Every small business needs a website, but finding the best small business web hosting package isn't always easy. Many plans are targeted primarily at home users, and don't have the power that businesses need.
Small business websites can't afford to fail – ever, so reliability is key. Choose a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or best dedicated server hosting plan, if you can afford it, to avoid the hassles of shared servers. Look for support that can be accessed at speed with telephone and live chat available, as well as emails and tickets. You'll probably want a plan that includes automated backups, too, but that's another area where you'll need to check the small print: backups are often an optional extra.
Think about an upgrade path, too, especially if you're looking to start with the best shared hosting plan. If your business grows then your website needs might also expand, and it will make your life much easier if your chosen host has the add-ons and extras to cope.
There's a lot to think about, but fortunately, you'll find plenty of the best web hosting solutions focused on exactly what small businesses need. In this article we've tested the best small business web hosting providers. After a rigorous review process, we've uncovered the services that offer something for every business user, from the smallest home business to demanding corporate users.
Best small business web hosting overall
Some small businesses might not want to pay for VPS or cloud hosting, or they just can't afford it, so in that case, shared hosting is a good and affordable choice.
Hostinger has been around for a long time and over the years it accumulated over 29 million customers. The company above all has very wallet-friendly plans, and these are a great choice for any newcomers.
Pricing starts at just $1.99 per month over four years. This plan is short on features - there's no free domain, you only get support for one website and one email address - but that could still be enough for the simplest plans.
If you're building a business or more demanding site, there are plenty of other options available for only a little more cash. For example, the "Business" plan supports up to 100 websites and 100 email addresses, adds ecommerce support, daily backups, and includes four times the system resources for the best possible speeds, yet it's still priced from only $3.99 a month.
Hostinger's VPS plans deliver even more power for high-traffic and performance-critical sites. They're reasonably priced, too, with plans ranging from $5.99 a month up to $21.99 for an 8 core, 32GB RAM, 8TB bandwidth setup. That's good, but HostGator doesn't offer dedicated hosting for even more heavyweight sites, so if you need the maximum possible performance then you might have to look elsewhere.
All in all, Hostinger is a capable provider with very cheap plans that can appeal to almost everyone. If you are not satisfied, the plans are also fully refundable for 30 days.
Read our Hostinger review
Best small business web hosting for speed
HostGator has a strong reputation as a web host for consumers and first-timers, but it has plenty to offer business users, too. Along with the value shared and website builder plans, there's speedy and reliable cloud hosting, a managed WordPress range, VPS products for users who need more control, and dedicated hosting for the most demanding and high-traffic sites.
Opting for a high-end plan typically gets you more speed and configurability, but there are plenty of other benefits, too. If you're planning to send a lot of outgoing marketing emails, for instance, some shared hosting plans can limit you to as little as 50 emails an hour; HostGator's VPS products have no limits at all
No hosting plan gives you everything you need, so it's good to see HostGator also offers business-friendly optional extras for more demanding sites. You can add the excellent CodeGuard backup service from only $2.75 a month, for instance; SiteLock protects you site from attack, and can detect and automatically remove malware; you can upgrade HostGator's free SSL to ecommerce or the most trusted EV certificates, and Google Workspace integration can equip your team members with Gmail addresses and easy collaboration via Google's powerful apps.
Read our HostGator review
Best small business web hosting on a budget
Shared hosting is slower and less reliable than VPS and dedicated plans, but it's still perfectly adequate for many websites, and the best plans cover all the core business needs.
DreamHost's shared hosting plan scores well on the fundamentals. There are no limits on bandwidth, emails or MySQL databases. Your site is secured by a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, and preinstalled WordPress allows you to get a quality site up and running in an afternoon.
Handy extras include the ability to host unlimited domains from a single account. And in a nice touch, DreamHost doesn't just offer a free domain name with each shared hosting plan (except the monthly plan): there's free privacy protection, too. If you've registered a domain without that, and been inundated with emails and phone calls from ‘website designers’ and assorted scammers, you'll know how valuable that can be.
It's a strong all-round package, but if you need more, DreamHost also offers everything from managed WordPress and WooCommerce, to VPS, dedicated and cloud hosting plans.
VPS Business plan is especially suited for small businesses as it was built for them according to DreamHost. You get unlimited everything except for storage (60GB). Since it's a VPS, you'll use your own server resources for unhindered performance and if the need arises, you can easily scale up the RAM.
Billing is flexible. You can sign up for monthly billing, or alternatively choose the three-year plan for the best discounts. Don't be put off by the longer term: DreamHost products are protected by an exceptional 97-day money-back guarantee, so there's plenty of time to test the service for yourself.
Read our DreamHost review
Best for easy setup and simpler website management
Most small business hosting products are focused on power and functionality above ease of use. That's not a problem if you know what you're doing, but small businesses don't always have the technical expertise to manage this kind of hosting, and it could take quite some time and effort to figure out how the service works.
With GoDaddy Business Hosting small businesses have another choice if they want to try something different than what's already mentioned. This is a hybrid product which aims to offer the dedicated resources and similar performance to Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting, with the simplified cPanel-style management of a shared hosting service.
GoDaddy's baseline Launch plan gives you 4GB RAM, two CPUs and 100GB of storage, for instance. These resources are solely for the use of your website, which should give you improved and more consistent website performance, no matter what's going on with other sites hosted on your server.
Restrictions elsewhere are kept to a minimum, with support for unlimited websites, databases and emails, and unmetered bandwidth. (‘Unmetered’ means there's no fixed limit, but GoDaddy reserves the right to complain if your site is hogging resources.)
There's a SSL certificate thrown into the mix, and GoDaddy has included a one-year, one-user subscription to Microsoft Office 365 Business Email.
Overall, the range is a little more expensive than some VPS products, but if you're looking for easy setup and simpler website management, GoDaddy could be worth a look.
Read our GoDaddy review
Best VPS hosting for small businesses
Basic shared, cloud and similar hosting plans are easy to use and can deliver good performance, but they also limit your control over the server environment. You can't choose to install Windows, for instance, or do anything else that would affect other websites hosted on the same server.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are isolated environments which you can tweak, adjust and customize however you like. As a bonus, you also get CPU time and RAM allocated just for you, improving both performance and stability.
For small businesses, we already mentioned DreamHost's VPS plan but Liquid Web's offer is more than deserving of a mention too.
Liquid Web's starter VPS product gives you two CPUs, 2GB RAM, 40GB SSD space, 100GB backup, and 10TB bandwidth, for instance, and is priced from $59 (£42) a month. If you choose the two-year plan, the price drops to $15 per month.
Some hosts have cheaper VPS plans, but that's often because specifications have been trimmed to the bare minimum. Liquid Web takes a more honest approach, with even the most basic plans including items that are often chargeable extras elsewhere. For example, that $59 gets you built-in backups, Gigabit transfers, unlimited sites, a dedicated IP address, CloudFlare CDN, DDoS protection, antivirus, antispam, cPanel/WHM or Plesk Onyx, and more.
All VPS plans are highly configurable, with Linux options including CentOS 6, CentOS 7, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04 and Debian 8, and high-level plans support Windows Server 2012 and 2016.
Whatever you're installing will include server management by default, which means Liquid Web will handle maintenance tasks such as operating system updates. Proactive system monitoring allows the company to detect and fix some problems before you even notice them, and speedy, responsive 24x7x365 support will help you with anything else.
Factor in the 100% uptime guarantee and generous service level agreements and Liquid Web has a lot of business hosting appeal.
Read our Liquid Web review
How we test the best small business web hosting services
Similar to how we test web hosting and website builder services, we dig through those services to find out which ones best suit small businesses.
This is done by identifying what a small business needs from a web hosting solution - anything from 24/7 customer support to custom shared hosting plans depending on the size of your small business.
We also test how reliable these services are and whether it's easy to use for beginners.
Lastly, budget is everything. If you're a small business that is looking to expand online, we are aware that you may not want to fork out a tone of money monthly to keep your site up and running. We choose web hosting solutions that give you more for your money.
