Best Web Hosting for Small Business

There are so many web hosting services out there, having its own pros and cons. Thus, finding the right one for your small business be a little difficult, costing you your time and money. So, to make the job easy for you, we’re here with 10 best web hosting services after testing and reviewing several web hosting companies.

This list is made by considering the most important factors when choosing a website such as the average speed (load time), uptime (based on last 24-month data), and cost.

10 Best Web Hosting for Small Business

1. Bluehost

Bluehost web hosting is the most popular and affordable hosting option for new websites. It has been around since 2007 and now hosts more than 3,000,000 websites. Bluehost is great for WordPress websites, that is why it’s officially recommended by WordPress.org as well.

Their 3-year introductory comes at a price of $2.75/mo, and renews at $7.95, with features like free domain name, website builder, and one-click install for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal through cPanel. Moreover, unmetered bandwidth and 50 GB storage are also included in their basic plan.

It’s reliable, secure, and very easy to use providing 24/7 live customer support, free email accounts, and SSL (security level), dedicated, VPS, and managed WordPress hosting plans for higher traffic websites. You can start with them right away as all their hosting plans get instantly activated coming with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

• Best uptime – 99.99%
• Top 5 speed – 405 ms
• It is the best hosting option overall
• Free domain and site builder
• Easy to use and is beginner-friendly

Cons

• Discounts for higher-tier plans only

2. HostGator Cloud

If you’re willing to build a custom website, then Gator Website Builder is the one to go for as its drag and drop website builder is designed to be an eCommerce-friendly and easy site builder for beginners.

HostGator provides flexible features that include unmetered bandwidth, unmetered disk space, unlimited email accounts, and built-in cache on all plans. Moreover, their plans also provide you with a free domain for a year, free SSL certificate and easy WordPress installs.

HostGator serves all size organizations from small businesses to enterprise websites by offering WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. All their plans come with a 45-day money-back guarantee while their cheapest plan starts from $2.74/mo and renews at $10.95/mo.

Pros

• Top 5 uptime – 99.99%
• Top 5 speed – 399 ms
• Best cheap cloud
• Unlimited email accounts, bandwidth, and storage
• Free website transfer

Cons

• Costly renewal

3. Hostinger

Hostinger is the best cheap web hosting offering incredibly affordable, and appealing hosting plans which come with an easy website builder, free SSL certificate, 24/7/365 customer support and a variety of different features.

Their ‘Single Web Hosting’ plan is limited to 10 GB of disk space, 100 GB of bandwidth, one email account, and one MySQL database whereas other plans come with unlimited bandwidth and databases.

Hostinger also provides services such as Email, WordPress, VPS, Cloud, and Windows VPS hosting. Their cheapest plan starts from just $0.99/mo and renews at $2.15/mo while all their plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

• Top 2 load time – 350 ms
• Cheapest price
• Free SSL certificate

Cons

• The cheap plan includes limited bandwidth
• Free domain not included

4. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks offers fast and reliable hosting for about 12+ years and hosts over 500,000 websites. All their plans offer an unlimited SSD storage, unlimited data transfer, a free domain for 1 year, free Wildcard SSL, cPanel access, and PowerCacher.

You can always upgrade to their more flexible VPS hosting once your website grows bigger. Moreover, GreenGeeks provide an unlimited number of domain names, unlimited email accounts, nightly backups, high-quality 24/7 customer support, and environmentally friendly practices.

Their reliable hosting plans start at an affordable rate of $2.95/month with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

• US, Canada & Netherlands Servers
• Good load time (445 ms) and uptime (99.98%)
• Best ‘Green’ hosting
• Unlimited storage and bandwidth
• Free site transfer

Cons

• Costly renewal
• Doubtful refund policy

5. DreamHost

DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting providers which was founded in 1996 and hosts over 1.5 million websites, blogs, and applications in more than 100 countries. Moreover, DreamHost is different from the other web hosting services on this list as they offer to pay monthly instead of yearly, which means that you can sign up and get started with your hosting account for $4.95.

Alternatively, you can opt for a 3-year plan starting at $2.59/mo, which renews at $4.95/mo. The basic plan will provide you with a free domain, 50 GB SSD storage, one website, and unlimited bandwidth. You can use their drag and drop builder and an email for a monthly fee of $1.67/mo.

The company also offers other features including a variety of domain management tools, strong security features (LetsEncrypt SSL), unlimited data transfer per month, pre-installed WordPress, and easy-to-use, beginner-friendly website builder. DreamHost offers its own admin panel instead of a cPanel which does the same job.

All their plans come with a generous 97-day refund policy including 24/7 US live chat support.

Pros

• Good load time (648 ms) uptime (99.94%)
• Monthly plans are available
• Unlimited bandwidth and storage
• Generous 97-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• Average uptime (99.94%)
• cPanel not included

6. SiteGround

SiteGround is one of the three web hosting companies which are officially recommended by WordPress.org and are hosting over 2 million domains. SiteGround was founded in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2004 and is well-known for its exemplary customer service.

Their hosting plans offer a website builder, SSL, Cloudflare CDN, email account, daily backups, and SSH access, for free. Their cheapest StartUp plan starts at $3.95/mo and renews at $11.95/mo wherein you can host one website, which is well-suited for 10,000 monthly visits. The plan also comes with unmetered traffic, 10 GB webspace, and 24/7 support.

SiteGround offers a variety of services including WooCommerce hosting, cloud hosting, managed WordPress hosting, enterprise hosting, and dedicated servers. Additionally, they’re renting servers from the Google cloud instead of having in-house servers. Moreover, all their plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

• Good uptime (99.99%)
• Sufficient load time (673 ms)
• More than 20 email accounts

Cons

• The cheap plan is way too limited
• Setup fee on their monthly plans

7. A2 Hosting

US-based A2 Hosting is the fastest shared web hosting, which was founded in 2002 and is now hosting more than 500,000 websites. This is fast because they use LiteSpeed Cache and their servers are optimized for WordPress websites.

A2 Hosting is not just the fastest but is also reliable and well-known for its major content management systems including Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, OpenCart, and Magento. Moreover, their hosting plans offer unlimited SSD storage, a free LetsEncrypt SSL certificate, and free site migration.

A2 Hosting’s cheapest plan starts at $2.96/mo and renews at $7.99/mo which comes with a domain name for one year, one website, 25 email accounts, free Cloudflare CDN, and unlimited bandwidth/disk space.

A2 Hosting also offers VPS, dedicated, and reseller hosting for webmasters besides shared hosting with a reliable customer support team called ‘Guru Crew Support’ where customers can connect 24/7/365 via live chat, email, phone, and tickets. All their plans provide a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

• Fastest load time – 317 ms
• Servers are WordPress optimized
• More than 20 email accounts
• Unlimited bandwidth and storage

Cons

• Average uptime – 99.93%
• Costly renewal

8. WestHost

WestHost is a web hosting company owned by thgingenuity Ltd. whose  speed hasn’t been among the top 15. However, WestHost is a good option for small businesses due to their cheap pricing which starts at $1.99/mo and renews at $4.99/mo, and free CDN with site backups.

The cheapest plan will give you FTP access only, while SSL and free domains will not be included. If you want access to them, then you’ll have to choose their higher-tier plan ‘Preferred’. Thus, it’s a difficult choice for beginners as you’ll be unable to use quick installs for CMS.

Unlike other popular web hosting services, the company only offers a shared hosting provider. Thus, once your website starts growing, you’ll have to transfer your sites away from WestHost.

Pros

• Good uptime – 99.98%
• Includes free Cloudflare CDN
• Cheap pricing

Cons

• Below average load time – 881 ms
• No free domain or SSL included
• No cPanel or auto-installs included

9. GoDaddy

GoDaddy is recognized as one of the largest domain registrars having 14 facilities around the globe and powering over 44 million websites. However, they don’t own their server park and have partnered with Amazon and they rent servers from AWS. GoDaddy is a suitable and reliable provider for both small and very big websites.

It’s a great solution for building custom websites as it offers a simple drag and drop website builder called ‘GoCentral’, which is designed for beginners. Moreover, GoDaddy features web-developer-friendly tools such as MySQL, CloudLinux, cPanel, Python, and multiple versions of PHP.

Their cheapest plan starts at $4.33/mo and renews at $8.99/mo offering 100 GB of website storage, unmetered bandwidth, security monitoring, and DDoS protection. However, SSL certificates, email accounts, and site backups are not included in the cheapest plan. All of their yearly and multi-year plans offer 24/7 customer support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

• Good load time (554 ms) and uptime (99.97%)
• Massive 100 GB website storage
• Access to cPanel and website builder

Cons

• No site transfers
• Need to pay extra for SSL and email

10.            Site5

Site5 is a web hosting company founded in 1998 and is now owned by Endurance International Group, which also owns Bluehost and HostGator. Site5 is a better choice for web developers or designers as its features aren’t best suited for beginners.

Their cheapest shared hosting account starts at $7.65/mo offering unmetered disk space/bandwidth, 24/7 customer support, and backup recovery. However, the basic plan doesn’t include a free domain nor free SSL.

Moreover, it’s easy to install popular applications like Joomla, Drupal, or ZenCart through their cPanel/WHM. All their hosting plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

Pros

• Good uptime – 99.99%
• Above-average load time – 629 ms
• Unmetered bandwidth/storage

Cons

• The cheap plan is limited
• Expensive pricing
• The domain is not free

Bottom line:

If you are just starting out as a new online business, bluehost is the recommended hosting for you. It is best for any website with initially low traffic or growing website.

What are you waiting for go host your dream with the Bluehost