My top hosting recommendations and warnings for small businesses and entrepreneurs, based on creating hundreds of websites sites over 18 years.

By Product Dragon—Nonprofit helping ethical product innovators

Ihave learned a few important things about hosting while building business websites since 2005. Below are my top small business web hosting recommendations based on practical considerations, plus some warnings.

⭐ TL;DR – My top hosting pick (and my personal go-to) is due to very affordable 12-month pricing, excellent support, fast speed, free SSL, and various other factors.

This article applies to “shared” and managed hosting for WordPress, where the hosting company manages all technical aspects of running the web servers.

A complete hosting solution doesn’t just offer technology; it genuinely integrates a skilled team of tech experts with your own.

Alexander Frakking

SiteGround Hosting

I first tried SiteGround in 2017 to host a group of websites for a new startup. I was lured by the low 12 and 24 month pricing, but found the support, stability, and other tools (such as WordPress site migrator and 1-click staging) were worth far more. I now consider it the overall best web hosting for WordPress.

SiteGround for WordPress hosting

SiteGround’s key strength is streamlined WordPress hosting and custom tools to simplify WordPress installation, migration, setup, and performance. It’s the only hosting I would recommend to a WordPress beginner (as well as experts), because it automates security, daily backups, and WP core plus plugin updates in a sensible way.

  • 1-click WordPress installer: it creates the folders, installs the most recent WP version, creates and configures the database & user,
  • WP site migration tool: If you have WP sites hosted anywhere else, SiteGround provides a free migration plugin tool that actually works very well. I’ve migrated dozens of sites with zero issues. Site migration is the biggest hurdle to switching to better hosting, and this tool fixes it.
  • Free SSL: Amazingly, many big hosts still don’t offer free SSL, or they make it very difficult to set up and maintain. SiteGround does it automatically (Let’s Encrypt SSLdomain, subdomain, or wildcard using Let’s Encrypt SSL), and you can change settings.
  • Caching plugin: SiteGround developed their own caching/optimizer WP plugin which is actually very good. It has all the options you’d want, and is designed to work with their environment (for example: memcache options).
  • WordPress optimized: SiteGround seems overall well-optimized overall for WordPress performance, and it’s faster than several competitors in the same price range in my own speed testing, and all plans include free CDN.
  • Unlimited sites: While you can create “unlimited” WordPress (or other) sites, the file storage and inode usage creates practical limit. See below for details. (GrowBig plan and up)
  • 1-click staging sites: When you need to install a new plugin, theme, or make major site changes, it’s a good idea to not do it on your live site. Staging creates a perfect duplicate of your site on a subdomain where you can safely make changes. When done, either discard the staging, or 1-click copy it to your productions site. (GoGeek plan and up)

SiteGround for general hosting

SiteGround hosting is a perfectly capable all-purpose hosting, and I’ve used it for custom app sites (PHP/Laravel), Wikimedia hosting, and