6 Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses [REVIEWED]
6 Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses [+ Buyer’s Guide]
What if I told you that you could find the best hosting service for your small business, within just 10 minutes? In this article, I’ll review and compare the 6 top small business hosting providers to help you find the best fit for your requirements.
Other than the reviews, I’ve also laid down a deep comparison table, a detailed buyer’s guide, and a helpful FAQ section, all for your convenience. By the end, you’ll know exactly which hosting provider to sign up at to get your small business website rolling on the internet.
That said, let’s start with the comparison table:
| Bluehost – Winner | HostGator | Hostinger | Dreamhost | InMotion Hosting | A2 Hosting | |
| Overall Rating | 4.8/5 | 4.5/5 | 4.3/5 | 4.3/5 | 4.2/5 | 4.5/5 |
| Starting Price | $2.95 | $2.75 | $1.99/mo | $2.59/mo | $2.99/mo | $2.99/mo |
| Average Uptime | 99.98% | 99.99% | 99.9% | 99.84% | 99.95% | 99.98% |
| Storage | 50GB | Unlimited | 30 GB | Unlimited | 100 GB | 100 GB |
| Free Backups | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Customer Support | 4.7/5 | 4.7/5 | 4.5/5 | 3.5/5 | 4.7/5 | 4.5/5 |
| Visit Bluehost | Visit HostGator | Visit Hostinger | Visit Dreamhost | Visit InMotion Hosting | Visit A2 Hosting |
With that out of the way, here are our quick picks:
Quick Picks
Before we dive into detailed information on best hosting providers for small businesses, here is an overview of our top choices, based on our research, experience, and testings.
Best Overall: Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the most professional hosting services we’ve tested so far. Its average uptime is always strong, with prompt customer support and affordable pricing. We highly recommend Bluehost to any small business owner willing to get their site rolling on the internet.
Runner Up: HostGator
HostGator is a great Bluehost alternative but does not offer month-to-month hosting packages as Bluehost does, requiring you to subscribe for longer. However, HostGator is also an excellent option for small businesses to build their websites without paying through the nose.
Best Cheap: Hostinger
Compared to the recommendations above, Hostinger doesn’t perform very well when it comes to handling traffic spikes with unaffected performance. But, it’s certainly the best you can get for as low as $1.99/mo.
Keep on reading to get into detailed reviews of the best hosting providers for small businesses.
1. Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses: Bluehost
Founded in 2003, Bluehost is the leading hosting provider for any type of website and is known for offering reliable solutions at a cheap price.
Over the years, Bluehost has maintained a stable 99.98% average uptime. If you run a critical business that gets much of prospects and sales through the business website, such a strong uptime will make sure your website is up 24/7.
Bluehost also performs well in terms of customer support. The company offers a 24/7 customer support service that’s friendly, knowledgeable, and quick. We tested Bluehost’s support by asking a few questions regarding setting up a website. The support agent responded quickly and knowledgeably.
Ease of use is another highlight of Bluehost, making it a fit for not-so-tech-savvy users. When you sign up at Bluehost, it walks you through a quick wizard that’s helpful in understanding the basics.
The basic hosting plans (AKA shared hosting) at Bluehost start from $2.95/mo. This starter package lets you host a single website and provides all the essential features – including an SSL certificate, 1-click WordPress installation, free CDN, and SSD-based servers.
Simply put, Bluehost is our top recommendation for small business owners. It offers a lot of scalability options – so, when your business grows, you can easily upgrade to a higher plan at Bluehost to suit your requirements.
2. Best User-Friendly Hosting for Small Businesses: HostGator
HostGator has been in business since 2002 and powers over 2 million websites to date. It’s another giant web hosting service that’s owned by the same company as Bluehost – Endurance International Group (EIG).
As a popular hosting provider, HostGator offers a 99.9% server uptime guarantee to get you peace of mind, knowing your website would be available 24/7. The company also offers a prompt support service that’s up 24/7 through multiple channels like email and live chat.
The shared plans of HostGator start from $2.75/mo and throw in quick WordPress installation, SSL certificate and the unlimited policy that applies for storage and bandwidth. $2.75/mo is quite affordable but beware of HostGator’s renewal rates before you sign up.
Support for eCommerce is a key feature of HostGator, allowing you to sell products & services through your website. HostGator’s Business plan even includes the starter pack of SEO tools for free, to track the SEO score of your website and make improvements.
In a nutshell, we highly recommend HostGator for small business owners looking for a trustworthy hosting solution. It’s a great alternative to Bluehost and offers almost the same hosting features and value for money.
3. Best Cheap Web Hosting for Small Businesses: Hostinger
Hostinger is yet another popular small business hosting provider that has been around since 2004. What sets Hostinger apart from the pack is its crazy hosting discounts that bring web hosting within the reach of anyone.
The server uptime of Hostinger is amazing, even for business websites. Backed by LiteSpeed caching, ultra-fast PHP, and SSD-powered servers, Hostinger’s hosting plans provide fast page loading performance to help improve your conversion rate.
However, there’s a catch: I’ve noticed that Hostinger’s starter plan can’t handle traffic spikes well – when there are a lot of visitors on your website, the page loading speed is affected, resulting in a poor user experience.
Therefore, we would recommend upgrading to the Premium hosting plan of Hostinger as your small business website starts to get a few thousand visitors every month.
Hostinger’s shared plans start from as low as $1.99/mo and go all the way up to $4.99/mo. The starter plan offers very limited features, like a single website, 30 GB storage, and a single professional email account. But, it’s a fit for starter websites.
We cannot rule out that Hostinger is a great web host. But, it fits portfolio websites, one-page sites, blogs, etc better – especially its starter package. So, we would only recommend it if you’re running low on budget.
4. Best WordPress Hosting for Small Businesses: DreamHost
DreamHost is one of the oldest hosting services that came out in the world. It has been popular since its inception in 1996 and is popular for a prolonged money-back guarantee and WordPress-friendly features.
If you’re not sure, WordPress is the largest CMS platform on the planet to date and powers 43% of websites on the internet. Are you looking to build and manage your small business website through WordPress? Then, you might like DreamHost’s WordPress-friendly features.
DreamHost’s shared plans are affordable, starting from only $1.99/mo. Like other top hosting services, DreamHost includes many basic features like an SSL certificate, pre-installed WordPress, and an easy-to-use control panel.
Being in the industry for 26 years, DreamHost knows how server uptime impacts businesses and thus, it offers a 100% uptime guarantee and claims to refund your money in case your website goes down.
That said, DreamHost is definitely a good choice for small business owners. However, it needs some improvements in areas of customer support and the availability of email accounts with the starter package.
5. Best Web Hosting for Small eCommerce Businesses: InMotion Hosting
Popular for the remarkable 24/7 customer support, InMotion Hosting is also a great hosting solution for small business requirements. One of the main benefits of InMotion Hosting is easy & quick scalability – you can always upgrade to a higher plan at InMotion Hosting, as per your business requirements.
Another highlight of InMotion Hosting is its eCommerce-ready packages. But, this feature is only available with the higher shared plans – Power and Pro. The basic hosting features like SSL certificate and professional email addresses, however, are included with each plan.
The web hosting plans at InMotion Hosting start from $2.99/mo. What’s exciting about InMotion’s starter plan is it allows you to host 2 websites instead of one and offers a large 100 GB SSD storage. Moreover, there’s an extensive security suite that includes DDoS & spam protection and data backups to get you peace of mind.
The availability of such powerful features for an affordable price makes InMotion Hosting a great way to go. It’s even better for businesses that have the potential to grow since its higher plans are suitable for high-traffic business websites.
6. Best Fast Hosting for Small Businesses: A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is an underrated hosting provider that has been offering reliable solutions since 2001. It came out with the aim of delivering the fastest hosting services to improve the page loading speeds of users’ websites which can lead to a better user experience and higher conversion rate.
Surprisingly, A2 Hosting has managed to achieve an ultra-fast page server performance and thus, its servers offers 20X faster performance than the regular hosting servers. It’s called the Turbo feature and only supports the Turbo plans of A2 Hosting.
The hosting plans at A2 Hosting start from $2.99/mo and each plan is equipped with 24/7 Guru support that’s fast and reliable. Other than that, the provider guarantees a 99.9% server uptime while offering a free website migration.
Simply put, A2 Hosting is your best bet if top-tier server speed is your utmost concern. But, you won’t be able to enjoy that unless you pay for a Turbo server which can be quite expensive.
Buyer’s Guide – What to Look for in a Small Business Hosting Provider?
This buyer guide lists down the most important things you should consider when looking for a small business hosting service. Deciding on a hosting solution based on these factors will help you find the best bang for your bucks.
Server Uptime
The server uptime of a hosting service will impact the availability of your website on the internet. Higher uptime leads to more availability of your site.
If you’re a critical business that doesn’t want to miss out on any prospects, it’s important to go for a reliable hosting provider that offers at least 99.98% average server uptime. It’ll make sure your website does not face downtime frequently.
Customer Support
It’s not uncommon to come across issues when setting up your hosting account or customizing your website. In that situation, connecting to a representative of your hosting provider can be helpful.
A hosting service that offers 24/7 customer support backed by knowledgeable, quick, and friendly agents should be your priority.
Pricing
As a small business, you don’t want to invest a significant part of your budget in web hosting. Therefore, closely review the initial and renewal prices of any web hosting service you consider.
I won’t recommend chasing the cheapest hosting service on the planet. But, a provider that offers affordable web hosting for small businesses while maintaining a good value for money should be your top concern.
Features
The hosting features like the availability of an SSL certificate, ads credit, data backups, easy-to-use control panel, email marketing tools, eCommerce functionalities, etc., will impact your user experience.
Although you may not need some advanced features like SEO tools and analytics right at the beginning, going after the basic features will be of help. In this article, we’ve taken special care to only review the feature-rich web hosting providers for small businesses.
Storage Space
If you’re an online store that will sell a variety of products on their website, considering the storage capacity is important. The various product pages & other pages on your website and the use of images and videos can take up a lot of storage capacity.
Therefore, before you sign up for a hosting solution, reconsider your storage requirements. For most small businesses, a storage size of 30 GB or 50 GB would be more than enough.
Page Loading Speed
A study by Google reveals that 53% of mobile visitors abandon a website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. If you’re looking to grow your business in profits, it’s crucial that your business website loads fast.
The biggest factor involved in the page loading speed of a website is its server speed. So, choosing a hosting provider with performance-packed servers is important. Chasing a hosting service that offers SSD-based servers also helps.
FAQs on Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses
Got questions? We’ve got answers – below are the answers to the most frequent queries regarding small business hosting services.
What Is the Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses?
Bluehost is so far the best web hosting for small businesses. The company performs well in key aspects like server uptime, pricing, server performance, customer support, and hosting features. It also offers good security features like free SSL certification.
On top of that, Bluehost offers a lot of eCommerce-friendly features to help small businesses sell products through their website, at an affordable hosting price.
Which Web Hosting Is Best for Small Business User to Host Their Website?
Bluehost is the best web hosting for small businesses to host their website. With shared hosting plans starting from around $3/mo, Bluehost goes easy on your pocket and offers basic features like an SSL certificate, easy WordPress installation, 24/7 customer support, and a free domain for the first year.
Furthermore, Bluehost offers multiple web builders including Weebly, WordPress, and Bluehost’s own Bluehost website builder. Each of these is graphical and allows small business owners to build their website without code.
How Much Does It Cost to Host a Small Business Website?
Most hosting providers only charge $4-5/mo for small business web hosting. The expense would increase as your website grows and requires more hardware resources. Also, the renewal rate of hosting services is usually higher – it may fall around $6-10/mo.
Furthermore, some other expenses like domain registration, SEO tools, paid website builder, etc., may also add up to your hosting expenses.
Can You Host a Website for Free?
You can host a website for free on a website builder platform like Weebly and its alternatives. But, free hosting always has many downsides that can cripple the chances of your small business’s success.
Sometimes, companies like Weebly display irrelevant ads on your website when you build a website on their platform for free. Also, you get an unprofessional second-level domain name that’s not as trustable as we recommend for a business website.
Therefore, it’s highly recommended that you avoid free hosting providers.
Key Takeaways
What is the best web hosting service for small businesses? Here are the takeaways:
- We’ve narrowed down Bluehost as the best small business hosting provider. It’s fast, friendly, and affordable. On top of everything, Bluehost cares for the websites based on it and offers reliable hosting solutions with the highest availability.
- If you’re looking for a great alternative to Bluehost, HostGator is a perfect way around. It offers quite the same service as Bluehost but lacks SSD-powered servers, resulting in lower website performance.
- Lastly, we highly recommend Hostinger if you’re short on budget and seeking a cheap yet reliable hosting service to host your small business website on.
