The best small-business web hosting services of 2025: Expert tested

3 weeks ago 5

When you're looking for web hosting, pricing isn't the only consideration. You have to consider a lot of different things, like uptime, hardware specs, and customer support options to figure out the best way to get your business online.

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And a lot of these things can get complex, depending on what kind of digital presence you want to have. For instance: Businesses that rely mainly on online sales have to pay a ton of attention to uptime guarantees, but brick-and-mortar stores need hosting providers with local servers close to their place of business or where their customers come from.

I looked at scores of web hosting providers to find the top picks that offer the best in reliability, scalability, features, and ease of use. They have uptime guarantees of as high as 100%, plans ranging from shared servers to multiserver cloud hosting, and one-click installers for popular website builders like WordPress.

What is the best small-business web hosting service right now?

GoDaddy has got to win my pick for the best small-business web host of 2025. Its flagship Web Hosting Deluxe plan is packed with value at $14 per month. It lets you host up to 10 websites, and it offers 50GB of storage space on an NVMe hard drive, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain name, cPanel, and SSL security for encrypting your website traffic.

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As a B2B tech journalist and software reviewer, I've analyzed scores of web hosting providers just in the last year. I've written detailed accounts of my experience with hosting providers like Hostinger, Bluehost, DreamHost, ScalaHosting, and many more. For this list, I've focused on the web hosting features that matter most to small businesses — affordability, reliability, and the ability to scale.

The best small business web hosting services of 2025

GoDaddy's web hosting dashboard makes it easy to manage multiple websites and servers, no technical expertise needed. It also offers decent performance during rush hours, even on its shared hosting plans. Recently, GoDaddy has introduced a suite of business tools that it offers for free with all its hosting plans, under the umbrella of GoDaddy Airo. This new AI-powered platform adds a host of new functionalities to its web hosting platform, including website building, social media management, and LLC incorporation.

Review: GoDaddy: Easy and reliable web hosting for small sites and beginners

During my performance tests, GoDaddy maintained a 100% uptime with no outages, surpassing its advertised uptime guarantee of 99.99%. Its average server response time was around 180 ms, while its page loading speed was well below one second on every occasion. I also liked the fact that GoDaddy offers strong security features like SSL certificates and DDoS protection across all plans, along with spam protection for its mailbox service.

Pricing starts at $5.99/month on the Economy plan, which gets you 25GB of NVMe storage. But for shared hosting users, the Deluxe plan offers a lot more value for an initial cost of $7.99/month, letting you host up to 10 websites with over 50 GB of NVMe storage in total. GoDaddy also offers WordPress and VPS hosting solutions for more advanced users, which can offer better performance for high-usage scenarios.

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DreamHost, one of the few web hosting companies that gets an official recommendation from WordPress.org, offers the best in reliability backed by a rare uptime guarantee of 100%. During my tests, I found that the hosting provider keeps those promises while maintaining a fully loaded time that's well below the recommended maximum from Google.

This hosting provider is very easy to use, thanks to its modern design with straightforward navigation. Plus, there's a vast library of resources and tutorials available for advanced use cases. DreamHost even offers a 97-day money back guarantee on all its hosting plans, which is the most generous offer in the entire industry and three times more than the market standard.

Also: The best WordPress hosting services

What it struggles with, however, is volume. Performance seems to be significantly reduced during active hours on shared hosting plans. And since DreamHost only has 3 data center locations spread across the US and the Netherlands, people in other parts of the world will notice a performance drop especially when the servers are under duress. Luckily, DreamHost's entry-level plans are very affordable, so you can easily opt for something on the higher end of its shared hosting plans for better performance.

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Much like DreamHost, InMotion Hosting is a vendor that gets a lot of love from the WordPress community. It comes with an uptime guarantee of 99.98%, which translates to just eight minutes of downtime per month on average. InMotion does similarly well in performance tests too, but unlike DreamHost, its speed is unimpacted by traffic spikes and server activity.

Review: InMotion Hosting: Capable web hosting with a 90-day guarantee

InMotion's entry-level shared hosting plan starts at just $2.24/month when billed annually, but prices go up a lot after the first year. But you can also subscribe to a 3-year initial plan for a slightly higher price to make the discount period last longer. Even the Core plan, which is cheapest among the various shared hosting plans, offers 100 GB of SSD storage coupled with the ability to host up to 2 websites on a single subscription plan. You also get a free domain, SSL certificates, and a 90-day money back guarantee.

Apart from the usual hosting features, InMotion comes with cPanel for its web hosting dashboard and a website builder called BoldGrid that's custom-built for WordPress.org users. Its customer service is incredible too, with minimal wait times and capable support agents. However, the upselling attempts can be a bit too nosy at times.

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SiteGround offers an uptime guarantee of 99.9% and can easily handle more than its promised minimum of 10,000 visits a month on its base plan. It's yet another WordPress-focused website builder, but one with arguably the best performance especially for users outside the US and Europe. This is because its data centers are now hosted entirely on the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, benefiting from the platform's global reach and strong reliability.

While there are three web hosting plans to choose from for WordPress, the GrowBig plan at $6.69/month offers the most value with unlimited websites, 20 GB of storage space, and ~100,000 visits monthly. You also get a host of complimentary features like SSL certificates, daily backups, a free CDN, business emails, and a 30-day money back guarantee.

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Apart from being beginner-friendly and customer-centric, SiteGround offers its proprietary SuperCacher technology to optimize and improve WordPress sites. Automatic platform-wide performance evaluations happen every month, so bugs and vulnerabilities are spotted early on. While its renewal prices jump up to 4 times the initial rate, SiteGround is well worth the additional investment for advanced WordPress users.

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Per its own reports, ScalaHosting has been maintaining a flawless 100% uptime year over year with no significant outages. Server responses are quick across locations in the US, Europe, and Asia. Based on my recent speed tests, it took just a little over a second to load the LCP on a basic WordPress site.

Unlike more traditional web hosts, ScalaHosting offers its proprietary SPanel over the standard cPanel for website and server management. It lets you control websites, databases, emails, and domain names through a single interface — with additional white-labelling options for resellers and agencies. Additional features include an AI security system that claims to block 99.97% of all attacks, SSL certificates, as well as antivirus and anti-spam protection.

ScalaHosting's shared server plans start at $2.65/month initially, although what it's most known for is the Cloud VPS plans priced upwards of $22.46. These plans come with a minimum of 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of RAM, 50 GB NVMe SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, and automatic site backups. You also get 24/7 fully managed support with instant live chat options for all VPS customers, along with a fifteen-minute ticket response time for more complex issues.

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Web host	Starting cost	Storage space (in GB)	Bandwidth	Interface
GoDaddy	$5.99/month	25GB	Unlimited	Custom dashboard
DreamHost	$2.95/month	Unlimited	Unlimited	Custom control panel
InMotion Hosting	$2.24/month	100GB	Unlimited	cPanel + AMP
SiteGround	$3.99/month	10GB	Unmetered	Site Tools
ScalaHosting	$2.65/month	50GB	Unmetered	SPanel

Choose this small business web hosting service...	If you want or need...
GoDaddy	An all-in-one solution with a user-friendly interface and built-in website builder that's perfect for beginners who need simplicity without sacrificing performance.
DreamHost	A reliable, budget-friendly hosting option with excellent US performance and a generous 97-day money-back guarantee to test the service thoroughly.
InMotion Hosting	Rock-solid reliability with comprehensive features including BoldGrid website builder, making it ideal for businesses that need dependable performance and US-based support.
SiteGround	Premium WordPress hosting with advanced caching technology and Google Cloud infrastructure for businesses willing to pay more for superior performance and optimization.
ScalaHosting	Affordable, scalable VPS hosting with exceptional security features and perfect uptime, ideal for growing businesses that need room to expand without technical complexity.

SMBs have specialized web hosting requirements that not all solutions can meet. Here's what I look for when choosing a web hosting provider specifically for small businesses:

Uptime guarantees: Look for an SLA-backed uptime guarantee of at least 99.9% in your web hosting provider. Anything more than 10 minutes of potential downtime per week is generally unacceptable for any kind of business use.
Loading speed: Not only do loading times affect user experience, but even search engines consider them a crucial factor when determining your page rank. So aim for a web host that offers a server response time of under 600 ms, along with NVMe SSD storage and built-in CDN technology to improve real-world performance.
Scalability: As your business grows with time, you need a web hosting service that can keep up with upgraded plans that offer more storage, better performance, greater customizability. Look for a web host that offers a mix of shared, virtual, dedicated, and cloud hosting plans at different price points for the best experience.
Essential security features: Daily backups, SSL certificates, and DDoS protection are just some of the security features you should look for in your web hosting provider. Small businesses need to prioritize customer security, so choose a platform with a clear and transparent security policy that details exactly how it handles and safeguards data.
Storage and bandwidth allocations: Your monthly data transfer requirements can be calculated by using this formula: Monthly visitors × Average page size × Pageviews × 30 days. This is the total amount of content your website serves each month, so look for a hosting plan that offers a higher storage amount than whatever number you get from it.

For each web hosting service that I reviewed, I conducted several different performance tests under multiple scenarios to see how they hold up against situations that businesses might face in the real world. I also look at things like server locations, storage capacity, caching tools, and CDNs — all of which can affect performance.

Apart from judging platforms by reliability and speed, I also look at their overall value for money, the quality of their web hosting management interface, and the availability of security features like SSL certificates and DDoS protection. I also looked at SLAs for upholding uptime guarantees and checked whether a 30-day money-back guarantee was available.

Basically, a web hosting service is just a company that rents out remote servers from its physical data centers so that you can host a website on them. These servers provide the necessary hardware and software infrastructure you need to establish an online presence for your small business.

Small businesses have a range of hosting options to choose from, depending on the hardware specifications and level of support that you require. This includes shared hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated hosting, and managed services for CMS platforms like WordPress and Drupal.

Depending on the nature of the server your website is on, not to mention the level of support offered and any paid add-ons you might need, small business web hosting can cost as little as $1-2 each month, all the way to hundreds of dollars.

Most experts agree that an SLA-backed guarantee of 99.9%+ is pretty good for most small business scenarios. However, there are exceptions to this depending on how important it is for your website to not go down during normal activity.