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★★★★★

We recommend Siteground as the best web hosting for small businesses in 2023. Read our full review below.

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Siteground is one of the most popular web hosting services around.

With more than 18 million sites hosted, the hosting company has come a long way since its humble beginning back in 2004.

Over the years, Siteground has built a solid reputation as a reliable, fast, and responsive hosting provider.

And, as a business owner, these attributes are some of the things you want to see in a hosting provider.

Web Hosting for small businesses

But, before you choose a hosting service for your business website, here are a couple of questions you may want to answer.

How techy are you?

To host your business website, you will need to pay for a domain name, subscribe to a hosting plan and then configure the domain name server (DNS).

For most people, these tasks required to get the website online may be too technical for them to handle by themselves.

So, you want to be clear about whose responsibility it is to ensure the website goes live. Whether you will need to hire someone or handle it by yourself.

How much do you intend to spend on hosting?

You can get a dedicated server that costs several thousand dollars a year to host your business website or go for shared hosting, which usually costs just under 100 dollars per year.

The bottom line is you will find a hosting plan that fits within your budget. However, keep in mind though, that you’re probably going to get what you paid for.

Top-quality, reliable, and fast hosting will probably cost a lot more.

What volume of traffic do you expect?

If your business has a high-growth potential or could probably go viral you may want to go for hosting plans that can successfully handle traffic surges.

If on the other hand, you’re running a small business then a shared hosting plan may be just right for you.

So, consider the future traffic potential of the business when purchasing a hosting plan.

You may also like: A-Z Guide to Launch Your WordPress Site in 24 Hours

How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Service for Your Small Business?

Imagine this, you are ready to purchase a hosting solution for your business website. You’ve finished estimating the potential traffic to expect and have set your budget.

But, when you Googled ‘web hosting for small businesses’ you got over 200 million hits!

Now that’s an incredible amount of data to go through just to find the best hosting service for your business.

So to ensure you don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of available services to choose from, we’ve created this checklist for you.

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Handy Checklist for choosing a web hosting solution

We designed a nice infographic that illustrates all the important points to check when choosing a web host. You can download the Checklist here. No opt-in is required.

Or, continue reading.

Site uptime

Reliability should be your top priority when it comes to choosing a web hosting provider for your business website.

Inaccessible sites or downtime could cost you a lot of money in lost transactions and of course traffic.

You don’t want to wake up one morning to find that your site is down. Or to receive a message from a customer informing you about the downtime.

So, the hosting service you choose should, at least, guarantee 99% uptime.

To get a fairly good idea of how reliable a web host provider is, you may want to read other people’s reviews and experiences using the service.

Site Speed

Google uses site speed signals as a ranking factor. The faster your site, the more likely it is to rank higher.

And, of course, customers expect your website to load in under three seconds.

All though, there are several factors that can affect how fast a website loads, including but not limited to image sizes, the website code and architecture, and the server on which the site is hosted.

You want to ensure you don’t have server-side speed issues. The reason is, you can easily fix the other issues by yourself unlike if it’s a hosting problem.

So, to ensure the site speed is up to scratch, you may want to choose a web host that has several servers in different locations.

And, if you can, choose one with servers that are located in the same location or nearer to where the majority of your customers reside. This way, you can significantly cut down on data lag time.

Customer support

You are probably going to run into problems once in a while with your website and you need all the help you can get when it happens.

Responsive, fast, helpful customer support can be the difference between spending a couple of minutes or several hours or days trying to get your website to function properly.

Great support to fall back on is an essential requirement for the success of your website vis-a-vis business.

Use the free trial support test to gain firsthand experience of how effective and responsive a potential web host customer support is without having to make any serious commitment.

Another thing you can do is to read reviews from real people using the service already.

Traffic volume

This depends largely on the type of website you are building. If, for example, the website is for a local business that excepts a handful of visits per day, the server needs of the business will differ from a website that attracts thousands of visitors in a day.

Considering this, you will want to pick a hosting provider that offers robust bandwidth and storage to handle your unique traffic needs.

Keep in mind though, that the more resources (bandwidth and storage space) your website uses the higher the hosting charge you’ll have to pay.

Price

The hosting price is probably one of the first things you check when choosing a web host.

While we recommend that you don’t base your final decision to choose a web host on pricing alone, it is also worthwhile to compare prices, in addition, to the features listed above.

Remember, it costs money to provide quality service, so you must be prepared to pay a fair price to receive the quality, reliable and fast service you need to grow your business.

Migration features

If you already have a website and planning to move to a new host, you want to make sure the web host you choose can handle the migration of your site seamlessly.

Some host providers offer free migration while others charge a fee to help you move the site.

Migrating your website to a new host is a tricky affair. If for whatever reason, the migration was not handled properly, you could potentially lose years of work and the keyword rankings you’ve achieved over the years.

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Is Siteground the Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses?

Based on how Siteground:

• Stacks up against the set of criteria above
• My personal experience hosting our website on the platform
• And, reviews from other users

Siteground is without a doubt one of the best hosting services for small businesses.

But, don’t take my word for it, though.

To show just how reliable the web host is, WordPress recommended Siteground alongside two other host providers for its users.

Now, that should count for something, don’t you think?

Siteground Features

Here are some of the unbeatable features that made Siteground the best web host for small businesses.

Siteground pros

Benefits of hosting your business website with Siteground.

Ease of Use

Whether you are a veteran web developer with years of experience hosting and managing websites or this is your first time, one thing you want, is a web host that is easy to use.

Siteground understands this need, which is why they developed an intuitive Client area that is easy to navigate.

In the Client Area, you can quickly navigate to the task you want to perform.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the button to your WordPress dashboard and the cPanel is boldly displayed.

For a new customer, Siteground offers a one-click installation that allows you to install software including WordPress, Joomla, Woocommerce, etc. even if you don’t have any technical know-how.

So, on ease of use, Siteground scores a 9.5/10 from us.

Unlimited Email Accounts

When you purchase any Siteground hosting plan, you also receive access to create unlimited email accounts.

Secure and Unlimited Databases

If you are a regular user like me, you may not really care about databases and all.

However, the database is like a warehouse where all your content and information are organized and stored.

A limited database means you only have a finite space to organize your things.

On the other hand, with the access to create unlimited databases, you get to create different ‘spaces’ to store information.

Applications

As of the last count, Siteground supports more than 250 applications.

This means, no matter the software your site is running on, it is likely going to be compatible with Siteground.

Some of the software that is compatible with Siteground include:

• Content management systems like Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal
• E-commerce software like Magneto, Prestashop, Woocommerce, etc.
• Forum apps like phpBB and vBulletin
• Wikis like MediaWiki, TikiWiki
• Online learning platforms, and so on.

Server locations

Siteground has a distributed network of servers located in six countries on 3 continents.

And also uses a CDN network that spans 90 countries and 194 cities worldwide.

This means your site visitors experience a faster load time as content is served from the nearest server location.

Server Security

Data safety is a major concern for most businesses. To ensure customers’ website content, data, and information are secured Siteground uses a multi-layered security architecture to protect their data centers.

Siteground deploys the latest end-to-end encryption technology to protect data while in transit and also access to sensitive data is protected by advanced tools like the phishing-resistant security keys.

Server Speed

Siteground is one of the fastest web host providers. The company uses the latest SSD drives on their shared and cloud hosting platforms to ensure fast load time.

Their servers are regularly updated to the latest PHP version and there’s the SuperCacher tech that is used to cache dynamic pages.

Siteground partnered with Cloudflare to provide free CDN to all their clients. All of these combine to ensure Siteground’s servers are nimble, agile, and fast.

Michael of Researchasahobby.com ran a test to see how Siteground speed compares with the other 15 host providers.

The result is fascinating. Here’s a screenshot of the chart.

For a more detailed reading see the article

Server Uptime

Server uptime was the primary reason we hosted Smart Entrepreneur Blog on Siteground.

Our previous experience with another host wasn’t something to write home about.

Even though we had to pay a significantly higher amount to host our site on Siteground, we have no regrets so far.

 Interestingly, Siteground guarantees 99.99% uptime annually, and if for whatever reason, they fail to maintain the rating you will receive a month of free hosting.

And for every 1% drop in uptime, you get an additional free month of hosting.

Backups

When building your website, you can configure your Siteground account to automatically back up your site.

Siteground backups your website daily and if you have lost any data, you can restore it in one click.

Siteground Customer Service Phone Number

Siteground has one of the most responsive customer support in the web hosting space.

While we haven’t had any cause to contact customer service since we started hosting our site on their platform, the ratings and reviews from other users are stellar.

Take, for example, Siteground is rated 4.8 out of 7,140 reviews on Trustpilot.

And, when you visit the support center in the client area, you often get this feeling that Siteground actually cares about its users. And that they are prepared to help you resolve whatever issue you’re experiencing.

Interestingly, you can contact Siteground customer support via live chat, phone, or ticketing.

Regardless of the channel you choose, you can rest assured that the Siteground customer support team will respond to you fast.

Siteground Cons

This review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning at least one Siteground con, so here you have it.

Domain Names

Unlike some web host that offers free domain registration alongside the first year of hosting, you will pay $15.95 to register your domain with Siteground.

Siteground Pricing Plans

Siteground offers a range of different pricing plans that are tailored to meet your budget.

Whether you are an individual and just wanted to host a personal site, a small business with limited needs, or a large corporation Siteground has pricing plans that are best suited to your needs.

Siteground’s shared hosting and WordPress-managed hosting are pegged at the same price points.

The starter plan on these hosting solutions is $6.99/mo. for the first year and $14.99/mo. for subsequent renewal.

The Managed Cloud hosting starts at $80.00/mo. for the entry plan. While the advanced Business Plus plan is $160.00/mo.

Siteground’s Enterprise hosting plan is a custom-built solution for companies with unique needs.

Siteground Hosting Plans

Siteground offers four primary hosting solutions:

• Shared Hosting, is by far the most popular web hosting solution.
• Managed WordPress Hosting
• Managed Cloud Hosting
• Enterprise Hosting

However, for this review, I’ll only focus on the shared hosting plan, since that’s the plan we are currently hosted on.

Siteground’s Shared Hosting Plans

Shared hosting is a web hosting solution in which you share a hosting server with several other sites.

Think of shared hosting as an apartment building with several blocks of flats.

Each flat is occupied by a different family. Usually, the people living in the apartment building have to share common facilities, like a swimming pool, an elevator, and a parking space.

When you buy a shared hosting plan, you are sharing the server’s resources with other websites.

As a result, the cost of hosting your website is significantly smaller compared to if you had a whole server to yourself.

Siteground offers shared hosting plans which are best for hosting individual websites, small business sites, and websites that don’t consume too many resources.

The Siteground shared hosting is split into three plans:

• StartUp
• GrowBig
• GoGeek

Compare Siteground Shared Hosting Features

Must have features.

Performance Boosters

Security Solutions

Support

Ecommerce

Wrap up

The web host you choose for your small business website can be the difference between succeeding online and struggling.

As a business owner, you want a web host you can trust. One that is reliable and has great customer support to help you resolve any problems you may have in a timely manner.

Siteground has proven for 16 years now that it is a reliable, responsive, and fast web host. And above all, it is truly a small business-friendly web host.

I personally host all our websites on Siteground and I believe without a doubt that Siteground is the best web host for small businesses.

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