7 Best QuickBooks Hosting Providers for 2023
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Mark has researched and reviewed accounting software at Fit Small Business since 2019 and has developed an extensive knowledge of accounting software features and how unique business needs determine the best accounting software.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
The best QuickBooks hosting provider should offer essential cloud hosting features and benefits, such as guaranteed high uptimes and automatic backups, security and reliability of data, and excellent performance and speed of its information technology (IT) services. As a bonus, some providers offer additional benefits, such as free trials and money-back guarantees.
Here are our top seven best QuickBooks hosting providers:
- Ace Cloud Hosting: Best overall QuickBooks hosting provider
- Quick Cloud Hosting: Best value for a QuickBooks hosting provider
- Right Networks: Best for users that prefer an Elite QuickBooks solution provider
- Apps4Rent: Best for users who also want Microsoft Office along with QuickBooks
- Summit Hosting: Best for QuickBooks users that manage intensive workloads and many integrated apps
- MyVAO: Best for those without a QuickBooks Desktop license yet
- Cetrom: Best for accounting and certified public accounting (CPA) firms
Best QuickBooks Hosting Providers At a Glance
QuickBooks Hosting Provider | Pricing ($/Month) | Uptime Percentage Guarantee | Data Backup | 24/7 Customer Support | Free Trial | Host Other Software Besides QuickBooks | Offers Industry-specific Solutions (i.e., BPO) | Unlimited QuickBooks File Storage | Free Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection | Money-back Guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | From $50 per user | 99.999% | ✓ | ✓ | 10 Days | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (Enterprise) | ✓ | ✕ |
 | From $25 per user | 99.99% | ✓ | ✓ | 7 days | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
 | From $68 per user | 99.995% | ✓ | ✓ | N/A | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | 30 days |
 | From $29.95 for one user | 99.99% | ✓ | ✓ | N/A | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
 | From $55 per user | 99.99% | ✓ | ✓ | 14 days | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
 | $59.95 per user | 99% | ✓ | ✓ | 30 days | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
 | Quote-based | 99.99% | ✓ | ✓ | N/A | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
Ace Cloud Hosting: Best Overall QuickBooks Hosting Provider
Ace Cloud Hosting offers an excellent selection of hosting services for a variety of industries. It provides dedicated servers so that you can run multiple applications simultaneously in a secure computing environment. It also hosts tax software, such as Drake Software along with Sage Software application hosting. It guarantees a high uptime rate of 99.999%, which means that its servers are extremely reliable.
Pros
- 99.999% guaranteed uptime
- Pay-as-you-go plans
- 24/7 customer support
- Free daily data backups with 45 days of rolling data backup
- 10-day free trial
Cons
- Expensive for QuickBooks Enterprise hosting
- No money-back guarantee
Services & Features
- Intuit-authorized Commercial Hosting Provider
- Shared hosting
- Dedicated hosting
- Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions
- Remote desktop services
- Application virtualization
Ace Cloud Hosting Overview
Quick Cloud Hosting: Best for Affordability
Quick Cloud Hosting, a QuickBooks-focused hosting provider, offers standard hosting services for as little as $25 per user, per month. Its standard hosting services are a great option for individuals and organizations that don’t need extensive configurations and high bandwidth. Additionally, it has affordable dedicated servers for midsize and large companies with many employees and those managing a large amount of data.
Pros
- Most affordable among the best QuickBooks hosting provider we reviewed
- Has multiple data centers to protect clients’ physical and virtual information
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Free data backup and migration
- Free 24/7 customer service
Cons
- No money-back guarantee
- No option for users with no QuickBooks license
- Limited free trial availability (seven days only)
Features & Services
- Standard hosting for QuickBooks Desktop products
- Dedicated hosting for QuickBooks Desktop products
- Sage hosting
- Tax software hosting, including Lacerte and Drake Tax
- 24/7 technical support
- Disaster recovery
- Data backup and software updates
Quick Cloud Hosting Overview
Right Networks: Best for Users Who Prefer an Elite QuickBooks Provider
Although all of these QuickBooks hosting providers are certified by Intuit, Right Networks has the designation of being an Elite QuickBooks Solution Provider, and Intuit promotes the company on its website. This means Right Networks has a long-standing relationship with Intuit, allowing it to provide genuine and well-tested products and excellent customer support. It offers a QuickBooks-focused hosting service and an all-inclusive supported service for all of your office and accounting applications. You can purchase QuickBooks Desktop licenses if needed.
What We Like
- Hosting option is purchased directly through Intuit
- 24/7 tech support
- Free data migration
- Product testing performed with Intuit before product launches
- 99.995% uptimes
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Cons
- More expensive than other alternatives
- No free trial
Features & Services
- Shared QuickBooks hosting directly through Intuit
- Tax application hosting
- Firm IT outsourcing
- 90-day automatic data backups
- Access to all firm resources from one secure portal
- Productivity application hosting including Office 365
Right Networks Overview
Apps4Rent: Best for Users Who Want Microsoft Office Along With QuickBooks
Apps4Renthas a variety of hosting solutions available, including session-based plans where computing resources are optimized to manage QuickBooks and a few essential apps, such as Microsoft Office. Session-based servers are easier to set up than dedicated servers, as most of the resources are shared. If you only need to use QuickBooks and Office and don’t need to install any other third-party accounting apps, then Apps4Rent is a great choice.
What We Like
- 15-day money-back guarantee
- Bank-level security features
- App hosting for QuickBooks at no additional charge
- Automatic daily data backups
- 24/7 customer support
- 99% uptime guarantee
- Multi-user capability
What's Missing
- No free trial
- Session-based plans are unavailable for all QuickBooks editions and versions
- You cannot change the industry in session-based plans
Features & Services
- Intuit-authorized host
- QuickBooks cloud hosting
- SharePoint hosting
- Virtual desktop
- MS Project server
- Virtual server
- Microsoft Azure services
- Microsoft 365 hosting
- Hosted exchange
- On-premise infrastructure management and licensing
Apps4Rent Overview
Summit Hosting: QuickBooks Users Managing Intensive Workloads & Many Integrated Apps
Summit Hosting gives you complete control over your QuickBooks Cloud hosting with an extremely customizable dedicated server. It has a reputation for building dedicated servers in remote desktop protocol (RDP) environments. It provides a fully personalized QuickBooks hosting plan by allowing you to build your own quote. For instance, you can add multi-factor authentication to some or all of your users and have other apps aside from QuickBooks installed on the server.
Pros
- Dedicated servers fully customized to your needs
- Can build your own quote for a fully personalized plan 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Nightly cloud server backups
- Compatible with any platform
- Offers a free 14-day trial
Cons
- No option for shared hosting
- More expensive than similar providers
Features
- 24/7 access to live chat
- Nightly backups retained for 15 days
- SSAE 18-certified servers
- Can provide a virtual private network (VPN) if needed
- Sage cloud hosting
- Multiuser capability
- Remote backups for disaster recovery
Summit Hosting Overview
MyVAO: Best for Those Without a QuickBooks Desktop License Yet
MyVAO is the best choice if you haven’t purchased a QuickBooks license and would like to pay one fee for license rental and QuickBooks hosting. When you purchase a Desktop license from QuickBooks, there’s no free trial, and you must pay the license fee annually. With MyVAO, you can try QuickBooks Desktop for free for 30 days and then pay for your license on a monthly subscription.
Pros
- Prices include QuickBooks Desktop license
- 30-day free trial available
- 99% uptime guarantee
- Daily and weekly data backups
- Up to five QuickBooks company files per user
Cons
- No option for users with a QuickBooks license
- Only offers QuickBooks hosting
Features
- Intuit-authorized host
- QuickBooks commercial hosting
- 128-bit encryption
- Data backed up twice daily
- 24/7 customer support
- AIS SAS 70 Type-II-compliant data center
- Add-ons, such as Tax1099, Bill.com, and Expensify
MyVAO Overview
If you don’t have a QuickBooks Desktop license yet, you can choose from QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Premier, Enterprise, and Accountant. Read our QuickBooks Desktop version comparison to see which fits your needs.
Cetrom: Best QuickBooks Hosting Provider for Accounting & CPA Firms
Cetrom is a cloud hosting provider that offers IT hosting services to accounting and CPA firms of all sizes. Upon enrollment, it’ll handle the entire data migration process, ensuring that your system is set up correctly. With it, you can establish a program to manage, host, and support your accounting software, back-office apps, reporting or analytics programs, client portals, and your email on the cloud. This flexibility, along with excellent customer support, makes it an ideal option for those in the accounting field.
Pros
- 99.99% uptime rate
- Data backups are performed daily
- Six-month no-hassle guarantee
- Enterprise-level security
- Firms can host their clients’ QuickBooks files
Cons
- Pricing is not transparent
- No free trial
Features
- Intuit-certified host
- Shared hosting
- Hosted email services
- Virtual desktop services
- Managed CPA cloud computing services
- Senior-level IT support available 24/7
Cetrom Overview
How We Evaluated Best QuickBooks Hosting Providers
To determine the best QuickBooks hosting providers, we looked into several factors, including the price, level of security, scalability of services, and customer support:
- Price: Each service provider’s pricing plans vary based on the different available features. To understand what you’re paying for, you should ask for an itemization of all fees to be charged. We looked at the types of service plans and what they included to determine the best value.
- Security: The security and reliability of data are critical when selecting a hosting provider. We evaluated the type of security measures taken to protect this data and also the level of security, with the expectation that it’ll be at par with bank security or any company handling sensitive information.
- Customer support: Calls to support teams can translate to hours of frustration, especially when it’s an urgent issue that demands immediate attention. We looked at each provider’s availability—how and when you can reach customer support and their level of responsiveness. Ideally, the best QuickBooks hosting provider offers 24/7 customer support.
- Scalability: While some QuickBooks hosting providers were more limited than others in terms of their additional service offerings, we considered the potential for scalability and options available to support business growth.
- Performance and speed: A company’s productivity relies on the performance and speed of the IT services that it uses. Hosting providers can offer extremely high uptimes and automatic backups. We looked at uptime rates and backup frequency to help determine the best options.
- License included: Some hosting plans include QuickBooks licenses while others don’t, so we looked at the available offerings for each.
Types of QuickBooks Hosting Providers
Intuit has endorsed a select number of hosting providers as Authorized Partners. All the hosting providers that we have recommended are endorsed by Intuit, and they’ll support the updates you need as you grow your business. These providers also have the ability to onboard customers with existing licensed copies of QuickBooks software, provide subscription services for new QuickBooks licenses, and provide customers with early access to QuickBooks updates.
Intuit’s Authorized Hosting Providers are divided into two different types:
- Commercial: This rents out QuickBooks licenses on a month-by-month basis. Many also provide standard hosting services for companies that already have the licenses they need.
- Standard: This is for businesses that already have their QuickBooks licenses. If you decide to add a new user and require a new license, you’ll need to deal directly with Intuit to obtain it.
In terms of user access and control, there are three types of hosting:
- Dedicated hosting: Dedicated hosting allows the user complete control over the physical server, with the ability to customize it according to their need for performance, stability, scalability, and security.
- Shared hosting: With shared hosting, a single physical server hosts multiple user sites, apps, or accounting software. Each user gains access to a server segment and the data in that segment. A shared server can host hundreds of different users.
- VPS hosting: A virtual private server (VPS) is a virtual machine or container, so essentially there isn’t a physical, dedicated server. Each virtual server runs its own operating system and hosts its own databases, files, and settings.
Why Use a QuickBooks Hosting Provider
QuickBooks Desktop, one of our best small business accounting software, becomes more powerful when hosted. Below are some of the main reasons why you should consider using a QuickBooks hosting provider:
- Enables remote access: The most compelling reason to use a QuickBooks cloud hosting provider is the ability to access your QuickBooks Desktop program from anywhere with an internet connection.
- Offers data security: With QuickBooks cloud hosting, safety and security measures are followed to ensure that your data is safe and only you have access to it. The hosting company will back up and secure your data for you instead of you having to do it in your office.
- Allows collaboration: QuickBooks cloud hosting is ideal for businesses with multiple users because the software won’t have to be installed on multiple computers, and users won’t be limited to how they can access it. Cloud hosting also makes it easy to share your data with an outside accountant when help is needed or it’s time to prepare your tax return.
FAQs
How is QuickBooks hosting different from QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based software that’s readily accessible online and doesn’t need to be hosted. Meanwhile, QuickBooks hosting is necessary for you to access your QuickBooks Desktop files from anywhere and on any internet-enabled device.
What should I look for in a QuickBooks hosting provider?
The important factors to consider when hiring a QuickBooks hosting provider are security, scalability, excellent customer support, high uptime percentage, and affordable pricing.
What is the best QuickBooks hosting provider?
It depends on your needs and the complexity of your QuickBooks workflows. If you want a simple QuickBooks hosting solution with Office integration, you can go with Apps4Rent. If you need a fully customizable server, consider Ace Cloud Hosting or Summit Hosting.
Bottom Line
QuickBooks hosting allows you to harness the power of QuickBooks Desktop software combined with the accessibility of QuickBooks Online. Whether your priority is seamless data migration, a low-cost solution, or more options for customizations and flexibility, you can find the right one from our top recommendations.
