The best web hosting providers in the world are deliciously fast, reliable, and resource-aplenty at a very fair price. They offer quality hosting and top-tier tech support!
The #1 web hosting provider is definitely Hostinger, with fast response times powered by LiteSpeed, and their 10 strategically located data centers.
We own over 40 web hosting accounts and have built over 85 test sites to measure their uptime and server speed. Today, we’ve handpicked the top 8 web hosts based on performance and service (all averaging less than 180 ms), just for you!
By the end of this article, you’ll be able to make an informed decision on which web host is best for your website.
Note
Premium Shared
136 ms
$5.99 /mo
With 85+ test sites created (so far!), you might guess that our Bitcatcha team knows what we’re talking about when it comes to web hosts. We love watching hosts evolve, and Hostinger’s a brand that’s come a long way.
In fact – we recently conducted some brand research and found Hostinger to be the most sought-after web host of 2020 (Read the full report here).
Why all the hype? We can take a guess: Hostinger is proving themselves more and more to be a very well-balanced host. They’ve grown to provide premium-level performance and support at prices that are surprisingly affordable.
One thing’s for sure – they passed our own performance tests with flying colors. We built 3 different test sites specifically to host on Hostinger and run through our server speed test tool. Here are the results from their US datacenter!
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 75 ms | 21 ms | 92 ms | 244 ms | 136 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 211 ms | 265 ms | 172 ms | 37 ms | 107 ms |
The numbers don’t lie – Hostinger’s speed test results were real impressive. With a global average server speed of only 136 ms, Hostinger is a top-tier A+ ranked host!
They’re very speedy in the USA, London, Canada and Germany while some slowdowns are expected in locations further away like Bangalore and Singapore. However, they do have 10 data centres strategically placed around the world. Pick the closest one to your target audience and you won’t have to worry about speed!
Hostinger’s plans also come with features that boost site load speed. To name a few, there’s their very own Cache Manager, LiteSpeed cache, NGINX caching, PHP7 support and WordPress optimisation
With an array of impressive features, an excellent support team all over the world, fantastic global speeds and wallet-friendly pricing, Hostinger’s place as the #1 best web host is rightfully earned.
Hostinger doesn’t offer free daily backups, which is expected at their price point. However, they do have free weekly backups which serves our needs well enough.
Also, their rates are low BUT it’s only applicable with a longer subscription period (48 months). This might be a little bit of a turn off for some people.
GrowBig
136.9 ms
$7.99 /mo
Officially WordPress endorsed and built on the Google Cloud Platform, SiteGround definitely deserves all the recognition they’re getting as one of our recommended web hosting solutions.
We actually have multiple accounts with them for testing purposes, but we’ll be having a look at their entry-level GrowBig plan.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | São Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 68 ms | 33 ms | 96 ms | 233 ms | 181 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 243 ms | 203 ms | 165 ms | 29 ms | 118 ms |
Speedwise, our test site proves that SiteGround’s servers are speedy as hell with a global average of 136.9 ms, earning them an A+ ranking!
If you’re in need of even faster speeds, no probs. Cloudflare is integrated into the system, and all you have to do is enable it to get your minds blown.
The GrowBig plan is fairly priced at only $9.99 a month, and it comes packed with a bunch of little goodies, which doesn’t just boost your server speed, but overall efficiency as well. Their SuperCacher boosts site load speed up to 4x quicker, you get to enjoy free daily backups, free priority support and free restores!
With 6 data centers strategically spread out across the globe (all on the Google Cloud Platform), all you need to do is pick the closest one to your audience and let SiteGround work its magic.
If you’re in the market for cloud hosting, we performed a test on SiteGround’s cloud hosting plan as well and the results were pretty good!
Obviously, price. SiteGround’s renewal prices can get expensive; be mentally prepared to pay more than double the introductory prices to renew the contract.
Having said that, we do feel that the price we have to pay is justified, considering the level of service received from SiteGround.
Basic
153 ms
$5.95 /mo
Another web host officially recommended by WordPress, Bluehost has more than 17 years of experience in the hosting industry. They understand what people are looking for when it comes to web hosting – speed and reliability!
Their data center is excellent, providing lightning quick response time across the board in our server speed tests.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | São Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 ms | 78 ms | 183 ms | 193 ms | 164 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 330 ms | 168 ms | 125 ms | 92 ms | 174 ms |
With a global average of 153 ms, Bluehost proves their mettle as an A+ ranked web host, performing incredibly well in the West US (23 ms), East US (78 ms) and Canada (92 ms).
Their response times in the other locations aren’t too shabby either, mostly scoring below 180 ms with the slowest location all the way in Bangalore at 330 ms.
Features offered by them are quite solid, with 50GB of SSD storage, free SSL, SEO services, free domain, while their support lines are manned by WordPress experts to assist you with all your WordPress woes.
If you feel that you need a boost of speed, you’ll be glad to learn that they’ve got a free CDN built directly into the account, available at just a click.
Not bad at all, considering the low entry price of only $3.95 a month (with 36-month plan). Bluehost is a great choice for small blogs and online businesses on WordPress!
Bluehost has only 1 data center, which is based in the USA.
Although they’re really fast, nothing beats proximity to the target audience, and them only having one data center means those targeting people located further away would be at a disadvantage.
Also, do note that they don’t have an uptime guarantee.
EcoSite Pro
118.6 ms
$7.95 /mo
GreenGeeks is one of those web hosting services that’s damn near perfect, marred by just a couple of things.
Their data centers are all sorts of solid. In fact, they’re one of the fastest providers we’ve had the pleasure of reviewing!
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | São Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 ms | 23 ms | 86 ms | 218 ms | 145 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 208 ms | 186 ms | 151 ms | 20 ms | 99 ms |
They’re real fast in the US East, US West and Canada, scoring 23 ms, 50 ms and 20 ms respectively. Even in locations further away, they’re not really that slow, with a response time of just 218 ms all the way in Singapore!
At a jaw-dropping global average of 118.6 ms, GreenGeeks more than deserves their place as one of the best web hosting providers in the world!
Speed isn’t the only thing they’ve got going for them. The company has a solid support team, features that’ll keep customers happy, revolutionary infrastructure, Git compatibility, Cloudflare integration… basically everything one can wish for in a web hosting provider.
As if they don’t already make a whole bunch of companies look bad by being this awesome, GreenGeeks also happens to be really eco-friendly; investing 3 times of every amp they use into renewable energy!
Their prices are also very pleasant at only $7.95 a month. They’re a great choice for small to medium sites, plus they’re environmentally friendly!
Every rose has it’s thorn, and in GreenGeeks’ case, their lack of data centers makes them quite thorny.
They only have presence in Chicago, Phoenix, Montreal and Amsterdam, so users from further away like in Asia won’t get to experience sites hosted with them at their best.
Also, they seem to be lacking phone support and you might want to take their claims of “unlimited” resources with a grain of salt.
Starter
179.5 ms
$25 /mo
Kinsta is a lean, mean, hosting machine. Powered by Google Cloud, Kinsta is able to leverage on their space-age tech to provide users with quality web hosting at decent speeds!
Check out the results from our server speed test below.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | São Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 130 ms | 95 ms | 10 ms | 287 ms | 203 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 487 ms | 266 ms | 221 ms | 83 ms | 13 ms |
As the data center for this test site is located in Europe, Kinsta’s response times from London and Germany are lightning fast at only 10 ms and 13 ms respectively. Signs of sluggishness started showing the further away the locations are, with Japan at 221 ms, Sydney 266 ms, Singapore 287 ms and Bangalore at 487 ms.
Regardless, Kinsta still scored a global average of 179.5 ms which earns them our coveted A+ rank!
With more than 10 years worth of experience with WordPress, Kinsta is more than prepared to provide you with one of the best Managed WordPress Hosting solutions in the scene.
Set-up is uber user-friendly. Sign up, build your site, and let the Kinsta team take over from there. You practically won’t have to worry about a thing as they manage your site for you.
Features are plentiful, you get daily backups, tech support is great (they only hire WordPress specialists), your uptime is guaranteed, and you get software to turbo-charge your site. We’re talking KeyCDN, NGINX, MariaDB, the works.
Select a data center that’s closest to your customers (they’ve got 24 to pick from) and you’re absolutely golden, no worries whatsoever about site load speed!
It’s a great choice for e-Commerce on WordPress or those expecting a spike in traffic!
Kinsta is great and all, but the price tag has most of us wincing in pain. At $25 a month (with a 12-month plan), you’re gonna want to make sure that there’s a solid return on your investment.
Also, They seem to lack email hosting and phone support, so keep that in mind if you’re considering their services.
Turbo Boost
149.8 ms
$14.99 /mo
A2 Hosting packs some serious firepower in their arsenal of features, which makes them the perfect choice for entrepreneurs looking to host multiple websites with just one provider.
Thanks to their Turbo Servers (tweaked to provide a huge boost of speed) and their Turbo Cache (which can boost site load speed up to 20x quicker) sites hosted with them will have an UX which is smoother than a baby’s butt.
Here’s proof of their speed, from the server speed test performed on their US data center.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | São Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63 ms | 10 ms | 129 ms | 234 ms | 145 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 433 ms | 214 ms | 147 ms | 13 ms | 110 ms |
With the quickest response time of only 10 ms in the US and the slowest in Bangalore at 433 ms, A2 Hosting produced an impressive global average of 149.8 ms, which earns them an A+ ranking!
A2 also has their Optimized Applications (Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Magento, Opencart, etc) to thank for their speeds. These apps are all set up and tweaked to reduce site load speed.
The green-lovin’ hosting provider packs a bunch of value into their accounts by offering their users a whole lot of unlimited perks.This includes unlimited sites, email addresses, total databases, storage, transfers, basically, almost everything but the kitchen sink!
You won’t even need to pay for SSL or site migrations!
All the perks listed above plus their excellent speed makes A2 an excellent web hosting solution, especially at their fairly affordable rates.
With 4 data centers to pick from (spread across the USA, Amsterdam and Singapore) you’ll have no problems reaching your target audience.
Support leaves quite a bit to be desired, as they kept us waiting for quite a while before attending to us on live chat.
It could just be due to a lack of manpower, and it shouldn’t be a consistent problem as long as they get more help.
Hosting Starter
121.7 ms
$5.95 /mo
Coming in hot at #7 is Canada’s very own big daddy of web hosting, HostPapa!
They might be considered a small, independent company but don’t let that fool you – their performance in terms of speed gives the big boys a good run for their money.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | São Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 67 ms | 28 ms | 80 ms | 231 ms | 132 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 200 ms | 203 ms | 173 ms | 8 ms | 95 ms |
On their Canadian data center, HostPapa scored a global average of a hot 121.7 ms, which is faster / as fast as most top rated web hosts available out there! They’re obviously fastest in Canada at 8ms, and they’re lightning quick in Germany, London, and the USA too!
Even their slowest location isn’t all that slow, coming in at 231 ms all the way from Singapore. With that, HostPapa is an A+ ranked host.
They may not have the latest features, and they don’t have much in terms of advanced tech, but instead, they leaned into what they do best – providing a great user experience with solid basic services.
Their interface is very well thought out, making it very easy for beginners to access and get started. If users still find it difficult to get started, a one-on-one video/phone session with the PapaSquad is even available, to help with your woes!
Speaking of the PapaSquad, support is simply fantastic. We never had to wait very long on live chat, with replies consistently coming in less than a minute.
Feature wise, what HostPapa offers ain’t too shabby – 2 websites, a free domain, 100GB SSD storage, free SSL, free Cloudflare, and 99.9% uptime guarantee at a starting price of a mere $5.95 a month.
Best of all, HostPapa powers their data centers and office spaces with 100% green renewable energy, which is a huge plus for sustainability!
An amazing choice for beginners and small businesses!
HostPapa has limited data center coverage, with zero presence in Asia.
The lack of free automatic backups is also a little bit of a letdown, and their uptime guarantee can be a little suspect.
Start
151.7 ms
$11.95 /mo
ScalaHosting is one of the OGs of web hosting, and they’ve obviously put all the experience they’ve accumulated into good use.
They’ve been consistently improving their services throughout the years, and now their data centers have joined the BDC, or the Best Data center Club(™).
While their shared hosting plan is decent, they really shine with their Managed VPS plan, which gave us one of the best user experiences so far.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | São Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 178 ms | 120 ms | 45 ms | 165 ms | 232 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 144 ms | 285 ms | 202 ms | 116 ms | 30 ms |
We ran a speed test on their Europe server and discovered that their response times are real hot in Germany and London, at 30 ms and 45 ms respectively. The slowest location would be in Sydney at 285 ms, but that’s expected given the distance.
With a global average of 151.7 ms, ScalaHosting packs a real mean punch when it comes to speed, earning them an A+ ranking.
Feature-wise, the web hosting provider made great effort in making the customer feel like they’re getting plenty of value.
They provide a whole host of unlimited goodness, such as websites, storage, bandwidth… then they’ve got their freebies, such as free migrations, free domains, free SSL and free CDN.
If those aren’t enough for you, ScalaHosting decided to sweeten the deal by throwing in free 7-day automatic backup too!
On top of all that, you’ll be able to enjoy their critically acclaimed SPanel, which is ScalaHosting’s very own control panel. It’s one of the best control panels we’ve had the pleasure of using. Uber user-friendly and fully compatible with cPanel!
At only $9.95 a month for their 3-year contract, ScalaHosting provides a whole host of generous resources with their quality servers that won’t let you down. Great for WordPress sites and small business users!
ScalaHosting unfortunately is late to the SSD game – they only offer SSD storage on mechanical drives, unless you’re willing to splurge on their VPS plans.
If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, take a look at these additional web hosting companies:
If you are looking for specialty hosting, here are some best host lists that you might find handy.
Core Web Vitals will soon be used as part of Google’s ranking criteria. It focuses on 3 different aspects of page experience – Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay , and Cumulative Layout Shift.
Out of the 3, the first 2 are highly dependent on speed!
Think with Google also mentioned that you’ll want your site to load under 1 second because the probability of users bouncing when site load speed takes 1 – 3 second is a whopping 32%!
In other words, people won’t just leave your site if it takes too long to load – it might lose out in ranking compared to faster loading sites!
This is why you shouldn’t just be looking at cheap web hosting – you may save more on expenses but you’ll be losing out in thousands of missed sales opportunities.
Here’s a few more things you should know about our testing methodology:
This might all sound mundane, technical and even boring, but believe me it’s highly important. If you select the wrong type of hosting service, you probably won’t realize it until much later when your site starts picking up traffic.
Then, you’ll realize that you’ll need different sorts of resources for your website, but it’s too late to back out and you’re stuck paying for a service that doesn’t quite do your business justice.
Take it from us, because we’ve made that mistake before.
Let’s jump in and have a look at the different types of web hosting services available, so you don’t make the same mistake we did.
Shared web hosting is exactly what it sounds like. You’ll be sharing server space with a bunch of other users on the same server, with the resources split evenly among everyone.
This is by far our most recommended web hosting type, as it’s great for general purpose use, and actually performs surprisingly well if you go for a reliable brand that takes no nonsense from errant users.
It’s simple, uncomplicated, perfect for first timers thinking about dipping their feet in building a website. Most of them are really quite affordable too, which is always a plus in our books.
The only problem with shared web hosting is that rogue users might (intentionally or not) take up too much resources, causing slowdowns for everyone else sharing that same server.
However, as mentioned earlier, pick a reliable brand that takes no nonsense from their users (like Hostinger), and you’ll be fine!
While shared web hosting hosts multiple websites on a single server, with cloud web hosting, your website will exist across multiple servers – a cluster of servers, to be exact, in the cloud.
This means that the provider can literally choose other servers to load up your site from, if a particular one is under stress or is facing performance issues, which ensures stable, consistent, site load speeds!
Users usually upgrade from shared hosting to cloud hosting once they feel that their website has outgrown the resources that shared web hosting provides.
How would you know if it’s time to upgrade?
Well, when you’re allocated bandwidth is constantly being used up due to heavy traffic, or if your web hosting provider straight up complains and TELLS you to do it, then yeah it’s time to upgrade.
Aside from it’s obvious speed benefits, cloud web hosting provides users with a whole lot more features than shared hosting, such as balanced load, better security and easy scalability.
However, the downside is the price. Good things don’t come cheap, and cloud web hosting is unmistakably, good.
VPS servers, otherwise known as Virtual Private Servers, are actually quite similar to the abovementioned cloud hosting.
The key difference between these two is that while cloud hosting utilizes several different machines on the cloud, VPS hosting uses one massive physical server which is then partitioned into several different servers.
Each one of these partitions act as a dedicated server on its own with its own resources, but at a much larger scale than what a shared hosting server would provide.
Faster and highly reliable compared to shared hosting servers, VPS hosting is typically very customizable, easily upgradable, and the partitions can be configured however you want to suit your needs.
Since each partition acts as a dedicated server, you’ll enjoy greater privacy and security – you won’t have to worry about resource hogging, traffic surges or privacy breaches from other users.
If you’re experiencing heavy traffic spikes on your ecommerce site, or if the website you’re running is particularly resource heavy, you should consider upgrading to a VPS account from your shared hosting server.
You’ll have to pay quite a bit more, but we personally feel that the damage to the wallet is actually worth the trade off in performance, stability, security and resources.
For those of you looking for complete control over your servers, or if you just have deep pockets and a deep dislike for sharing, you might want to look into dedicated hosting plans.
With dedicated web hosting, you’ll practically be renting an entire server with ALL of its resources, dedicated just for you or your business. That’s the equivalent of booking out an entire restaurant or movie theatre, just for a date.
Better make damn sure that date is worth it!
Best suited for large enterprises or successful sites with consistently high daily traffic, dedicated web hosting users will have full access to the server, with the ability to configure it to support the exact amount of web traffic required to keep the site running.
Its uses include being able to install alternative operating systems for the webserver, or running performance-enhancing utilities like advanced page caching systems which require specific server hardware that only dedicated servers can provide.
With its superior speeds, reliability, resources, and most importantly, customizability, they are typically used to support extremely high levels of traffic for ecommerce, media, or publishing sites.
However, be prepared to get your kidney familiar with the black market to pay for its services. Dedicated Web Hosting does not come cheap and rightly so, considering you’re literally renting out an entire server for yourself.
It might even come with unexpected expenses too, such as licensing for software that are required to get the server running, i.e. Windows, or maybe even cPanel.
Managed WordPress hosting is just the bees knees of… well, hosting WordPress sites.
If you’re running an enterprise site based on WordPress (and if your wallets are deep enough) we’d always recommend using managed WordPress hosting services.
It has all the benefits of WordPress Hosting, but MANAGED!
Okay, I realize that doesn’t say much. Let me elaborate.
First up, Managed WordPress Hosting isn’t all that much different from regular shared hosting, except that you’ll get to enjoy all of the perks and none of the drawbacks – always fast, backed up, and secured!
All you have to do is sort out the initial set up, and since it’s literally managed, you can just kick back and sip on a cocktail while the experts work on keeping your site well oiled and running smoothly.
You won’t need to worry about WordPress updates, because they’ll manage that for you. Security concerns are forgotten because, well, they’ll manage all your security updates. You won’t even need to lose sleep over optimizing your site because it’s… managed!
If something goes wrong, don’t panic – these services usually will have WordPress experts as support to sort everything out for you because… managed!
You get the idea by now.
The only note about managed WordPress hosting is that you might not be able to install the plugins you want, and it’s kinda damaging to the ol’ wallet.
So, we’ve covered how to determine a good web hosting service, the types of web hosting available, and the benefits of picking a provider with a data center close to your target audience.
Before you go bragging to all your friends about your newfound expertise in web hosting, let us do you the favour of stopping you right there, cause we’ve yet to talk about which type of web hosting is suitable for YOUR website.
First up, you’re going to need to know what kind of website you’re looking to build. By doing so, you’ll know what sort of features you’ll need, the amount of resources required, and all the little extras that are required to run your website.
Decide if the website you want is going to be a:
So, which type of web hosting is best for you?
Quite frankly, we don’t have the answer to that. Each one of these services serve a different purpose, and there really is no “best” web hosting service, only the one that works better for your business or website.
For those that are just starting out or are looking for an affordable option to host your website, you just can’t go wrong with a shared web hosting plan. Just make sure that the service comes with good features, knowledgeable support, and is able to handle the traffic you’re expecting for your site.
As a recap, here’s our top 3 web hosting providers for 2022:
If you ask us which web hosting is best for your company, the honest answer is that there’s no one best provider out there. There’s only the one that best serves your needs.
Having said that, it’s important to note that all the hosts that made an appearance on this list are ranked A+. That means they’re all great, with tried-and-tested awesome speeds. Select any one of these and you shouldn’t be disappointed!
Obviously, our choice for the very BEST web hosting provider for 2022 goes to Hostinger, thanks to their amazing performance, affordable prices and their dedication to constantly improving the hosting experience for customers.
Their server speeds are fantastic; globally fast, even in locations further away from their data center. In fact – they’ve got a bucketload of speed-enhancing features, including:
They have 10 strategically-located data centers to provide a wide coverage area for their users. But more than that – they also offer local versions of websites and support staff!
It’s little wonder that Hostinger emerged as the fastest-growing web host in 2020.
We’re pretty happy to crown them as the best web host of this year, too. Credit where credit is due.
Web hosting is a service provided by a company that allocates space on a server for a website to store data. Everything that makes up a website comprises data, which needs to be stored on physical servers. Web hosts provide users with that space and makes the website accessible to visitors.
Web hosting allows your website to be accessible by others. Website builders allow you to build and design a website, from how it looks to how it flows, in a user-friendly manner. Most website builder services also include web hosting services as well.
With the right server software, hardware and technical expertise, yes you can. Though your website performance will most likely be nowhere as reliable as those hosted on professional web hosting services. Hosting your own website is generally not worth the effort for the average user, and you’ll be better off just hosting your site through web hosting providers.
Yes. There are plenty of free web hosting services around that you can utilize for your website. However, they come with performance restrictions, handicaps, and ads displayed on your website (which you have no control over). If you’re looking to actually build traffic and generate revenue through your site, we would strongly advise against going for these free services.
Shared web hosting can cost $12 to $420 per year – excluding domain and SSL. Domains would typically cost you $10 – $20 a year, while SSL can cost anything from as little as $8 up to $1000 per annum. These can build up to cost quite a bit, so we highly recommend a web hosting service that offers both domain AND SSL for free, like Hostinger and SiteGround.
Figure out the purpose of your website, and find out which kind of web hosting would be best to fulfil that purpose. Generally, for small business or personal sites, shared web hosting should be enough to cover all the bases. If it’s for a large to medium website, best not cheap out – go for something that provides you with more resources like VPS hosting.
If you’re building a WordPress site targeting the USA, Bluehost would be the preferred web hosting choice. If it’s a non-WordPress site with a global audience, it’s better to pick GoDaddy. Note that Hostinger would be a great choice for both. They’re optimized for WordPress and have data centers worldwide.
SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer. It keeps a website secure, allowing visitors to freely browse, shop, and provide information to the website securely. It’s considered to be highly beneficial and is essential for every website. Providers like Hostinger and SiteGround offer free SSL certificates!
A data center is a building that houses groups of servers that store website data. By picking a data center that is close to your target audience geographically speaking, you’ll be able to ensure optimum website performance for your visitors! Hostinger and SiteGround provide great global coverage of data centers.
