If you’re looking for ways to start a small business, hosts of resources exist online. However, many people find the process of setting up and running a website difficult and time-consuming. That’s where hosting sites come in. Hosting sites let you set up your own website for free, so you can focus on building your business rather than worrying about setting up and managing your website. Plus, most hosts offer templates and other resources that make starting a small business easy.
In this guide, we’ll break down the Best Web Hosting Sites for Small Businesses, best web hosting for small business ecommerce, best web hosting for wordpress and best website hosting in terms of both features and cost so that you have all the information you need to find the right hosting platform for your website.
Best Web Hosting Sites for Small Businesses
What is a Small Business Hosting Site?
There are a number of different types of small business hosting sites. Here are some examples:
– E-Commerce Hosting Sites: These sites allow businesses to sell their products and services online. This type of site is popular because it allows businesses to have a presence on a global stage, as well as make money from traffic and sales generated by customers visiting their website.
– Professional Services Hosting Sites: These sites offer businesses the ability to rent out space in their office or warehouse for events, seminars, training workshops, or other purposes. They can also provide support and services such as advertising and marketing.
– File Sharing Sites: These sites allow businesses to share files securely online. This type of site is popular because it allows businesses to connect with customers over the internet without having to worry about data security.
– eCommerce Platforms: These platforms allow small businesses to sell products and services through an ecommerce storefront. This type of platform is popular because it makes it easy for business owners to set up their own website, manage customer base, and generate income from sales generated through online selling.
– Professional Services Platforms: These platforms offer businesses the ability to hire professional employees who will handle various tasks related to their business such as graphic design, marketing research, account management, etc.
Best Hosting Sites For Small Business
1. HostGator: Best for tech-heavy businesses
If you need more from your site than just a place for customers to find you online, you might be looking at dedicated server hosting as your preferred method of managing and storing your website data. Should this sound like your situation, HostGator might be the best website hosting company for your small business.
For those who don’t know, dedicated server hosting means getting your own server within a company’s existing network. Instead of sharing server space with other websites, you’ll get your own dedicated server, as well as the software and customer service tools required to keep things running smoothly.
HostGator also offers more introductory-level hosting options as well, which are on par with other providers in terms of pricing and services.
Here’s what HostGator offers:
- Dedicated server plans: There are three tiers, each using Intel Xeon-D CPU servers. Plans also come with eight, 16 and 30 GB RAM options. All dedicated servers also include three dedicated IPv4 IPs, DDOS protection, unlimited databases, fully redundant network and 24/7/365 live support. Prices start at $118.99 per month.
- Shared web hosting business plan: Less intense and expensive than HostGator’s dedicated servers, which makes it a better fit for businesses with lighter needs for their websites. This plan includes unlimited domains, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certificates, SEO tools and even a free business domain name. Prices start at $5.95 per month.
2. Bluehost
While HostGator tops the charts, Bluehost certainly makes a compelling case in second.
Bluehost has remained consistent, with its score staying at 4.6 out of 5 since our pre-2022 research. However, in that time, Bluehost has dropped into second place from its previous position at the top of the list. That being said, in our market analysis testing, Bluehost remains victorious with an impressive 4.9 out of 5, making it our most trusted hosting provider with users. With comprehensive features, excellent customer service, and affordable shared hosting plans, it continues to be a solid choice for small businesses.
Let’s take a deeper look at what Bluehost has to offer.
Price: 3.5/5
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Bluehost’s shared hosting plan prices range from $2.95–$28.99, making them a cost-effective choice for any new or small business. Its four plans – Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro – all come with cheap introductory fees to help you get started. Here’s what a 12 month subscription looks like:
- Basic: from $2.95/month
- Plus: from $5.45/month
- Choice Plus: from $5.45/month
- Pro: from $13.95/month
3. InMotion: Best for unlimited bandwidth on a budget
Few web hosting companies provide unlimited bandwidth as part of their low-cost hosting options — this isn’t the case with InMotion, however.
InMotion’s hosting options include free SSL certificates too, which is a boon for businesses that want to explore e-commerce options while giving their customers a sense of security. This is a great suite of services at a reasonable price, which makes InMotion a strong contender as the best web hosting site for most small-business owners.
InMotion offers the following business-oriented products:
- Launch: Comes with a free domain, two free websites, 50 gigabytes of disk space and unlimited bandwidth, as well as 10 email accounts for $10.99 per month.
- Power: One free domain; 50 websites; 100 gigabytes of disk space, unlimited bandwidth and 50 email accounts; as well as other marketing and security tools, all for $14.99 per month.
- Pro: Free domain; 100 websites, 200 gigabytes disk space, unlimited bandwidth and email accounts; faster performance; pro-level support; and more for $23.99 per month.
4. DreamHost
With its quality features and immense storage space, DreamHost is great value for money for any small business that has plenty of content to host – plus there’s room to grow! WordPress comes pre-installed, and you get automated daily backups, free domain privacy, as well as advanced features like Shell access – all at a cheap price.
Price: 4.1/5
For a three-year contract, DreamHost’s shared hosting plans start at these affordable introductory prices:
- Shared Starter: $2.59/month
- Shared Unlimited: $3.95/month
It’s worth noting that you can get the Unlimited plan for the same price as the Starter if you lock in for one year only!
While it isn’t top of our research for price, it scores well thanks to the partnership between price and all of its other wonderful features. You get a lot for your money!
One of the biggest standout features for DreamHost is its excellent 97-day money-back guarantee, which means you can try it totally risk-free and get a full refund if you find it’s not the right fit for you.
5. iPage: Best for businesses on a budget
Having a super-robust web host might be the only viable option for some business owners. But for others, a straightforward, simple and inexpensive option may be all that’s needed.
If you fall into the latter category, then iPage could be a great option for you. With iPage, you can opt for shared, VPS, dedicated or cloud hosting for your website needs. You’ll also get one-click installs of popular apps and CMS platforms and excellent customer service. Best of all, you won’t spend a fortune in the process.
Here are iPage’s product options:
- Web hosting: The leanest of iPage’s options, as well as the least expensive. Includes unlimited disk space and domain names, a free online store builder, email support, one-click installers and more for $7.99 per month.
- Business VPS hosting: Less intense and expensive than HostGator’s dedicated servers, which makes this plan a better fit for businesses with lighter needs for their websites. This plan includes unlimited domains, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certificates, SEO tools and even a free domain for $59.49 per month.
Best Web Hosting For Small Business Ecommerce
1. Cloudways: Best for cloud-based web hosting
Cloud web hosting may be easy to come by these days, but few providers offer the same level of flexibility and customization that Cloudways provides for their clients. This host gives you the option to choose between five different cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, which are considered among the most popular options around.
Better still, Cloudways doesn’t require users to sign up for a long-term contract either. You can set up a pay-as-you-go account or even go with a free trial — all without putting a credit card on file.
Prices vary depending on the cloud platform selected and support tier, all plans, however, include 24/7/365 support, free SSL, free migration, unlimited application installation, 24/7 real-time monitoring, free migration, team management, automated backups and more.
2. Hostinger
Hostinger combines affordable prices with a huge range of features – an impressive value score of 4.6 out of 5 makes it our best choice for price. With discounted prices starting at just $1.99 per month, and with three shared plans to choose from, Hostinger has a lot to offer. But, its main downfall is its lack of help and support options, as well as its overall performance.
Price: 4.6/5
With the highest score for price out of any provider on this list, it’s no surprise that Hostinger’s shared plans have a cheap introductory rate, especially for its longest 48-month subscription:
- Single: from $1.99/month
- Premium: from $2.99/month
- Business: from $3.99/month
Hostinger’s discounted plans are a real steal, but don’t worry if you’re not ready to commit just yet! Hostinger promises a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can fully test the waters first.
3. Namecheap: Best for technical support
If you’re a newcomer to managing your website, the best web hosting for your small business might be the one that provides you with round-the-clock technical support, and is willing to go the extra mile to make sure your site is up and running just the way you want it.
Namecheap goes above and beyond in this department, offering 24/7 support through chat — no question is too big or too small for Namecheap’s team of technical support specialists, who are even willing to step in and make changes for their customers if they don’t have the technical savvy to do it themselves. And as the name implies, their web hosting prices are pretty competitive as well.
There are several Namecheap hosting tiers:
- Stellar Business: Provides unmetered bandwidth so your site never slows down during high-traffic periods. Comes with free automatic backups as well, and is PCI compliant and e-commerce friendly. Costs $4.44 per month for the first year, then goes up to $8.88 per month.
- EasyWP Turbo: Inexpensive hosting for WordPress sites with up to 250,000 visitors per month and 50 gigabytes of storage included. Costs $7.88 per month, with the first month for $2.
- Qasar: Full VPS hosting with Linux-based servers, allowing companies that need a total command of their networks the flexibility to run their digital presence as they see fit. Costs $24.88 per month, with a new signup promotion of $19.88 per month.
- Xeon E3-1240 v3: A physical server solution for businesses that need to go the extra mile for their websites and digital environments. Costs $74.88 per month, with the first month for $36.88.
Best Web Hosting For WordPress
1. Bluehost (www.bluehost.com)
- From: $2.75 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Uptime: 99.97%
- Load time: 1.1s
- Overall: / 5
Another host that’s ready for WordPress – and officially recommended by WordPress.org – Bluehost is a good choice for most users.
It’s cheap and also packs a cool extra perk – a free domain name for the first year.
Recently, Bluehost introduced their revamped user panel, which makes working with your hosting setup easier, especially if you want to launch your site using WordPress, which Bluehost will install for you.
2. SiteGround
No list of best WordPress hosting could be complete without SiteGround playing a prominent role. The company has been making a name for themselves in the WordPress community for a while now. And not without a reason. Their hosting platform is strong when it comes to for-WordPress optimized servers, plus they offer managed WordPress hosting at price points that are unheard of (read: you won’t find a cheaper managed host of the same quality anywhere else).
What’s also worth pointing out is that SiteGround is one of the few officially recommended hosts by WordPress.org.
For the tests, we went for the StartUp package. Although for a generally more WordPress-optimized package, we’d recommend the GrowBig or GoGeek plan. They are a tad more expensive, but come with additional perks such as advanced caching (custom-built by SiteGround), staging, premium wildcard SSL certificates, and free PCI compliance – should you want to run an e-commerce store.
3. DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)
- From $2.59 / month
- Traffic allowed: unmetered
- Uptime: 99.84%
- Load time: 1.97s
- Overall: / 5
DreamHost has been a solid option among the best hosting services for years now. They have good reviews, offer okay performance, and have been one of the few companies endorsed by WordPress.org – something that should be important to you if you’re planning to build your website on WordPress.
DreamHost gives you access to a 24/7 support that’s a US-based team of professionals. However, since the team is US-based, the live chat support is available from 5:30 am to 9:30 pm Pacific only, but you can submit online support tickets whenever you want to.
4. Kinsta
Best performance among managed hosting ($29.17/mo)
Kinsta is a boutique hosting provider for WordPress that focuses mainly on optimized managed hosting setups. However, them being “boutique” doesn’t mean that they can’t handle the load.
In fact, Kinsta has the full power of the Google Cloud Platform behind it. They take Google’s infrastructure and make it more accessible and easier to use. Kinsta doesn’t use the traditional cPanel UI, but instead gives users a custom panel that puts focus on what’s important while hiding everything else.
The fact that this host is “managed” means that it’s Kinsta who handle every server-management-related task for you.
Best Website Hosting
1. Bluehost
- NORMALLY $8.99/MONTH
- FREE DOMAIN AND SSL CERTIFICATE
- RECOMMENDED BY WORDPRESS
- 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE
Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting companies in the world, especially among people launching their WordPress websites. Bluehost is one of three hosts that is officially recommended by WordPress, and we agree.
They offer great rates and a beginner-friendly platform that makes every aspect of running a WordPress website easy. You can certainly build other types of websites on Bluehost, but it is definitely set up to work best with WordPress.
Most of the time Bluehost will walk you through a task the first time, like setting up a blog or email account on your site.
If you get stuck or have a problem, they have 24/7 support by phone or live chat. They list their support number and live chat options right on their site, so you can reach out for help within two clicks.
Installing WordPress is one click, as are hundreds of other apps available in Bluehost’s deep app marketplace.
Bluehost also offers fantastic analytics and SEO tools to track how well your website is ranking for specific keywords. This gives you a good idea of how you should optimize your site for the best search rankings.
The Basic shared hosting plan is usually $8.99 per month, but there are major discounts if you are a new customer. If you sign up for three years and lock in the price, you can get it at $4.95 per month.
With a 12-month commitment, the price drops to $3.45 per month. Like other hosts, renewal pricing is higher than promotional pricing, so I recommend signing up for a longer contract to lock in the low price.
If your site keeps growing and you want to upgrade, Bluehost gives you lots of options: managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. When you are ready for more server power and control, you can grow and stick with the same provider.
Bluehost is a very safe play for people who want to build their site with WordPress. If you want to use another content management system besides WordPress, there will probably be a little extra legwork and backend maintenance.
2. HostGator Web Hosting
Best for Shared Hosting
Bottom Line:
HostGator is an excellent web hosting service that offers an array of powerful tools, including a terrific website builder, for bloggers and small businesses.
PROS
- Numerous, feature-rich hosting plans
- Excellent shared hosting offering
- Good for novice webmasters
- Useful site-building software and e-commerce tools
- Helpful, 24/7 customer service
- Outstanding uptime
CONS
- Not all plans have a Windows Server option
Why We Picked It
HostGator is a fantastic web hosting service with a varied selection, including feature-rich WordPress, VPS, dedicated, and cloud server packages. It also includes useful tools, such as the terrific Gator website builder. In a nice touch, HostGator lets you select a Windows-based server, something not offered by every web hosting service.
Who It’s For
Small and midsize businesses that want to quickly build a Linux- or Windows-based website, and have room to grow. And you can do that, as HostGator’s shared hosting packages have unlimited disk space, monthly data transfers, databases, and email addresses across the board.
3. Hostinger
- STARTS AT JUST $1.99 PER MONTH
- FREE WEEKLY BACKUPS
- FREE SSL CERTIFICATE
- 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE
Hostinger offers dependable web hosting at a great price. Shared hosting plans start at $1.99 per month, which includes free weekly backups and enough bandwidth for 10,000 visitors to your site.
Normally you have to back up your site yourself, or pay extra, but you get that peace of mind for free with Hostinger.
The most popular option is Premium Shared Hosting plan which costs $2.59 per month. This lets you create up to 100 websites and host 25,000 visitors. You’ll also get a free domain for one year and a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to secure your website.
The Premium Shared Hosting plan provides 100 GB SSD storage, which is enough for various website content. Should you need more space, upgrade to one of their VPS or cloud hosting plans.
Hostinger uses its own control panel called hPanel. Thanks to the eye-catching and well-organized navigation icons, it’s user-friendly and easy to navigate. It also comes with an auto installer that lets you set up WordPress or other content management systems using only a few clicks.
Another great feature is their dedicated WordPress dashboard on hPanel.
You can manage several tasks, such as updating the core WordPress version, activating or deactivating plugins, and enabling maintenance mode from the hPanel. A navigation button lets you access your WordPress dashboard via hPanel with a single click.
LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP) is automatically installed when you set up WordPress. Its server-level cache and other optimization features help you accelerate the website for a better user experience.
Tips for Successfully Starting a Small Business.
Setting up your business account is one of the most important steps in starting a small business. By doing this, you’ll be able to access all of the resources and support that you need to get your business up and running. You can also use this account to keep track of your finances andTo manage customer feedback.
Get started with Hosting
Hosting is the process of placing an online presence for another person or company so that they can sell or offer products or services online. It can be used as a way to build your small business from scratch, or it can be used as a complement to a larger organization. To start hosting your own site, there are several ways to go about it. You can search for hosts on websites like HostGator or have someone else design and create a hosting plan for you. You can also find host providers through traditional print media such as newspapers, magazines, or online directories.
Get the Most out of Your Small Business Hosting Site
One of the most important things you can do when setting up your small business hosting site is make sure that it offers high-quality service and features that will help you grow and succeed as a business. You should also think about how you can make use of your site’s resources to improve sales and marketing efforts for your company. By using host options that offer great services at reasonable prices, you’ll be able to reach more people than ever before and increase profits quickly on your small business hosting site.
Conclusion
Starting and running a small business can be a rewarding experience, but there are a few key steps to take in order to success. By following these tips, you’ll be able to get your business off the ground and onto the path to success.