how-to
Advertiser Disclosure
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 it 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 best hosting resources for your specific needs.
By Host Type:
By Industry Type:
Best Shared Hosting for Startups (Nonprofits/SMBs/Solopreneurs)
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. 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. No matter your needs, these are our five highest recommended shared hosting providers:
1.
Bluehost.com
- Known for high-performance, low-cost shared hosting
- FREE website builder with 1,000s of templates
- Endorsed by the WordPress.org team as a top WP host
- FREE CDN accelerates your site’s page loading
- Usually $7.99/month, but our visitors pay $2.95/month
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Bluehost: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 4 minutes
If you’re looking for an affordable host, Bluehost is a solid, reputable choice, but their low cost coupled with their supremacy in the shared hosting arena is what makes this provider such a value deal. The Bluehost name is listed toward the top of many of... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Shared Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.bluehost.com/shared |
2.
iPage.com
- An industry-leading shared host with competitive pricing
- Attract visitors with a complimentary marketing suite
- $500 in extras like Google AdWords and SiteLock security
- Start selling online in minutes
- Get more than 75% off today! (usually $8.99/month)
- Get started on iPage now.
iPage: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 5 minutes
Whether you're a first-time website owner or a web veteran, iPage’s excellent hosting services and fantastic list of extras make them one of the best values in web hosting.Unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and emails are just a part of what makes iPage’s... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Shared Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.ipage.com/shared |
3.
InMotionHosting.com
- A favorite for shared hosting (and dedicated or cloud)
- FREE SSD storage packs 20x the performance
- FREE SSL certificate and 24/7 support
- 1-click installs for WordPress and popular CMSes
- Get started with FREE website transfer service
- Get started on InMotion Hosting now.
InMotion: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 5 minutes
InMotion offers an excellent business-class shared hosting plan. While carrying a higher price tag than other cheap hosts, it has a very nice list of features to help justify the extra cost. For the IT crowd in the audience, you’ll appreciate SSH access, as... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Shared Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.inmotion.com/shared |
4.
GreenGeeks.com
- Fast, reliable shared hosting for business or blogging
- FREE website migration and website builder
- Easily install popular apps such as WordPress
- Unlimited domains and email accounts
- 99.9% uptime and 24/7 expert support
- Get started on GreenGeeks now.
GreenGeeks: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 4 minutes
Perfect for small business owners, bloggers, or web developers, GreenGeeks offers an impressive blend of features that appeal to all types of site owners. More experienced customers will appreciate the unlimited domain names, SSD RAID-10 storage, and unmetered... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Shared Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | Unlimited SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.greengeeks.com/shared |
5.
HostGator.com
- A balance of price and performance in a shared host
- Includes intuitive control panel with 1-click CMS installs
- Unlimited everything — from domains to databases
- Around-the-clock expert support
- 50% off your first month, plus domains starting at $5!
- Get started on HostGator now.
HostGator: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 5 minutes
HostGator is a great compromise between performance and price. They offer unlimited emails, MySQL databases, disk space, and bandwidth, plus 1-click installs of popular open-source projects, in addition to a 99.9% uptime guarantee on their shared hosting... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Shared Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 45 days | Unlimited | New or Transfer | www.hostgator.com/shared |
Best Cloud Hosting for Startups (Data-Sensitive/Highly Trafficked Sites)
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 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 VPS hosting providers:
6.
InMotionHosting.com
- 50% off the first month with added discounts
- Real-time redundancy powered by a cloud infrastructure
- FREE cPanel licenses with enterprise-grade CentOS
- FREE server management for patches and updates
- FREE SSDs and SSL certificate for fast, secure hosting
- Get started on InMotion now.
InMotion: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 4 minutes
Boasting market-leading VPS hardware, slick management software, and free SSD drives and backups, InMotion offers the most attractive VPS plans you'll find anywhere.Each VPS plan comes with free SSD storage arranged in RAID 6, which is incredibly fast and... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 75 GB - 260 GB SSD | New or Transfer | www.inmotionhosting.com/vps |
7.
Hostwinds.com
- Managed or unmanaged virtual servers available in Windows or Linux
- Cloud hosting instances with hourly or monthly billing
- Instant upgrades without downtime
- FREE around-the-clock monitoring
- Automatic nightly backups available
- Get started on Hostwinds now.
Hostwinds: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 6 minutes
Does any hosting provider have more virtual private server packages than Hostwinds? The company offers 10 configurations — and that's just for managed Linux server partitions. Hostwinds provides 10 additional plans each for managed Windows VPS and unmanaged... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 days | 20 GB - 500 GB | $14.84 | www.hostwinds.com/vps |
8.
InterServer.net
- FREE migrations from shared hosting and instant provisioning
- Latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python, and Ruby pre-installed
- 16 operating system options for Linux or Windows users
- NO contracts and your price is guaranteed for life
- Full root access included
- Get started on InterServer now.
InterServer: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 6 minutes
InterServer's on-site datacenter and hands-on involvement with configuring and provisioning virtual private servers give customers a level of flexibility not seen with many other hosting providers. InterServer rations their VPS and cloud resources through... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 25 GB - 400 GB | $1.99 | www.interserver.net/vps |
9.
Bluehost.com
- 2-4 cores and 4-16GB of RAM
- Endorsed by the WordPress team
- Redundant storage and optional SiteLock security
- Seamless migration from Bluehost shared plans
- Get 50% off your first month (was $29.99, now $14.99)
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Bluehost: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 5 minutes
When comparing the performance versus price of VPS plans, Bluehost brings supreme value to the table. In addition to competitive pricing, they offer premium support and excellent uptime compared to other VPS options in the industry. If you’ve outgrown shared... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 30 GB - 240 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.bluehost.com/vps |
10.
LiquidWeb.com
- Only pay for resources you use with daily billing
- 5TB of outgoing bandwidth and FREE incoming bandwidth
- API access and cPanel available
- Instant provisioning and SSD speed
- FREE Storm® Firewall and real-time server monitoring
- Get started on Liquid Web now.
Liquid Web: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 7 minutes
It's no secret by now that Liquid Web is known for best-in-class technology and reliability that exceeds expectations (from uptime to technical support). Their VPSs embody that reputation to its fullest — including a new Managed WordPress product (Hop one... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | VPS Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 50 GB - 1.6 TB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.liquidweb.com/vps |
The Best Web Hosting for Startups Scales to Dedicated Servers
Truthfully, not many startups are going to need a dedicated hosting plan out of the box. If performance is king and price isn’t an issue, however, then dedicated servers are the way to go. Here are our top picks:
11.
LiquidWeb.com
- 100% network and power uptime guarantees
- Custom configurations, SSDs, and instant provisioning
- Auto-migrations, backups, and 24/7 Sonar Monitoring™
- Block/object storage and load balancer add-ons
- Our visitors pay $96.75/month! (usually $129/month)
- Get started on Liquid Web now.
Liquid Web: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 8 minutes
Liquid Web's strong suit is their managed dedicated server hosting. They own and operate three state-of-the-art datacenters in the US and have over 50 developers working tirelessly to build and maintain custom solutions for added performance and... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 211 GB - 1,775 GB SSD | New or Transfer | www.liquidweb.com/dedicated |
12.
InMotionHosting.com
- Rebootless kernel updates
- 1-click installs and FREE SSDs
- cPanel/WHM licences with FREE SSL
- Tier 1 network with redundancy
- 99.999% net uptime via Smart Routing™ technology
- Get started on InMotion now.
InMotion: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 5 minutes
InMotion offers amazingly fast, reliable dedicated hosting on market-leading hardware — making it an easy choice for anyone seeking a premium dedicated host. From free SSDs to a fanatical support team, InMotion has all the bases covered for both small-scale... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 500 GB - 1.2 TB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.inmotionhosting.com/dedicated |
13.
Bluehost.com
- RAID 1 mirrored storage
- Minimum 3 IP addresses per plan
- Modern hardware, spec'd and maintained in house
- 24/7 expedited support from the dedicated team
- Sign up today for 50% off first month
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Bluehost: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 5 minutes
Built on OpenStack technology, with a minimum of four cores per server, Bluehost offers reliable and flexible dedicated hosting options at an extremely reasonable price. We continually praise their shared hosting options for having fantastic hardware and a... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 1 TB | FREE (1 year) | www.bluehost.com/dedicated |
14.
HostGator.com
- Linux or Windows servers available
- Top-of-the-line fully redundant network and datacenter
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- SSH access and support for multiple languages
- Use code HA30OFF for 30% off first month
- Get started on HostGator now.
HostGator: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 6 minutes
Founded in 2002, HostGator is one of the largest web hosts with a long lineage of dedicated server hosting. With updated hardware, including Intel Xeon Quad-core processors and a boatload of RAM, HostGator balances performance, quality of service, and... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 500 GB - 1 TB RAID | FREE (1 year) | www.hostgator.com/dedicated |
15.
iPage.com
- Fully managed support
- Predictable monthly costs without overage charges
- Easily scalable as demands increase
- Extensive security and mirrored storage for data protection
- Save 20% your first month by ordering today
- Get started on iPage now.
iPage: Our Expert's Review
Setup time: 5 minutes
If you need a fast and flexible dedicated server, iPage offers a very solid option. Whether you’ve outgrown your previous host, or know you have larger-than-average needs, iPage has you covered without breaking the bank.Built on their cloud technology,... Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anytime | 500 GB - 1 TB | FREE (1 year) | www.ipage.com/dedicated |
See more top dedicated hosts »
Hopefully, all the startup leaders reading this will find themselves needing a dedicated hosting plan at some point. The Silicon Valley types might be closer, but the right host can make all the difference for helping small companies grow.
Search instead for the best web hosting for:
Was this helpful? Tell Us Thanks.
About the Author
Questions or Comments? Ask Laura!
Ask a question and Laura will respond to you. We strive to provide the best advice on the net and we are here to help you in any way we can.