Did you know that there are about 28 million small businesses in the United States?
That means more than 50% of the country’s working population work in this type of business. That equates to about 12 million people.
With the competitive markets, even small businesses need an online presence. For that, you need to have the best web hosting for small business. It can be a great part of your digital transformation framework for success.
But how do you determine which provider is right for your small business? Read on and find out more.
What Web Hosting Features Should You Look For?
When it comes to choosing business web hosting, there are some features to look out for. For example, a good provider will offer unlimited data transfers per month. They need to have email capabilities as well as an option between solid-state or traditional hard drive storage, and good customer support representatives.
There are times where you need to think about the operating system of the server. Servers based on Windows offer an environment that runs scripts using Microsoft. If you want other frameworks, Linux servers are more common.
Consider whether you want to sell products on your website. If so, you need to opt for a web host with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. This will help in keeping your customers’ data secure between their browser and your web host.
Having an SSL certificate will help secure your customers’ purchasing information like their credit card numbers. Your customers by more from your business if they see that green padlock when visiting your website. Check with your provider since some toss it for free while others charge a lot for it.
The Importance of Uptime
The other features mentioned above can give more value to your small business web hosting services, but none is as important as website uptime. Remember, your clients will not have the means of accessing your website if it’s often down.
Frequent downtime can result in other drawbacks. For example, your loyal customers might lose their confidence in you.
Some customers might turn to your competitors. They might discover that the new one is better since it was timelier for their needs. That ensures they won’t come back to your small business.
The providers listed here have excellent uptime. Always remember that no matter how good the web host features are, it’s nothing compared to uptime. Here are the top web host providers you can use for your small business website:
1. HostGator Web Hosting
When it comes to reliability, HostGator has lots of simple services. They have a lot of useful plans for both individuals and small businesses alike. If you’re a novice webmaster, this host is your top pick even if you opt for shared web hosting.
HostGator has cloud hosting, a smart technology that improves your redundancy. It does so by spreading your website’s content across different devices. With this, your load times get boosted as well.
All HostGator’s cloud plans give you shared access to a specific system resource level. This applies for both CPU time and RAM. HostGator allows you to get more of these resources and get the benefits as soon as possible.
This web host has a lot of extra features you can avail. For example, they have SiteLock’s malware scanning service that you can avail for $1.67. It’s a great value since a lot of other providers will charge twice or thrice more for similar features.
2. GoDaddy Business Hosting
If you’re a business that needs functionality and ease of use, GoDaddy is a great choice. It’s a hybrid service that offers dedicated resources. It shares a lot of similarities with Virtual Private Server hosting.
The main difference is that it has simple cPanel-style management. It’s comparable to a shared hosting service.
Their baseline Launch plan offers 60 GB of storage while giving 2GB RAM and one CPU. All of these are for your website’s use. This helps in giving consistent website performance regardless of the conditions affecting other websites hosted on your server.
GoDaddy gives minimal restrictions. That means you have unlimited website support, database and emails, and unmetered bandwidth. Take note that GoDaddy reserves the right to complain if your website hogs a lot of resources.
This web host provider’s price range is more expensive compared to other VPS services. But if money isn’t an issue, the easy setup along with simple website management are worth investing into.
3. Liquid Web
This web host provider gives basic shared and cloud hosting plans. They’re easy to use while ensuring that performance is consistent. The main caveat is that they limit your server environment control.
For example, it isn’t possible to install Windows to your server. Other things that might affect other websites within the same server aren’t allowed as well. That problem is easy to fix—opt for their Virtual Private Servers instead.
These isolated environments are customizable no matter what you opt to do. After all, you get the CPU time and RAM allocation all for yourself. That means your performance and stability improves and stays that way.
Liquid Web’s VPS services aren’t that cheap. But that’s because their basic plans include features that other services charge as add-ons. For example, their $59 plan gives you backups, unlimited websites, dedicated IP addresses, and other useful features.
This web host provider also guarantees 100% uptime for your website. They’re generous with their service level agreements too. This makes them an attractive choice when it comes to business hosting.
4. DreamHost
Do you plan to have simple business websites? If so, DreamHost has shared hosting services that can handle your needs. For all the fundamental factors, this provider has excellent scores due to a lot of reasons.
For example, DreamHost doesn’t impose bandwidth, emails, and MySQL database limits. It has a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate as well as a pre-installed WordPress. With this, you can get a decent quality website within a few hours.
If you want to scale up your operations, you can get extras like unlimited domain hosting. These come with their own free domain name as well as privacy protection. It’s a handy feature considering around 80,000 websites get hacked each day.
DreamHost also has flexible billing plans. They offer monthly billing for shared hosting so you can avoid long-term contracts. If you’re satisfied with their service, you can opt for a three-year plan—it’s protected by a 97-day money-back guarantee.
5. OVH
When it comes to standard hosting, dedicated server plans are at the top. If you’re willing to pay more, you can get an entire system for your website. Doing this ensures you get the best performance and reliability.
Using OVH for your dedicated hosting gives some benefits. This provider has a farther global reach for its data centers. They have centers in Australia, France, Germany, Canada, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.
That means you have increased chances of performance increase. If your website gets hosted near your target audience, they’ll have a faster website experience. You can do this with a high degree of configuration since it supports at least 16 operating systems.
OVH offers a lot of functionalities that can help you make a capable system regardless of its purpose. A lot of people agree that the optimal price range for a good website is between $74-$137.
Even for capricious business owners, the range of features makes it worth a look at least.
6. Blue Hosting
This web host provider gives low-cost web hosting solutions. Despite this, they give excellent service with fast server speeds. This program ensures that you have 99.99% of guaranteed uptime with a good level of redundancy with their RAID 10 SSD Disks.
They have local data centers to cater to small local businesses. For example, if you’re in Chile, you can trust Blue Hosting to have a data center there. Their selected plans allow you to get your own private domain as well.
If you’re having trouble with your website, you can contact them for support. Their technical team is up 24/7 and are always glad to help. You don’t need to wait that long to get reliable, trustworthy support.
Do you plan to have a WordPress website? If so, they have a 1-click software installer to get it.
This ensures that you get your website running as soon as possible. This gives you more time to study your market and grow your small business.
Get the Best Web Hosting for Small Business Today!
Small businesses don’t need to waste their time and money over the wrong web host providers. You deserve to get the most out of your money and time.
That’s why it’s important to get the best web hosting for small business.
Do you need help start your blog? Don’t fret; check out our guide here and learn how to make your own blogging website. You can use the tips listed for your business as well.
