Finding the Best Web Hosting for a Small Business
Getting an email — especially small companies — is important for businesses of all sizes in this day and age. Potential customers may not be able to find you online without one, so current customers may have difficulty going your route if there is no website address they may hand out.
You’ve probably landed on this web hosting platform for small business as you know that without hosting you can’t have a website — which is valid! But where are you going to start? How do you learn growing companies are successful and which businesses are unreliable? How do you know the web hosts are worthwhile for small businesses and which ones are just a waste of time and money?
Okay, We also gathered and placed together a selection of our favorite small business web hosting companies on this website. Whether you have a small mom and pop store, or a small business that produces a lot of revenue, this guide covers all the bases.
If you continue to read on, you can see that we have picked different hosts that are best for certain categories of small businesses, depending on their size and budget. Yeah, let’s dig into the list of web hosts for small business!
The Most Affordable Web Hosting for Small Business
You certainly don’t need a mega-size hosting package with all manner of bells and whistles if you’re a little mom & pop store or a single person. Budgets are also not to be a problem in this case, so you don’t need a hosting company to break the bank. Yet finding a hosting company that can expand with your business is crucial so you don’t have to move if you like it.
In this case, we’d recommend Bluehost…
The awesome thing about Bluehost is that they offer pretty cheap single-site plans, but they also offer full-on dedicated servers if you need more power and your business scales.
Bluehost is probably the best all-around host for a small business because it’s pretty cheap (plans launch at $2.95/month). Our help is strong and they offer live chat assistance 24/7/365 which is a nice feature if you just need to hop on and fix a fast question without opening a support ticket and waiting for an answer. Bluehost is hard to go wrong and it’s one of the few companies we endorse as a general, all-around strong host that covers a lot of different bases.
Web Hosting for Medium-Sized Small Businesses
If you have a medium-sized small business and need something with a few advanced features that is a little more robust (but something that is still affordable), we would highly recommend SiteGround. They literally become one of our top hosting companies. Their level of support is practically exceeded except by some of the hosting companies that are really costly, and their efficiency is top notch.
We have a nice built-in caching system that helps the sites easily and their prices start for a single site at around $3.95/month, which is accessible to most small businesses. They’re still great for WordPress, so if you’re searching for WordPress hosting for small business, they’re basically one of the best options to choose from.
Hosting for High Traffic Website/Blog
When you run WordPress and have a high-traffic website, there is no better option than WP Engine. They are, and appropriately so, the WordPress specialists. Including sleek online backups and additional security tools, hands down if you’re a small business running WordPress. They’re a bit more expensive than other hosts (their cheapest plan begins at $22/month) but it’s worth it.
If you have a high traffic website and do not want to use WordPress (you should really try it), then we would suggest that you go for Liquidweb. They’re located in Michigan and one of the greatest you’ll ever find is their help. Telephone, telephone, and web service are accessible 24/7/365. If you need further reassurance, cybers guards are hosted with Liquidweb at the time of writing— what else do you need to know?
Small Businesses eCommerce Hosting
Hosting eCommerce usually requires certain important things— a safe checkout SSL certificate, the capacity to manage multiple guests at once, and intense efficiency. If you have a small business and you’re looking for hosting eCommerce, you’ll need to be sure you’re choosing a host with all these things. There are a few ways you can split this decision in our professional opinion.
If you need a host with multiple hosting options for a WordPress site or other platforms such as Joomla or Magento, we would recommend SiteGround. We have a very sleek system in place to provide free SSLs, are super reliable, and have great support— which is really important to an eCommerce website. Think about it— if your site goes down and customers start complaining, your reputation may be disastrous.
Nonetheless, if you are operating WordPress for eCommerce and you have a little more of a budget, we will suggest that you go for WP Engine. You have a wonderful setup environment to make improvements to your platform without impacting the live product that consumers use, as well as many other excellent eCommerce apps.
Small Business Hosting/ Blog Hosting
Most small businesses in this day and age should do some kind of blogging to stay relevant, provide expertise on current topics in their industry, and connect with their customers as well. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform at the moment. Any of the above-mentioned hosts can host and do a great job with WordPress.
Small Businesses Email Hosting
Email is a critical part of any enterprise, and it is essential for your small business to have a very secure email host. They provide email storage on their sites if you are using Bluehost, Liquidweb, or SiteGround. WP Engine does not offer email hosting, however, as they just want to focus on being the best website host they can, without email distraction.
There may be another situation where you already have your website hosting, but just want to get email hosting and point the MX records of your domain to an email host.
In any event, as the strongest email hosting company for small business, we would strongly recommend Rackspace. We have outstanding tech support, competitive availability, and offer different choices for standard email inboxes as well as inboxes for Microsoft Exchange.
Small Businesses Domain Registrars
This is a subject that needs its own page (which is coming soon), but we’re going to say for now that NameCheap is our favorite registrar of domains. They’re accessible, open, and in a registrar everything you’d want. Don’t you think you believe us? They’re licensed with cybersguards.com, and think about what that means!
Things to Avoid strictly
It’s easy to get sucked into a marketing pit when you’re looking at web hosting for small businesses. Here are some growing drawbacks for web hosting that we think small business owners can avoid:
Pre-Fab Website Builders
While it may be tempting to use one of those pre-fab website builders like Wix or SquareSpace, the problem with these website builders “What You See Is What You Get”(WYSIWYG) is that they don’t offer a lot of flexibility; not almost as much as hosting your own WordPress website and learning how to use a web server.
Use something like this to build up a quick platform can be incredibly tempting, but if your business grows and/or you find that you need to do any technological customizations; you’ll be out of choices. Not to mention the need to move the entire website to a professional web hosting company. These might be all right for something simple to host a non-profit website, but they’re not really all that robust about what small businesses need.
Our best advice is to take the time and learn how to build a WordPress site and use a real web hosting company. That way, as you see fit, you will configure stuff and have full control of the website.
Free Blogs
Don’t use a free blog (such as Blogspot.com or WordPress.com) where the web link ends up being something like “yourbusinesshere.blogspot.com” or “yourbusinesshere.wordpress.com.” Domains and web hosting is as cheap as it is— if you run a business, you should be able to afford a couple of bucks a month to do it the right way.
Do not use a free Yahoo email for your company (yourbusiness@yahoo.com, etc.). Nor should you use any other free email services. This looks incredibly unprofessional, diluting the name as well. Sign a domain and purchase email hosting at least even if you don’t intend instantly to build a website. You should feel more professional and be more open about your email settings and the appearance of your company.
GoDaddy
While they are putting a lot of money into marketing for small businesses, we believe that there are better options out there. If you’re running your small business online, it’s hard to avoid seeing a GoDaddy ad advertising business owners, so there’s a possibility you’ve already seen one and might even suggest it.
They’re not a bad host or domain registrar at all; we just think small businesses have better options out there when it comes to web hosting, with better support and better money features. Their service is not bad, nor is their efficiency poor, but it’s just not up to (in our opinion) what we consider should be a small business host.
Low Quality Hosting
In the field of web hosting, it’s certainly true to say “you get what you pay for.” If you operate a personal blog, you might get away with hosting in lower quality (although we wouldn’t suggest it). If you are a company, though, your credibility will suffer when consumers frequently find that your website is down or offline. Personally, our best recommendation is to spend some money on hosting to save a bigger headache down the road and protect your business ‘ online image.
Choosing a Small Business Hosting Company
At the end of the day, only you can make a decision that suits your expenditure and requirements. One aspect we would say when looking at ratings is to be vigilant of websites trying to push low-quality hosts (such as iPage) on you just to make a quick buck on fees for hosting.
