15 Best: Hosting for Startups (Cloud, Cheap, or Dedicated Hosts)

The best hosting for startups mirrors many of the same aspirations held by the ambitious founders and developers seeking the next big thing: new technologies, speed, and the ability to scale.

Nowadays, the term “startup” can mean just about anything. From the crafters selling their jewelry online to the multimillion-dollar companies in Silicon Valley, startups all seem to come back to ideas, innovation, and motivation to make something happen.

As such, startups of all shapes and sizes have different web hosting needs than casual bloggers or hobbyist designers. Startups need to build an online presence and get their brand or product seen — and do so quickly so that they can focus on growing their business instead of fighting with a website. No matter your startup’s size or industry, we’ve compiled a list of the 15 best hosting shared, cloud, and dedicated hosting solutions for your specific needs.

Cheap | Cloud | Email | Dedicated Servers

When in doubt, shared hosting is a good place to start — it’s easy on the wallet and comes loaded with all the tools new businesses need to succeed. Budgets are lean when you’re just getting started, and these hosts listed below give you the most bang for your buck. We’ll go into more specifics below about which entrepreneurs and businesses might be best suited for shared hosting, but here are the five highest recommended shared hosting providers:

See more top shared hosts ­»

Not sure if you’re a good candidate for shared hosting? Occupations and industries that thrive on shared hosting typically include:

• Independent Contractors (résumés and consulting services)
• Graphic Designers, Photographers, and Performers
• Nonprofits, Religious Organizations, and Humanitarian Groups
• Realtors, Brokers, and Mortgage Consultants
• Restaurants, Mom-and-Pop Businesses, and Boutiques
• Bloggers, Freelance Writers/Editors, and Online Publications
• CPAs and Financial Representatives
• Attorneys and Local Government Officials

When choosing a hosting provider for your startup, keep an eye out for particular features that resonate for your company’s goals. The best shared hosting services will give you unlimited storage space and bandwidth, along with a free domain name. Reliability, automatic backups, and top-notch support might be more important to some entrepreneurs, while others will place more value on a site builder, eCommerce tools, and marketing credits.

Hosting in the cloud or on a VPS, otherwise known as a virtual private server, is perfect for big-budget startups, businesses with rigorous technical requirements, and companies experiencing rapid growth in web traffic that shared servers can no longer handle. For example, these organizations would do best with VPS or cloud hosting:

• Tech Startups (cost-effective, compute-capable servers for fast-growing sites)
• Healthcare Organizations (HIPAA compliance for protecting sensitive patient data)
• Retail Chains (PCI compliance secures credit card info; can display thousands of products)
• Investment Firms (helps safeguard sensitive financial and customer data)

Cloud and VPS hosting plans also give you more control over your infrastructure. If you’d prefer to focus on your business and products, however, most hosts offer various levels of managed services where their experts will take care of your hardware needs. Because your server resources scale with your traffic needs, you’ll only pay for what your site or application actually uses. Read on to see who we tab as the best cloud hosting providers:

See more top cloud hosts »

Central to any growing business is the ability to communicate — both internally among employees and externally with your customers. A strong email hosting platform helps you coordinate your organizational growth and the projects helping you achieve success. As with all things business, speed and security is a must-have feature. Even better, many of our favorite email hosting providers include additional productivity tools, such as calendars and conferencing apps, as well as newsletters and other email marketing tools.

See more top email hosts »

Truthfully, not many startups are going to need a dedicated hosting plan out of the box except for those with big ambitions and investments. Applications relying on large databases or susceptible to high traffic spikes will need the extra computing firepower and security measures to remain online and growing. After all, nothing is worse for a young company than not being there for its early advocates.

If performance is king and price isn’t an issue, however, then dedicated servers are the way to go, because you’ll never have to worry about your website crashing due to a spike in visitors. Here are our top picks:

See more top dedicated hosts »

Hopefully, all the startup leaders reading this will find themselves needing a dedicated hosting plan at some point — when your website is large enough to demand its own resources, you know you’ve made it. The Silicon Valley types might be closer at achieving that goal, but the right host can make all the difference for helping small companies grow.

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