Choosing the best web hosting for your small business can help you save your time and money.
As a small business, you will essentially have to focus on utilizing the right resources including your web hosting plan. Picking the right web hosting plan will ensure fewer downtime issues, faster loading speeds and a secure website for your customers.
In this blog post, I am going to list down 5 web hosting providers who offer the best features and value for money for small businesses.
Quick Overview: 5 Best Web Hosting Plans for Your Small Business
Here is a quick overview before we jump into the details.
Below are the 5 best web hosting plans for small businesses.
We will compare and see each of them in detail in the coming sections.
What are the types of hosting plans available?
Before you choose a hosting plan for your small business, you need to know which are the types of hosting plans available in the market and which one suits your requirement.
Generally, there are 5 types of hosting plans available as below.
Shared Hosting
In a shared hosting plan, your website is normally hosted on a server that is shared between many other websites.
If you are just starting out on your small business, a shared hosting plan is the best. It is cheaper and serves the purpose.
But the only downside is, with a shared hosting plan, the resources will be limited. There will be limits on the monthly visitors to your website and your storage space.
But all these will not cause much issues if you are just building a static website for your small business in the beginning.
VPS Hosting
VPS stands for virtual private server. As the name says, websites hosted on VPS servers share one physical server but act like multiple, separate servers.
VPS servers provide a balanced solution between dedicated and shared hosting plans.
Dedicated Hosting
In dedicated hosting, your website will be hosted on a single server that is not shared between any other websites.
Dedicated hosting plans offer extreme flexibility and convenience. But they will be expensive than a normal shared hosting plan.
Cloud Hosting
In a cloud hosting set up, your website will be hosted on a network of multiple servers which altogether will look like one giant server.
A cloud hosting plan is more scalable and secure but at the same time a bit costlier than a shared hosting plan.
Managed WordPress Hosting
These are hosting plans specially designed for WordPress websites. They offer features like one-click WordPress install, daily backups, and timely WordPress updates.
Though some providers offer managed WordPress plans that are quite expensive, there are plans available which are suitable for small businesses expecting minimal traffic on their websites.
Which type of hosting plan is the best for a small business website?
Generally, for a small business, I would recommend going with a shared hosting plan. Or if you have a website that runs on WordPress, you can certainly pick an affordable managed WordPress hosting plan.
Shared Hosting vs. Managed WordPress Hosting
Shared Hosting
- Basic hosting plans where your server space will be shared with multiple other websites.
- The cheapest hosting option you can get.
- Cheaper prices often indicate mediocre performances in terms of speed and security.
- Features like automatic backups doesn’t come with these plans.
- Can host websites built on WordPress as well as other platforms.
- No performance enhancement features for WordPress sites.
Managed WordPress Hosting
- Hosting plans that offer WordPress-specific services and performance enhancements.
- Costs more than regular shared hosting plans.
- A higher price offers more faster and secure services for WordPress websites.
- Comes with automatic backups and restore options.
- Can host only WordPress websites and gets all WordPress updates automatically.
- Offers WordPress specific features like in-built caching and dedicated WordPress support.
If your small business needs only a static website (website with static content), then going with a WordPress website is the best option.
What is a static website?
A static website normally has fixed content and the same content will be shown to all visitors to the website. Static websites are suitable for portals that contain less amount of information. Static websites do not offer options like user log-in or user registration. For a small business, a static website will be apt if you only want to display your business information that is fixed.
Now here’s why a WordPress website is the preferred option if you only have static content.
- Less development cost. Buy a WordPress theme and get it customized by a developer.
- With some practice, you can update the content on your website by yourself. You don’t need the help of a developer all the time.
- Most managed WordPress plans are easy to use and offer excellent support options.
Basic Managed WordPress Hosting Plans for Small Businesses
| Feature | Siteground | Namecheap | Bluehost | A2 Hosting | Hostgator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $ 3.95 per month | $ 3.88 per month | $ 2.95 per month | $ 3.92 per month | $ 5.95 per month |
| Storage Space | 10 GB | 10 GB | 50 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Visitor Limit | 10,000 monthly | 50,000 monthly | Unlimited | Unlimited | 100,000 monthly |
| Data Backup | Daily auto-backup | One-click backup | Limited auto-backup | No auto-backup | Daily auto-backup |
| Free SSL Certificate | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Customer Support | 24x7 Support through phone, chat & tickets. | 24x7 Support through chat & tickets. | 24x7 Support through chat & calls. | 24x7 Support through phone, chat & tickets. | 24x7 Support through chat & calls. |
| Free Website Transfer | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Major Pros | Speed, Security & Support | Speed, Price, User-friendliness | Price, Free domain name, Storage space | Storage space, Free SSL, Free transfer | Speed, Security, Free transfer |
| Major Cons | Limited storage space | No cPanel | Poor loading speed | No auto-backups in basic plan | Slow support |
What are the factors to consider when you buy a web hosting plan for your small business?
Your hosting plan can decide the speed, uptime, security and even bounce rate of your website.
This isn’t complex, but here a few things to keep in mind when you get a web hosting plan for your small business website.
Storage space
Get an idea about the storage space that comes with a hosting plan before making a purchase. Basic plans will normally offer less storage space. If you are building only a static 4-page website, these basic plans will be good enough for your small business. Providers like SiteGround offer 10 GB storage space on their basic plan.
Visitor limit
Some web hosting plans come with a visitor limit. This will limit the maximum number of visitors to your website in a month. Make sure you are aware of this feature before buying any plan. If you are expecting a large number of visitors in a month, you might want to pick a plan that best suits your requirement.
Speed
If your hosting plan doesn’t load websites fast, it is literally going to affect your business performance. A slow loading website will increase bounce rate, reduce dwell time and perform poorly on search engines.
Security
If your website isn’t hosted in a secure environment, there are chances of it getting attacked. Even if one of the websites in a shared hosting environment is under attack, it can pose a threat to all other websites hosted there. So make sure your web hosting plan is secure enough.
Price
Price is a major factor when it comes to small businesses. If you are just starting out and need only a basic website, go for a small plan. But if your business is something that relies a lot on the web, maybe you want to go for a bigger plan.
Support
Your hosting provider’s customer support team should be able to provide timely solutions according to your request. This is critically important for any provider you choose. Most providers offer support through phone, chat, and tickets.
5 Best web hosting plans for your small business
Here is the list of 5 best web hosting plans for your small business and their features in detail.
#1 SiteGround
Siteground is my personal favourite. I have been using it for almost a year after switching from GoDaddy due to loading time and security issues.
Siteground offers hosting plans that are fast and super secure. They also have an excellent support team available over chat, tickets and phone.
For a small business, I would suggest going with their managed WordPress plans which are secure and affordable.
Below are the 3 types of managed WordPress plans offered by Siteground.
StartUp Plan
- $3.95 per month
- 1 Website
- 10 GB Web Space
- ~ 10,000 Visits Monthly
- Free WP Install
- WP auto updates
- Free SSL
- Free daily backup
- Free CDN & email
GrowBig Plan
- $5.95 per month
- Unlimited Website
- 20 GB Web Space
- ~ 25,000 Visits Monthly
- Free website transfer
- Inbuilt caching
- On-demand backup
- 1-click staging
- Plus all features from StartUp Plan
GoGeek Plan
- $11.95 per month
- Unlimited Websites
- 30 GB Web Space
- ~ 100,000 Visits Monthly
- Advanced priority WP support
- More server power
- PCI compliant servers
- Pre-installed Git for WordPress
- Plus all features from GrowBig Plan
Out of all the above plans, the GrowBig one is the best. It comes on an affordable price tag with great features like free website transfer, in-built caching, on-demand backup, and one-click staging along with all other managed WordPress features.
Though this plan costs a bit more than the Startup Plan, it is a great investment if you plan to host multiple websites in the future.
If you only need a basic website with mostly static content, you can go with their basic plan (startup plan) that start at $ 3.95 per month.
#2 A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is another web hosting provider that offers affordable plans suitable for small businesses.
They have normal shared hosting plans and WordPress hosting plans that start from $ 3.92 per month.
But when it comes to WordPress hosting, they offer two types of plans, which are shared plans and managed plans. Both the plans are different in their features and the managed plans offer more WordPress specific features at a premium price.
A2 hosting promises faster page loads, free SSL and free website transfer by their experts.
For small businesses, I would recommend going with their shared WordPress plans that offer attractive features at a reasonable price.
Below are the 3 shared WordPress hosting plans offered by A2 Hosting.
Lite
- $2.96 per month
- 1 Website
- 5 Databases
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Transfer
- cPanel Control Panel
- Free SSL & SSD
- Free & Easy Site Transfer
- Anytime Money Back Guarantee
Swift
- $3.70 per month
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Databases
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Transfer
- cPanel Control Panel
- Free SSL & SSD
- Free & Easy Site Transfer
- Anytime Money Back Guarantee
Turbo
- $7.03 per month
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Databases & Storage
- Unlimited Transfer
- cPanel Control Panel
- Free SSL & SSD, Free Site Transfer
- Turbo (Up To 20X Faster)
- A2 Site Accelerator
- Anytime Money Back Guarantee
#3 Namecheap
NameCheap is one provider that is known for domain names. But now they have come up with some really affordable hosting plans suitable for small businesses.
Their new array of managed WordPress hosting plans is called Easy WP. It is fast, easy to set up and offers all essential managed WordPress features on a really affordable price tag.
Easy WP hosting plans start at an attractive price tag of $ 3.88 per month or $ 22.88 per year.
All Easy WP plans come with the below features.
- 1x WordPress website installed
- Powered by Namecheap Cloud
- Easy Backups and Restores
- SFTP & Database Access
- Temporary EasyWP free domain
- Support for Namecheap domains
- 30-days money back guarantee
- 24/7 Support
And here are the different managed WordPress (Easy WP) hosting plans available from NameCheap.
Easy WP Starter
- $3.88 per month
- 10GB SSD storage
- 50K visitors/month
- 1x WordPress website installed and ready to go
- Powered by Namecheap Cloud
- Easy Backups and Restores
- SFTP & Database Access
- 30-days money back guarantee
- 24/7 Namecheap Support
Easy WP Turbo
- $7.88 per month
- 50GB SSD storage
- 200K visitors/month
- 1x WordPress website installed and ready to go
- Powered by Namecheap Cloud
- Easy Backups and Restores
- SFTP & Database Access
- 30-days money back guarantee
- 24/7 Namecheap Support
Easy WP Supersonic
- $11.88 per month
- 100GB SSD storage
- 500K visitors/month
- 1x WordPress website installed and ready to go
- Powered by Namecheap Cloud
- Easy Backups and Restores
- SFTP & Database Access
- 30-days money back guarantee
- 24/7 Namecheap Support
Note: When you buy any managed WordPress hosting plan, make sure you are well aware of the features included. Some providers do not offer a cPanel along with your plan. In such cases, you can access your website files using SFTP.
#4 Bluehost
Bluehost is one hosting provider recommended by many pro-bloggers and website experts around the world.
BlueHost has been in the market for quite a while and is recommended by wordpress.org on their official website along with SiteGround.
BlueHost plans come with attractive features like free domain name (for 1st year), free SSL certificate, 1-click WordPress install, 24/7 support etc.
Their basic plan comes at an affordable price tag of $ 3.95 per month, which does a decent job for small business websites.
Here are various plans and the features offered by BlueHost.
Basic
- $3.95 per month
- 1 Website
- Free SSL Certificate
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- 5 Parked Domains
- 25 Subdomains
- $50 Marketing Credit
Plus
- $5.45 per month
- Unlimited Websites
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unmetered SSD Storage
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- Unlimited Parked Domains
- Unlimited Subdomains
- $100 Marketing Credit
- 1 Office 365 Mailbox – Free 30 Days
Choice Plus
- $5.45 per month
- Unlimited Websites
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unmetered SSD Storage
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- Unlimited Parked Domains
- Unlimited Subdomains
- $200 Marketing Credit
- CodeGuard Basic Backup
- 1 Office 365 Mailbox – Free 30 Days
#5 HostGator
HostGator is another hosting services provider that I would like to recommend. They offer various web hosting plans that are suitable for small businesses.
Their shared hosting plans and WordPress hosting plans are a bit different in their pricing and features.
Their shared hosting plans start at an attractive price tag of $ 2.75 per month. This plan is called Hatchling Plan on their website.
Whereas if you want to go for a managed WordPress hosting plan from HostGator, the pricing starts at $ 5.95 per month.
Now, both these starting plans are a little different in their features.
A small comparison and links to more details are given in the table below.
Hatchling Plan
- $2.75 per month
- Single Domain
- One Click Installs
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Free SSL Certificate
WordPress Hosting - Starter Plan
- $5.95 per month
- 1 Site
- 100k Visits Per Month
- 1GB Backups
- Free SSL Certificate
Final Verdict
Now, these are the top 5 hosting providers you can consider for your small business website.
And among the top 5, I personally use SiteGround’s Grow Big plan which starts at $5.95 per month. This plan has all the essential managed WordPress features and will also allow you to host multiple websites. I find SiteGround to be a reliable provider because of their speed, security and support options.
Alternatively, if you only want a very basic plan, you can go ahead with any of the 5 providers that I have mentioned above. A managed WordPress hosting is any day a better option if you have a website that runs on WordPress.
Feel free to check out the above-given tables and compare the features and prices before you zero-in on any of the hosting providers.
Have any queries or feedback?
Let me know in the comments.
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