Small business hosting
Web hosting for UK small businesses
Most small business websites run well on our Small plan, which costs £21.18 a year and includes 5 GB of space, 100 GB of bandwidth and two addon domains. Every plan is on UK servers with free SSL, unlimited email accounts, weekly remote backups and a 15-day money-back guarantee, so a smaller site can start on the Very Small plan at £10.03 and move up later.
At a glance
What a small business gets
What your site needs
The five things a small business site has to do
Load quickly
Visitors leave slow sites. UK servers with LiteSpeed and Redis caching keep pages quick for UK customers.
Look safe
Free SSL gives the padlock, and Imunify360 watches for malware and attacks.
Send email that arrives
Unlimited mailboxes on your domain, with spam protection and an external mail relay for delivery.
Survive a mistake
Weekly remote backups, kept for about a month, let you go back after a bad update.
Get found
A UK server and a .co.uk or .uk domain support your local and national search presence.
Get help
Live chat is open 24/7 for the hosting service, so a question at 10pm does not wait until morning.
Which plan
Picking a plan by the kind of business
| Your business | Likely plan | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A one-page site or a sole trader profile | Very Small, £10.03 | One site with email, and room to grow |
| A typical business site with 10 to 40 pages | Small, £21.18 | The balance of space and price most firms need |
| A site with a lot of photography, or a small shop | Medium, £33.45 | More space, and room for a second site |
| A firm running several sites | Large, £44.60 | Six addon domains in one account |
| An agency, or a busy site | Limitless, £66.89 | Unlimited addon domains and 500 GB bandwidth |
Prices are per year when billed yearly. Free migration applies to Small and higher plans billed yearly.
Getting online
From order to a working business site
- OrderChoose your plan and domain
- InstallOne-click WordPress, or upload your own
- EmailSet up addresses on your domain
- CheckTest on a phone before you announce
- LaunchShare the address with customers
A worked example
What a typical small business actually uses
Consider a local tradesperson with a 12-page website, a contact form, a gallery of about 80 photographs and three email addresses. Compressed photos take around 25 MB, WordPress and plugins another few hundred, and email a little more over the years. That fits on the Small plan's 5 GB many times over.
Traffic matters less than people expect. A local business with a few hundred visitors a day uses a small fraction of the 100 GB of monthly bandwidth that comes with the Small plan.
The things that decide whether the site helps the business are different: how fast it loads on a phone, whether the contact form works, and whether enquiry emails arrive. Those are what the platform is built around.
Mistakes to avoid
Five common small business hosting mistakes
Most problems come from a few repeated habits, which are easy to avoid once you know them.
- Paying for far more than you need. Start small and upgrade when you have a reason.
- Ignoring updates. Old plugins are the most common way small sites get hacked.
- Using free webmail for the business. A domain email looks more established.
- Forgetting renewals. Put the date in your calendar.
- Not testing on a phone. Most visitors will be on one.
Try it for 15 days
If the plan is not right for your business, ask for a refund within 15 days of ordering.
Be realistic
What hosting does and does not cover
Hosting keeps your site online, secure and fast. It does not write your content, design your pages or run your marketing, and support will not build the site for you. Many small businesses use a freelancer or a template for the build and rely on us for the platform.
If you are moving from another host, free migration is included on Small and higher plans billed yearly, so you do not have to move the files yourself.
FAQ
Common questions
Is shared hosting enough for a small business?
For most small business websites, yes. A brochure site, a WordPress blog or a small shop runs well on shared hosting, and you can move to a bigger plan as traffic grows.
Can I have a business email address?
Yes. Every plan includes unlimited email accounts on your domain.
What if my business grows?
You can move to a larger plan. Plans differ in disk space, bandwidth and addon domains, not in the quality of the service.
Do I need to pay for security separately?
Free SSL, Imunify360 malware protection, a firewall and DDoS protection are included on every plan.
Is there a contract?
You choose a billing term. Monthly, 6-month and yearly terms are available, and the 15-day money-back guarantee covers your first order.
Keep reading
Related pages
Give your business a fast UK website
Start with the plan that fits today and move up when you grow.