
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.
Best “Cheap” Hosting for Startups
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:
1. Bluehost.com

Monthly Starting Price $2.95
- Known for high performance at a low price
- Endorsed by WordPress.org team
- FREE Weebly site builder and CloudFlare CDN
- FREE domain and unlimited storage
- Get 63% off today (was $7.99/month)
- Get started on Bluehost now.
CHEAP
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cheap Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 50 GB - Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.bluehost.com/shared |
2. Hostinger.com

Monthly Starting Price $0.99
- Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
- FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
- FREE daily or weekly backups
- Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
- SSH access & SSL certificates
- Get started on Hostinger now.
CHEAP
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cheap Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD - 30 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.hostinger.com/shared |
3. HostGator.com

Monthly Starting Price $2.64
- Get 62% off by buying 36 months up front
- Unmetered disk space & bandwidth
- Unlimited email addresses & free SSL certificate
- One-click WordPress install & free blog tools
- Free 1-year domain registration on select plans
- Get started on HostGator now.
CHEAP
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cheap Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
45 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.hostgator.com/shared |
4. iPage.com

Monthly Starting Price $1.99
- Easy setup and superb reliability since 1998
- FREE domain and Google marketing included
- Unlimited bandwidth, storage, and emails
- FREE site builder and shopping cart
- Get more than 75% off today (was $7.99/month)
- Get started on iPage now.
CHEAP
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cheap Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.ipage.com/shared |
5. GoDaddy.com

Monthly Starting Price $1.00
- Get a free domain from world's #1 registrar
- Industry-leading page load times for your site
- Unlimited bandwidth and up to unlimited storage
- Choose between cPanel or Plesk control panels
- Award-winning support on hand 24/7
- Get started on GoDaddy now.
CHEAP
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cheap Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 100 GB - Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.godaddy.com/shared |
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.
Best “Cloud” Hosting for Startups
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:
6. InMotionHosting.com

Monthly Starting Price $5.00
- Ranked #1 for cloud VPS hosting
- Fault-tolerant SSD storage and up to 8GB of RAM
- FREE control panel with choice of Linux OS
- Full root access or managed servers available
- FREE live-state or scheduled snapshots
- Get started on InMotion now.
CLOUD
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cloud Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
90 days | 75 GB SSD - 260 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | www.inmotion.com/cloud |
7. HostGator.com

Monthly Starting Price $4.95
- 2x as fast and 4x the computing resources
- Tons of storage with the scalability of the cloud
- Low-density servers and multiple caching layers
- Unlimited domains and MySQL databases
- Upgrades available for security, backups, productivity, and domain privacy
- Get started on HostGator now.
CLOUD
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cloud Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
45 days | 120 GB - 240 GB | New or Transfer | www.hostgator.com/cloud |
8. Hostwinds.com

Monthly Starting Price $4.99
- Choose your OS or application configuration
- Hourly or monthly billing for convenience
- Optional upgrades for cPanel, backups, and more
- Managed services, SSDs, and HDDs available
- Block and object storage, plus enterprise firewall
- Get started on Hostwinds now.
CLOUD
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cloud Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
N/A | 30 GB - 750 GB SSD | New or Transfer | www.hostwinds.com/cloud |
9. A2Hosting.com

Monthly Starting Price $5.00
- High-powered SwiftServer platform with FREE SSDs
- Quick Start Cloud configures servers in minutes
- Root access and on-demand server controls
- Optional Cloudflare web application firewall for added speed and security
- Softaculous and cPanel upgrades available
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
CLOUD
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Cloud Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 75 GB SSD - 150 GB SSD | New or Transfer | www.a2hosting.com/cloud |
The Best “Email” Hosting for Startups”
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.
10. A2Hosting.com

Monthly Starting Price $2.99
- FREE software for webmail, newsletters, contact forms, list management, and spam filtering
- Unlimited inboxes, forwarding & autoresponders
- Secure POP3, IMAP, and SMTP messaging
- Unlimited storage and transfer with FREE SSL
- Get more than 50% off today (was $7.99/month)
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
EMAIL
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Email Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | Unlimited SSD | New or Transfer | www.a2hosting.com/email |
11. Bluehost.com

Monthly Starting Price $2.95
- FREE domain and unlimited emails
- Secure email with 3 webmail solutions
- $200 in advertising credits with Google and Bing
- Google app integration available
- FREE Office 365 mailbox for your first 30 days
- Get started on Bluehost now.
EMAIL
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Email Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 50 GB - Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.bluehost.com/email |
12. iPage.com

Monthly Starting Price $1.99
- FREE site transfers and 1-year domain registration
- Unlimited domains, storage, and email addresses
- Email forwarding, autoresponders, and webmai
- Market your site with $200 in ad credits
- FREE online store and site-building tools
- Get started on iPage now.
EMAIL
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Email Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | www.ipage.com/email |
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 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:
13. LiquidWeb.com

Monthly Starting Price $149.00
- 100% network and power uptime guarantees
- Custom configurations and instant provisioning
- Auto-migrations, backups, and real-time monitoring
- Block/object storage and load balancer add-ons
- Windows or Linux with 100% uptime guarantee
- Get started on Liquid Web now.
DEDICATED
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
N/A | 480 GB - 2 TB SSD | New or Transfer | www.liquidweb.com/dedicated |
14. InterServer.net

Monthly Starting Price $70.00
- 24/7 uptime monitoring and private datacenter
- Up to 24 cores and 100TB bandwidth
- 12 operating systems and 3 control panels
- Custom configs built and maintained in-house
- Price-lock guarantee without contracts
- Get started on InterServer now.
DEDICATED
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
N/A | 250 GB - 12 TB SSD | $7.99 New or Transfer | www.interserver.com/dedicated |
15. A2Hosting.com

Monthly Starting Price $99.59
- Root access and 3 levels of server management
- Expertly managed servers deployed instantly
- Choose from 4 datacenters across 3 continents
- FREE redundant SSD storage in RAID-1 arrays
- Choice of 13 Linux operating systems
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
DEDICATED
RATING
★★★★★
Our Review
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Dedicated Hosting Plans |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 256 GB SSD - 14 TB HDD | New or Transfer | www.a2hosting.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 — 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.
Search instead for the best web hosting for:
HostingAdvice.com is a free online resource that offers valuable content and comparison services to users. To keep this resource 100% free, we receive compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). HostingAdvice.com does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.
Our site is committed to publishing independent, accurate content guided by strict editorial guidelines. Before articles and reviews are published on our site, they undergo a thorough review process performed by a team of independent editors and subject-matter experts to ensure the content’s accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. Our editorial team is separate and independent of our site’s advertisers, and the opinions they express on our site are their own. To read more about our team members and their editorial backgrounds, please visit our site’s About page.
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.