.

The reason why Weebly takes a lower spot on my list has to do with its lack of templates and limited customization of its builder tool. I couldn’t find one music website theme in its gallery and you’ll notice less overall variety by comparison to Squarespace and Wix. Don’t get me wrong: you can still make an attractive band website using Weebly, but you’ll have to put in a bit more work for it.

The drag-and-drop Weebly editor has everything you’d expect from such a tool. You can design pages with any type of content you want, from text to maps, images, or videos.

Some options are missing, though. For example, custom headers and video backgrounds are great, but where are the mesmerizing scrolling effects or interactive animation features?

Nonetheless, simple is sometimes the best way and Weebly has a way to help you build smooth music websites without great effort.

Proven Marketing Techniques

One of Weebly’s standout features is its marketing platform, Weebly Promote. The team’s expertise when it comes to making and keeping customers can be a great benefit for your music hosting store.

Weebly brings your fanbase closer to you and your merch through email marketing that works. You can create a newsletter, dynamic Facebook ads, customize ready-made newsletter layouts with a simple drag-and-drop interface, and get help with your marketing strategy

Then, you can track your newsletter performance with in-depth metrics. You’ll see stats on delivery, how many were opened, as well as the number of people that clicked through. We live in the age of data-driven decisions and all the best website hosting for bands give you access to such in-depth customer feedback.

The Promote features are comparable to what you’d get with MailChimp, but the Weebly version also syncs with your main account, so that you can do everything site-related from one dashboard.

Remarkable Product Photography

Functionality matters, but it’s aesthetics that more often drives people towards buying things. Whether you’re just starting out in music merchandising or looking to improve your current offer, Weebly can help with the way your products look.

Weebly’s Photo Studio is a unique service to this company and a significant reason why it’s one of best website hosting for musicians. It’s one thing you don’t get anywhere else and it has a lot of potential. Through this service, you can ship your merchandise to Weebly, have each item shot in high-resolution, and then make a gallery with perfect product photos.

The standard pack includes three photos from different angles, but you can also opt for 360 interactive ones. Aside from product listings, you can use the images to your heart’s content – on Instagram or Pinterest, in your emails, or even on the landing page of your website.

Search Engine Optimized Website

Your online visibility depends on search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing. The better your music website is ranked in search engine page results, the easier it is for new listeners to hear your music and get in touch with you.

Fortunately, the Weebly Builder gives you a decent amount of SEO control. All websites feature advanced HTML formatting that will help you rank better. From headers and footers, to URLs, image alt text, meta titles and descriptions, you can optimize everything.

It may sound confusing, but the platform has an easy guide to help you out. It won’t replace a professional SEO agency, but it’s enough to speed up the process of getting your music website indexed by major search engines.

5. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is an all-round solid hosting solution, not just in terms of web hosting for musicians. It’s a bit lower on my list because of its slightly higher cost compared to Bluehost. That said, many customers say the service is worth it because you get premium website performance.

With two decades of experience in the industry, you’d be hard-pressed to find an independent company as successful as A2. Although quirky, the service is carbon neutral for more than 10 years and continues to deliver tailor-made hosting services to suit all needs and budgets.

Unlike the previous options on my list of best web hosting for musicians, A2 Hosting is aimed more at music repositories. If you want to sell your products online and avoid the high costs of platforms like iTunes or Amazon Music, this is how you do it.

For the cost of a mid-range Wix or Squarespace plan, you can get a VPS (virtual private server) server to host your website and all of your music in one place. There’s plenty of space to include album art, backstage videos for fans, and more. All you need to do is set everything up and you’ll be good to go.

Managed VPS Experience

Band website hosting on a VPS might sound new to you. However, this is a great solution for creatives who already have a lot of content, including podcasts, interviews, concert or behind the scenes clips, and more.

A VPS gives you more control over your hosting environment. This might not sound great for beginners, but A2 Hosting’s fully managed VPS plans basically take care of themselves.

A team of specialists configures your hosting environment to get it up and running. They migrate your site if you already have one, set up a comprehensive security solution so you won’t have to worry about malware or viruses, and more.

If you experience any problems with your band’s website, you can reach out to A2 Hosting and ask them about anything you want – from database errors to PHP code. A2’s Guru Crew is, in fact, one of the best things about this service, as it can help you guarantee a premium music platform for your fanbase.

Pitch-Perfect Audio Streams

Taking ownership of the production line is an important part of business success. The great part about hosting your own music and content is that you don’t have to cut anyone else in your profit. This is what many overlook when trying to find out what is the best website hosting for a band.

However, there’s a downside as well. Ownership comes with responsibility. Services like Google Play Music or iTunes ensure a high level of quality. If you want the community to consider your personal channel viable, you’ll have to deliver a similarly excellent service throughout.

The first major step is to ensure that your music and content are available on-demand, in high-quality, and without interruption.

Fortunately, all of A2’s VPS plans run on a separate stack referred to as Turbo Servers. According to the company, these configurations enable you to have page loading speeds that are up to 20 times faster than competing services.

The WebSocket proxy configuration alongside nearly a dozen cache plugins greatly speed up the delivery of live content, which means better streams for your fans. Furthermore, you can ask the tech gurus to enable mod_pagespeed for increased bandwidth, so nobody will ever wait through a “buffering” period.

Spotify what?

Easy Band Website Setup

If you’re still worried about setting up your music website with a VPS, know that A2 Hosting’s plans come with a cPanel installed. You’ll be able to 1-click add WordPress and then use Softaculous to add the WooCommerce suite for your storefront.

You can use the default audio player, but nothing’s stopping you from going with one of the trending plugins, like Audio Dock, Zoom Sounds, or WavePlayer. Overall, it’s a solid managed hosting environment that will make it easy for you to set up a web site for musicians.

6. InMotion Hosting

Even though I’ve listed InMotion Hosting after A2, this doesn’t mean that I think any less of it. In fact, both services are highly competitive. The only major difference is that A2 Hosting also gives you the option for European or Asian band website hosting, aside from the two US locations.

If your fan base mainly comes from the Asia-Pacific region, it’d recommend A2 Hosting. Otherwise, your page loading speeds with InMotion will be comparative or better than A2’s. As is the case with Bluehost, there are WordPress setups that will help you get online fast.

What’s unique to InMotion Hosting is that the company is employee-owned. The host’s constant success is mostly due to the no-nonsense approach to the business, US-based customer support, and emphasis on overall quality of service.

Even though it’s slightly more expensive than my third pick, InMotion packs a great value offer. Aside from top-notch performance, most WordPress plans come with a Jetpack license, drag-and-drop builder, and free domain name for a year.

WordPress Optimized Stack

WordPress is a great CMS for beginners looking to make their first website, and I’m not the only one saying it. However, the best web hosting for musicians needs to perform well despite complex and media-heavy pages. As such, it’s important to have a machine capable of running WordPress properly.

InMotion Hosting optimizes its hosting infrastructure to have your WordPress website firing on all cylinders. Both on the software and the hardware side, you can rest assured that you’ll have exceptional loading times.

In addition to full SSD storage, server software is set up so as to deliver content to your visitors the instant they access your website. The details can get pretty boring, but the bottom line is that you have several out-of-the-box performance enhancing plugins to work with.

Suffice it to say that the latest technology is used, which is why InMotion is acknowledged as one of the best US-based hosting companies.

BoldGrid Website Builder

The WordPress platform is known for the ease with which it allows you to create and publish content. However, it isn’t as intuitive as Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly in terms of individual page design.

Consequently, InMotion decided to meet new users halfway and include a drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress in the form of BoldGrid.

When you make it big and your web hosting for musicians is overloaded by thousands of visitors every day, you will have to upgrade to a more accommodating host and work with a standalone developer. And when you do, they’ll be happy you used WordPress (and BoldGrid) to create your basic website.

In addition to powerful tools, BoldGrid has ready-made music themes to help you get started. You can easily edit and post whatever content you want, add a playlist, and sell music, and merch. It’s a great what-you-see-is-what-you-get solution.

Expert Music Website Security

All of InMotion’s WordPress plans come with a robust security package included, so you don’t have to worry about building a website in the dark.

Free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt are included, which means that your platform will be padlock-protected. This is pretty much a standard nowadays, especially if you want to sell stuff online. If you don’t have SSL, search engines like Google will penalize you in search results.

There’s a web application firewall, hack and malware protection, and a spam filtering software. Furthermore, all of the plans with the exception of the entry-level one feature automatic offsite backup tools.

As a bonus, you’ll be able to easily and securely transfer data in and out of your website with SSH access, free of charge.

7. SiteGround

SiteGround completes my mid-range, three-way in terms of the best music hosting solution for bands. Like InMotion and A2, the company has provided exemplary hosting service ever since the early 2000s.

With SiteGround, you can go the VPS route with its managed cloud hosting or get a managed WordPress plan. It all comes down to your budget and needs. Because of their value and affordability, I’d recommend the managed WordPress plans, either of which will help you fast track the creation and publishing of your first band website.

This is a service that developers, as well as those who like to work with collaborators will love. Alongside Bluehost, SiteGround’s managed services are recommended by the WordPress foundation. It doesn’t get any better than an endorsement from the people behind the most popular CMS on the web.

WordPress Themes and Tutorials

You can tell SiteGround is committed to the WordPress CMS not only from its contribution to developing its core code, but also from the wealth of WP tutorials and themes available on the platform.

There’s a gallery of free WordPress themes you can use for inspiration or, even better, as a foundation for your web site for musicians. And yes, there’s a template for music as well. Once you’ve made your account, there are step-by-step tutorials you can follow for installing the WordPress CMS, custom themes, and plugins.

With SiteGround’s tutorials, you’ll be able to do everything on your own, down to optimizing your pages to load as fast as possible with caching technology, image compression, and content-delivery networks (CDNs).

Overall, the knowledgebase renders the entire process of building a website less intimidating and more down-to-earth. The best part about this documentation is that it’s completely free of charge. You don’t need a SiteGround account to benefit from the knowledge, although it’s always nice to repay people for their hard work.

Work with Freelance Collaborators

Although the hosting service is geared towards developers and small businesses, there’s nothing to say you can’t also benefit from its advanced tools. Higher tier plans include a neat feature that lets you add collaborators to your website straight from the dashboard.

This is a possibility you always want to be open to. Maybe you want someone to maintain a blog or you’d like to hire a web designer to give your band’s website a new look. Later on, you’ll definitely want to hire a professional to manage everything for you, while you focus on your music.

Maybe you’ll be fully booked for weeks on end and you won’t have any time to spare for routine maintenance or posting new content. Who knows?

Either way, with SiteGround’s collaborator feature you don’t have to give people your credentials. Instead, you’ll be able to make individual accounts for each associate.

Premium WordPress Performance

All of SiteGround’s new WordPress customers are hosted on the Google Cloud Platform. Many of the older accounts are getting transferred there too. The beauty of GCP is that it gives you access to a high-speed worldwide network of servers that spans the entire globe, from Los Angeles to Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and even Sydney.

The US tech giant is constantly expanding and upgrading its platform, so odds are your website will load blazingly fast now and in the future. SiteGround builds on this powerful hardware with the right software, so that your visitors across the world enjoy a seamless performance on your platform.

You can activate the free version of Cloudflare CDN straight from the dashboard, while Nginx’s Direct Delivery will load your images and dynamic content in a split second. There’s also caching technology that ensures your page stays sharp regardless of the distance between your server and visitors.

For those who are migrating to SiteGround, the SG Optimizer WordPress plugin will help you keep track of all the performance optimizations you can do. All of these will drastically improve the responsiveness of your music website.

8. Bandzoogle

I’ve left the regular best website hosting for musicians for last because, despite the allure, these are the most limited services of the bunch. You’ll see in a moment why.

Bandzoogle is one of the leading solutions for band website hosting. The unique feature here is that the service is created by a musician and it specifically addresses a musician’s needs.

It also doesn’t hurt that you can create stunning websites with little effort. My advice is to give the 30-day trial a whirl and test the waters. Don’t commit, but try to play around with everything as much as possible.

When you take a step back to look at the basics, Bandzoogle is more expensive and offers fewer features than the previous companies on my list. Despite giving you a free domain name for life and no commission on sales, the service doesn’t include professional email.

Unless you already have a business email, you’ll have to purchase it from them, and it doesn’t come cheap. Bandzoogle will charge you for email almost as much as the Pro plan, effectively doubling its cost.

Website Design with Built-In Ecommerce

If you want to benefit from the fully-featured Bandzoogle website builder, you’ll have to go with the most expensive plan. Otherwise, you won’t have access to certain customizations, such as video headers or custom fonts.

Fortunately, there are dozens of preset themes made with the music industry in mind, and this shows. The editor lets you crop and edit your images to give them a unique feel. There’s a slideshow tool you can use to showcase them, an easy-to-add music player, and more.

Basically, you’ll be able to launch your music website with Bandzoogle in a matter of hours. Everything is there, you just have to make it your own.

If you also want to sell stuff through your platform, things can get a little expensive. As is the case with the builder, you’ll have to purchase the most expensive plan to have access to things like ticket sales, merch, inventory tracking, and more.

Easy Press Kit Releases

A nice touch you won’t find with other hosting services is the ability to create electronic press kits in a heartbeat. This is a useful tool for promotion purposes because you can just add it to your website and then send it to influencers, magazines, or whoever can give you visibility.

Bandzoogle has a video tutorial on how to use the EPK. Usually, it includes information about the band/artist, quotes for the press, memorable tracks, high-res images, and more. Once you have all of this, it literally takes minutes to complete your first press kit page.

Afterwards, you can send the URL to whoever needs it and get back to jamming. It’s a great way to showcase your music to labels, festivals, or venues. Sort of like a business card hosted on your band’s website, but for the music industry.

Promotion Tools

Bandzoogle includes a series of promotion tools you can use to keep connected to the fans and the community. There’s a mailing list option that lets you design stylish emails from professional layouts, various search engine optimizations, and social media integrations.

One major downside to this music hosting service is the lack of website metrics, which the industry relies on in order to generate conversions.

If you don’t know more information about what your visitors do on your website, you won’t be able to effectively address their preferences. It’s like trying to sing for a live audience without seeing or hearing them.

9. Music Glue

Unlike Bandzoogle, Music Glue isn’t really a web site for musicians or a place where bands can host their website, but rather a shared marketplace. It’s like Amazon or eBay, but for music. You or your band set up shop on its website and start selling merch, physical or digital music, and even tickets to a worldwide audience.

So why have I included Music Glue on my list? As of 2020, MG features digital storefronts for more than 60,000 artists, including Led Zeppelin, Red Hot Chili Peppers, David Bowie, Metallica, and more. In terms of digital music sales, Music Glue is one of the biggest.

The platform’s resounding success is based on the direct-to-fan model, since the community can purchase a variety of merchandise from their favorite artists without going through a label or other well-known music intermediaries. Well… Music Glue is the intermediary.

Another crucial difference from Bandzoogle is that MG takes a share of the sales revenue. This is likely negotiable for premium artists, but not so much for the majority of music websites.

Instant Storefront

So what makes Music Glue a relevant answer to what is the best website hosting for a band? An important reason behind its success is that you can create a store for yourself in a matter of minutes. There are no limits to how many products and/or pictures you can add, while the end-result will always be mobile-friendly.

If you want to sell tickets, you can do so directly to your fans, starting today. You can set up pre-orders for both albums and tickets, while the company does order fulfillment and customer service on your behalf.

It’s a pretty good deal and, I have to admit, an easy way to get the sales part of your web hosting for musicians done right. You don’t even have to worry about the quality of hosting, since Music Glue has all of that taken care of.

Despite the ready-made process of selling things online, there’s limited customization of your storefront and individual product showcase. The layout is pretty fixed. You can move things around a bit, play with colors and backgrounds, but not much else.

Music Management Services

Another great thing you can do with Music Glue is establish a fanclub. You can create an exclusive group for your community and reward them with merchandise, tickets, or select content. This is a great, often underestimated feature that promotes customer loyalty and sales.

However, there’s nothing stopping you from achieving the same thing with any of the best website hosting for musicians on my list.

Music Glue also has account managers to help artists plan their marketing campaigns. You can get expert advice on what merchandise to focus on, which are the best-selling products overall, and what you can do to improve sales.

It won’t replace a dedicated marketing team, but it’s often enough to give you a push in the right direction. For example, apparel and accessories always sell better than paper goods, phone cases, or mugs.

Spanning over 20 languages and nearly 30 currencies, your store’s reach will be tremendous. There are perks to working with experienced parties, and Music Glue is one of the very best.

Useful Marketing Tools

Managing sales is never an easy task, especially if it’s not something you want to do full time. With Music Glue’s dashboard, you won’t have to worry about missing out on important events. You can set up automatic weekly reports and low-inventory alerts, so you never run out of your best-selling merch.

You’ll also be able to sell more effectively with social media integration. And then there are the usual options, including vouchers, discounts (fanclub or otherwise), or checkout upsells.

Music Glue’s value proposition is an out-of-the-box ecommerce solution for your music website. Given the platform’s visibility, many renowned artists decided to set up an MG store in addition to the one on their respective website. Who doesn’t want access to a worldwide audience of music lovers ready to spend?

10. Bandcamp

If Music Glue is the go-to for stars, Bandcamp is the favorite among independent artists. As is the case with my previous choice, this is not a complete service, which is the reason why it takes the last spot on my list. Still, it has a well-deserved as one of the best website hosting for bands and you’ll see in a moment why.

The platform is meant to give you a way to host your music online and sell it, which is why artists often use it alongside Bandzoogle. You create a great first website with the latter and have all your music uploaded on Bandcamp.

This is basically Music Glue with slightly different features and no cut in on your profits. There are just two plans, a free one and a pro version. Although the regular subscription is generous, the paid-for plan gives you access to batch upload, custom domain name, an ad-free experience, and in-depth stats on your traffic.

Overall, Bandcamp is a powerful tool. Why? Because it can easily dub as an ecommerce platform that lets you keep your main site simple. This is the reason why hundreds of thousands of artists use it.

Host and Sell Your Music for Free

I suggest you use the free version of Bandcamp to upload and sell your music. Then, purchase an affordable WordPress hosting and create your main website, complete with a custom domain name.

WordPress lets you embed Bandcamp’s player on your music website, regardless of where it’s hosted. This is an excellent feature because you don’t have to purchase expensive, resource-intensive hosting to have ecommerce functionality. It’s a win-win situation.

The WordPress foundation even has a tutorial about how you can integrate Bandcamp, and the process is easier than you think.

Solid Features Free to Use

Something beloved by the fans and artists alike is that Bandcamp lets you select a floor price for your music and buyers can choose to pay more for it if they wish to support you.

The storefront is great, yet the immense community is much more valuable – through music feeds, artist recommendations, and fan accounts, your creations will reach international ears fast. You can also upload high-quality formats like Apple Lossless and FLAC and have the website convert it to any audio format you desire.

You can showcase your music using ready-made audio players and sell music (digital and physical) in 18 of the world’s largest currencies. The application supports album art, as well as images of your merch, and can be easily embedded on other websites.

More importantly, the platform gives you a series of useful statistics that offer an insight into your Bandcamp page. You’ll be able to see where your music is embedded, which tracks are most/least listened to, who is linking to your page, and more.

Using these metrics, you can make data-informed decisions about your merch and your career.

Pro Is Worth It

If there are so many great things included in Bandcamp’s free plan, is there a reason to go pro anymore? I argue that yes, it is.

For its price, the subscription is basically a steal. You get a lot of value from the additional features, including batch upload of your music, targeted messaging, and ad-free videos if you want to upload clips.

You’ll also be able to give your Bandcamp page a custom domain name that does not include the hosting brand, offer an exclusive streaming channel for your fans or the press, and receive even deeper stats on your visitors.

More than anything else, Pro is a way to support the platform. With so much exposure and a multitude of useful tools that are free to use, it’s only fair that the creators be compensated for their work.

How to Compare Music Hosting Services

Choosing the best host for your band’s website is not an easy task, especially if you also have to design it. However, as my list of the best hosting services for musicians shows, there are numerous platforms that can help you achieve your goals within the desired budget.

This is, by no means, a comprehensive list of all the music hosting that can help you launch a website, but I have tested all of the best services out there. The companies I’ve included are the most likely to help you get online, connect with your fans, and establish alternative incomes.

Depending on your context, some services may be better than others. For example, if you’re decided on working with WordPress, places 5 through 7 should jump at the top of your best website hosting for bands list.

You should feel free to compare my choices with other platforms out there. To help you judge for yourself what is the best website hosting for a band, here’s what you should look for:

• Website Builder. If you’re trying to keep costs down, a website builder will help you get by without a professional web developer. WordPress is manageable on its own, but it might still be a bit too complex for a beginner. This is the reason why Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace are at the top of my list.

• Ecommerce Functionality. A music website is a great place to showcase your work. If people like your tracks, being able to buy them on the spot will incentivize a purchase. Some hosts make it easier to set up a storefront, while others have little documentation on the topic. As a last resort, you can use Bandcamp in tandem with your main website.

• Overall Cost. Even if you don’t pay attention to your costs, website hosting companies do. And they’ll pile up one service after another until your monthly expenditures reach surprising sums.

I’ve focused on the services that offer the best value and the fewest upsells. However, it’s up to you to decide whether an additional service is worth it. My advice is to see if you can DIY before you buy. You’d be surprised at what you can achieve with some WordPress tutorials.

• Included Storage. The importance of how much storage you get with your music hosting depends on whether you also want to host your music in the same place. If the answer is yes, then you’ll want to pay attention to how much GBs are included in each plan.

• Additional Features. Finally,try to pay attention to things like website security, automatic backups, free domain name, and email hosting. You’d be surprised at how many companies seem like a good deal when they’re not. Many hosts are only worth it if you sign up for at least a year, while others are a great deal regardless.

Choose the Best Website Hosting for Your Band

Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly are the go-to choices if you want to set up your first music website with as little hassle as possible. With some differences here and there, all of them have solid website builders and ready-made templates you can rely on to create a polished website for yourself or your band.

If you want to go the WordPress route, which I wholeheartedly recommend, Bluehost is one of the cheapest ways to do so. The company also has a dedicated WordPress support service you can buy into, although its usefulness will depend on how much you’re willing to research things on your own.

A2 Hosting’s managed VPS plans are a great option if you also want to host your tracks in the same place. InMotion Hosting and SiteGround are slightly more expensive than the previous two, but the value you get with each plan is worth it. InMotion gives you a great builder on top of everything else, while SiteGround makes it easier to work with collaborators.

In terms of niche choices for hosting music websites, Bandzoogle is one of the foremost options. Although it’s a bit more expensive than other options, the music-specific features you get with each plan are worth the cost. Music Glue and Bandcamp are similar in that both services fast-track the eCommerce side of your business.