Want to jump straight to the answer? The best small business web hosting for most people is Bluehost or Hostinger.

Every small business needs a website. And every website needs web hosting. But you, as a small business owner, don’t have time to worry about operating and maintaining websites—you have a company to run and grow. 

Fortunately, the best web hosting solutions for small business owners are hassle-free. You can get your site online with ease and rest easy knowing how much is handled for you on the backend without you lifting a finger.

The Top 5 Best Web Hosting Providers for Small Businesses

• Bluehost – Best for small businesses starting a WordPress site
• Hostinger – Best cheap web hosting for small businesses
• DreamHost – Best for small businesses selling with WooCommerce
• GreenGeeks – Best for eco-conscious small businesses
• HostGator – Best cloud web hosting for small businesses

Continue below to see our full reviews of the best web hosting providers for small business sites. Use this guide to find the hosting provider and plan that matches your specific needs.

Bluehost — Best for Small Businesses Starting a WordPress Site

Bluehost is one of the largest and most reputable hosting providers on the market today. They provide a wide range of hosting solutions that accommodate small businesses and first-time website creators.

I love that Bluehost is an all-in-one solution for web hosting. If you’re starting a new website from scratch, you can get everything you need under one roof from Bluehost.

For one, every Bluehost plan comes with a free domain for the first year. That simplifies your setup process, as you can get it directly from Bluehost instead of shopping for one from third-party domain registrars. 

Plans also come with one-click WordPress installation, a free SSL certificate, and 24/7 support. Bluehost is known for providing some of the best support options among web hosting providers—you can always connect with a real human whenever you have questions.

Look, WordPress is the best platform for building a site, adding and managing site content, and customizing the look and feel of your home on the web. I’d always recommend WordPress over other options if you’re looking for freedom and reliability. 

So, it’s a boon that Bluehost also offers WordPress-specific hosting plans. You get a drag-and-drop WordPress builder (which is easier to use if you’re not already acquainted with building on WordPress) and more than 300 templates to choose from. You can get up and running on day one with no technical experience required. 

You’ll also get a $150 Google Ads credit when you sign up, which is a great way to start advertising your small business and its new website.

Both the shared and WordPress hosting plans from Bluehost start at a pleasing $2.95 per month. Just be aware that that rate will increase on renewal after your first year of hosting. All plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

Hostinger — Best Cheap Web Hosting for Small Businesses

Most small business owners don’t want to spend a fortune on web hosting. But there’s a fine line between affordability and performance that can be tricky to navigate. 

That’s where Hostinger shines. They offer real value: cheap hosting plans that stay affordable for longer and don’t sacrifice performance.

With shared hosting plans starting at just $1.99 per month for a single website, it’s tough to find a better deal from such a reputable provider in the web hosting space. And that rate stays low for longer—you can lock in that $1.99 per month for four full years, then still only pay $3.99 per month after that.

Not only is Hostinger cheap, but it’s also extremely easy to use. You can get started immediately with its beginner-friendly dashboard and site builder. 

You also get automated weekly backups, so you can restore old versions of your site if anything goes wrong. Plus, the Hostinger tech support team is available to help you out 24/7/365.

Hostinger also offers free site migrations, which is perfect for any small business that has an existing website and is switching providers. 

It all just goes to show you how much value you’re getting from such rock-bottom pricing. 

There are three shared hosting plans to choose from, all of which can accommodate small businesses:

• Single Shared: $1.99 per month, limited to one website
• Premium Shared: $2.99 per month, up to 100 websites and includes a free domain
• Business Shared: $3.99 per month, includes daily backups

If you already have a domain name, just want to host a single website, and you aren’t expecting more than 10,000 monthly site visits, the entry-level plan will be fine for your needs. Otherwise, start with the Premium plan that comes with a free domain for one year and accommodates up to 25,000 monthly visitors. 

All plans are backed by Hostinger’s 30-day money-back guarantee. 

DreamHost — Best for Small Businesses Selling with WooCommerce

DreamHost prides itself on being a hosting solution to help you succeed. It has tons of great tools and perks that simplify hosting and managing websites. 

It’s fast, reliable, feature-packed, and really easy to use. But what really makes DreamHost stand out from the crowd are its WooCommerce hosting solutions.

This is perfect if you’re running a WordPress site and plan to add ecommerce functionality by installing the WooCommerce plugin, which can turn any small business blog or basic site into an online store.

The WooCommerce-specific plans use next-generation cloud technology and server-level caching to ensure your site operates with blazing-fast speed. This helps you convert more visitors into buyers, as they won’t bounce because your product or checkout pages load too slow.

DreamHost’s servers can even accommodate large traffic spikes during flash sales, holidays, and busy seasons, so you’re not punished by your web host just because your web store suddenly became more popular.

These DreamHost plans come with WordPress and WooCommerce pre-configured. You’ll also benefit from automatic updates, free SSL security, and 100% guaranteed uptime. 

If you’re using DreamHost for WooCommerce, your site can accommodate a large volume of traffic. Even the entry-level plan can support up to 100,000 monthly site visitors. 

It’s worth noting that WooCommerce hosting from DreamHost will be a bit more expensive than a traditional shared plan. These solutions start at $16.95 per month, compared to basic shared plans, from $2.59 per month. 

But the extra investment in your ecommerce site is well worth the cost, as most basic plans can’t accommodate online sales needs. And they certainly don’t come with useful DreamHost extras like free migration, a staging area for testing site changes, and Jetpack preinstalled. 

DreamHost plans are backed by an industry-leading 97-day money-back guarantee.

GreenGeeks — Best for Eco-Conscious Small Businesses

GreenGeeks offers a unique quality in their web hosting solution for small businesses. While their hosting still delivers everything you need and expect, they go the extra mile to do it while also protecting the environment. 

For small businesses that brand themself as environmentally conscious, this is huge. You can find a web host that aligns with your values.

The entire platform is designed to run without wasting resources. All of the servers and backend configurations are energy efficient. GreenGeeks also uses renewable energy to power amperage pulled from power grids, thanks to its partnership with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. And, for every new hosting account provisioned through GreenGeeks, the brand plants one tree.

So if eco-friendliness is a fundamental part of your brand identity and messaging, you can sign up for GreenGeeks and use that positioning for your marketing materials. 

But, again, they also don’t skimp on hosting features. GreenGeeks promises 99.9% uptime and offers 24/7/365 support, advanced security, built-in scalability, free site transfers, free nightly backups, a free domain for one year, and so much more.

Plans start at just $2.95 per month, and they’re all backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

HostGator — Best Cloud Hosting for Small Businesses

HostGator is a pillar in the web hosting industry, known for providing reliable hosting with exceptional customer support. 

Powering more than two million websites worldwide, HostGator is a great option for small businesses that want to scale without having to change hosting providers down the road.

Many small business websites might not start with a ton of consistent traffic. But, if your operation grows like you’re hoping it should, that’s bound to change. 

Rather than scrambling to find a new web hosting solution, HostGator can grow with you as your traffic increases over time. That’s where HostGator’s cloud plans have the edge over basic shared hosting.

With HostGator Cloud, your site will be stored on and loaded from multiple virtual servers instead of sharing a single physical server with other sites. This means you can accommodate traffic surges without sacrificing speed or performance. It also helps HostGator meet their 99.9% uptime guarantee.

You have complete control over your cloud server resources and can change these on demand from HostGator’s intuitive dashboard. For example, adjust your hosting resource allocations to prepare for a big marketing campaign’s payoff.

HostGator Cloud plans start at $4.95 per month and come with a free SSL certificate, free domain for one year, and $200 in search engine marketing credits. They’re also backed by a 45-day money-back guarantee. 

How to Find the Best Web Hosting for Your Small Business

Every web hosting solution offers the same basic service: they provide a home for your website on servers, ensuring your site is available to anyone browsing the web. 

You’ll also find a significant overlap in the types of web hosting offered by each hosting service. Most offer shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting packages. While most small businesses can get away with shared hosting, it doesn’t mean you should just blindly commit to that option without examining others.

There are certain factors that you need to consider as you’re evaluating small business web hosting providers side-by-side, even if you’re picking from the options reviewed in this guide.

Below we’ll take a closer look at the buying criteria for small business hosting and how you can use this information to find the best web hosting for your small business. 

Performance Needs

Having a website is useless if people can’t access it. Websites with slow loading times and unexpected downtime can reflect poorly on your business and chase away customers. 

Make sure you choose a hosting provider that’s fast, secure, and reliable. But every service will promise that in vague terms on their website, so how do you know if they deliver what you need?

Hosting resources are usually described in terms of processing power, memory, storage, and monthly bandwidth or number of monthly visitors. As a small business website, the CPU cores you get don’t matter too much. To a lesser extent, neither does memory, as just about everyone provides enough on their entry-level plans.

You should pay attention to two key items to know if a hosting plan will deliver the performance you need: monthly visitors or bandwidth and storage. 

The former lets you know two things. One, what amount of traffic it can handle in a month and, two, if the provider will charge you for going over that limit. Judge that against your expectations of traffic for the first year your website is live.

The latter, storage, is key if you have product videos or a lot of images going onto your small business website. You don’t want to run out of storage space or bog down your site too much with large files that need to load for every visitor.

Also, look at uptime guarantees from providers. Many promise 99% uptime or better, but check the fine print for a service-level agreement that backs up that promise (and potentially compensates you if it isn’t met). 

Initial Setup and Ongoing Maintenance

What does it take to get your website live? This will look a little different for everyone. 

Some of you might be launching a brand new site from scratch. In this case, you’ll want to look for one-click installations, website builders, pre-built templates, and more. This is also a good opportunity to bundle domain registration with your web hosting plan so you can get everything from a single provider. 

Others might be switching web hosts, which means you’ll want to look for a hosting solution that offers migration services. The best hosts will do this for free with minimal or no downtime during the switch.

In both of these scenarios, you want to prioritize hassle-free maintenance. Small business owners don’t have time to be playing around on the backend of their web hosting service every day. It should be a set-it-and-forget-it solution. And keep an eye out for automated backups (including whether they’re done weekly or daily) as well as routine backend maintenance, such as automated WordPress and plugin updates.

Use-Case-Specific Needs

Some small business owners have unique needs that need to be addressed by a hosting provider. It all depends on the type of business you’re running and what you’re trying to get out of your website.

For example, maybe you’re planning to sell products on your small business site. In this case, you’ll need to use a web hosting provider that supports ecommerce functionality. Be mindful, too, of corresponding needs—not every host that supports ecommerce lets you easily sell services in the same way as regular products or lets you book appointments.

Or maybe you want to collect email addresses from your website visitors and integrate that with your CRM. For this situation, a WordPress-friendly hosting provider is likely the best option, as you can easily add plugins for this functionality.  

Support

Your web hosting provider should be available to help you 24/7/365. If you have a problem or question on a holiday or in the middle of the night, you ought to be able to connect with a real person ASAP.

Small business owners probably won’t be updating or making changes to their website during regular business hours—they have operations to run, employees to manage, and customers to deal with. Most of you will probably be doing work on your site during off hours. 

Look for a hosting provider that offers the full array of phone, live chat, email, and ticket support. You can also check out user reviews to see how long it takes on average to resolve problems and close tickets.

For those of you who want a little extra help, you can look for a managed web hosting solution. These will typically be a bit more expensive than an unmanaged plan, but everything is handled for you on the backend. This includes software updates, security patching, site backups, and more.

The Top Web Hosting for Small Businesses in Summary

Bluehost and Hostinger are the best web hosting providers for most small businesses. Bluehost is ideal if you’re starting a new WordPress site, and Hostinger is perfect for small business owners that want a plan that stays affordable for the long haul.

But other options have their virtues for other situations. Use DreamHost if you’re planning to sell online with WooCommerce. Check out HostGator if you want the scalability and power of cloud hosting without paying much more than other providers’ shared plans. For small businesses that value environmental stewardship, GreenGeeks has you covered. 

Source: quicksprout

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