The type of web hosting you choose will determine how your website will perform in terms of speed and user experience. That’s why, as a small business, you need to be careful with your choice of web hosting. Here at Red Media Solutions, we believe that Flywheel is one of the best website hosting solutions for small businesses.
To help you make a good choice, we have reviewed the top 5 best websites hosting for small businesses;
1. Flywheel
Flywheel is one of the best website hosting solutions for small businesses. This web hosting was built with creatives and designers in mind, but it also suits any business owners who need affordable managed WordPress hosting. It offers managed hosting that suits the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
Feature-wise, Flywheel has all you need. Its basic plan (Tiny), which starts at $13/month, allows one to host one WordPress website and offers 20GB of bandwidth as well as 5GB of disc space. It can handle up to 5,000 visitors monthly. Other packages include Starter ($25/month), Freelance ($96/month), Agency ($242/month), and a custom-built plan.
What’s more? Flywheel offers you multisite support, daily backups, SFTP, a free SSL certificate, multiple support, and staging (a cool feature, especially when you want to test new things such as themes before rolling them to your public site.
Another outstanding feature of Flywheel is its user-friendly panel. Everything is clear, and you don’t need to have prior knowledge to perform some basic tweaks.
When it comes to installing WordPress, Flywheel makes things easier for you by offering options. First, you can migrate your site from your existing host to Flywheel for free. Two, if you want to create a new WordPress site, you can do so from your Flywheel dashboard with just a couple of clicks.
Flywheel also has commendable customer care service. Its live chat, which can be accessed via its official website, is available 24/7, and you can also submit a support ticket. The good thing about the Flywheel customer support team is that it is knowledgeable when it comes to handling issues relating to WordPress.
In addition, there is an extensive knowledge base on their official site that has articles covering common topics about this WordPress hosting platform.
In terms of performance and uptime, Flywheel has a commendable 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Pros
· It has quick page load times
· It provides nightly backups so you can rest easy knowing your site data is safe
· Flywheel has a stellar customer care team that is knowledgeable
· It offers easy scalability and allows for the installation of a wide variety of plugins
· It is budget-friendly, with its cheapest package starting at $13/month
· Flywheel offers a generous 30-days money-back guarantee
· Offers free site migration services
Cons
– Its plans are more expensive as compared to shared hosting
– You cannot access SSH due to the managed security provided by Flywheel
Overall, we would recommend Flywheel hosting to any web developer, designer, or anyone looking for a reliable managed web hosting service that is dedicated to WordPress.
2. Bluehost
For those with a limited budget and who plan to use WordPress, Bluehost is an excellent choice. It is one of the few websites hosting companies recommended by WordPress. You can choose from shared hosting plans, dedicated servers, and VPS hosting plans.
With Bluehost, you can easily install WordPress, even on their standard shared hosting plan. And once installed, you can install the WooCommerce plugin so as to create an online store.
All the shared hosting plans come with a cPanel control panel as well as unlimited bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain name.
Shared hosting plans at Bluehost start at $2.95 for the first month. It is hard to find a better package for shared hosting than what Bluehost offers.
In terms of customer support, Bluehost offers a fast and friendly customer support team that can be accessed via a chat system. In addition, they have a vast knowledge base where you can find common issues addressed.
Pros
· It is relatively affordable
· It has a user-friendly dashboard
· It has fast load speeds
· Support responds within a short time
Cons
– They lack an uptime guarantee, but overall their uptime is commendable
– Their shared hosting plans are quite limited as compared to similarly priced plans on other hosting platforms
Overall, this is a great hosting platform for those who are getting started with the online world. Their affordability makes it possible for one to test waters in the online world without having to invest a lot of money.
3. SiteGround
A list of the best website hosting for small businesses cannot be complete without SiteGround occupying one of the top 3 positions. This company has made its name in the WordPress community for quite some time now, and for good reasons.
They have a powerful, reliable hosting platform thanks to their WordPress optimized services. In addition, they offer shared hosting packages at competitive prices, with their startup package starting at $6.99/month- $14.99/month. Other types of hosting you will find include cloud hosting, reseller, enterprise hosting.
It is worth noting that SiteGround is one of the few hosting providers officially recommended by WordPress, and this is a reason enough to trust their hosting services.
Getting WordPress up and running with SiteGround is easy thanks to their in-built installer. The installation process is quite seamless, and you can do it with ease.
In terms of customer support, SiteGround is unparalleled, offering support via phone, social media, tickets, and chat. The support agents are quite knowledgeable, especially on issues relating to WordPress as well as a range of other issues relating to site management. Their knowledge base also offers help as you can find commonly asked questions answered here.
They have a 99.99% uptime guarantee, which means your site will be live virtually all year long. What’s more? They offer plenty of commendable features, including free daily backups, free SSL, unlimited email accounts, and one-click WordPress installation.
Pros
· It has fast load speeds, and thus your website will load fast
· Has a commendable uptime guarantee of 99.99%
· Its customer support is commendable. They have phone support as well
· Provides free daily backup, and thus you don’t have to worry about loss of data
· Siteground has a user-friendly custom dashboard making it beginner-friendly
Cons
– Limited resources on its shared hosting options as compared to most of its competitors
– Higher renewal prices. This is its major downside
Overall, this is great hosting for WordPress websites. For those looking for a reliable, affordable, fast hosting service, SiteGround is a proven giant.
4. GoDaddy
Most hosting solutions for small businesses are focused on performance and functionality rather than ease of use. This is not a problem for people who know what they are doing, but unfortunately, most small business owners do not have the technical expertise to manage their hosting, and it always takes some time to understand how to figure out how the hosting platforms work.
With GoDaddy hosting, it’s quite the reverse. They have prioritized ease of usage more without compromising performance, features, and functionality. In fact, we can term them as a hybrid hosting that aims to provide dedicated resources and great performance, just like VPS hosting but with simplicity (cPanel-style interface) of a shared hosting service. The basic plan, which starts at $1/month for a 12-month contract, gives you 2GB of RAM and 100GB of storage, for instance.
GoDaddy is the largest domain registration platform and also the largest web hosting provider in the world. This web hosting offers its customers shared hosting plans, dedicated servers, and VPS hosting.
What more? GoDaddy supports unlimited websites, unmetered bandwidth (although monitored), and emails. There is also a free SSL certificate and one-year, one-user subscription to the Microsoft Office 365 Business email.
Pros
· GoDaddy has a decent uptime guarantee of 99.94%
· They have a great page load time, which means your site will load fast
· GoDaddy allows you to install over 125 3rd party apps with just a click. This includes content management systems like Joomla and WordPress
· It has one of the cheapest hosting plans
Cons
– The basic plan lacks critical features such as SSL certificate, backups, free site migration, and security
– In recent years, their uptime has taken a downturn
– There are plenty of upsells
– Customer support is not consistent
Overall, if you are looking for an easy-to-use hosting with a wide range of features, GoDaddy could be worth consideration.
5. HostGator
This is one of the oldest website hosting providers. It began as a domain registration company and still offers this service alongside web hosting services.
HostGator gives you a free domain name as a part of your website hosting package. Other benefits of hosting with HostGator include a free SSL certificate, access to different WordPress plugins, such as WooCommerce and CMSs, etc.
What’s more? HostGator offers different types of hosting, including VPN hosting, shared hosting plans, and dedicated servers.
The basic plan costs $5.95 a month and offers all the essential features you need to launch and run your website. The renewal cost is $9.95 a month. All the plans allow free site migration and are backed by a 45- days money-back guarantee. In addition, you get to enjoy unmetered disk space and unlimited bandwidth.
Pros
· HostGator has a commendable uptime guarantee of 99.99%
· All plans are backed by a 45-days money-back guarantee
· It has a cPanel control panel, which is often user-friendly for many
· You get a free domain name, free SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage space, and unlimited email accounts on all the plans
Cons
– Disks are not SSD, which means your site can get slower over time
Overall, this is a great hosting service we can recommend to anyone looking for reliable shared website hosting and domain name registration.
Conclusion
We have come to the end of our brief reviews of the best website hosting solutions for small businesses, and we do hope that the information above has made it easier for you to choose a hosting service.
When choosing a hosting provider, make sure you consider the following- uptime guarantee, speed, customer support, price, and features of each plan.