Best Website Hosting for Small Business Needs – Top 10 Hosts Compared for 2023

Aleksandar Stevanovic

Aleksandar Stevanovic

Software Reviews Expert

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Alex is a Senior Software Content Writer at Techopedia. He focuses on creating reader-oriented comparison pages, reviews, research pieces, and editorials. With nearly a decade…

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| Fact Checked by Michael Simon

Michael Simon

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Michael is a Tech Content Editor at Techopedia, who is passionate about delivering high-quality tech content online and ensuring the accuracy of our content. With…

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Last updated: 13 September, 2023

The best website hosting solution for a small business should be affordable while simultaneously providing you with all the tools, apps, and plugins you need to build and manage your website.

In this guide, we’ve reviewed the top 10 best hosting options for small business websites, looking at their hosting plans, features, security, and server speed, among other key aspects, to help you make an informed decision and choose the best website hosting provider for your small business.

The 10 Best Small Business Web Hosts Ranked

Here’s our complete list of the best website hosting services for small businesses, together with their most remarkable features and the advantages they offer over their competitors:

1. DreamHost — $2.95/month — The best small business website hosting solution in 2023, with unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL, and a free domain name.
2. BlueHost — $4.95/month — Leading hosting solution for online stores and WordPress websites, with hundreds of customizable themes, daily website backups, and free malware scanning.
3. InMotion — $2.29/month — Fast and reliable hosting, with a full suite of security tools to ensure your website is 100% protected from hackers, malware, and DDoS attacks.
4. Liquid Web — $17.50/month — A fully managed hosting solution, ideal for migrating existing WordPress websites to faster, more reliable, more secure servers.
5. A2 Hosting — $2.99/month — Flexible hosting solution with Turbo Servers for up to 20x faster site loading.
6. InterServer — $2.50/month — A super-affordable small business web hosting solution with unlimited bandwidth and storage, iron-clad security, and one-click installs for over 450+ cloud apps.
7. IONOS — $1/month — The best website and email hosting for small businesses on a tight budget, with unlimited storage, free SSL, and a free domain name for an entire year.
8. HostArmada — $2.49/month — Lightning-fast site loading speeds, superb security, and professional help installing apps and plugins to get your website ready for launch.
9. NameCheap — $1.48/month — Reliable shared hosting with a unified dashboard to manage all your websites in one place.
10. HostPapa — $2.95/month — A decent option for small businesses looking to build a new WordPress site from the ground up. Comes with free WP installation, as well as one-click installs for over 400 apps and plugins.

Which Hosting Package is Best for Small Businesses?

There are many different hosting packages, from shared hosting and VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting to dedicated hosting. Which one is the best fit for your business depends on your industry and the size and content architecture of your website.

On the other hand, if you’re migrating an existing website, you can also opt for shared hosting, but you have to pay closer attention to what’s included in the package.

Ideally, you want one with free website migration, one-click installation for all your plugins, enough storage to store all your content assets, and unlimited bandwidth so you don’t have to worry about the website slowing down due to increased traffic.

What’s also worth noting is that there are separate hosting solutions for online stores – ecommerce websites – which can significantly differ from one provider to the next.

Still, they’re a much better option for ecommerce than regular hosting solutions since they’re optimized for Shopify and WooCommerce and offer native integration with a wide variety of crucial apps you’ll need to run your business.

You should also keep in mind any industry-specific rules, regulations, and policies your business must abide by. For example, a healthcare website must adhere to HIPAA compliance rules regarding the protection, backup, and storage of patient data, which often necessitates a custom hosting solution on a dedicated server.

How Much Bandwidth and Storage Does a Small Business Need?

Bandwidth and storage requirements are directly tied to the amount of monthly traffic your website receives and the content on the site.

If you’re looking for an affordable option, we’d recommend getting at least 10 Gb of bandwidth, which should support 20,000+ monthly visits. As for storage, 5 Gb should suffice for a static website with limited content, but if you’re running a blog on your site, your best bet is a plan with 100 Gb or more of SSD storage.

What’s also worth considering is whether the hosting plan is easy to scale. As your business grows, the available resources on your plan may be too limited. It’s always a good idea to opt for a hosting provider that lets you upgrade your subscription and access more resources if you need them.

Are There Any Hidden Costs a Small Business Should Know About?

There are many hidden costs when it comes to website hosting – so if you don’t carefully read the offer before accepting it, you may end up paying much more than you initially thought.

Everyone uses marketing tricks to get you to sign up for their service, and hosting companies are no different. The most common one is a discount for a certain period, after which you’ll be charged full price for the service.

 

So, while you may think that $1/month is a great deal, you might find yourself paying $14/month after the first six months, once the introductory offer expires.

Other extra costs often come from domain name registration, email hosting, and website builders. Some hosting providers offer these for free with their higher-tier subscription plans, but some only provide them as add-ons.

So, if you don’t carefully review what’s included in your package, you may end up paying extra for domain name registration and other key services that are crucial for setting up and launching your website.

Because of this, we recommend comparing the features available on different plans before you make your final decision. You might just find that the higher-priced subscription tiers are actually more cost-effective when you add up the cost of services you wouldn’t have access to on cheaper tiers.

The Best Small Business Website Hosting Services Compared

Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of the best web hosting sites for small businesses so you can get a better idea of what you can expect to get for your money from each of the top 10 providers:

Reviews of the Top Small Business Web Site Hosting Providers

Here are in-depth reviews of the best website hosting services for small businesses so you can see exactly what different providers offer and make an informed decision:

1. DreamHost — Best Small Business Website Hosting Solution

DreamHost is a flexible web hosting solution for businesses of all sizes, with customization options to match your business goals and niche. It offers a fully customizable control panel that’s intuitive and easy to use, a range of professional WordPress templates, and a full suite of tools to help you succeed.

The platform’s shared hosting plan offers an affordable, entry-level price for all new sites, including WordPress sites, and equips you with all the tools you need to get to your target audience. This includes a free domain, unlimited traffic support, a WP website builder, fast SSD storage, and a free SSL certificate.

Regardless of whether you’re running an ecommerce store, a small business website, or a blog to promote your services, DreamHost provides you with unlimited storage and easy account administration, so you can fully customize every aspect of your website and easily upscale your account as your business grows and expands.

Other reasons to opt for DreamHost are its fully optimized servers with a 100% uptime guarantee, advanced resource protection, and 24/7 access to in-house experts with decades of experience, who will help you resolve issues as quickly as possible.

In addition to website hosting, DreamHost offers full web design and development services alongside site management and SEO marketing to ensure you receive all the qualified monthly visitors you can handle.

With over two decades of experience in the industry and millions of satisfied customers, DreamHost remains the number one website hosting solution on the market.

2. BlueHost — Leading Hosting Solution for Online Stores and WordPress Websites

BlueHost is a popular WordPress hosting solution that offers a host of features and useful resources to help you turn your small business website from a dream into a reality.

There are four different pricing plans for the Shared Hosting option, all of which come with a free CDN (a Content Delivery Network), free SSL, custom WP themes, daily website backups, and free malware scanning.

What’s fairly unusual about BlueHost is that it allows you to host multiple websites on a single subscription. With the cheapest plan, you’ll be able to host two websites – which might be handy if you want to host your online store on one domain and your blog on another, for example.

To help you set up an online store, BlueHost offers a full walkthrough for the entire creation process so you can fully customize your website and sell anything from physical goods to consultation services to customers all over the world.

You’ll also be able to offer discounts and special promotions, see exactly what your website visitors are interested in, design custom account pages for your customers, and optimize every page of your site to ensure you rank at the top of Google search results pages.

If you’re looking for a more traditional WordPress website, you’ll be happy to learn there are hundreds of professional WP themes at your disposal.

You’ll also get a free onboarding session – so you can immediately start fine-tuning your website – as well as access to BlueHost’s WordPress Academy, which offers hundreds of tutorial videos so you can customize every aspect of your website.

And if you don’t want to do it yourself, you can always outsource website building to BlueHost’s team of experts and get your site up and running with zero stress.

To top it all off, BlueHost offers 24/7 hosting support via Live Chat or phone, so you’ll always have access to an experienced professional who can answer any question and quickly resolve any problem you might experience.

3. InMotion — Fast and Reliable Hosting with a Full Security Suite

InMotion offers a variety of hosting options, so you’ll have no trouble finding a plan that perfectly fits your industry and your website vision.

With over two decades of web hosting experience, InMotion is among the most reliable providers, offering a full security suite to ensure your website is up and running at all times and safe from hackers, malware, and DDoS attacks.

In addition to reliability and iron-clad security, InMotion offers superb server speed, ensuring your website has lightning-fast loading. If you opt for one of the higher-tier plans, your website will be hosted on UltraStack servers.

These feature advanced layered caching and are fully optimized for speed, so they’re up to 20x faster than regular hosting servers.

Another reason to opt for InMotion is how easy it is to use. You get a custom Control Panel to handle every aspect of your website, as well as access to an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, so you can quickly add elements while picking from the numerous website themes at your disposal.

Of course, you can also edit text, images, and videos so you can ensure your website is fully optimized for both desktop and mobile.

InMotion also gives you access to a variety of back-end tools with its Hosting Plus feature, which includes SSH (Secure Shell) access, Python, Node.JS, Ruby, and GIT version control, and more.

You’ll also get a free SSL certificate, ten professional business email addresses at your domain, a full set of tools for ecommerce support, and 24/7 live chat support for all your questions.

4. Liquid Web — Fully Managed Hosting Solution, Ideal for Migrating Existing Sites

Liquid Web is an experienced hosting provider, offering a variety of fully managed website hosting solutions, as well as custom-tailored options to help you reach your business goals faster.

It’s a great option if you already have a WordPress website and want to migrate it to a fast and reliable hosting provider. The migration is completely free, and everything is handled by Liquid Web’s team of professionals, so it’s stress-free.

Its WP hosting servers are optimized for speed, thanks to efficient image compression, object caching, and global content delivery to ensure that your site loads almost instantly and that your users remain satisfied.

What’s great about Liquid Web is the fact that their highly technical staff proactively monitor server performance. This means that the vast majority of issues are detected and resolved before they can cause any disruptions or website downtime.

In addition to WP hosting, another great option for small businesses is VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting, which lets you pick and choose the memory and CPU combinations and resources dedicated to your website. This makes it super cost-efficient and easy to scale as your business grows.

This service lets you host unlimited websites on the VPS and comes with an integrated firewall, DDoS protection, ServerSecure Advanced Security, root access, and a dedicated IP address.

The best part about Liquid Web is that it’s completely risk-free. You can try it in practice for 30 days and get a full refund if you’re not satisfied with the service. Moreover, there are no contracts, so you’re free to upscale, downscale, or cancel your subscription at any time.

5. A2 Hosting — Flexible Hosting Solution With Turbo Servers for Lightning-Fast Site Loading

A2 Hosting is a super-flexible solution, offering over 15 different types of hosting packages for various types of businesses, with all the necessary tools you need to get your business off the ground and start generating profit.

What’s special about A2 hosting is that all of their WordPress installs are pre-configured to ensure the best site speed and superb security, thanks to the proprietary A2 Optimized plugin.

The plugin helps with compressing images, caching, and optimizing your CSS, JS, and HTML on your hosting account. The end result is a super-fast website with reduced render and load times and improved overall site performance.

An advantage of A2 Hosting over its competitors is the Turbo Server architecture, which allows for 20x faster site speed than regular hosting servers and is a great option for websites with a ton of content and assets.

In addition to lightning-fast performance, A2 Hosting provides industry-leading security, automated daily site backups, and expert 24/7 support.

One thing worth noting is that if you want to build a new website from scratch, you’d have to pay an extra $2.99/month for the A2 Website Builder. Moreover, it’s only available on Shared Hosting plans, with strict limits regarding the number of pages and templates you can access on every plan save for the most expensive one.

6. InterServer — Super-Affordable Small Business Web Hosting and Email Solution

InterServer is a great entry-level option, with fast and reliable Shared Hosting plans starting from as little as $2.50/month. It’s one of the best cheap web hosting for small businesses, considering the value you get even with the starter plan.

The value you get for your money with InterServer is incredible, given the fact that you’ll have unlimited storage, unlimited business email accounts, a free SSL certificate, and complete access to an intuitive website builder.

This hosting provider also includes InterShield for free with each plan – it’s an in-house security solution that uses data from thousands of servers to prevent website attacks before they even start. It also automatically scans for viruses and malware, ensuring your website is 100% secure.

With the InterServer hosting solutions, you’ll also have access to over 450 cloud apps that you can install with a single click. These include everything from blogging plugins and social networking apps to CMS platforms, frameworks, and a wide variety of ecommerce apps.

The one drawback of InterServer is that it doesn’t offer a free domain name. If you want to register or transfer your existing domain, you’ll have to set aside an additional $7.99 on top of what you’re paying monthly for the hosting.

7. IONOS — Best Website and Email Hosting Service for Small Businesses With Tight Budgets

IONOS is a super-affordable hosting solution for small businesses that are just getting started and want to get their website off the ground. With one of their best-selling plans, you can host an unlimited number of websites for just $1/month for the first six months.

If you opt for the Plus plan, you also get unlimited storage, enhanced CPU and memory resources, a free SSL certificate, free mail, and a free domain name for a whole year. You’ll also enjoy daily website backup and recovery and will have access to technical support 24/7 for any questions and troubleshooting.

Additionally, all plans come with a wide array of apps and plugins you can install with a single click, so your website will be up and running in no time.

And if you don’t want to bother with the technical side of running your WP website, you can always opt for a managed WordPress service.

You get to choose between dozens of templates and fully customize the look of your website, but the IONOS team will handle all the admin and backend tasks, ensuring that your website performs optimally at all times for as little as $1/month.

On top of hosting, IONOS also offers a variety of other useful services, including email hosting, a website design service, an online store builder, and social media advertising.

8. HostArmada — Lightning-Fast Site Loading and Professional Help to Prep Your Website for Launch

HostArmada is a cloud hosting provider that offers superb reliability and uptime thanks to its cloud technology. This server architecture allows for effortless upscaling in case you need more resources down the line, with zero website downtime or loss of data.

All of HostArmada’s servers are meticulously optimized for loading speed, and the company offers on-demand, dedicated website optimization to ensure that your website loads as fast as possible, regardless of how complex or content-rich it might be.

All hosting plans include a free SSL certificate, free website migration, unlimited databases, email accounts, subdomains, and a variety of features to ensure your website is ready for launch.

The experts at HostArmada will help you install apps and plugins, as well as customize and upgrade your website with an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder.

Regardless of which plan you choose, you’ll also enjoy regular free malware scans and automatic malware removal, and your websites will be protected by both WAF (Web Application Firewall) and an IP Firewall, ensuring they’re safe against hackers, DDoS, and other cyber attacks.

Another great thing about HostArmada is the fact that it has data centers spread all over the globe, so the site loading speed will be lightning-fast whether someone’s visiting from the US, Europe, Asia, or Australia.

9. NameCheap — Reliable Shared Hosting With a Unified Dashboard to Manage Your Sites

NameCheap is another great option if you’re looking for an affordable hosting option for multiple small websites. The shared hosting options include a free website builder and a professional email service, and you can host the sites with a CMS (Content Management System) of your choice.

If you opt for WordPress hosting, you’ll be able to host a single website, but the advantage of this option is that you’ll be able to scale your resources at any time as your website starts getting more monthly visitors.

An added benefit of WP hosting is that you’ll have access to an easy-to-use website builder and hundreds of professional WP themes and plugins, so you’ll be able to spruce up your website and turn it into a revenue-generating machine.

What’s also great about NameCheap is that you can manage all your websites from a single dashboard, which saves valuable time and makes it easy to keep everything organized.

NameCheap performs manual site backups twice a week, with the addition of automatic daily backups if you opt for one of the higher-tier subscriptions.

10. HostPapa — Decent Option For Small Businesses Looking to Build a New WordPress Site

HostPapa is a solid option if you’re looking to build a WordPress website from the ground up and get it ready for launch as soon as possible.

Their hosting plans include a straightforward website builder, access to hundreds of WP themes, one-click installs for over 400 apps and other essential small business tools, and free setup and domain name.

All hosting plans include free WordPress installation and update, a Softaculous installer for all your apps and plugins, a free SSL certificate, and 24/7 professional support.

You’ll also have access to an easy-to-use cPanel control panel and a customized HostPapa dashboard, so you’ll be able to effortlessly manage every aspect of your website.

If you opt for the Pro or Ultra pricing plans, your website will be hosted on low-density, premium servers, so you’ll enjoy lightning-fast loading times regardless of how many website visitors you have.

You’ll also get a website staging area to test new plugins, updates, and features before pushing them to the live site to ensure everything works properly. These plans also include automated daily backups up to 5 Gb, full domain privacy, enterprise-level security, and a fully managed Web Application Firewall.

Key Factors to Consider When Comparing Business Web Hosts

Hosting service providers typically offer half a dozen hosting solutions, ranging from shared and WP hosting to VPS and dedicated hosting.

For example, the best web hosting for a small ecommerce business won’t be the same as the best website and email hosting solution for a company offering consultancy services.

On top of that, you’ll typically have the option of choosing between ten or more different pricing plans, so you should carefully consider all the key factors before making your final decision.

Here’s a quick rundown of the most important factors you should keep in mind when choosing the best website hosting service for your small business:

• Bandwidth and storage — Ideally, you’d want a hosting service that doesn’t limit the amount of monthly traffic or the SSD storage for your website. This means you won’t have to worry about upscaling and paying extra for the service as your business grows and you start attracting more website visitors.
• Server speed — Server speed is crucial since it directly impacts how fast your website will load. For more complex sites with a ton of content, videos, gifs, and other advanced elements, it’s best to opt for a higher-tier pricing plan that ensures your website will be hosted on servers fully optimized for speed.
• Security — Website security is another area you can’t afford to skimp on. Choose a provider that offers a free SSL certificate, regularly checks for and removes malware, and offers protection against hacking, DDoS attacks, and other cyber threats.
• Professional business email — You should always have an address that ends with your domain name to help build trust with your audience and instill confidence in potential partners. Opt for a hosting provider that lets you generate addresses for your entire team.
• Website builder — Even if you already have a website and simply want to migrate it, it’s always a good idea to have access to an easy-to-use website builder. This allows you to expand and add new pages to the site and easily fine-tune, rearrange, or replace existing ones.
• Website staging area — The staging area is crucial for businesses that want to experiment with apps and plugins or want to occasionally update the site’s architecture. It allows you to apply the changes and see them in practice without disrupting your actual live website, so you can make sure everything works and looks good before you push to live.
• Pricing plans — We’ve mentioned this already, but we can’t stress this enough — compare different pricing plans and make sure the one you end up choosing includes all the key features you’ll need. Compare similar plans from different providers and opt for the one that’s the most cost-effective.

Should a Small Business Opt for a Free Web Host?

There are quite a few “free” web hosting services on the market, but you’re probably aware that free services often come at a cost. After all, building and maintaining servers for web hosting costs a ton of money, and these providers need to make a profit somehow, or they’ll go out of business.

They mostly do it by displaying advertisements on your website and limiting your bandwidth and access to crucial features so you’d have no option but to eventually give in and upscale to one of their paid plans.

So, while you might be tempted to opt for a free web hosting solution due to your tight budget, you should be aware that this is almost never a better option.

With premium plans starting from as little as $1/month, there’s really no reason to stunt your business’ growth by opting for a watered-down free plan that severely limits your monthly traffic and storage or causes website downtime.

Best Website Hosting Guides

If you want to learn more about website hosting, feel free to check out our other guides:

• Cheapest Website Hosting
• Best WordPress Hosting Providers
• Top VPS Hosting Services
• Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers Compared
• Best Australian Website Hosting Companies
• Best Hosting Services in the UK

Conclusion – What Service Offers the Best Website Hosting for Small Business?

Our reviews have hopefully helped you narrow down your options and enabled you to better understand the differences between the best hosting sites for small businesses so you can make an informed purchase decision.

If you’re still on the fence, we recommend DreamHost as the overall best solution for small businesses, as it offers unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans, lets you fully customize all elements of your website, gives you access to all the apps, and plugins you need, and guarantees 100% uptime.

The best thing about DreamHost is that it also offers a 97-day money-back guarantee, so you’ll have more than enough time to test out the service before deciding whether you want to commit to a monthly or yearly payment plan or switch to a different provider.

Small Business Hosting FAQs

Aleksandar Stevanovic

• 

Aleksandar Stevanovic

Alex is a Senior Software Content Writer at Techopedia. He focuses on creating reader-oriented comparison pages, reviews, research pieces, and editorials. With nearly a decade of experience, he’s written for numerous leading brands across various niches, such as The Tech Report, Bitcoincasinos.com, CEX.IO, Forbes, Business2Community, and many more. His expertise in cybersecurity has made him a popular authority on privacy tools such as VPNs, password managers, blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and antivirus software. You'll find Alex working on cars, playing guitar, and cooking fantastic food in his spare time. You can reach Alex on Twitter: @stevanovic_alex

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