5 Best Web Hosting Services for Small Businesses in 2022

The best web hosting for small businesses is budget-friendly yet packed with essential features like free domains, SSL certificates, and email accounts. They have sufficient storage and bandwidth for growing businesses and plans that scale as the needs of your website increase. Plus, they make it easy for you to get online quickly with free website builders and ecommerce-ready plans. See which web hosting services made our top five.

After evaluating a dozen services, we found that these five providers offer the best web hosting for small businesses:

• Namecheap: Overall best website hosting for small businesses and most affordable long term
• DreamHost: Best for small businesses looking for dedicated WordPress hosting with a site builder or WordPress site migration services
• InMotion: Great web hosting company for small businesses prioritizing a high level of customer service
• IONOS: Best web hosting for small marketing agencies and freelance web designers
• Bluehost: Best all-in-one WordPress ecommerce site builder and hosting solution

Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses at a Glance

Web Hosting Provider	Monthly Pricing From*	Site Builder Plans From*	Free Domain & SSL	Unlimited Bandwidth	Storage	Uptime
	$1.88	$1.88	✓	✓	20GB	100%
	Visit Namecheap
	$2.95	$2.95	✓	✓	50GB	100%
	Visit DreamHost
	$3.49	$3.49	✓	✓	100GB	99.9%
	Visit InMotion
	50 cents	$1	✓	✓	10GB	99.9%
	Visit IONOS
	$2.75	$2.75	✓	✓	50GB	99.98%
	Visit Bluehost

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Web Hosting Provider	Monthly Pricing From*	Site Builder Plans From*	Free Domain & SSL	Unlimited Bandwidth	Storage	Uptime
	$1.88	$1.88	✓	✓	20GB	100%
	Visit Namecheap
	$2.95	$2.95	✓	✓	50GB	100%
	Visit DreamHost
	$3.49	$3.49	✓	✓	100GB	99.9%
	Visit InMotion
	50 cents	$1	✓	✓	10GB	99.9%
	Visit IONOS
	$2.75	$2.75	✓	✓	50GB	99.98%
	Visit Bluehost

*Monthly cost, based on a 12-month billing cycle, renews at a higher rate

Namecheap: Overall Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses

Namecheap

Overall Score: 4.61 OUT OF 5

What We Like

• 100% uptime
• Modest renewal price increases
• Site builder included free with all shared hosting plans
• Free 24-hour site migration
• Free automated backups included with all shared hosting plans
• 30-day free trial for WordPress hosting—EasyWP plans start from $4.88 per month

What's Missing

• Site builder isn’t very sophisticated or intuitive
• Fairly low amount of included storage (20GB) in entry-tier plan
• Increased site traffic can negatively affect site speed

Best For

• Startups and small businesses that want low upfront pricing and cost savings over time; $1.88 per month shared hosting for the first year renews at $3.88 per month
• Business websites needing guaranteed 100% uptime
• Businesses wanting value-adds such as (30 to unlimited) email addresses, free site builders, 30 to unlimited subdomains, and free backups
• Businesses wanting help and support; Namecheap provides 24/7 live chat and help desk support, instant setup upon plan purchase, and free migration services

Visit Namecheap

When we compared providers, it quickly became obvious that Namecheap offers the best web hosting for small businesses, especially when cost is a driving factor. Most web hosting plans renewal prices are exponentially higher, but not Namecheap’s, living up to the tagline, “make more online, for less.”

The entry tier’s first-year cost is $1.88 per month and renews at just $3.88 per month for the second annual billing cycle. Likewise, the highest shared hosting tier, Stellar Business, is offered at $4.98 per month for the first year and renews at $9.98. Only IONOS comes close to offering the same in terms of the cheap web hosting for small businesses.

Nor does the value Namecheap packs into its shared hosting plans suffer as a result. All plans include a free domain and SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, from 30 to unlimited subdomains, from 30 to unlimited email addresses on your domain, 100% uptime, and free backups. But if you do need more storage in a starter plan, consider DreamHost. It offers 50GB at the base level or Unlimited in the second tier—both at $2.95 per month for the first year.

Namecheap’s Stellar plan includes two backups weekly (although not guaranteed). However, the Stellar Plus and Business plans include free automated backups, ensuring that your site can be restored if something goes wrong. Its data centers are located in the U.S., United Kingdom, and Europe, and its shared hosting servers reside in Phoenix, Arizona.

Namecheap interface—cPanel navigation (Source: Namecheap)

Namecheap Pricing & Features

Unique Features for Small Businesses

• Handshake domains: If you like pioneering new tech, Namecheap uniquely offers what are called “Handshake Domains.” These are domain extensions (e.g., .creator, .elite, .ill, .oh, .oo, .oot, .orb, .p, .pgp, .saas, and .sox), ranging from $8.98 to $34.98 per year, that are not centrally registered. Instead, handshake domains are purchased using blockchain technology (i.e., a coin system) in a peer-to-peer registry. The idea is that it supports internet equality and that bypassing the centralized ICANN registry makes the domains less vulnerable to things like “hacking, censorship, and corruption.”
• Tools and apps: Namecheap’s new App Marketplace includes dozens of tools that make it easier to build a website or even grow your business. For example, you can add the Weebly or Strikingly site builders from the app marketplace, create a logo on the free logo maker, create and order business cards starting from $18.88, or add Validation to your ecommerce site in order to authenticate traffic and prevent online fraud and chargebacks.
• DDoS protection add-on: According to infosecurity magazine, a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack could cost a small business as much as $120,000. Starting from $8.88 per month, you can add DDoS protection through Namecheap’s Supersonic CDN (content delivery network). In addition to protecting your site from slowdowns due to DDoS attacks, it further supports fast load times by loading your site from a local CDN server instead of the main hosting server.

Expert Opinion

You will be hard-pressed to find cheap web hosting for small businesses at a lower lifetime cost than you get with Namecheap. Even if you end up purchasing add-ons, your overall cost for web hosting, building, and security with Namecheap is likely to be the most cost-effective, especially over time. Still, its site builder is a bit lacking compared to DreamHost’s WordPress and IONOS’ non-WordPress drag-and-drop site builders.

Visit Namecheap

DreamHost: Best WordPress Website Hosting & Migration

DreamHost

Overall Score: 4.21 OUT OF 5

What We Like

• 97-day money-back guarantee—the longest of all web hosting services
• Low-cost Unlimited plan that lives up to its name: unlimited websites, traffic, and email addresses on your domain
• BoldGrid WordPress website builder
• Free automated WordPress migrations
• Domain privacy included in all plans; 100% uptime guarantee
• 100% uptime guarantee

What's Missing

• Proprietary interface is somewhat dated, which makes it less intuitive than more visually oriented cPanels
• Subpar user reports regarding customer support
• Site speed lags at times

Best For

• Businesses that have or want a WordPress site; DreamHost includes automatic daily backups as well as WordPress install, a WordPress site builder, and WordPress core and security updates
• Businesses looking for a web hosting platform that offers free WordPress site migrations
• Content-heavy, high-traffic, and large websites; DreamHost includes unlimited storage as well as bandwidth in the Unlimited plan

Visit DreamHost

The best web hosting for small businesses that have or want to build a WordPress website is DreamHost. All-inclusive plans start at $2.95 (the same as Bluehost’s WordPress builder plans) but come loaded with goodies. For example, DreamHost shared hosting includes automated daily backups, free WordPress site migration (should you need it), and automatic management of WordPress core and security updates.

In addition, DreamHost includes a WordPress website builder free in shared hosting plans. This eliminates a great deal of the learning curve needed to build a WordPress site. There are more than 200 industry-specific templates, drag-and-drop editing, and content blocks, as well as a Quick-Start Inspirations Wizard to streamline the process even more.

If you want more options like this, InMotion and Bluehost both include WordPress site builders in shared hosting plans. Bluehost also has affordable ecommerce-ready online store plans and is recommended for ecommerce WordPress websites.

Choosing and editing a template using the DreamHost WordPress website builder (Source: DreamHost)

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DreamHost Pricing & Features

*Requires a 12- or 36-month contract

Unique Features for Small Businesses

• Unlimited plan, unlimited value: The 12-month introductory price for the Unlimited shared hosting plan is the same as its base plan. While renewal cost is significantly higher, this gives startups and small businesses a plan they can use to grow and scale more quickly at a very low first-year cost.
• DreamHost Academy: All the amenities in the world don’t matter if you can’t easily understand and access them. The DreamHost Academy is filled with information to help you successfully navigate and explore the system, ensuring you can find and access the benefits you need most. Additional support includes 24/7 ticketing, live chat, and phone callbacks.
• Real-time SEO recommendations: DreamHost’s new WordPress website builder can help you not only build a WordPress website more quickly, it also offers real-time search engine optimization (SEO) recommendations to help you attract your audience and grow your brand’s online presence.

Our Expert Opinion

DreamHost offers the best WordPress web hosting for small businesses. The site builder eases the work of building your site with premade templates and content blocks. In addition, wizards guide your way with design inspiration and SEO recommendations, and the DreamHost team takes care of tough stuff like core updates or migrating your site from another server. Read our DreamHost review to learn more about why it’s a champ in the web hosting space.

Visit DreamHost

InMotion: Web Host With the Best Customer Support

InMotion

Overall Score: 4.08 OUT OF 5

What We Like

• 24/7/365 U.S.-based support
• No-downtime site migration
• DDoS, hack, and malware protection included in all plans
• Intuitive control panel
• Unlimited email addresses and storage after base tier
• 90-day money-back guarantee
• BoldGrid WordPress website builder included (same as DreamHost)

What's Missing

• Upper-tier plans get pricey on renewal
• Resources included in base plan may not be enough for growing websites
• Occasional downtime issues
• Free domain not included in lowest-tier shared hosting plan

Best For

• Small businesses wanting the peace of mind of great customer care; InMotion prides itself on 24/7/365 human support, including U.S.-based support for U.S. customers
• Extensive knowledge base with articles, tutorials, and guides on hundreds of topics

Visit InMotion

While InMotion’s prices (especially on renewal) don’t rival platforms like Namecheap or IONOS, it offers the best hosting for small businesses that want top-notch customer support. We put that to the test when evaluating the service, hitting up InMotion’s live chat team with questions about the Launch and Power plans.

We had a live support agent asking to help us within about 10 seconds and had our answers in less than two minutes. While this might sound simple, it’s not always the case, especially when asking sales-related questions. Some providers delay in providing answers so as to keep trying to work you toward a sale. While that may be an effective sales technique with someone who is ready to buy, it’s not the best approach with buyers in the research stage.

The first time you visit InMotion’s support page, you’ll get a pop-up notification asking permission to notify you when new content is added to the support resources. This is very helpful for businesses managing several websites, such as small digital marketing agencies. The cPanel is visually based and intuitive, making it easy to navigate the myriad of tools and features included.

The Support page itself has about 90 links to educational and instructional resources. They are organized into bite-size sections such as common tasks, domain-related topics, website building, tutorials, and so on. In addition, there’s a community forum where you can source answers from (or provide them to) other InMotion customers.

InMotion has a modern, intuitive, visually based cPanel.

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The support resources InMotion provides are extensive. (Source: InMotion)

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InMotion Pricing & Features

Unique Features for Small Businesses

• Low-cost WordPress website building services: The only thing easier than creating a website with a site builder is having someone else build it for you. InMotion will build a custom one-page website for you for $249. Or pay a one-time fee of $349 to get a free consultation, professional business email, automated backups, SEO tool configuration, interactive Google Map, and the option to add up to four more pages for $99 each. It will be linked to your social media accounts and will be both mobile and Google search-friendly. With either option, your site should be ready in one to two business days.
• Marketing and productivity tools: All plans except for the first-tier Core plan include $150 in ad credits you can use to promote your business online. Expand your site’s functionality, speed, performance, traffic and more with one-click installs for more than 400 apps, plugins, and add-ons. Easily integrate Google Workspace apps and email into your website.

Our Expert Opinion

Don’t downplay the value of getting great support with your website hosting service. It can make all the difference when something goes wrong or you just need help to get the most value for your dollar. Choose InMotion if customer care and support is a top priority when choosing web hosting for your small business.

Visit InMotion

IONOS: Best Web Hosting for Small Marketing Agencies & Freelance Web Designers

IONOS

Overall Score: 3.94 OUT OF 5

What We Like

• Personal success consultant to help you get the most out of your site and hosting with any plan
• Malware protection, site scan, and DDoS protection included
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Low-cost, all-in-one website builder and hosting plans

What's Missing

• No free trial or version to test the site builders without subscribing to a plan
• Railgun CDN that distributes your site to 60 servers worldwide for faster load times is only on the most expensive plan

Best For

• Digital marketing agencies and freelancers looking for a client management solution
• Small businesses and startups needing low-cost hosting, especially the first year
• Small businesses and casual ecommerce sellers wanting an easy-to-use, non-WordPress drag-and-drop website builder

Visit IONOS

IONOS is the only web hosting provider on this list specifically marketing to digital marketing agencies. Its partner program comes with many perks, such as single-dashboard client management and three-month free product trials. You can join the program free by applying or by selecting “With Membership” when you sign up for hosting.

The plans and pricing listed in the next section are identical to those offered as “Hosting Plans for Agency Partners.” Additional benefits listed for agency partners include a directory listing in the Agency Partner Network (potentially bringing new clients to your door), a direct line to your personal IONOS consultant, and professional tools for agencies, freelancers, website designers, and resellers.

IONOS’ partner program is a great way to grow your digital agency.

As someone who has used IONOS hosting for about 10 years for my own and for clients’ sites, I can personally attest to its customer care. The handful of times I have needed help or support, the IONOS team has been available, prompt to respond, quick to address my issues, and fast to resolve them. And with automated daily backups, it’s easy for the team to restore your site or database when something goes wrong—even if you were the one who messed something up.

IONOS (formerly IONOS by 1&1) used to offer up to 2,000 email accounts with paid hosting plans. It’s disappointing that hosting plans now only include one email account, regardless of tier. You can purchase additional email accounts with 2GB of storage for $1 each (or get more storage for higher fees).

IONOS WordPress hosting plans do include five email accounts in the second tier and 10 at the highest tier. Still, compared to unlimited emails in all but the lowest tiers with Namecheap, DreamHost, and InMotion, this feels like a let-down.

IONOS, which is also on our list of the best drag-and-drop website builders, offers hosting plans that include its proprietary website builders. The Starter plan includes a simple, easy-to-use but somewhat design-limited MyWebsite Now creator for fast site building.

The Plus and Pro plans come with the far more sophisticated MyWebsite Creator and Creator+ site editors. You can add an online store to any of the site builder plans at an additional cost.

IONOS Pricing & Features

*12-month billing contracts
**Website builder plans start at $1 per month with annual billing

Unique Features for Small Businesses

• Beginner- and customer-friendly: Having access to a personal consultant means you won’t need to struggle to set up your site or hosting features. This is particularly useful for digital marketing agencies managing multiple client sites as well as beginners and small businesses wanting to build a strong online presence.
• Sites built for speed and fast load times: Site and page load speed is a critical factor in success as far as ranking in Google search. The IONOS’ site builder is built for fast loading and includes speed-enhancing features like automatic image resizing, 99.99% uptime, and Google PageSpeed. Keep in mind that it’s not a WordPress site builder, so if you need a WordPress site, check out DreamHost or Bluehost.
• Site building services: Like InMotion, IONOS offers affordable website building services for those wanting to skip the learning curve altogether. IONOS’ plans include a one-time and monthly fee so that you also have support for managing your site and making changes on an ongoing basis.
• Online marketing add-ons: Create and manage all your online listings in one place by subscribing to a List Local plan. Choose a Google Ads Management plan for creating, tracking, and optimizing your Google Ad campaigns. Learn SEO and improve your site’s Google rankings with an IONOS rankingCoach plan.

Our Expert Opinion

IONOS is the best web hosting for businesses wanting a one-stop digital marketing shop as well as freelance web designers and digital marketing agencies looking for a client management solution. While its add-ons can drive up expenses, the return in leads and sales generated could be well worth the cost. We do wish they didn’t skimp on email addresses—for bundled emails and hosting, consider any of the other three web hosting services listed above.

Visit IONOS

Bluehost: Best Web Hosting for WordPress Ecommerce Websites

Bluehost

Overall Score: 3.78 OUT OF 5

What We Like

• All-inclusive packages for online stores including hosting, site builder, setup, WooCommerce, and email marketing
• App marketplace—quickly and easily extend your site’s functionality with tools for shipping, payments, currency conversion, accounting, and even selling courses online
• Officially recommended by WordPress for web hosting

What's Missing

• Pricing gets expensive on renewal
• Problematic with high volumes of traffic
• Limited free widgets and add-ons
• No plans indicate they include email addresses (requires separate purchase starting at $4.95/month)

Best For

• Startup and small ecommerce operations wanting an easy-to-build WordPress website for scalability and versatility
• Businesses and educators wanting to sell courses or subscriptions online

Visit Bluehost

Bluehost’s all-in-one WooCommerce WordPress ecommerce packages provide a great option for anyone—even a true beginner—to set up an online store. Plus, the Bluehost Builder makes it super-easy to build a WordPress website quickly, and it’s included with any hosting plan, not just the online store plans. Like IONOS, Bluehost also made our list of the top drag-and-drop site builders for small businesses.

As to ecommerce web hosting for small businesses, Bluehost offers two plans for online stores: Standard and Premium. Both include unlimited products and come with the intuitive, drag-and-drop Bluehost Builder.

The Standard plan costs $12.95 per month for the first year with a 12-month contract. It comes with WooCommerce installed and plugins for site security, email marketing, analytics, customer reviews, and one year of free automated backups. With one click, you can install payment processing capabilities for top processors, and you can place orders manually and set up discount codes for promotions.

The Premium plan costs $24.95 per month for the first year with a 12-month contract. It adds to the Standard plan’s features with online appointment booking and scheduling tools, the ability to sell subscriptions, and product customization options (e.g., sizes, colors, and so on). You also get free domain privacy, automated backups (forever), and built-in local and national tax calculation and management.

See how easy it is to build an online store using the Bluehost Builder.

Bluehost Pricing & Features

Unique Features for Small Businesses

• Online marketing services: Outsourcing various digital marketing services may be more cost-effective than hiring in-house. Bluehost offers full-service web design, marketing, and content management services as well as SEO, pay-per-click ad management, and site migration services. With that said, providers like Namecheap, DreamHost, and InMotion all provide site migration for free.
• Online store setup services: Bluehost promises online store web hosting subscribers 24/7 support, including help setting up your store, adding products, installing and using plugins, and customizing your online store’s features.
• Free CDN: Your Bluehost web hosting package includes free CloudFare CDN (content delivery network) that distributes your site’s content to servers so that it can be loaded from a server near the site visitor. This improves site and page load times, which in turn benefits your site’s SEO and site visitor experience. You have to enable this in your account to activate it.

Our Expert Opinion

Building a website on WordPress is challenging. Building a full-scale online store on WordPress is doubly so—but Bluehost can make all that pain go away. The WordPress-recommended web hosting company has ecommerce-ready plans to streamline the process of getting your online store, well, online.

Visit Bluehost

How We Evaluated the Best Web Hosting for Small Business

The key to a successful website is ensuring your web hosting provider is tailored perfectly to your business and its website’s specific needs. Security, ease of use, maintenance, and online presence all go together as websites need to be up and running consistently. Click on any of the tabs below for details about the criteria we used to determine the best web hosting services.

Small businesses need affordable web hosting plans with all the necessary features. We concluded that Namecheap has the best overall value for the cost. You’ll save money now and in the long run, get 100% uptime, and get small business essentials like free professional email addresses, a domain, and SSL site security.

Visit Namecheap

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the best hosting for small business?

Apples-to-apples, the best web hosting service provider based on our criteria is Namecheap, especially when cost is the top concern. However, digital agencies and web design freelancers should take a look at IONOS’ partner program. Those prioritizing support will love InMotion’s customer care and resources. Finally, WordPress web hosting is best with DreamHost, except for ecommerce sites—which are most easily built with Bluehost’s online store plans.

Where can I host my business website?

While you can start with web hosting, there are all-in-one solutions that are far easier when it comes to creating a website for your small business. For example, Squarespace is a leading website builder that includes hosting, domain name, SSL certificate, and unlimited storage and bandwidth in plans starting from $14. See more options in our list of the top website builders.

What is the best hosting for beginners?

The absolute best hosting for beginners comes with drag-and-drop website builders that include hosting, SSL security, and perks like appointment booking, ecommerce selling, and SEO and marketing tools in all-inclusive packages. When considering hosting alone, look for a small business-friendly web host that has affordable introductory pricing, inclusive plans, and a free website builder.