Best Web Hosting for Small Business Owners and First Time Bloggers
Based on our own experience and research, the best web hosts for you to get started to host your website are SiteGround and DreamHost. Both these hosts are excellent for new website owners and bloggers – SiteGround has excellent customer support and a decent set of features, some of which get bundled in your plan itself while DreamHost also offers great service and features though it may be a tad difficult for newbies to learn. DreamHost recently displaced well known BlueHost from the list of recommended web hosts for beginners.
SiteGround provides discounted rates starting at around $4 per month for the first duration. Note, however, that these will increase to full price rates on renewal (Read Understanding Costs of Running a Blog). The shared hosting plans from DreamHost start at $10 per month.
Hosting Prices in a Nutshell
The table below shows the comparison of per month charges of the top two web hosts. Note that these are non-discounted rates paid annually. Bear in mind that web hosting companies do not give any discounts on renewals.
| Web Hosting Provider | Single Domain Hosting | Multi-Domain Hosting |
| DreamHost | $10 | $10 |
| SiteGround | $10 | $15 |
Quick Pros and Cons of each Hosting Company
- Both these providers give you a free domain name for the first year.
- Both of them provide free SSL.
- DreamHost provides unlimited disk space while SiteGround limits its space to 10 GB and 20 GB for its single and multi-domain hosting plans respectively.
- DreamHost also provides free Domain Privacy Protection.
- SiteGround allows you to choose where your server will be located – this feature is great for those businesses who have localized audiences as their websites will load faster.
Summary – Best Hosting for Small Businesses
If you are looking for a good web host for a small business, you are going to host just one website. If you need your site to load faster or if you have an audience which is in Europe or Asia, then you should opt for SiteGround. If you need a lot of disk space, then you should prefer DreamHost. If you are a blogger
If you are a blogger and have a niche audience, then opt for SiteGround as you get great performance. If you have a very large audience, then go for DreamHost as they will allow you to serve more users, albeit at a marginally slower speed.
If you are an entry-level web designer who is just starting out (and may need to host more websites on the same host) and will have small businesses as clients, then DreamHost will be the better option as it offers more disk space and allows you to host multiple domains at the same price. If performance is your priority, then we recommend that you opt for the multi-domain plans at SiteGround as they offer better performance.
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We hope you liked our quick guide to the best web hosting for beginners. If you need additional choices, you should read our Complete Web Hosting Comparison of the Best Web Hosts or read through our Beginner’s Guide to Web Hosting. Let us know which web host did you choose for your first site in the comments section below. Good luck with your business or blog.
This is a great guide, you have summed up quite valid points here. A reliable hosting can have a very positive impact on a person’s website. When searching for such services I always check if they include solid-state drives for better speed and performance. I also use CDN and SSL certificates for better speed and security. Backups are another important feature that comes in handy. The best hosting that I have used so far is the Bluehost. I literally never had an issue with them and if there is any issue at your end, they are always there to help you out. What else can we ask for? 🙂
Good guide. I initially used Dreamhost who are great, but being a UK based business I now use Siteground cloud hosting with UK based servers available. Thanks for sharing.
What about siteground. Are their uptime good enough?
by the way, thanks for sharing a great post.