As a small business, building your own website for the first time can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, the best web hosting services for small businesses make the process much less painless than it might otherwise be. Generally, they offer a suite of tools that provide smaller companies with everything they need to design, launch, and maintain their websites. This will include such things as a domain name (i.e., a website address), access to content management systems (like WordPress), email accounts, security software, third-party plugins (for enabling e-commerce on your site), as well as storage space.

Of course, there are lots of web hosting services out there, so choosing the right one for your small business can be difficult. Here are the 17 best web hosting services for small businesses in operation in 2020. Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses, but they should all do a good job of guiding you through the process of launching and running your own website.

Powering over two million websites worldwide, the Massachusetts-based Bluehost is one of the best web hosting services for small businesses around today. Founded in 2003, it provides subscribing companies with a free domain name for the first year, a free SSL Certificate for website security, and also a simple one-click WordPress install process. On top of this, Bluehost also provides 24/7 support for subscribers, while its shared web hosting services provide smaller businesses with a lower cost option for getting online. Its services start from $7.99 per month.

Based in California, InMotion Hosting is another highly reputable service that offers a wide range of web hosting services. Beginning from $7.99 per month, it offers everything from shared hosting (in which a single server hosts multiple sites/customers at once, thereby spreading costs between them) to WordPress and virtual private server (VPS) hosting. For larger SMB, it also provides a dedicated server hosting service from $99.99, enabling companies to operate their websites at greater scale. As with most other quality hosting services, InMotion also gives customers 24/7 live support, and is compatible with a range of open source editing apps — that let users customize and modify files — such as WordPress, PrestaShop, b2evolution, and Joomla. 

Founded in 2002, Houston-based HostGator is a web hosting service for small businesses and also larger enterprises. Beginning from as little as $2.75 per month, it offers a variety of web hosting services, ranging from basic website builders to WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated server hosting. In addition, most of its packages include unmetered bandwidth, free domain names, free SSL Certificates, and free WordPress/cPanel transfers. Other packages, such as its Business Plan, also include free SEO tools and a free dedicated IP address. It also offers 24/7/365 support, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a 45-day money-back pledge.

Hosting over one million websites, iPage has been a highly affordable option for small businesses ever since 1998. It offers a single website shared hosting plan at $1.99 per month, while it also provides a number of more premium options such as a WordPress Optimization bundle and also support for Google’s G Suite. All of its plans come with unlimited bandwidth, a free domain name for the first year, and an inclusive SSL Certificate. Importantly, it has uptime of around 99.9%, and it’s compatible with a wide range of third-party apps, such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, PixelPost, b2evolution, Gallery2, and ZenPhoto.

Another California-based web hosting service, GreenGeeks prides itself on being an eco-friendly provider. This eco-friendliness comes in the form of a pledge to put three times the energy its hosting consumes back into the energy grid, and all in the form of renewables. Aside from its environmental credentials, it also offers a comprehensive suite of web hosting packages, from WordPress hosting to reseller and VPS hosting. As can be expected, it also provides customers with 24/7/365 support, as well as money-back and 99.9%-uptime guarantees.

Located in Michigan, with additional data centers in Singapore and the Netherlands, A2 Hosting is another very strong web host for small businesses. It offers a more extensive range of hosting plans compared to many other services, encompassing cheaper shared hosting and also reseller, VPS, and dedicated server hosting. Its shared hosting packages are optimized for apps such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. They also offer free SSL Certificates and “Turbo Servers.” which claim to be 20 times faster than industry averages.

GoDaddy is perhaps the most well-known web hosting service for small businesses, and with good reason. Its hosting services begin from $2.99 per month, including everything from shared hosting to WordPress hosting and business hosting. Even with its basic shared hosting package a free domain is included, as are unmetered bandwidth,100GB storage capacity, and free Office 365 email. More premium plans provide unlimited websites, greater speed, unlimited storage, and free DNS protection and SSL Certificates, among other features.

Founded in 1996 and based in California, Dreamhost is one of the longest-running web hosting services for small businesses around today. It offers three main hosting plans, with its shared package costing $3.95 per month and including a free SSL Certificate, a free domain, one website, and also unlimited bandwidth and WordPress pre-installed. It also provides a more premium “DreamPress” package, which comprises one WordPress website, unlimited storage, on-demand backups and one-click restores, as well as other features. It also offers a VPS hosting service, while all of its packages come with 24/7 support.

Registered in the UK, US, Spain and Bulgaria, SiteGround is an international web hosting service that provides packages ideal for small and medium business sites, as well as e-commerce sites. Its plans include standard web hosting and WordPress-optimized hosting, as well as a cloud-based hosting services for websites that require higher performance. Its services include a range of features that make setting up and running a website easier, such as automated WordPress migration, collaboration tools, and SSD storage.

Based in London, WP Engine is a web hosting service for small businesses focused on WordPress. It claims to go “beyond” other managed WordPress hosting, with its APIs and tools designed to create a wider variety of WordPress sites than other rivals. Aside from that, all of its packages include 24/7 support, at least 50GB bandwidth per month, transferable websites, and automated SSL Certificates. While its basic Startup package includes only one website, its Premium package includes provision for up to 50 websites.

While most good web hosting services promise 99.9% uptime, Hostwinds goes a little further, promising 99.9999% uptime. Its hosting packages start from $8.99 per month and include unlimited bandwidth and disk space, as well as a free domain, free SSL Certificate, a free dedicated IP, website transfers, and instant setup. It also offers an “Ultimate” package from $12.99 that includes unlimited domains, as well as business plans that promise 500% faster speeds and greater traffic capabilities.

Based in New Jersey, AccuWebHosting offers a range of Windows-focused hosting packages. Its basic small business web hosting plan costs includes three domains, 30GB SSD storage, 150 email accounts per domain, 750GB data transfer per month, daily website backups, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Its services also include dedicated WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and cloud-based hosting for greater scalability and a 100% uptime rate.

Based in Michigan but with data centers elsewhere in the US and also in the Netherlands, Liquid Web provides one of the widest range of web hosting services for small businesses. Its packages include managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting, but also dedicated server, VSP, dedicated cloud, and high performance hosting — that is, using multiple servers in order to ensure the lowest possible latency and downtime. It also offers custom hosting solutions, so it’s really built from everything from the smallest startups to larger enterprises. All of its packages come with automatic SSL Certificates, 24/7 support, daily backups, unlimited traffic, and a variety of developer tools, such as SSH, Git, and WP-CLI.

Claiming to be the UK’s fastest web hosting service for small businesses, 1&1 Ionos Web Hosting is also one of the best. Its basic Business package provides a free lifetime domain, a SSL Certificate, up to 25 email accounts, and 100GB of storage. Its premium Expert package includes unlimited storage and unlimited databases, as well as 9GB of RAM, for faster performance. Aside from its standard web hosting services, it also sells dedicated hosting services, for larger companies that require more powerful hardware.

Headquartered in Malta but catering to a worldwide customer base, Cloudways Web Hosting offers a wide suite of hosting packages for small businesses. It works with a choice of data centers, including AWS, Google Cloud and DigitalOcean, while its hosting plans include 24/7/365 support, free SSL, free migration, unlimited app installs, dedicated firewalls, automated backups, and real-time monitoring as standard. Its prices start from $10 per month, but rise depending on which cloud provider you choose. 

Founded in 1998 and based in California, Media Temple’s hosting services cater to a wide variety of businesses, small and large. The host features managed WordPress packages that provide easy setup and migration, and it also offers shared hosting plans that cover more email accounts, more sites, greater storage capacities, greater bandwidth, as well as malware detection and a web application firewall. There are also VPS services and managed services for AWS, furnishing greater scale and capacity for larger businesses.

Pressable Web Hosting is another service for small businesses that’s focused on managed WordPress hosting. All of its hosting packages come with unlimited bandwidth, with its basic Personal plan for small businesses providing the quick installation of one WordPress site, as well as 20GB in storage and a capacity of 30,000 visits per month. Other plans cover the installation of additional WordPress sites, enable up to 400,000 visits per month, and give as much as 50GB in storage. Regardless, all of Pressable’s plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, as well as 24/7 support and free SSL Certificates