The Best Web Hosting Services for Small Businesses 2025

Generally speaking, Hostinger will probably be your first choice. It’s admittedly a little hard to decide which service offers the best web hosting for small businesses, as so many of them are quite similar on the surface. But, according to our own testing, the top three candidates are Hostinger, Bluehost, and IONOS.

Hostinger offers a great all-around package of features for the price, while Bluehost is more affordable after renewal. IONOS is a great option for businesses looking to scale up significantly. But really, you’d probably be fine choosing any of the three, and here’s why.

The best web hosting services for small businesses

Compare the best web hosting services for small businesses

Best for	Best for versatility	Best for small, secure WordPress sites	Best for websites that intend to scale
Star rating	4.9 AllAboutCookies writers and editors score products based on a number of objective features as well as our expert editorial assessment. Our partners do not influence how we rate products.	4.8 AllAboutCookies writers and editors score products based on a number of objective features as well as our expert editorial assessment. Our partners do not influence how we rate products.	4.7 AllAboutCookies writers and editors score products based on a number of objective features as well as our expert editorial assessment. Our partners do not influence how we rate products.
Starting price	$1.95/mo	$2.99/mo	$3.20/mo
Money-back guarantee	Yes — 30 days	Yes — 30 days	Yes — 30 days
Uptime guarantee	99.9%	99.99%	99.99%
Monthly visits	25K - 200K	40K - 400K	N/A
Number of websites	25 - 100	10 - 100	1 - unlimited
Free SSL certificate	On all plans	On all plans	On all plans
Free domain for a year	On all plans	On all plans	On all plans
Learn more	Get Hostinger Read Hostinger Review	Get Bluehost Read Bluehost Review	Get IONOS Read IONOS Review

Hostinger: Best for versatility

What we liked

Beginner-friendly interface: Starting your first website shouldn’t have to be complicated, and Hostinger follows that philosophy. Its admin UI is pretty good at giving you an intuitive, beginner-friendly experience for managing your hosting package.

Solid performance: Our testing revealed that Hostinger’s shared hosting offers pretty good performance, especially for the price (see below for more details). A site that loads faster converts more, after all.

Good web builder tools: In keeping with the whole “ease of use” thing, Hostinger has made a point of including a simple yet powerful website builder to help you get up and running. Its WordPress integration is pretty good, too.

What we didn’t like

Not PCI-compliant: While Hostinger is aimed at small businesses, its servers aren’t rated for storing customer payment information. You’ll want to use a third-party payment platform like Stripe or PayPal for that, which can be inconvenient.

Test results

Across our tests, Hostinger performed admirably with low and stable server response times. The performance scores were respectable, though not mind-blowing, with fairly average loading times for the site as a whole.

But site performance can be tweaked for better loading times. The stability of the servers is what matters, and Hostinger has that in spades.

Star rating summary

The Performance, Features, and Security categories are the ones that carry the most weight in our rating system, because you obviously want a site that’s fast and secure. And, of course, you want the features to help you build that site in the first place. And in those particular categories, Hostinger got 5s across the board.

Bluehost: Best for small, secure WordPress sites

What we liked

Great security features: Getting your site hacked isn’t just an inconvenience; it can be a legal liability as well. Bluehost goes the extra mile when integrating security features, including Imunify360, to harden your WordPress sites.

Affordable plans: Bluehost’s plans are a little bit cheaper than Hostinger’s when you account for the price hike after the first renewal on both platforms. For example, Bluehost’s Starter plan renews at $9.99/mo, while Hostinger’s Premium plan renews at $12.95/mo. (Yes, that’s the cheapest plan.)

Seamless WordPress integration: Bluehost makes a particular point of streamlining its WordPress hosting experience with managed WordPress hosting plans, the security suite mentioned above, and a whole lot of other extra features.

What we didn’t like

Slightly less good performance: As you’ll see below, Bluehost’s shared hosting servers didn’t perform as well as Hostinger’s servers, for example. This drop in performance won’t be a deal-breaker for most small sites, and can be mitigated with a CDN, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

Test results

The server response time isn’t overly high, but it does fluctuate quite a bit, which isn’t something you want from a web host. But even the “high” response times are pretty low, so it’s not so bad.

The site performance scores are a bit less heartening. Tests reveal good First Contentful Paint times (indicating our test site loaded quickly), but higher Last Contentful Paint times (indicating it finished loading more slowly than other sites).

Star rating summary

Compared to Hostinger, Bluehost takes a small hit in the “Big Three” categories, particularly in Performance. But our overall experience with the service was good, so we can still recommend it despite all that. For you, the affordability may well be worth the tradeoff.

IONOS: Best for websites that intend to scale

What we liked

Options for scaling to enterprise: IONOS offers quite a range of web hosting types that will let you grow from a small brochure site, to a mid-sized ecommerce site, to a full enterprise platform. That flexibility makes it a great choice for anyone who intends to scale up to the big leagues.

User-friendly: IONOS strikes a surprisingly good balance between the aforementioned enterprise options and ease of use for beginners. It gives you full control of your hosting experience without being too confusing.

Good web builder: IONOS makes it easy to start up your first website with a feature-filled and generally good site builder. Just tell it what kind of site you want, pick a design, and go from there.

What we didn’t like

Lack of built-in performance tools: Shared hosting lacks features like a built-in CDN. You can get that separately, but it would be nice if it were included in the plan. The servers themselves are fast enough, though.

Test results

The maximum server response time we measured was a little high, but the servers were mostly stable. The performance scores were impressive, though, and the servers also performed very well under load when we tested them. The 100% uptime certainly didn’t hurt the performance score either.

Star rating summary

The lack of features like a free CDN means that IONOS takes a small ding in the Features category. But it still gets 5s in the Performance and Security categories, along with quite high scores across the rest of our tests. All in all, IONOS offers a pretty decent package for the price.

How we tested the best web hosting services for small businesses

When looking for the best options for small business sites, we prioritized ease of use, overall stability, good server performance, security, affordability, and customer service. We tested each one by getting the cheapest plan, creating a website, and keeping records of our experiences.

We used Dotcom-Tools, Uptime Robot, and Loader.io for the performance, uptime, and load tests.

We made our judgments based on the following criteria:

• Our experience: We noted how easy or hard it is to manage your hosting and set up a website.
• Pricing: We compared the features offered in each plan to the price, accounting for price hikes after the first renewal.
• Performance: We tested each site with the aforementioned tools to gauge each host's server speed and stability.
• Features: We considered the number of features offered by each host and the quality of their implementation.
• Security: We examined each host’s security practices and tools.
• Support and reputation: We tested the support teams with simple issues to see how they’d respond.

Bottom line: The best web hosting service for small businesses

Hostinger provides the best overall package for small business sites.

Don’t get me wrong, all three are pretty good. And you might decide that Bluehost’s more affordable plans are right for your WordPress-based business site, or you might want the room to grow that IONOS provides.

But, as mentioned at the beginning, Hostinger provides the best overall balance of features, ease of use, and price-to-value for most use cases.

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