A website is a must today for all businesses. There are a number of purchases occurring over the internet and if you do not a website, you are missing out on a lot of things.
A small business has a constraint on resources when compared to the large business organisations. They have to effectively manage everything and strike a balance between profitability and revenue.
That is definitely not easy and we understand the requirements of a small business. Therefore, we suggest 4 best web hosting for small businesses. Rest assured, we have compared them on 5 crucial parameters before announcing the best.
Table of Contents
What is web hosting ?
A web hosting is required to park your website on the internet. It is a storage place which stores all the relevant files, folders, data, structures related to your website. It is where your website lives. To have a great website, you will need a good host.
We analysed the performance and compared them amongst each other to determine the best among these 4 web hosting companies
Certain parameters that we considered while analysing the web hosting companies are:
- Plan Features
- Cost (Price per Month)
- Up-Time
- Load Time
- Customer Support
Best Web Hosting For Small Business
All the 4 web hosts are good and have their own features which makes them stand out. A web host, cheap on prices and the other providing a ton of features for free but a relatively higher price. After a detailed analysis we rank the 4 Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses as follows:
- Bluehost – The fastest load time of 410ms with amazing plan features starting from $3.95 per month and a good customer support. It is recommended by WordPress.org for WordPress sites.
- Hostinger – Offers the cheapest price for plans starting $0.99 per month, the 2nd fastest load time of 420ms and a multi-lingual customer support. A free domain with Premium & Business plans.
- SiteGround – Amazing plan features starting from $6.99 per month with a good and quick customer support. Speed of 650 ms and an uptime of 99.99% backed with guarantee.
- HostGator – Amazing features and a 45 day money back guarantee with plans starting from $2.75 per month.
A detailed explanation of the web host provider with the recommendation is given below.
Bluehost
One of the best & most commonly used web host. It offers simple hosting solutions, perfect for small businesses.
The best part of Bluehost is that they offer plans and features that support the growth and expansion of a small business. This is what makes the offerings of Bluehost as the most desirable for small businesses.
A ton of marketing features at a reasonable cost, enables excellent website performance, helps build traffic and disperse content on social media platforms makes Bluehost the #1 Choice or The Best Web Hosting for Small Business.
Bluehost Hosting Plans
Bluehost offers a number of hosting plans to meet your requirements. The hosting plans offered are as follows;
- Shared Hosting – $3.95 to $13.95
- VPS Hosting – $19.99 to $59.99
- Dedicated Hosting – $79.99 to $119.99
- WP Pro – $19.95 to $49.95
- eCommerce – $6.95 to $12.95
*All prices are on per month basis.
If you are starting a fresh or you are a small business or a mid sized business, these plans are good enough to handle your requirements.
Bluehost Features
Bluehost offers some of the striking features that can help your small business website in multiple ways. All you need to get started and grow is facilitated by these features it offers.
Some of the vital Bluehost plan features that makes it stand out are;
- Storage : 50 GB to Unlimited
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Free Domain (Selected Plans)
- Free SSL Certificate
- Email Accounts
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
- Marketing Credits (Worth $200)
- Marketing Center (Monitors all traffic, social media, blog traffic etc)
- Bluehost SEO Tools
- Free Site Backup (Selected Plans)
These plan features make Bluehost as the best web host for small business.
The high storage space and bandwidth helps you create as much you want for your visitors and can handle any amount of traffic. Free SSL certificate is of utmost importance from the SEO and Data Security standpoint.
The free domain is worth at-least $15.99. Free email accounts are what you need most to communicate with your customers as a business. It gives you that professional feel and experience.
All the plans also have Marketing Credits, that is you would receive $100 for Microsoft Advertising and $100 for Google Ads when you spend your first $25 on a new Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads account.
It also one of the best platforms for WordPress websites, have easy built in tools for marketing and probably the fastest load time.
Up Time
You definitely want your website to be accessible all the time to your visitors. Therefore, up time measures how long was your website live and accessible on the internet for your visitors.
Bluehost has an amazing up time 99.99%. However, they do not have any policy that guarantees any up time nor do they offer any compensation for down time.
Load Time
Research shows that 53% of visitors would leave the page if the load time of the page is not within 3 seconds.
Bluehost has an amazing load time statistic. A fast loading page does hold the interest of the visitor. The average load time is about 410ms which is very quick.
Customer Support
Bluehost customer support is quick and easy to connect with. They are available 24 x 7 and you can contact them over
- Phone
- Live Chat
- Ticket
- Knowledge Base
You can expect a quick response and almost majority questions answered in knowledge base.
You can use our coupons and avail discounts and benefits on Bluehost web hosting and domains.
Bluehost Coupon
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Hostinger
As one of the cheapest hosting provider, Hostinger has user base is 29+ Million people.
Hostinger is simply outstanding when it comes to pricing. No close competition. Including the up sells, their prices are lower than the competition. The basic plan of SiteGround is almost the starting price of Hostinger Cloud Hosting.
What performance level can you expect in such dirt low prices? Well, turns out to be the opposite.
Hostinger is amazing in performance too. The difference between Hostinger and Bluehost is of just 10 milliseconds, that is less than a blink of an eye.
Hostinger Hosting Plans
Hostinger offers a number of plans to meet the requirements of its customers. If you are a small business, then you will most likely find the best priced plan with amazing features to meet your needs.
Hosting plans offered by Hsotinger;
- Shared Web Hosting – $0.99 to $3.99
- Cloud Hosting – $7.45 to $37.00
- WordPress Hosting – $2.15 to $14.95
- VPS Hosting – $3.95 to $29.95
- Minecraft Hosting – $8.95 to $29.95
- Windows VPS – $26.00 to $250.00
*All prices are on per month basis.
The plans do comes with up-sells but still the price comes out to be the lowest when compared with Bluehost, SiteGround and Hostgator.
Hostinger Features
With dirt cheap pricing, Hostinger does offer amazing features in its plans. These features can help small business start with ease and scale in the future.
The features Hostinger offers is to help run and manage your website in the best way, but they lack on the other aspects of business. Certain tools of marketing offered by Bluehost is lacking in Hostinger.
- Storage : 10 GB to Unlimited
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Free Domain (Selected Plans)
- Free SSL Certificate
- Email Accounts
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
- Hostinger SEO Tools
- Daily Backup (Selected Plans)
- Free CloudFlare CDN
These are some the must have features of a website. What makes Hostinger stand out is the price at which they offer such features.
A free domain is worth over $15 alone, leaving the other features aside. A free SSL certificate is very useful as it affects Google Search Rankings. It also insures data safety and increase trust worthiness of a website.
A free CDN can help your website load extremely fast and the email accounts adds a professional feel to the website. These are some of the features that makes a small business stand out.
The daily backup is always recommended as it acts a fall back option. In case things go wrong, you can always fall back on the previous version.
Single Shared Hosting : With storage of 10 GB SSD, 100 GB bandwidth, priced at $0.99 per month for 48 months is best suited for small businesses, portfolios and blogs. 1 email account and database, weekly backups and other features mentioned above come free with the plan except for the domain. You can still buy the domain at an affordable from Hostinger starting at $0.99 per year.
Premium Shared Hosting : Storage capacity of 20 GB SSD, 2X processing power and memory, priced at $2.89 per month for 48 months, unlimited features / bandwidth / email accounts as mentioned above, this plan is suited for larger projects like business website, online store etc. A free domain is available with this plan.
Business Shared Hosting : Priced at $3.99 per month for 48 months, unlimited features / bandwidth / email accounts, free domain, free SSL & CloudFlare CDN, Daily backups with 4X processing power and memory, this plan is best suited for businesses to scale.
Up Time
They guarantee 99.9% service up time. On account of default a compensation of 5% of the monthly hosting fee will be credited for that month.
For our websites that we host on Hostinger, we have an up time of 99.998%.
Load Time
Research shows that 53% of visitors would leave the page if the load time of the page is not within 3 seconds.
The average load time for Hostinger is 420ms, which is the second fastest load time among the 4 web hosting companies.
Customer Support
Hostinger customer support is available 24 x 7 on the following mediums
- Live Chat
- Knowledge Base
They do not offer a phone facility for customer support.
You can use our coupons to avail discounts and benefits on Hostinger hosting plans.
Hostinger Coupon
UP-TO 95% OFF
Use our coupon and stand a chance to avail a discount up-to 95% on Hositnger Hosting Plans
SiteGround
It is one of the best web hosting platform, crafted for easy website management.
SiteGround does end up third on the list but it is still amazing when compared to other web hosting companies. The recent price hike has made web host expensive. We do understand that quality comes at a price but for a small business, it is still on the higher side.
It has an amazing mix of features that are required for business. It is the only web host of the three that offers a staging environment. The only lag is that it does not offer any free domains and the storage space is only 10 GB to 40 GB.
For performance, SiteGround is at par with Hostinger and Bluehost on number of parameters. The web host lost the race with just a few milliseconds, almost a blink of an eye. They offer multiple customisation options and also offer customised plans.
SiteGround is truly outstanding when it comes to customer support and complex operations, but with the recent price change and turning down of Free Website Transfers, the web host lands on the third place in our list.
SiteGround Hosting Plans
SiteGround does offer a variety of choices to its customers. They have a plan to meet your set needs. Moreover, you can customise the plans to meet your needs.
- Shared Hosting – $6.99 to $14.99
- WordPress Hosting – $6.99 to $14.99
- Woocommerce Hosting – $6.99 to $14.99
- Cloud Hosting – $80 to $2100
- Reseller Hosting – $14.99
- Enterprise Hosting – Quote
*All prices are on per month basis.
SiteGround has a very clear pricing. They charge exactly what you are seeing on their screen. Almost no up-sells. This is what we like about SiteGround, everything up front and no hidden surprises.
SiteGround Features
SiteGround offers a ton of great features and nothing beats the fact that they offer customisation options. We do not get to see that very often.
Some of the features offered by SiteGround are;
- Unmetered Traffic
- Free SSL Certificate
- Daily Backup
- Free CDN
- Free Email
- Staging (Selected Plans)
- 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
Most of the features mentioned above are even available in the most basic plan of SiteGround. These are the features that any website should have at all costs. Most of the web hosts provide these as up sell options but not in the case of SiteGround.
They include these features in the plan knowing their importance and therefore they have a higher price when looked at it.
You know the importance of a free SSL Certificate and a free CDN, as we have mentioned it above. They very important for your website’s success.
A daily backup feature in all plans is a real plus and so is the free email option. The feature mix offered by SiteGround is truly commendable.
Staging is also a very important feature. It may not seem now but later when you are running your website, it is of immense value. To make changes such as theme change etc, you need staging. It creates a duplicate version of your website where you can do the necessary changes and update the same in live version. A very useful feature.
The money back guarantee helps you try the web host without fear.
SiteGround constantly upgrades its servers and technology to provide a faster and better experience.
Up Time
They guarantee 99.9% up time on an annual base. For an up time fall from 99.9% to 99.0% they compensate by 1 month free hosting and for every 1% drop from 99.0%, they compensate with an additional month free hosting for every 1% drop. It is mentioned in there terms of service.
Load Time
Research shows that 53% of visitors would leave the page if the load time of the page is not within 3 seconds.
SiteGround has an average loading speed of 650 ms. It is not the fastest but still among the top 10 web hosting service providers.
Customer Support
SiteGround has an amazing customer support. They are available 24 x 7 and you can contact them over
- Phone
- Live Chat
- Ticket
- Knowledge Base
It has a very quick response time and the query gets solved in no time. They also have a knowledge base and majority of your doubts/query would be answered there.
You can use our coupons and avail discounts and benefits on SiteGround Hosting plans.
SiteGround Coupon
UP-TO 80% OFF
Use our coupon and stand a chance to avail a discount up-to 80% on SiteGround Hosting Plans
HostGator
One of the popular known company for web hosting. It is been in the industry since the past 15 years.
Yes, we do recommend HostGator as they offer the best price range with the features and have a good up time statistic but also on the other hand there is nothing unlimited so the performance does vary as per the plans.
HostGator Hosting Plans
HostGator offers the following plans to its customers.
- Shared Web Hosting – $2.75 to $5.95
- WordPress Hosting – $5.95 to $9.95
- VPS Hosting – $19.95 to $39.95
- Dedicated Hosting – $89.98 to $139.99
*All prices are on per month basis.
HostGator Features
HostGator offers a number of amazing features for a small business website. They have features that can help your small business scale and grow.
Some of the features offered are;
- Free SSL Certificate
- 45 Day Money Back Guarantee
- Unlimited Free Email Accounts
- Unlimited Storage
- One Free Website Transfer/Migration
- Google & Bing Ads Credit
The longest money back guarantee policy is of HostGator when compared to the remaining three web hosts.
All plans have a $100 Google Ads & $100 Bing Ads credit which is transferred to you after the terms & conditions satisfy. For Google Ads on spending of first $25 and for Bing, it is 90 day coupon with the Bing account not more than 30 days old.
With SSL certification it is better for SEO purpose and also it is important for a better consumer experience. Your data stays secured and consumers trust the website.
It also offers security features at extra cost such as CodeGuard, SiteLock, Domain Privacy and G Suite.
For the Migration policy, it has to happen within 30 days from the opening of the account. They can transfer the 1 full cPanel with all domains, email accounts and settings.
The free migration option helps a lot when you are not well versed with coding and such things. The HostGator team handles it for you.
Up Time
They guarantee 99.9% up time. If they fail to meet the guarantee, they compensate by providing 1 month hosting credit to your account.
Load Time
Research shows that 53% of visitors would leave the page if the load time of the page is not within 3 seconds.
The average load time for HostGator is around 1000 ms which is not that great compared to other 3 web hosting service providers. It will take 1 second to load your page.
Customer Support
HostGator customer support can be reached by either
- Phone
- Live Chat
- Knowledge Base
You can use our coupons and avail discounts and benefits on HostGator Hosting Plans.
HostGator Coupon
UP-TO 60% OFF
Use our coupon and stand a chance to avail a discount up-to 60% on HostGator Hosting Plans
Other Web Hosting Reviews
You should analyse web hostings on parameters like, pricing, features, value for money, load time, up time, customer support etc. These are some of the most important things that you will need in a web host (we say with experience as we are in the business of digital marketing and websites).
We suggest you do test and review web hosts yourself, if you have the time and resources, nothing better like it. Otherwise, you can check out our reviews and decide which one you would like to go for.
We do review web hosting companies and analyse them on parameters that we think are really important and one should definitely look for in a web hosting company. We have reviewed some major brands, big names and new ones too.
Here are some of the web hosts which we have reviewed,
If you would like us to review a web host, leave it in the comments below.
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