Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Want to jump straight to the answer? The best business checking account for most people is Chase Business Complete BankingSM or Bluevine. Whether you’re running a large company or a side hustle, you’ll need to separate your business transactions from your personal finances. Get an account set up in minutes with one of our top recommended business checking providers. The Top 10 Best Business Checking AccountsBest of 2023: Axos Business Interest Checking, Bluevine, Chase Business Complete BankingSM, Found, Huntington Unlimited Business Checking, LendingClub Bank Tailored Checking, Lili, Mercury, Novo, TD Business Convenience Checking We review each of these 10 brands and explain how to choose the best business checking account for you below. Our Favorite Business Checking Accounts 2023:
![]() The majority of these are free business checking accounts. Some do have a monthly fee, but it’s fairly easy to get those waived by meeting reasonable requirements. I’ll give you an in-depth review of the top business checking accounts. We’ll cover the top features, benefits, prices, and any potential drawbacks that should be taken into consideration when choosing a business checking account below. The Best Business Checking Account ReviewsChase Business Complete BankingSM – Best Checking Account For Small Businesses
Chase Business Complete BankingSM is a great solution for small businesses that need a traditional range of checking services. With Chase, you get the modern online business checking experience you expect from one of the world’s leading banks–24/7 access, mobile apps, and support when you need it. But you’ll also have the ability to walk into more than 4,700 local Chase branches to handle affairs in person. Deposit up to $5,000 cash per statement cycle without any fees. Accept payments in person and over the phone with Chase Quick AcceptSM card reader. ![]() You really do get complete banking from Chase. The online-only banks are very cheap, but they are not great for people who need a variety of account types, in-person services, or to handle cash deposits. Chase, on the other hand, excels in meeting the needs of small business owners, no matter how they need to bank. Top benefits and highlights of Chase Business Complete BankingSM include:
With all the services and support offered by Chase, it’s no surprise there is a monthly maintenance fee, which you may not have with online-only banks. That said, there are multiple ways to waive the monthly fee, such as maintaining a $2,000 minimum daily balance or providing proof of military status. Meeting these or other simple criteria will drop your fee from $15 per month to $0. Chase also offers 24/7 customer service for customers. This is fantastic for any issues, big or small, that might come up. They offer the tools you need to manage your growing business, including some of the best business credit cards on the market today. Overall we find that Chase Business Complete BankingSM is one of the best checking accounts for small businesses. Bluevine – Best Business Checking for Small Businesses & Startups
Bluevine Business Checking offers great accounts tailored to entrepreneurs. Seriously, just take a look at some of the highlights:
These features should be music to any entrepreneur’s ears. ![]() Easily set up one-time or recurring payments through their dashboard. Also, you’ll be able to easily pay vendors via ACH, wire, or check. And if you get paid via wire transfer, there are no incoming wire fees. Other Bluevine features include an intuitive mobile app and mobile check deposits, easily lock and unlock your business debit card for added security, a business debit MasterCard with contactless payment, and integrations with accounting tools like QuickBooks and Freshbooks, plus business tools like PayPal and Stripe. As for downsides, there aren’t many. They have a 38,000 fee-free ATM network through a partnership with MoneyPass—though it might be difficult to find an ATM within the network depending on your location. Bluevine does provide live support available Monday through Friday 8 am – 8 pm Eastern. Novo – Best Online Business Checking Account with Free Invoicing for Small Businesses
Novo is an online-exclusive business checking account intended for small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. ![]() They have transparent pricing and no hidden fees. You can apply for a Novo account in less than ten minutes online. Some of the notable highlights for Novo business checking include:
Novo lets you open a new business checking account with just $50. One of our favorite features Novo offers is its free, unlimited, customizable invoicing. You can create personalized invoices in seconds without worrying about monthly limits or extra fees. And integrations with Stripe, Square, and PayPal mean you can get paid via the method that works best for your business. Novo is a modern simple small business banking platform sponsored by Middlesex Federal Savings, F.A. You can integrate your account with Zapier, Xero, Slack, and other tools that your small business is currently using. Since it’s online, you can’t walk into a physical branch. So if your business has in-person financial needs, then Novo isn’t for you. However, Novo will reimburse you for ATM fees imposed by other banks. So you’ll still be able to access cash from anywhere without paying an extra fee. Lili – Best for Small Businesses Poised for Growth
Lili offers flexible online banking services for every type of business, including single- or multi-member LLCs, general partnerships, limited liability partnerships, S corporations, and sole proprietors. It’s everything you need, nothing you don’t, at a price tag that’s nearly impossible to beat. It takes about three minutes to sign up for the free version of Lili. You’ll get an online checking account with no minimum deposit, a Visa debit card, and tools to plan for taxes. ![]() It’s really a great all-in-one solution that helps you move money quickly, account for taxes, track expenses, and stay on top of your business. Lili is focused on helping businesses of all sizes manage finances and stay organized. Lili provides a great suite of services in a simple platform that’s easy to master. A few of the key highlights of a free Lili Basic checking account:
You have the option to upgrade your free Lili Basic account to a Lili Pro account for $9 per month. With Lili Pro, you’ll be able to send invoices, get advanced tools for taxes, overdraft protection, and cashback rewards for your debit card. You’ll also enjoy a 1.50% APY on savings account balances when you go Pro. To see how simple and stress-free online banking can be, get started with a free Lili account today. Axos Business Interest Checking – Best Online-Exclusive Bank with Competitive Returns
Axos Business Interest Checking offers an excellent online-only checking service with no annual fees. ![]() Some great features of the Business Interest checking account:
The online and mobile banking solutions from Axos are exceptional, as you would expect from an online-exclusive bank. You can also deposit a check from anywhere using your mobile device. Any newly incorporated business can earn a $200 bonus just for opening a business checking account with the promo code NEWBIZ200. And don’t worry – if you’re not a business owner and you open a new account, you can still get a $100 bonus with the code NEWAXOSBIZ. Overall, Axos Business Interest Checking is suitable for small business owners with modest banking needs. Found – Best for Freelancers and Self-Employed
Found is an all-in-one business checking solution designed for people who work for themselves. There are no account fees, no minimum balance, and no hassle signing up. It’s everything a self-employed business owner needs–and nothing they don’t. You’ll be able to bank anywhere with the modern Found app. If you need to make payments in person, simply activate your new Mastercard business debit card. ![]() The app is incredibly easy to navigate and allows you to handle way more than just business checking. Some of the other highlights include:
Getting paid by your clients and customers is very easy with a Found checking account. Create professional looking invoices and start taking ACH payments immediately. You can also connect a variety of payment gateways like PayPal, CashApp, Venmo, eBay, and other popular options. If you want, Found will calculate your quarterly tax payments and automatically set aside the money you owe inside your account. Little by little, you’ll have what you need to make quarterly payments a breeze. With Found+, an option premium subscription, you will be able to create more customized bookkeeping rules, scan receipts to track expenses, and pay your quarterly taxes directly in the app. Many self-employed business owners will be fine with a Found’s core online banking service, which has no required fees. Found’s banking services are online only, so you won’t be able to create paper checks or walk into a branch. I wouldn’t hitch your wagon to Found if you are planning on hiring full-time employees, running a non-profit organization, or managing your business with an S-corp. If you are self-employed, Found is simply going to work better. You can avoid account fees and get a much simpler online banking experience by choosing Found, which wasn’t designed for massive organizations. Have an LLC, that’s great–if you don’t, that’s fine too. You will sign up for Found in your own name, and you can add an EIN once you have an account. Please note that Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont Bank, Member FDIC. The Found Mastercard® debit card is issued by Piermont Bank pursuant to a license from Mastercard Inc. and may be used everywhere Mastercard debit cards are accepted. The entire signup process only takes a few minutes. Open your Found account today. More Great Business Checking AccountsMercury – Best business checking account for tech startups
Mercury is an online financial service and technology company providing business checking and savings accounts aimed directly at tech startups. With no fees for domestic and international wires, no minimum balances, and automatic cash management tools, Mercury is a great option for tech-focused small businesses and startups. Mercury lets you open FDIC-insured checking and savings accounts to store all deposits. Issue debit and credit cards tied to these account with custom limits you set and you can integrate Mercury accounts with QuickBooks, Xero, Gisto, Shopify, Stripe, PayPal, and more for improved functionality and visibility. ![]() Startups can grow with Mercury, whether you’re supercharging fundraising with minimally dilutive loans from Mercury Venture Debt, meeting investors, mentors, and other founders through Mercury Raise DTC, or getting matched with the right financing options for your business with Mercury Capital. You’ll also get access to Mercury Treasury, an automatic cash management account that puts money into securities and money market funds. Perhaps the best feature of all for tech startups, though, is the Mercury Vault. This ultra-safe way to store cash powered by Mercury’s partner banks in Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust (both members FDIC) gives you peace of mind that other startup-minded fintech companies can’t by FDIC-insuring deposits up to a whopping $5 million. That’s well over the standard minimum of $250,000 you’ll find others offer. An important note is that Mercury is not currently available to sole proprietors, and is largely marketed to startups and growing companies. But, it’s expanding its client base constantly with new offerings, and it offers a broad knowledge base and tools well-suited to tech startups. Apply for an account now. LendingClub Bank Tailored Checking – Best Online Business Checking For Unlimited Cash Back and Transactions
LendingClub Bank Tailored Checking offers a very lucrative online business checking account that offers unlimited cash back. You’ll also be able to immediately start earning 1%+ cash back on “signature-based” credit transactions that you make using their debit card. It takes just minutes to open an account too and you can get started as soon as you do. ![]() Couple that with their unlimited transactions along with their ATM fee reimbursement, and this makes LendingClub Bank’s Tailored Checking a very good option for bootstrap businesses and entrepreneurs. Here’s a more comprehensive list of their standout features:
Overall, LendingClub Bank offers a very solid digital business checking account. Get started in less than 10 minutes today. TD Business Convenience Checking Plus – Best Checking Account With up to 500 Free Transactions a Month
You can open a TD Business Convenience Checking Plus account with just $100. However, you’ll need to maintain a $1,500 daily balance to waive the $25 monthly maintenance fee. If you link a personal checking account to your Business Checking Plus account, TD Bank counts your combined balance between the two accounts toward the daily minimum. So this is a great choice for business owners who already have an account at TD Bank. ![]() Let’s review some of the account benefits:
While TD Business Convenience Checking Plus does have a high maintenance fee, you’ll benefit from more free monthly transactions. For comparison purposes, Chase Total Business Checking has a $15 fee for just 100 free transactions each month. Plus, it’s easy to waive TD’s $25 fee by maintaining a low combined balance between two accounts. Even though you’re limited to $5,000 free cash deposits each month, you’re only charged $0.25 per $100 thereafter. So an additional $5,000 cash deposited in a cycle ($10,000 total) would cost you $12.50. That’s just 0.13% of your deposits, which is next to nothing. TD Bank gives you access to other services, like merchant solutions, business loans, and business lines of credit. Huntington Unlimited Business Checking – Best Business Checking For Large Businesses With High Cash Flow
Huntington Unlimited Business Checking is a top option for larger organizations. If you have a higher monthly transaction volume, some of the other accounts on our list won’t fit your needs. ![]() The top features and benefits of Unlimited Business Checking from Huntington include:
Huntington does charge a $20 monthly maintenance fee for this account. But it’s waived with a $10,000 combined balance between all of your eligible Huntington Bank accounts. With an Unlimited Business Checking account, Huntington Bank allows you to choose one of the following bonus services as well:
This bank also has a tool called “The Hub” for business checking accounts. It comes with several digital tools for things like cash positioning and cash flow forecasting. The Hub is a great resource for managing your revenue and expenses. How to Find the Best Business Checking Account For YouAll business checking accounts are not created equally. The best choice for one business might not be ideal for yours. This is the methodology that you should use when you’re evaluating business checking accounts. I’ll explain each feature in greater detail below. FeesService fees and monthly maintenance fees are common for business checking accounts. In most cases, these fees fall somewhere in the $10 to $50 range. But there are still plenty of free business banking solutions. In fact, seven of the eleven accounts on our list don’t have monthly fees. Balance RequirementsSome banks require a minimum opening deposit. So choose a bank with a reasonable opening deposit minimum based on your situation. If you’re launching a startup and don’t have a ton of cash on hand, you can open some accounts with as little as $50 or $100. Some banks don’t require a minimum opening deposit at all. In addition to the opening deposit requirement, some accounts will charge for you falling below a certain minimum daily balance. Make sure that your cash flow is enough to maintain your minimum requirements without getting penalized. Transaction LimitsPersonal checking accounts will rarely, if ever, cap the number of transactions you can make in a billing cycle. But that’s not the case for most business checking accounts. Depending on the bank, activities like deposits, withdrawals, and transfers count toward a monthly limit. Some banks will restrict the number of in-person transactions you can make while offering free unlimited electronic transactions. For the most part, free monthly transaction limits start at 100. TD Business Convenience Checking allows for 500 free transactions per month. Other banks give you unlimited transactions, with a few contingencies. You’ll pay a small fee for each transaction over your monthly limit. This is usually somewhere in the $0.25 to $0.50 range. Mobile Banking and Online AccessibilityEvery bank offers some way to access your account online or through a mobile app. But with that said, some of these digital solutions are definitely better than others. Choose a business checking account that lets you deposit checks remotely, set up account alerts, and pay invoices automatically. I do nearly all of my business banking from a mobile app, and I’m sure you’ll want that convenience as well. Branch LocationsSome banks are region-specific, while others are large national chains. It’s important to choose a bank near your business location if you need to access a branch for anything. However, there are several business checking accounts that are online-exclusive. These banks don’t have any physical locations, and can be a huge advantage if your transactions are exclusively digital. Online-only banking is very popular for freelancers and entrepreneurs working remotely. But those solutions aren’t for everyone. For example, if your business accepts cash, you’ll definitely need access to a physical branch for in-person deposits. Additional Banking ServicesThis may not be important to you immediately, but it’s nice to have a bank that will provide you with additional services as your business grows. Whether it’s merchant services for credit card processing, additional accounts like a business credit card, a business loan, or line of credit, it’s easier to get these from a bank where you have an existing relationship. Always look at what else a bank has to offer beyond your immediate checking account needs today. The Top Business Checking Accounts in SummaryEvery business owner needs a business checking account. But everyone has different banking needs, which is why finding the best business checking solution can be difficult. For the most part, a business checking account functions like a personal checking account. However, business checking accounts typically have extra fees, minimum balance requirements, and monthly transaction limits. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-business-checking-accounts/
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Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Our recommendation for most people is Mercury because it’s convenient, affordable, and activated in minutes. Every business needs a bank account. In today’s digital world, many organizations are turning to online banks. Whether you run a startup or a multi-million dollar corporation, one of these online business banking solutions is sure to fit your needs. Top 11 Online Business Banking Accounts For 2023Best of 2023: Axos Bank, BankProv, Bluevine, Chase Business Complete Banking, Found, Lending Club, Lili, Mercury, NorthOne, Novo, and Relay. Below, you’ll find a review for all of my top picks for different situations. To help make your decision even easier, my research team identified six options that are great choices for most businesses, including:
From freelancers and startups to ecommerce stores and those needing extra flexibility, most people will get everything they need from one of the banking options above. ![]() Below I highlight the type of online accounts each bank offers, including prices, benefits, and other online banking solutions they provide. Then you’ll find the methodology I used to select the best online business banking solutions, and how you can use the same criteria to find the one for your business needs. The Best Online Business Banking ReviewsMercury — Best Banking for Startups
Mercury is my top choice for startups–it’s just as flexible and convenient as many of its competitors, but it allows you to pay employees, issue employee debit and credit cards, and sync your accounts with the tools you already use. This is a big deal. A number of the top online banking services are great if you are a single-person business, but once you start really growing, those lightweight services can’t keep up. Mercury, on the other hand, has all of the tools and services a founder needs to build their company. Through its partner banks, Mercury provides FDIC-insured US bank accounts to global businesses. Think of it as a traditional banking* backbone with a modern front end designed for today’s companies. Integrations and open API access mean you can tie your bank into the rest of your business. With Mercury, you can create virtual debit cards and track your cash flow. You can also easily manage Shopify, Stripe, Amazon, and PayPal integrations. Move money around with ease, issue physical and digital cards to your employees, and capture every transaction in clear reports. ![]() Mercury has zero monthly fees, zero minimum balance requirements, and many reasons to sign up:
On top of all of these appealing features, you can opt to use one of two safe ways to store your extra cash. I think these two tools that follow are the most compelling arguments for using Mercury as a startup or other young tech operation. Mercury Treasury lets you earn up to 4.64% on your idle cash with minimal work on your end. There are no opening or transaction fees required to create a Mercury Treasury account, though it is only an option for users with more than $250,000 in the bank. On the more traditional savings side of things, Mercury Vault protects your funds to an extent few other startup-minded fintech companies do. Keep any amount of cash in the Mercury Vault with deposits FDIC-insured up to a very generous $5 million and no need to split funds or open discrete accounts. All Mercury accounts have Vault available to utilize. Get started by opening a Mercury account today for free. *Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. All banking services are provided by Evolve Bank & Trust®, Member FDIC. Bluevine — Best for Small Business
Bluevine is an online banking service that’s tailor-made for small businesses. Their business checking is one of the best ones we’ve seen on the market. In fact, it even earned them a spot on our best business checking accounts list. ![]() With no monthly maintenance fees, no minimum deposits or account balances, and no “insufficient funds” fees, it’s an entrepreneur-friendly solution for small business owners looking to save money and avoid being nickel-and-dimed by their bank. Bluevine also offers eligible customers a full 2.0% interest on their business checking balance up to and including $250,000. That’s more than 50 times the national average! If you’re a business owner who wants to protect your money from being diminished by fees and watch it grow as it sits in your account, Bluevine is a great option. It also has an ATM network of 38,000 locations that have no surcharge through a partnership with MoneyPass. The downside is if there isn’t an in-network ATM near you, you’ll get hit with an ATM fee. In addition to a great business checking account, Bluevine now allows customers to add up to five sub-accounts to any business checking account. These sub-accounts allow users to manage their money better and give them more flexibility than ever. Earning 2.0% APY is hard to beat, and that doesn’t even account for all of the other features, such as contactless payments and no incoming wire transfer fees. Learn more about the benefits and terms of Bluevine. Overall, I highly recommend Bluevine to any small business owner who wants a flexible banking experience. You can refer to my complete Bluevine review for additional information. Lili – Best for Small Businesses Poised for Growth
Lili is an online banking app that delivers a ton of value for businesses of every size. Whether you’re a sole proprietor, single- or multi-member LLC, partnership, or S Corporation, Lili has you covered. Like our other recommendations, Lili is flexible, modern, and free of hidden fees. Where it steps apart are the built-in tools for expense management and invoicing. ![]() Instead of having to hook up two or three apps, you can get everything done in Lili. It’s easy to scan receipts, categorize expenses, and set aside money for taxes throughout the year. Come tax time, Lili will actually pre-fill your 1040 Schedule C if everything is ready to go. It’s just so simple to stay on track with Lili. You can create, send, and store every invoice directly in the app. There are no limits to the number of invoices you can send, and you can customize them by adding your business’s logo. Lili doesn’t have a deep set of integrations with other software. But you can do a lot more within the app itself than many other business banking solutions. This can be a huge advantage for small business owners who don’t want to rely on multiple apps just to complete simple transactions. If you are just starting out, Lili Basic may have all that you need. There are no fees and no minimum balance required. You’ll get a Visa business debit card with no ATM fees at more than 38,000 locations nationwide. You’ll also enjoy all the same account limits as you’ll get on Lili Pro. But if you’re looking for more, you can upgrade to Lili Pro. It costs $9 per month and gives you access to a savings account with 1.5% APY, overdraft protection up to $200, and a Visa premium debit card with cashback rewards. All Lili accounts are FDIC-insured. Get all your banking done anywhere, anytime with Lili Web or the sleek mobile application. Log in whenever it is convenient on any of your devices. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Find out more and apply for a Lili account today. Novo — Best for Entrepreneurs and Ecommerce
Novo is our top choice for entrepreneurs and ecommerce. It’s built for the pace of commerce today, with a mobile app that lets you make payments, send invoices, and transfer funds. The ability to scan checks and manage other common banking tasks makes your life so easy. That’s because nothing takes more than a few swipes on your phone. We love Novo for entrepreneurs because of the wide array of integrations to help slot it into your business’s current infrastructure. That includes integration with Quickbooks and Xero for your accounting and bookkeeping needs, Zapier for your CRM, email, or marketing, Shopify and eBay if you have an ecommerce presence, and Stripe for payment processing. ![]() Novo offers many features and benefits, including:
You’ll also benefit from discounts on business tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Cloud, and Stripe. And Novo even offers a great mobile app that lets you handle all of your business financial needs from your phone. It takes less than ten minutes to apply for a Novo checking account. The minimum to open one is $50, a relatively low amount when compared to others. Overall, Novo offers a basic, online-only small business checking for business owners seeking simplicity. If you’re a business owner who only needs a checking account, Novo is a great solution. However, if your needs extend beyond that, you should consider another option on our list. Relay — Best for Flexible Business Banking
Relay is a fee-free online business banking solution that has a few money management capabilities that the others don’t. You can create up to 20 checking accounts on Relay’s free online banking platform and issue up to 50 Mastercard debit cards. These may be physical or virtual debit cards, and yes, you can set individual spending limits and ATM withdrawal limits on all cards. ![]() New virtual debit cards you issue from your Relay account are activated instantly. Physical cards take about 8-10 days to arrive in the mail. Adding or editing your checking accounts is just as easy. And with the ability to create up to 20 accounts, you can manage your money your way. Want to set up a second business within your existing Relay account? Not a problem. You can assign read-only or administrator privileges to each user and control who gets access to each new account. Some of the other compelling reasons to choose Relay include:
Relay offers a complete online banking experience with very few fees. All of the direct integrations are included as well:
Everything I reviewed up to this point comes with free Relay business banking plans. The accounts payable features are available by upgrading to Relay Pro ($30/month per business). This lets you automate bill payments, consolidate vendor payments, and further streamline operations. Relay Pro also waives the fees for outgoing wire transfers and provides same-day ACH delivery. Sole proprietors and single-member LLCs are limited to 10 checking accounts, but other businesses can have up to 20. Since Relay does not offer savings accounts, you won’t be earning any interest. At the end of the day, Relay offers a lot more flexibility than other leading online banking solutions. It’s fast and free to create plenty of accounts or provide your employees with a secure debit card. Found — Best for Freelancers and Self-Employed
Found offers some of the best online banking services for people who are self-employed. Everything you need to manage payments, invoices, and taxes in a single app. Unlike many of their competitors, Found is not offering a stripped-down version of their full business banking. Instead, Found was created from the ground up to serve people that run their own show. ![]() Create and send invoices in Found instead of having to jump between multiple apps. Take or make payments, it’s all tracked in one place. Connect Found with Square, Cash App, PayPal, and other popular payment gateways. Make it as easy as possible for people to pay you–never a bad thing. Expense tracking and categorization on the mobile app are about as easy as it gets. You don’t need to be an accountant to save yourself a ton of stress come tax time. The light, streamlined experience with Found comes with tradeoffs. For example, you’ll probably want to consider another more comprehensive banking service if you have W2 employees or plan to in the near future. It lacks fancier reporting features, but not for the typical self-employed business owner. In their case, the automatic P&L, income, and expense reports in Found are perfect. Found+ is an optional paid subscription that includes additional bookkeeping features, photo receipt capture, and lets you make in-app quarterly tax payments. You can set up a Found account in about five minutes. There’s no credit check, no opening fee, no minimum balance. Found offers a Mastercard Business debit card with instant alerts on all transactions. Please note that Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont Bank, Member FDIC. The Found Mastercard® debit card is issued by Piermont Bank pursuant to a license from Mastercard Inc. and may be used everywhere Mastercard debit cards are accepted. For people that need simple small business banking, this should be at the top of your list. Visit Found to get started today. More Great Online Business Banking AccountsNorthOne — Best for Fully Mobile Business Banking
Modern business runs 24/7, and you can’t wait on “banker’s hours” to solve issues that arise. That’s exactly why NorthOne made my list. It takes as little as three minutes to open an account. There is no minimum balance and you can cancel at any time. Say goodbye to red tape, paperwork, and trips to your local branch. Everything can be done through NorthOne’s mobile web portal or mobile app, giving you round-the-clock banking access. You can send ACH or wire payments, deposit checks with your phone camera, create and send invoices with NorthOne’s separate free app, and even handle money management by labeling funds with the Envelopes feature. ![]() Small business owners, startups, freelancers, and folks with multiple independent revenue streams can all enjoy the benefits of NorthOne’s branch-free banking. You also get a NorthOne debit Mastercard for purchases and ATM withdrawals. You can freeze lost cards and order new ones through the mobile app, as well. NorthOne also integrates seamlessly with a wide variety of other software. From accounting tools like QuickBooks and top payment processors like PayPal and Stripe to the arenas where your business happens like Amazon, Shopify, or even Etsy—you can rest assured there won’t be any hiccups with weaving NorthOne into your business suite of technology. Pricing for NorthOne business banking is fantastically simple. It’s just $10 per month with no extra fees for deposits, purchases, integrations, or ACH payments. The only thing to be aware of is the $15 charge for sending or receiving a domestic wire transfer. That’s it—other than that, it’s a steady $10 each month with no surprises. Get your first month free with NorthOne. There are no commitments, just the opportunity to make banking easier. Axos Bank — Best Way to Include Your Employees In Your Online Banking
Axos Bank offers a suite of great banking solutions, including business checking, interest checking, business savings, CDs, and CDARs. At first blush, its accounts don’t stand out all that much— until you look at the offers that show up after you open an account. ![]() Its Workplace Banking product is one of these standout offerings. This service allows you to provide banking solutions to all of your employees. You’ll be able to provide them Axos no-fee checking accounts with unlimited ATM fee reimbursement and low-interest rates for home, auto, and personal loans. Axos will also provide your business with a financial literacy portal that includes nearly 200 tutorials and videos to guide your employees to financial success. It’s a versatile benefit to offer your employees that can work for a lot of different companies. Be it access to no-stress checking accounts, better-than-average access to loan options, or just tools to get better at managing money, a benefit like this is a great addition to your incentive package to help you recruit and retain great talent. When it comes to account specifics, here are a few key offerings of Axos’ Business Interest Checking account:
Axos also offers promotional perks, such as a $200 bonus for new business owners who open an account (use code NEWBIZ200) and a $100 bonus for all other new Axos Bank customers (promo code NEWAXOSBIZ). Plus, Axos clients receive four months of free subscription to ADP payroll services. This is a good choice if you need a solid suite of business banking options, combined with a way to help your employees with their banking needs. You can apply online today at Axos Bank’s website. Chase Business Complete BankingSM — Best Branch Access
A Chase Business Complete Banking account is a great choice for those who need both an online and in-person bank. For example, if your business frequently deals in cash or international currency, Chase can be good for you because you can go to an actual teller when you need to. Yes, other banks have online and physical locations—but no one holds a candle to Chase’s accounts offerings. You’ll have access to more than 4,700 branches and 16,000 ATMs for unrivaled convenience. Want to open a savings account or explore company credit card options? With Chase it’s as simple as talking customer service, which is available 24/7. Those online-only banks are great if you have extremely simple needs. But if a lot of your customers pay in cash, or your you require a few different types of bank accounts for your business, Chase will be a much more fitting partner in the long-term. ![]() You’ll be able to accept card payments anytime, anywhere with Chase QuickAcceptSM card reader. Of course, your sales are tied right into your checking account, and Chase will deliver same day deposits for no additional fee. With everything in one place, Chase makes banking as simple and secure as possible. Other online banking options might rely on several different services to get such transactions done–assuming all the integrations work–whereas Chase Business Complete Banking keeps everything in a single system. Manage everything through Chase Business Online web portal or via the mobile app. You can rest assured that Chase is monitoring your account for fraudulent activity and will alert you of anything suspicious. While there are fees, Chase gives you several ways to waive your monthly service fee like maintaining a minimum daily balance or making purchases on your Chase Ink Business credit card. In addition to checking accounts, Chase also has some of the best business credit cards on the market today. You’ll also benefit from exceptional merchant services and online business lending solutions if you need them. Overall, if you’re looking for a good online banking experience that’s complemented by in-person physical locations, it’s hard to find a better service than Chase. BankProv — Best Checking Accounts with Full Deposit Insurance
It’s something we take for granted—when you put money into your account, you expect nothing to go wrong. And especially in business checking, you never want to deal with the headaches and resolution process if something does go awry with your deposits. BankProv business account holders have their deposits insured by the FDIC for up to $250,000. There is also the Depositors Insurance Fund (DIF) to protect every penny beyond that. This level of protection is not something many other online business checking accounts offer. All DIF member banks are FDIC-insured, but not necessarily vice versa. ![]() What does all this mean for you? Every deposit you make into a BankProv business checking account is fully insured, no matter what. After all, you’re in business to make serious money, so why cap protection at only $250,000? You want a bank that will protect you once your account grows beyond a quarter of a million dollars. If you’re a startup in serious fundraising mode, BankProv’s DIF insurance is that much more important. You can secure capital to raise your bank account well above $250,000 and not worry about the protection for any of your deposits, regardless of your bank balance. BankProv offers five business checking packages that work for a range of entity sizes. The Classic Business and Small Business tiers have no minimum deposit requirement, with the former having no monthly fee and up to 50 free deposited items. Small Business checking has a monthly fee of $50 but unlimited free deposited items. You can also halve or waive the monthly fee entirely by keeping a balance of $100,000 or $250,000, respectively. BankProv also offers three higher octane plans for larger organizations, with minimum deposit requirements of $25,000, $500,000, and over $1 million. Each unlocks wider benefits, such as free incoming wire transfers, corporate data reporting (only available on the two highest-tier plans), and higher thresholds for free ACH payments. If you want to blow past the quarter-million mark without worry, go with BankProv. They’ll protect all of your deposits while also offering lending expertise in emergent industries like cryptocurrency and green technology. LendingClub Bank — Best for Businesses with Tons of Transactions
LendingClub Bank offers four banking solution options, making it a fantastic solution for scaling and growing your business. The four accounts it offers are Tailored Checking, Relationship Checking, Account Analysis Checking, and Interest Checking. ![]() The last three are built for large to massive organizations, so I’m focusing on their Tailored Checking account as it’s the best for the vast majority of high-volume small businesses. However, it is reassuring to know that big-league offerings are there if and when your company begins to really grow. Tailored Checking accounts come with:
What I love about this bank most of all is its allowance of unlimited transactions. Most banks require you to pay some fee after a certain amount of transactions each month. For example, Axos bank only allows you to have 200 transactions each month before you need to start paying a fee of $0.30 per transaction. Some banks even charge as high as $25 per transaction! That can add up quickly for many businesses. Not LendingClub Bank. It will let you run as many transactions as you need without penalizing you. That’s great for businesses that handle a high volume of transactions each month or have high-octane growth as a top priority. Tailored Checking also comes with 1%+ cash back on online and signature-based credit transactions made with your debit card. It’s also worth noting that you get 0.75% APY on balances of more than $5,000. Though it’s easy to point at Bluevine and say that their 2.0% is better, this is actually more lucrative for big businesses since LendingClub Bank doesn’t cap their balance requirements for interest. That means you can have $5,000 or $1,000,000 in their checking account and you’ll still be earning 0.75% APY. One potential downside is that it does require a $10 monthly fee along with $100 to open. However, the monthly maintenance fee is waived if you have a balance of more than $5,000. You can apply online in less than ten minutes without uploading any documents. If this sounds like the right solution for your business, apply with LendingClub Bank today. How to Find the Best Online Business Bank Account for YouNot all of the online banks on our list will be a viable solution for your business. You’ll need to narrow down your options based on certain factors—but which ones? Here are the factors we believe are the most important when choosing an online bank for your business. Fees and Balance RequirementsMonthly fees and minimum balance requirements are common when it comes to business banking accounts. Some banks offer accounts without fees, while others let you waive the monthly fee by maintaining a minimum daily balance. Unlike personal checking accounts, business accounts, especially business checking accounts, typically come with monthly transaction limits (more on those later). You might have to pay a fee if you exceed those limits. And the fees can add up if you’re not careful—especially once you get past the promotional pricing some banks offer. Our suggestion: Find a good online bank that imposes no monthly fees or “non-sufficient funds” fees, if you can. For example, Mercury is a great bank to choose if you want to save as much money as possible with your business banking. They don’t charge any fees or require minimum deposits. ![]() Novo and Axos are a few other great banks that don’t require a monthly service fee. Some banks require minimum balances to be maintained in your account, or else they’ll hit you with a fee. Chase is a good example of this. Though they do charge a monthly fee, they’ll waive it with a minimum daily balance. Minimum balances aren’t typically a huge issue since most of them are pretty low. But still, it’s a consideration when looking at banks—especially if you’re a newer business. Interest RatesYour annual percentage yield (APY) is another factor you should consider when choosing an online business bank. This is how much interest your account will accrue from the money you have sitting in there. Some banks offer higher APY than others. Bluevine, for one, offers 2.0% interest on your balance up to and including $250,000. That might not seem like much but it’s actually more than 50x higher than the national average (per FDIC). That can mean you’re passively earning a few hundred more dollars each year. Axos Bank has a variety of small business checking and savings accounts. The higher your average daily balance, the higher the APY of your checking account. For example, with an average daily balance of $5,000, you can earn up to 0.81% APY with an Axos Business Interest Checking account. ![]() While interest rates should play a factor in your online business banking search, there is one thing we recommend: Don’t rate chase. That means don’t make interest rates the BIGGEST factor that plays into your bank choice. It’s very easy to do that when banks float impressive-sounding interest rates. But, you have to remember that interest rates are only one ingredient in the bigger recipe of a good business bank. Transaction LimitsMany business banks impose transactional limits on their business checking accounts. If you exceed that limit, you might have to pay up to $0.50 per transaction. Banks do this because they need to have money in reserve to fulfill all of their customers’ needs. For example, Axos Financial gives you 200 free transactions per month. If you exceed that, they’ll charge you up to $0.30 per transaction. This could potentially add up over the year, especially if you’re a business that requires frequent transactions. If you’re a larger company, you’ll need higher transaction limits as you’ll be conducting more transfers, withdrawals, and deposits. You’ll want to be aware of fees incurred by heavy usage, and should keep an eye on the limits each banking provider gives you along with their APYs. Luckily, banks like Bluevine and LendingClub Bank let you do unlimited transactions per month at no extra cost to you. Custom Solutions and SupportYour business structure and industry will both have a significant impact on finding the right online banking solution for your needs. For example, it’s common for many online business banks to offer tools for startups, sole proprietors, and freelancers. Novo definitely falls into this category, as it integrates seamlessly with other third-party tools geared toward entrepreneurs. Other banks provide solutions for businesses operating in person. Square is a great service to turn to if you’re looking for hands-on merchant services like a POS system. You’ll even find some banks with niche-specific options for industries such as nonprofits. Lending options should also be taken into consideration. If you’re interested in small business loans or real estate loans, you’ll want to see what these different banks offer along those lines too. The same is true if you need a business credit card. Even if you don’t need a loan or credit card right now, it’s helpful to find a bank that offers these types of services for your needs in the future. In-Person Banking AvailabilityThis isn’t the biggest deal breaker. But we understand it can be very important to some readers to have a bank that they can actually visit. While online banking offers a wide variety of benefits, physical banks have their upsides too. With physical branches, you’ll have a much easier time depositing and withdrawing cash. So any business that accepts cash will likely need the option to visit a branch. You’ll also be able to talk to an actual human about your needs and issues. When it comes to something as important as your business, it’s tough to replicate face-to-face banking with online support. If you’re a business that deals a lot with international currency, you’ll definitely want an in-person bank you can go to in order to exchange currencies at a fair rate. Businesses that offer tax guidance also may need to lean on brick-and-mortar banks, because of all the receipts, invoices, and documentation involved. Chase is an obvious standout for this consideration. They have more than 5,000 physical locations in the United States. Just verify that there is a branch in your area. In-person banking is useless if you have to drive hours to make a deposit. Consider the availability of ATMs in your area as well. The ability to withdraw cash without extra fees or get reimbursed for ATM withdrawals from other banks may be enough to outweigh the fact that your online bank doesn’t have physical branches. The Best Online Business Banking in SummaryEvery great bank needs to have online services for business customers. Some banks offer online-only access, while others provide online banking services mixed with physical branches. If your business takes cash, you’ll need a bank that accepts in-person deposits. Otherwise, online-only banking can accommodate the needs of most companies, even ones that accept checks and sell products online. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-online-business-banking/ Want to jump straight to the answer? The best web hosting for most people is Hostinger or Cloudways. While it’s true that you can use any web host for your WordPress website, a WordPress-specific web hosting solution delivers better service, performance, and support for WordPress sites. If you’ve been feeling frustrated with your non-WP-specific web host and want something better suited to WordPress, you’re in the right place. I’ve gone through dozens of available hosts and ranked the best options on the market today, including providers WordPress itself recommends. The solutions below provide the best security, performance, and reliability for websites built on WordPress. The Top 9 WordPress Web Hosts for 2023Best of 2023: Bluehost, Cloudways, Flywheel, Hostinger, Kinsta, Nexcess, Scala Hosting, Siteground, and WP Engine. My team and I spent countless hours pouring over every detail from price and performance to ease of use, migrations, and features. Along the way, we identified five hosts that outshine the rest. Our favorite WordPress hosts for 2023 are:
Whether you’re looking for something affordable and easy to use, a lot of bang for your buck, or a host with limitless flexibility, you can’t go wrong with any of the hosts above. ![]() Depending on your goals, one of my recommended hosting providers may work better than another for your specific needs. Below you’ll find in-depth reviews that explain my recommendations, followed by a brief tactical section to help you assess your options. Hostinger — Most Affordable WordPress Web Host
Hostinger stands out for its low prices and stellar loading times. How low? Hostinger’s current managed WordPress plan starts at just $1.99 per month for a single website—which is unbeatable compared to other web hosts out there. While that is promotional pricing, even the contract renewal price of $3.99 per month is very affordable. But here’s the kicker: for just one dollar more per month (currently $2.99), you can build 100 websites along with 100 GB of SSD storage, free email, and unlimited bandwidth. That’s right, for the price of a single cup of coffee each month, you’ll be able to host up to 100 websites. That’s an amazing deal. ![]() For more information on plans and pricing, check out our in-depth Hostinger web hosting review. With their great prices, does that mean you’ll be sacrificing quality? Nope. In fact, you’re going to get solid uptime reliability with Hostinger. Loading times are speedy, too. According to the Hostinger website, server response time clocks in at around 43 milliseconds, which is very fast. To give you a comparison, that’s just 13 milliseconds “slower” than a lightning strike. In our testing, every Hostinger hosting type (shared, VPS, and WordPress hosting) averaged well under one second for loading. Hostinger recently implemented a new feature for page speed insights, where you can measure your site’s speed and see its performance history with just one click. If you find that you want to improve your loading speed, the new server transfer feature will recommend what to do. ![]() The company also recently added an advanced malware scanner and a WordPress staging tool so you can test changes without actually changing your entire live site. Overall, this is a great web host if you want good prices with quality hosting. If you want to maximize the number of sites you can host at a low cost, get signed up with Hostinger today. Cloudways – Best for Flexibility and Extensive Options
Cloudways has been providing managed WordPress hosting for over 11 years and has hosted 600,000+ WordPress websites. Another impressive statistic is that Cloudway has access to more than 120,000 active servers! Cloudways strives to provide flexibility to all of its clients. Some examples of this flexibility are offering unlimited WordPress websites, pay-as-you-go pricing with hourly plans (so you only pay for what you actually use), one click to add more server space, unlimited staging URLs, and more. And with an extensive knowledge base and 24/7 expert support, you don’t have to be a technical expert yourself to jump in with Cloudways. ![]() Cloudways currently has 62 data centers in 15 countries and 33 cities, so no matter where you are in the world, you will get speedy, reliable performance. For plans and pricing, the rates depend on several factors, including selecting from five Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers, plus the level of RAM, processor cores, storage, and bandwidth you need. The IaaS provider options are:
The managed WordPress plans run the gamut of pricing. The least expensive is $12 per month including DigitalOcean Standard hosting charges, with 1 GB of RAM, 1 core processor, 25 GB of storage, and 1 TB of bandwidth. The most expensive is $3569.98 per month including the AWS hosting charges. That plan includes 384 GB of RAM, 96 vCPU, 20 GB of storage, and 2 GB of bandwidth. All plans come with 24/7/365 support, free SSL, CDN add-on, free migration, unlimited application installation, 24/7 real-time monitoring, automated backups, advanced caches, auto-healing, and more. You can try Cloudways for free with a three-day free trial to test their managed WordPress hosting and how it will work for your needs. SiteGround — Best for Ecommerce Websites with Easy Site Migration
SiteGround is another of WordPress’ recommended web hosts. It offers incredibly affordable managed hosting solutions–that are incredibly powerful as well. Where SiteGround really shines is in how easy it makes:
I also like its advanced features for WordPress, like automatic updates and enhanced security on all SiteGround plans. You’ll also get free daily backups. That’s an amazing deal for the lowest-tier pricing. This covers most of the problems you could run into, freeing up more of your time to focus on your business or project. You can read even more about their offered services in my complete SiteGround hosting review. I recommend the StartUp plan. It gives you 10GB of space and up to 10,000 visitors for one site. This intro-level plan is $2.99 per month for your first year (paid upfront). ![]() You can boost your WordPress or WooCommerce site even further by going one step up to GrowBig. That lets you tap into SiteGround’s own Ultrafast PHP to speed up the visitor experience even more. Plus, you get the safety of on-demand copies of your site backups, all for $4.99 per month. The biggest plan is GoGeek for $7.99 per month with 40 GB web space, priority support, staging + Git, and the ability to white-label clients. All told, this is a great host for web stores on WordPress, ecommerce sites who want to switch to a better host, and anyone who wants solid security and easy site backups for their pages. Get started with SiteGround today. Bluehost — Best for Creating Your First WordPress Website
Bluehost is a favorite for many because it is one of the three web hosts that WordPress officially recommends for people to use. That’s about as good of an endorsement as you can get for WordPress hosting. The main reason people enjoy Bluehost? It’s simple to get started. Once you get started, you can install WordPress immediately and you’ll have your bare-bones site live within just 15 minutes. From there, you can follow our full guide on how to create a website so that you can get your site looking and functioning just the way you want it. Another reason that Bluehost is a fan favorite is that it has millions of users, which means that the kinks and issues with setup and the continued hosting of websites have generally been worked out. In the rare case that you do run into an issue, help is just a call away. You can reach out 24/7 to Bluehost’s award-winning customer support team if you find yourself with any questions or concerns. If that doesn’t have you convinced to try Bluehost, how about this: Bluehost has some of the lowest pricing around, with plans as low as $2.75/month. That’s incredibly cheap, especially for a brand that’s so reliable, trusted, and easy to use. ![]() As you might imagine, these traits make Bluehost the perfect host to choose if you’re just starting out. Yes, you will be on shared hosting. So if you or someone else on your server gets a huge spike of traffic, your site could go down. But honestly, this almost never happens. I’ve had websites on shared hosting for over a decade and never had a site go down. If and when you want to upgrade, Bluehost also offers managed WordPress hosting that starts at $9.95/month. Not the absolute lowest price point I’ve seen, but it’s still one of the lower-cost options out there for managed hosting. Bottom line: Bluehost is a great option for the vast majority of people reading this—but especially those who are just getting started. Scala Hosting — Most Freebies with Every WordPress Hosting Plan
WordPress hosting can be deceiving. While a lot of providers will boast about WordPress optimization on their servers, what more are you getting from them specifically? Scala Hosting not only makes sure its servers help your WordPress site perform better, it also throws in a ton of useful features on almost every plan. It starts with a free website migration, which not every provider offers. And it’s not just one website—Scala’s specialists will carry over as many WordPress sites as you need to their service, free of charge. These experts will handle the migration and verify everything’s working before you point the site to your new servers. That way, there’s no downtime for your sites whatsoever in the process. ![]() Security features are also prevalent in all Scala WordPress hosting plans. You get a dedicated firewall installed on your behalf, plus a brute force attack blocker, custom security rules that Scala’s team implements without you having to lift a finger, malware scans and removal, and automated updates to prevent vulnerabilities from arising. All Scala plans also include:
You can also unlock additional useful features by going with plans above Scala’s entry-level WP Mini (one website, 20 GB storage) package. Those are:
On those plans, you get managed service, meaning Scala’s support team of WordPress experts will help you with everything from plugin issues to overall troubleshooting. You also get a free domain if you opt for WP Advanced. And not just one year, either, like most providers. Each year that you prepay for hosting, you get a free year of your domain. That’s a very nice bonus. ![]() Scala’s pricing is also very competitive with other providers on this list and in the WordPress hosting space at large:
Give Scala Hosting a try or get connected with a representative to learn what more they can do for you. If you want worry-free WordPress hosting at a competitive price, Scala Hosting should be near the top of your list. More Good WordPress Web Hosting OptionsWP Engine — Best for Hosting Multiple WordPress Sites with Tons of Traffic
For pros, I recommend WP Engine. In fact, WP Engine is what we use here at Quick Sprout—and for very good reason. If you’re trying to get serious and build a high-traffic blog or business on WordPress, it’s by far the best managed WordPress host out there. But I don’t recommend it for anyone who’s just starting out, since it’s much more expensive. We’re talking between $30 to more than $100 each month versus a range of $4 to $15 with other products on my list. Most WordPress sites would do much better with Bluehost or Siteground. You’ll save a lot of money and won’t be paying for WP Engine’s advanced features you don’t need. For $20 per month paid annually, you can use the Startup plan to host one 10GB site with a limit of 25,000 monthly visitors. The Professional tier of service is $50 per month for three sites and 75,000 monthly visitors. ![]() That might seem like a lot of money for fewer resources (especially when compared to services like Hostinger and Bluehost, and especially given the fees you’ll pay if you exceed the visitor limits during a big traffic spike) but, remember, this is managed WordPress hosting. As a managed host, WP Engine professionally maintains speed and security at the server level—meaning you don’t have to do anything to maximize performance on your end. You don’t have to research and rely on plug-ins to shave seconds off your load time or become an expert on the best practices for building a lean site. Nor do you have to carve out time to install and update your plugins, run backups, or implement security features to ward off brute force attacks. WP Engine takes care of it all behind the scenes. The customer service is also excellent, with 24/7 support that includes trackable service tickets and a comprehensive knowledge base. WP Engine’s support staff are WordPress experts, providing detailed answers to your questions and issues. Every time I’ve had to reach out to customer support, I’ve always been impressed. The speed, thoroughness, and expertise are world-class. Overall, WP Engine is an excellent solution if you want to get serious about growing your WordPress sites. Refer to our complete WP Engine web hosting review to learn more about this top-rated provider. Nexcess — Best for Effortless Website Staging
Nexcess, by Liquid Web, is a powerhouse designed to service other powerhouses, like if you’re an enterprise customer or are charged with manning multiple WordPress sites. What I really love about Nexcess, though, is how easy it allows you to stage a website. Its one-click staging tool allows you to easily create a facsimile of your website that you can edit and test to your heart’s content—without worrying that you’re screwing up the actual website. The company also offers a ton of great plans that make it easy to scale. Prices start at just $15.83 per month for one website (as long as you pay for the entire year up front). You also can pay $19 per month if you prefer to pay month by month. If you need more features than the lowest-priced tier provides, the cost jumps quite a bit. The Maker tier costs $65.83 per month in the annual plan, but you get up to five sites and 40 GB storage with that plan. Nexcess calls its most popular plan the Designer tier, which offers up to 10 sites and 60 GB of storage for $90.83 per month. These plans offer a discount for the first three month. In all, the platform offers seven plans. The most expensive plan is the Enterprise tier, which provides up to 250 sites and 800 GB of storage. If you’re an agency or freelancer who plans to host websites for clients, one of the higher-end plans is a great solution for you. ![]() If you need more control but doing everything yourself through AWS isn’t appealing, then Nexcess is for you, too. You won’t have to do nearly as much setup and upkeep as AWS while still having a lot more control than other hosts give you. It also automatically updates WordPress and your plugins. That’s fewer headaches for you and your team. You’ll get all-level access to MySQL, SFTP, and SSH. You also get Git version control. Security, speed, and customer support are virtually unparalleled. Nexcess is obviously not right for everyone. Small businesses should choose one of the other options, as Nexcess plans would be overkill. For power users, though, Nexcess is the WordPress hosting that you’ve been looking for. Use coupon code QUICKSPROUT to get 40% off 2 months of any Nexcess hosting plan. Flywheel — Best If You Want Experts to Migrate Your Site for You
Flywheel is a managed WordPress host that really puts the “support” in customer support. The company offers a great migration service that takes care of the often stressful process of site migration for you. It has a dedicated team that handles the entire process of moving your site to its web host so you don’t have to. The best part: it’s absolutely free. That’s right. They’ll take care of everything at no extra cost. Flywheel is also fantastic because of great features like “blueprints” that allow you to save customized themes and plugins you use over and over again. You’ll also have 14 days on a free, password-protected demo site to show your work before having to pay. You can also easily transfer billing on any of your sites to a client. That makes FlyWheel an excellent option if you’re an agency or freelancer working on client websites. If you build sites for clients, we highly recommend you start using Flywheel. Flywheel offers a single-site plan with 5,000 monthly visitors and 5GB of disk space for $13/month. From there, you can scale up to a souped-up single-site plan for $25/month, or accommodate more sites in the two highest packages. If you need more than 30 sites, you will have to reach out to Flywheel for a custom quote. ![]() Bottom line: I’d use Flywheel if I were looking for a hassle-free migration experience and/or developing websites for clients. If that sounds like you, go with Flywheel as your web hosting provider. Kinsta — Best for Managing Unexpected Surges in Traffic
Kinsta is a great alternative to WP Engine if something about WP Engine doesn’t gel with you. What truly separates it from WP Engine, though, is its auto-scaling feature. In the event of an unexpected surge in traffic, its servers will automatically allocate more CPU and RAM to your website. That means you won’t have to worry about your website slowing down or crashing when you get an influx of readers. Instead, Kinsta takes care of it for you. That’s great for websites that frequently see infrequent spikes in traffic like when a blog post goes viral or if you have sporadic product launches in your ecommerce store. It can also be very good for websites that experience inconsistent traffic performance (e.g., viral videos, big product launches). Kinsta also offers a ton of pricing plans for excellent scalability. In fact, it offers a whopping 10 plans as well as a customizable enterprise solution. ![]() Pricing starts at $35 per month for 25,000 monthly visitors and scales up from there. If you need more than 2.5 million visitors per month, you can contact the Kinsta sales team to put together a custom plan. All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Bottom line: Kinsta can handle any volume of traffic that you need. You won’t have to worry about outgrowing them. One especially nice thing about Kinsta is that you get access to the same features across every plan, as opposed to upgrading to a higher-priced plan to unlock something. It also makes Kinsta’s pricing super simple. Pick the plan based on your traffic and you’re good to go. How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for WordPressNow that you know about some of the best choices for hosting your WordPress site, it’s time to find the best one for you and your business. Here are some of the major considerations to decide among the top options. Note: We intentionally didn’t include speed, security, and uptime on the following list of WordPress hosting factors. They are certainly important, but our recommended hosting providers have these responsibilities locked down. We wouldn’t recommend them otherwise. Multi-Site vs. Single-Site HostingEvery provider on our list offers different solutions if you plan to host multiple sites. That’s why it’s important to make sure the provider you choose can support all the sites you’ll be hosting in the future. The price and features for each package must be taken into consideration here. For example, WPEngine offers a few great packages if you’re managing multiple websites. Their multi-site hosting packages start at $44.25 per month with three sites included. You’ll also get 125 GB of bandwidth each month along with 15 GB of storage. It scales up from there to their Growth package that’s $86.25 per month—quite the jump. But you end up getting 10 sites included in that package with more bandwidth and storage. Kinsta is also another excellent option to consider if you’re looking for multi-site WordPress hosting. These packages are also built to scale. So if you end up getting more clients who need websites, you can just upgrade your package as needed. Providers like Bluehost offer unlimited websites at just $5.45 per month. But there’s a catch—it is completely unmanaged. That means it doesn’t come with the level of customer support and automatic maintenance you’d get with managed hosting. Customer Support That’s Actually SupportiveYou want your website must operate as smoothly as possible. This is especially important if you’re making money from it. So when something goes wrong, like an outage or security breach, you want someone in your corner to get you out of the jam. That’s why good customer support is an important consideration when you’re deciding on a WordPress host. WordPress hosting platform WPEngine offers one of the best-reviewed customer support teams. The team is on hand 24/7/365 to help you with any and all issues that arise. The trade-off here is that it’s a managed WordPress host, which means it comes at a steeper cost. With that price tag comes a stellar hosting service, though, along with a support team that’ll be at your disposal whether you need to optimize your website or guide it through any down times. Even better, the help desk and support staff of a managed WordPress site are WordPress experts. They understand your site and the plugins you’re using. They are essentially trained to help you—unlike a general host with customers running all sorts of applications. Managed hosts have built their business model on providing timely, reliable service. Conversely, cheaper hosts don’t put much of an emphasis on helping customers in their time of need. That’s not to say that all unmanaged options offer inferior customer support. In fact, hosts like Bluehost offer award-winning 24/7 customer support for all of your needs. They just might not know your site as well as a managed WordPress host does. Managed vs. Unmanaged HostingThis is one of the most important decisions to make when it comes to choosing a WordPress web host from this list. It determines everything from your level of customer support to security to price. First, let’s talk about the WordPress hosting most people are familiar with. You get a regular web host and that host usually gives you an easy way to install WordPress. You have a host, WordPress is installed, and that’s it. This is known as unmanaged WordPress hosting—and most WordPress hosting works like this. After a one-click install, you get the basic version of WordPress, the same version that you’d get if you installed WordPress on a server that you owned. Managed WordPress hosting takes things up a notch and offers several additional features. Instead of a basic host with WordPress installed, everything is built from the ground up with WordPress in mind. This hosting infrastructure is tailored specifically to WordPress, and the hosting provider usually customizes WordPress itself to make it better. Your site will be a lot faster and more secure with a managed plan. You’ll also benefit from much better support since the hosting team specializes in WordPress. The downside is that managed WordPress hosting is more expensive, but this makes sense. You’re getting more value for the higher price tag. Headache-Free Site MigrationWordPress hosting is typically an upgrade from old shared hosting solutions. So there’s a good chance you’re migrating your website to a new web host altogether. A quality web host will help you migrate your website between web hosts easily and seamlessly. You might get a dedicated technician work through the process for you, or have a customer support team to guide you through the process yourself. Some might even charge you a little more in order to migrate your site—and it’s usually worth the price in my opinion. See which hosting providers offer site migration as you’re reaching different options. For example, SiteGround has a free migrator tool you can use to get your website over to its host. WPEngine is another host that offers a migration plugin. Once downloaded, the plugin takes care of all the complicated work for you. Flywheel has experts on hand to help you migrate your website. Their migration team will take care of the whole process, so you don’t have to. If you want to transfer your website to a new host, be sure to check what the WordPress hosting provider offers to help transfer your website. You’ll want as much assistance as you can get to make the transition smooth. The Top Web Hosting For WordPress in SummaryWordPress web hosting puts your site on a server that’s only used for WordPress. This improves security and performance and enhances the overall experience for your website visitors. Factors like site traffic, technical experience, and scalability are all important factors to consider here. Beginners launching a new WordPress website likely won’t use the same solution as a high-traffic site that wants to switch hosts. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-web-hosting-for-wordpress/ Want to jump straight to the answer? The best online payroll service for most people is Gusto or Paycor. A great payroll service makes it easy to process accurate payroll every cycle. You can rest easy knowing your tax obligations are calculated properly and filed with the appropriate parties, ensuring you avoid any penalties. Switching to an online payroll service means you can automate your pay runs and stay compliant. This keeps your employees happy while simultaneously saving time and money. The 6 Best Online Payroll Services
![]() All six of our top picks will work for common payroll tasks like scheduling, new hire reporting, and security. Where they differentiate themselves is how they perform in the key categories most users have said are critical. These include ease of administration, employee self-service, reporting, and tax management. To find out how our recommendations work in the real world, we interviewed active users to understand how and why they chose the software they use. They walked us through the benefits and tradeoffs of using each payroll service, and shared insights you won’t find anywhere else. Gusto — Best for Dispersed Workforces
More than 200,000 businesses across the US rely on Gusto for payroll processing. This provider offers a comprehensive suite of features that makes it easy to onboard and manage your staff from anywhere. Gusto simplifies payroll, benefits administration, and HR for dispersed workforces. Its friendly and engaging user-interface is loved by admins and employees alike. ![]() Where Gusto ExcelsGusto is perfect for business owners who don’t have any prior experience running payroll on their own. Whether you are administering payroll or setting up employee benefits, there’s tons of guidance along the way. You can easily handle your backend HR with Gusto—even as a complete beginner. This combination of ease of use and robust functionality is why I included Gusto on my top five list and why it’s best for predominantly remote teams. Here are the areas where Gusto really stands out:
Users rave about Gusto’s clean and easy-to-navigate design. While the animated pigs and cartoon illustrations aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, they do resonate with Gusto fans. As one user we interviewed exclaimed, “Thank God we have Gusto. Look how easy this is. Yay!” Onboarding new staff is also a breeze, with simple checklists, templates for essentials like offer letters, and the ability for digital signatures. Gusto makes it so easy for employers that in-person onboarding is quickly becoming a thing of the past, even for localized workforces. Explaining how her company’s new employee onboarding process changed with Gusto, an HR manager for multiple $1 million companies said her team made an explainer video of how the employee’s new tablet works. Instead of a lengthy sit-down with a new hire going through the tablet’s functionality, her team simply shares that video via Gusto. Likewise, new employees can onboard with ease, which is critical for remote workers. You can send an automated email series that walks the employee through all the tasks needed during the onboarding process. It lets employees work with manageable chunks of information, rather than experience data overload on their first day at work. ![]() As she also found out, Gusto makes it understandable for even the least tech-savvy person on staff, saving her team time and energy addressing common user issues. “The same group of people that are using Gusto are also using other platforms we use,” she said. “I hear all of this stuff around all of these other platforms, but I don’t around Gusto.” Gusto also gives you flexibility when it comes to paying staff each month, offering unlimited payroll runs. Just like OnPay, you’re not locked into predetermined payroll cycles nor charged extra if your payroll processing needs increase. With Gusto, you can adjust as your needs change or when you have to manage a one-off situation. Unlike OnPay, Gusto gives you the convenience of automated payroll. This is an especially great feature for businesses with static payrolls, like an all-salaried team. Once you set up the initial payroll information, you can set it to run automatically every pay cycle. Need to change something? A simple toggle switch lets you turn this feature on and off as needed. Finally, if your business is subject to local taxes, Gusto makes it easy to manage and submit these withholdings. This is another area where Gusto pulls ahead of OnPay, which doesn’t offer this feature. Combined, all of Gusto’s pros make it an ideal tool for growing businesses with dispersed workforces. Where Gusto Could ImproveOf course, despite all the ways Gusto wins over users, it does have some shortcomings that bear calling out.
Users we interviewed were united in their criticism of Gusto customer service. Although customer service representatives are available Monday through Friday with extended business hours, the reps seem ill-equipped to handle user questions. Likewise, many users complained of long wait times and making multiple calls over many days and weeks to ultimately resolve questions. “They ran me around in circles actually,” noted one former Gusto user. “I think it’s because they didn’t know…didn’t understand their own services.” This user eventually left Gusto because he wanted a more cut-and-dried approach to payroll management. When you are a new startup without a dedicated HR department and want more hand-holding, this might be an issue. It’s also one area where OnPay and some of the other top five trump Gusto. Limited benefits are another area where Gusto is a little weak. While they have built a robust, one-stop-shop for payroll and HR services, that comes at a cost. According to some users we interviewed, Gusto wants you to forego your existing service providers in favor of Gusto or one of its preferred brokers. This was “not at all what I wanted,” said one former Gusto user. “I wanted them to do the payroll aspect. Not be a group manager for my healthcare.” Likewise, Gusto’s HSA and FSA benefits are not yet available nationwide. While payroll and 401(k) are available everywhere in the United States, HSAs and FSAs are only available in 38 states plus DC. If your business or employees happen to be in one of the 12 states not yet covered, this will present a challenge—at least if you want Gusto’s services in this regard. Similar to OnPay, Gusto relies on an optimized website instead of a dedicated app for mobile use. It isn’t a deal-breaker, but I am curious why a product with such a focus on the user experience skimped on this feature. Gusto does offer a limited employee-facing app called Gusto Wallet. This lets employees see pay information and tax documents, but that’s about it. Everything else must be done in the web version of Gusto. Most surprising on this list is Gusto’s difficulty integrating with common third-party tools, in particular accounting software. One of our interviewees struggled to connect Gusto with Xero, eventually giving up and leaving Gusto for another service. “They said it would sync, but they did not play at all nice together,” he noted. Gusto PricingGusto recently revamped its pricing tiers and prices, offering three pricing tiers of Simple, Plus, and Premium. ![]()
Whichever package you choose, Gusto also lets you add a la carte services for an additional fee:
Gusto also offers a contractor-only option for companies that don’t have any W-2 employees. It costs $6 per person with no monthly base price and includes limited services, including:
Start your free 30-day trial, so you can see what it’s all about without any financial commitment. Bottom line: Progressive business owners and HR professionals managing a workforce spread across diverse locations will love Gusto. Paycor – Best for Consolidating Employee Management
Paycor is one of the heavy hitters on our top six list. Its service offerings make it more akin to ADP than, say, Gusto or OnPay. For 30 years, Paycor has provided payroll software for companies of all sizes, but it has since expanded well beyond payroll processing functionality. Paycor is a full-service human capital management (HCM) tool that bills itself as a partner that “empowers leaders to build winning teams.” It does so by offering a suite of services covering every angle of the employee experience, from recruiting and human resources to time and attendance, expenses, and payroll. Its robustness makes Paycor a valuable solution for small- to medium-sized businesses. The company serves a broad swath of companies needing employee-management services, from less than 10 employees to those with more than 1,000. ![]() Where Paycor ExcelsPaycor is an established name in the payroll processing universe. It has more than 30,000 customers, most in the small- to medium-sized category. Rather than focus on one offering, like payroll, the company positions itself as a partner to help grow managers into effective leaders by offering a variety of tools. Payroll is just one part of the bigger picture. Customers appreciate how easy it is to process payroll and find the user interface attractive and straightforward. They also appreciate the HR Center of Excellence, an online repository of best practices, case studies, and informative articles.
We are impressed by how many users raved about Paycor’s ability to simplify the administrative side of payroll and human resources. One user called out the ease with which Paycor could be set up to quickly run payroll and how easy the interface is to navigate for basic payroll tasks. The user noted that it only takes five minutes to input employee hours into the portal and that taxes are all figured out automatically. ![]() Customers also noted the helpfulness of having the interface available in multiple languages, including Spanish. This ensures that all employees can quickly and easily access the information they need, regardless of their language. Another customer noted that Paycor stays current on emerging payroll management issues, like COVID leave. They also noted that having all employee information in one place greatly streamlines employee management and frees up administrative time. Employees love the ability to quickly and easily access their information, especially from the mobile app. One employee likes that he can quickly see how much PTO he has available and then request time off from the same screen. Admins love the mobile app, too. They note fewer employee questions about things like W2s, paystubs, time off, and the like. On the administrative side, customers appreciate the time savings that Paycor delivers. They are able use the time they used to spend managing onboarding and payroll on other, more revenue-generating tasks. Where Paycor Could ImproveOf course, everything isn’t perfect with Paycor. There are some recurring complaints we heard from users, too.
Once upon a time, Paycor had great customer service. Or so the reviews say. That doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. Even a cursory glance at the most trusted review sites, including TrustPilot, G2, and Capterra, reveals a troubling decline in Paycor customer service. Users note extended wait times and trouble getting through to a customer service representative. Once they do, their issues often go unresolved. Lack of knowledge and disinterest in resolving questions are two of the most often noted complaints. Help tickets languishing for months is another. If you are the type of user who won’t rely on customer service after you go live with Paycor, this may not matter. But if you want the reassurance of having support in your corner outside of the knowledge base, this will likely make Paycor a source of frustration for you. Reporting is another area of weakness. Users consistently note the difficulty in finding the reports they need. Once they do, they are locked into pre-built reports that don’t give them the information they actually want to see. As one review we read noted, “if ad hoc reporting is important or crucial to you, this is not the product for you.” The final area where Paycor can make some improvements is in the useability of the user interface. It gets good reviews for being visually appealing, but it sometimes suffers from making it overly complicated to execute simple tasks. As one reviewer noted, “Sometimes I feel like there are 100 ways to do the one thing I want to do.” This sort of overkill doesn’t seem necessary. If it’s frustrating for users to move around the system, even the most attractive UI falls flat. Paycor PricingPaycor breaks its pricing into two tiers—below and above 50 employees. Below 50 Employees When you have less than 50 employees, you can choose from four plans—Basic, Essential, Core, and Complete. You’ll be annoyed to learn that, unlike most other options on this list, Paycor hides all actual pricing. ![]() You have to choose a plan, then submit your name and contact information to the site. Then, a sales rep will reach out to discuss your needs. Paycor does offer 50% off for one year, but you won’t know the actual value of that offer until you know the starting price. Some internet sleuthing revealed that Paycor Basic costs $99 per month plus $5 per employee per month. Essential costs $149 per month plus $7 per employee per month, with a one-time setup fee of $59. Both the Core and Complete plans cost $199 each per month, plus $8 per employee per month for Core and $14 per employee per month for Complete. Both Core and Complete have setup fees of $99 and $199, respectively. Above 50 Employees There are no specific plans noted when you have more than 50 employees, so I can’t share any specifics with you. You’ll have to submit your information, and you’ll get a note telling you a sales rep will contact you and that you’ll get three months of free payroll. This puts Paycor in the unenviable position of being the least transparent payroll service provider on my list, despite being a great tool for HR management Bottom Line: If you’re looking to simplify payroll and HR tasks, Paycor is a powerful and straightforward tool. Paychex — Best for Experienced Payroll Teams
Paychex has over 50 years of experience providing a full suite of payroll, HR, time tracking, and benefits administration to businesses. This exceptional service speaks to the market Paychex best serves—larger businesses. While they’ll gladly work with businesses with fewer than ten employees, Paychex’s sweet spot is larger organizations with lots of employees and a dedicated HR staff. Unlike OnPay and Gusto, Paychex doesn’t focus on hand-holding for inexperienced users. Instead, their services are geared toward companies with complex payroll and HR demands. ![]() Where Paychex ExcelsPaychex has a very loyal customer base. Customers appreciate the strong customer service offerings, and they like being able to manage the service via a mobile app. Not only does the mobile app give employees the ability to self-manage their information, but admins use the app to manage the entire system. Regardless of the way you want to pay employees, Paychex can accommodate your needs. The service supports paper checks for those who need them, but it also can handle a wide range of digital payment services to simplify and speed up the payment process.
I was surprised at just how excited the users were when we spoke to them about Paychex’s customer service. Most notably, they mentioned how quickly any issues get resolved. This extends to all levels of customer service—not just the dedicated payroll specialist. So even if you don’t choose a package that comes with an assigned specialist, you can still expect to receive excellent customer service. As one Paychex user who manages a 35-person company noted, “Usually I will call if it’s like a payroll issue, and if my payroll specialist isn’t available, you go to anybody in the pool and 99%—I mean, probably even 100%—of the time, the person I speak to is extremely knowledgeable and will resolve it for me without having to go to my specific payroll specialist.” When it comes to correctly processing taxes, Paychex also receives high marks. This isn’t surprising since Paychex has been at this for a very long time and has the resources to make sure nuanced tax changes are addressed, even down to the local level. “Massachusetts recently installed a state-funded paid family and medical leave act,” the owner of a 100-person firm told us. “So that ended up being a new payroll tax and Paychex handled that without issue.” If there’s ever a hiccup, users were quick to point out that Paychex owned the mistake and resolved it quickly on the customer’s behalf. One interviewee noted that Paychex also credited them several months’ worth of fees to make up for the inconvenience. Paychex also puts focus on the mobile aspect of payroll in two ways. First, unlike OnPay or Gusto, Paychex does offer a mobile app for administrators. This allows admins to process payroll from anywhere at any time without having to use a web browser on their mobile devices. Second, Paychex offers several time-tracking options that work for localized and mobile workforces. ![]() “One of the big reasons for moving to Paychex was to take advantage of the online Time Clock,” said one Paychex user. “Having an automated system for checking in and checking out is super useful. This is a much more streamlined system. It definitely saves time.” Reporting is a key component of any payroll service, and Paychex users had many good things to say about it. In particular, users loved the built-in Payroll Journal and Employee Earnings Report. Users also noted that the drag-and-drop feature made it easy to pull customized information into reports. This is a standout among customized reporting across all products in my list. Paychex definitely understands the sophisticated needs of its target audience and does a great job of satisfying them. Where Paychex Could ImproveAlthough Paychex does a great job overall, there are still a few areas that could be improved to eliminate some recurring complaints.
When it comes to learning a new payroll software, there are two types of people—those who know a lot about the subject and want to dig in on their own, and those who are new to payroll and want more personalized attention. Paychex is definitely a service for the former. One interviewee spoke about this when discussing how new employees were onboarded. “My issue is just that I haven’t been handed anything that says ‘here’s how it should all work from beginning to end.’ I’m trying to figure that out all on my own,” she said. “It would be nice to have it all provided to me.” While the admin user interface is pretty bare-bones, it still causes confusion for some. Experienced HR teams will no doubt jump in and enjoy the ride, but someone without much payroll or HR knowledge might feel intimidated and overwhelmed by the options. It is not impossible but will take a few payroll cycles to make it all feel natural. One area that surprised me was user complaints about how difficult some integrations are, especially when it comes to time-tracking software. In some cases, the difficult integration results in additional work for a Paychex customer. As one user illustrated, “Paychex has their own time-in reporting product. We don’t use that…because we already had one that was DCA approved because we’re a federal contractor. Paychex is probably DCA-approved, but why bother? Why recreate the wheel? So, we have a separate system and I have to put the PTO in manually to Paychex.” It’s also worth noting that Paychex doesn’t share pricing information online, which means it can be hard to tell what Paychex is actually going to cost as you are shopping around. “That’s probably one of my largest complaints working with Paychex,” one current Paychex user told us. “They do promote a low upfront cost because they factor in a number of discounts, but then those discounts over time just disappear.” Likewise, the Paychex sales team didn’t escape scrutiny. Paychex salespeople are just plain pushy. Dozens of reviews ripped Paychex for their aggressive sales pursuits, including repeated emails, phone calls, and texts to existing customers. Their sales tactics, even for existing customers, leave something to be desired. “The only issue I’ve had is their salespeople,” noted another Paychex user we interviewed. No other product on this list gets these kinds of complaints. Paychex PricingFinding Paychex pricing information on their website is like searching for the holy grail. It might be out there somewhere, but it’s really hard to find. And when you eventually do find it, you feel like you accomplished something extraordinary. This is a totally different approach than Gusto, OnPay, and QuickBooks, which all put pricing front and center. ![]()
The danger with Paychex pricing, confirmed by numerous user reviews, is that costs can go up fast, especially as a la carte services are added. Some people leave the service over price increases. Bottom line: For the experienced payroll team or HR professional, Paychex is an incredibly powerful tool. OnPay — Best for Simplifying All Things Payroll
OnPay began as an internal solution to help simplify one family’s payroll business. A decade later, OnPay is one of the most highly-regarded payroll services on the market. Their focus on simplifying the complexities of payroll landed OnPay on my list. No dedicated payroll or HR person at your company? No problem. OnPay successfully helps anyone master payroll management, regardless of experience level. ![]() Where OnPay ExcelsOnPay delivers in a host of key areas that make it ideal for inexperienced payroll users.
Users we spoke to, especially those with no formal payroll or HR experience, really liked how easy OnPay is to use. “It’s easy for an individual who is not necessarily an accountant to operate this system,” noted one user, “like where you have a business owner who’s going to be doing this stuff.” OnPay also receives high marks on the employee use side. Reviews we studied consistently noted how easy the platform is for employees to access and navigate. They can self-onboard, print out paystubs, and change tax forms on their own. OnPay comes with the basic HR tools any small business needs, like automated onboarding workflows, customized PTO tracking, and new hire compliance reporting. If you want or need more options, OnPay integrates smoothly with a select number of third-party apps for accounting, time management, 401(k), and compliance. It bears noting, though, that OnPay offers the fewest third-party integrations of any product on my list. Still, if you’re using a tool in OnPay’s current integration repertoire, OnPay walks you through connecting the two with ease. “We’ve chosen to integrate OnPay with a time management system called Deputy,” noted the business manager of a small health clinic. “It’s incredibly simple.” ![]() When questions arise, OnPay ensures fast answers. “I think the longest I ever had to wait on hold was 10 minutes and they are always very helpful and polite,” the owner of a busy veterinary practice told us. “Their response every single time has been ‘we’ll take care of this for you,’ and they always do.” And if a payroll tax mistake happens, OnPay doesn’t let its users go it alone. Another user we interviewed noted, “If I get a message saying there’s a [tax] miscalculation, I go straight to OnPay and they’re like, no worries, we’ll explain what we did, why we did it, and you shouldn’t have to worry about it.” Another area where OnPay shines is reporting functionality, especially its pre-built reports. The people we interviewed and the user reviews we read online raved about how easy OnPay reports are to find and use, especially the year-end reports. And when customized reports are what a user needs, OnPay simplifies the process with its Report Designer feature. A simple drag-and-drop user interface lets you add or remove up to 50 data points, move columns, adjust date ranges, set up filters, and create custom views for individual users. OnPay’s customization extends to payroll cycles, too. Unlike others on my list, OnPay lets you run unlimited payroll cycles every month at no additional cost. For small businesses, this is an especially important feature, as one user pointed out who forgot to add a new employee before running payroll. “I forgot to click a button,” she recalled. After running the direct deposit payroll and seeing that she missed the new employee, she was able to go back in, quickly cut a check by hand, and ensure the new employee got paid on time. OnPay “is a great tool for me, because sometimes I forget to click a button.” All in all, OnPay delivers where it matters most by taking the guesswork out of payroll. Where OnPay Can ImproveNo online payroll service is perfect, and OnPay is no exception. The software’s focus on making payroll as easy as possible also creates some gaps in functionality. Whether these gaps are a big deal depends on your needs.
One notable deficiency is the inability of a payroll administrator to set up automatic payroll cycles. You have to go in and manually work through two screens and a confirmation page each time you run a payroll cycle with OnPay. This probably isn’t a huge hurdle for a small company with only a few employees or a payroll that fluctuates. But for a company with a large workforce of salaried employees, this can quickly become an unnecessary burden. Other products on my list, like Gusto, Paychex, and ADP do offer this set-it-and-forget-it convenience. While OnPay strives to be easy to use, there are some aspects where users struggle or face seemingly unnecessary annoyance. One user we interviewed cited trying to find individual 401(k) information as an example. “I have to go into the 401(k) listing and then unclick everybody that I don’t want. I’d rather be able to just … click the person I want and run the report.” Other OnPay users mentioned struggling with the onboarding process, at least for more complex situations. One person we interviewed noted that managing benefit accrual for different compensation schemes wasn’t easy to get set up. Then there’s the lack of a mobile app for administrators or employees. OnPay claims its website allows users to run payroll from anywhere with “just one bar of reception.” But a well-designed app is simply more intuitive and easier to use. Both Paychex and ADP have robust mobile apps. Even Gusto offers a limited mobile app for basic employee self-service. A somewhat more niche issue arises for businesses that operate in places with municipal taxes. OnPay can’t handle local taxes, so if your business is subject to these, you’ll want a payroll service that can manage them for you. All the other choices on my list offer this service. Finally, OnPay drops the ball a bit with fewer than 20 third-party app integrations. It lags far behind its competition in this regard. This also leaves a pretty wide gap for new OnPay users who already use accounting, time management, and 401(k) tools that aren’t on the list. OnPay PricingForget complicated tiers and customized quotes; OnPay offers all its services for one transparent monthly fee, and it’s a fee that puts OnPay among the most affordable options on my list. Their approach to pricing also garners rave reviews from actual users. “If you’re a small business like we are…it is an incredible value,” notes the business manager of the small health care clinic. OnPay costs just $36 per month plus $4 per person per month. That’s it. No contracts. No mysterious fees. No uncertainty. There’s even a simple calculator on their website that lets you see exactly how much you’ll pay. ![]() Other key features of OnPay’s pricing:
Bottom line: Small business owners and managers without payroll expertise will love the simple interface, solid customer service, and budget-friendly pricing. Try OnPay now for 30 days to see if it is right for your business. QuickBooks Payroll — Best for Solopreneurs and Small Teams
The power of a brand can never be understated, and QuickBooks is an instantly recognizable name in accounting software. The company has spent decades earning its reputation as being reliable and easy to use. This reputation extends to QuickBooks Payroll. It’s a no-brainer to tell you that QuickBooks Payroll is perfect for anyone already using QuickBooks for their accounting. You can even integrate the two from within QuickBooks accounting software with just a click. But QuickBooks Payroll is also perfect for any small business that wants a standalone, trimmed-down product for payroll management—something that’s easy to use and gets the job done without unnecessary bells and whistles. QuickBooks delivers a compact package of payroll services at a reasonable price, best suited for individuals and small companies that prioritize cost over extra functionality that they don’t need. ![]() Where QuickBooks Payroll ExcelsQuickBooks Payroll offers a number of great features that are perfect for the solopreneur or business owner tasked with managing small teams.
The users we interviewed all used QuickBooks Payroll in conjunction with QuickBooks. They unanimously agreed that QuickBooks Payroll saved them significant time every month. It also trimmed down expenses. One user noted that before turning to QuickBooks Payroll, they were spending at least an hour each month running payroll. Since converting, though, their processing time has been reduced to just minutes. And, as another interviewee noted, “It’s saving me money from having to pay my accountant/bookkeeper.” For users willing to pay a bit more each month, QuickBooks Payroll’s tax penalty protection can be a real lifesaver. When you are on the IRS’s radar, things can get sticky fast. Knowing your payroll software has your back can be worth the extra cost of the higher tier package. The reviews we read and the users we talked to consistently heaped praise on the prebuilt reports, as well. While 20 ready-to-go reports may not seem like a lot, for users with simpler needs, it is a nice compromise between covering the basics and overwhelming a user with too many choices. Time tracking is a huge win, too. The QuickBooks Time mobile app for Android and iOS lets you accurately track hours no matter where or when an employee is on the clock. There’s even geofencing technology baked into the app, something unique among our top five products. Users also find QuickBooks Time easy to manage and quite versatile, with one user even adopting it as an internal way to manage billable hours for clients. “We use QuickBooks Time in a way that wasn’t designed for, but…works for us,” noted one user we talked with. “We’re a marketing agency, so we have our different customers and…we track the time we’re spending on any given account and any given day. It’s for internal tracking, just so we’re not over-servicing or under-servicing a client.” QuickBooks Time is available as an a la carte service at the lowest QuickBooks Payroll subscription tier and included at the higher tiers. Where QuickBooks Payroll Could ImproveQuickBooks Payroll is great for many things, but not everything.
The biggest issue for QuickBooks Payroll is how limiting it is for anyone not already using, or willing to adopt, QuickBooks for accounting purposes. Without it, users can’t make use of the 650+ third-party integrations QuickBooks Payroll boasts about. Users also cannot integrate QuickBooks Payroll with any other accounting software. That’s a huge limitation for anyone wanting to do more than the basics of payroll. Also, of all the products on our top five list, QuickBooks Payroll really drops the ball with customer service. Dozens and dozens of reviews consistently mention bad customer service—in particular, long hold times. “If you have a problem with QuickBooks and you try to call them, you’re going to be on the line forever trying to get help,” noted one person we interviewed. Likewise, when unexpected problems arise users often have to turn to third-party resources for more information. One interviewee experienced this first-hand. “The direct deposit payment was supposed to hit on the 30th, and nobody got it,” he noted. “I sent it and then found out through the [QuickBook] forums that it was a QuickBooks issue.” Many users report significant issues with employees not getting paid or tax-related issues with the IRS. These complaints stretch back all the way to 2016. Combined with limited customer service, these unexpected hiccups can be very frustrating for an inexperienced payroll manager. Limited HR tools are another sore spot. There’s no easy or fun onboarding experience like Gusto and OnPay offer. You also don’t get the higher-level employee benefits of ADP and Paychex. You can only start capturing a small portion of these services with QuickBooks Payroll’s highest-tier plan, which is far more expensive than OnPay or Gusto. Tax calculations are also a potentially problematic area for some businesses. QuickBooks Payroll requires manual entries for workers who perform services in multiple states. The same holds true for employees that move often. QuickBooks Payroll will only track a maximum of two states. So if you have a multi-state workforce, you might find QuickBooks Payroll a bit limiting. This is likely not an issue for most solopreneurs or very small companies. But it is an example of how QuickBooks Payroll is not ideal for larger companies with many employees. QuickBooks Payroll PricingQuickBooks Payroll offers some of the least expensive pricing on our list, including 50% off for the first three months. Only OnPay costs less after the three-month discount is removed. This affordability makes QuickBooks Payroll a solid choice for an individual or small business that really just wants to manage a small payroll and doesn’t want to pay for unnecessary extra features. In line with targeting individuals and small businesses, QuickBooks Payroll offers crystal-clear pricing on its website. This makes it easy for anyone to understand options and start service with just a few clicks. ![]() QuickBooks often runs promotions, so you may be able to get a lower price today. Regular pricing is as follows:
QuickBooks Payroll also offers a la carte services, including:
QuickBooks Payroll offers a 30-day free trial, plus special introductory pricing of 50% off for the first three months. Bottom line: If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner with less than 10 employees who just wants straightforward payroll services, check out QuickBooks Payroll. ADP — Best for Never Outgrowing Your Payroll Provider
ADP is the most dominant name in the payroll industry, and has had more than 70 years to perfect its game. It offers a comprehensive suite of payroll, HR, and human capital management services under one umbrella. ADP is by far the most feature-rich product in my top list, providing every conceivable payroll-related service a business could need. If there’s anything you want to track or do related to payroll or HR in your company, ADP likely offers it. And that’s exactly why ADP hits the sweet spot for companies with significant workforce expansion dreams. Your business will never outgrow ADP. Where ADP Payroll ExcelsWhen you’re a behemoth in the payroll services space, you achieve that by delivering some big wins over and over. Here’s where ADP excels:
ADP is a tool built to support your business at every stage of growth. One area where this is clear is the flexibility built into payroll automation. Even if your payroll plans are straightforward today, as you grow and expand, ADP will still handle your more complex payroll needs with ease. Likewise, if your payroll data changes regularly, as it does for one college payroll administrator we interviewed, ADP makes it easy to modify payroll cycles anytime. “Every semester we have to change it,” one user told us. “So it’s very easy, user friendly. And self-explanatory.” ADP also makes new employee onboarding equally straightforward. No, the interface isn’t flashy or fun like Gusto—it truly is a no-frills affair. But it is one that gets the job done. Administrators and employees both find it easy to use. “We didn’t have any issues. I honestly didn’t receive one email.” one administrator noted, with regards to getting employees onto ADP after her company switched from Paychex. Another area where ADP stands out is the attention it puts into its mobile apps. There are separate apps for administrators and employees. ADP Mobile Solutions goes deep into functionality and simplifies the process for everyone. This is also a standout among the products I’ve covered here. Like the other products on my list, ADP’s reporting is rated as good by users. Their built-in reports are among the most comprehensive of all the providers on my list. One area where it particularly excels is extracting data for more complex purposes like audits. One interviewee noted this ease when responding to a bank audit request, telling us “It was really easy to gather the data and submit it to the bank.” Finally, ADP is exceptionally functional when it comes to integrations. If you can’t find an existing ADP product to do what you need, they offer hundreds of listed third-party tools that you can integrate with their payroll service. Honestly, the list is so extensive that there likely isn’t a tool you won’t find there. Where ADP Payroll Could Improve
People who want to be walked through the onboarding process are not going to love ADP. Unlike the hand-holding of Gusto or OnPay, many ADP users felt like they were on their own. “We weren’t really given the guidance on how to implement the system” one user noted, speaking about her company’s initial onboarding experience. This lack of guidance probably isn’t going to be an issue for a seasoned HR pro, but for someone without much experience in payroll, it might prove to be an insurmountable hurdle. Novices may prefer the approach of Gusto or OnPay for a less stressful onboarding experience. Taxes are another area where ADP has an unexpected weakness. Multiple reviews in just the past 12 months claimed that ADP missed a change to the law or compliance rules and caused an issue due. The ADP users we interviewed, both current and former, echoed these complaints. The difficulty in using custom reports also frequently came up in reviews and the interviews we conducted. In some cases, the problems were enough to motivate a customer to leave for a different payroll service. One user who left made this clear. “That was one of the major things I had issues with ADP about,” she noted. Custom reports were “not intuitive and easy to use. I had a lot of standard reports I would run and those would do the job, but then the custom ones, that’s when it started to get a little tricky.” ADP also gives the least pricing information of any product on this list. You have to engage with a salesperson to craft a package for your business, no matter your size or needs, since there is zero information on ADP pricing available on its website and you can’t sign up online. This is dramatically different from how OnPay, Gusto, and QuickBooks present their services. If you want to consider ADP, you’re going to have to talk to a sales rep—and also like Paychex, ADP has a reputation for very pushy salespeople. Overselling is also an oft-cited complaint from ADP users. And when you do engage with a sales representative, the services you are promised don’t always mirror the functionality you actually get. “During our negotiations, the sales rep said ‘Oh yeah, you can definitely do that,’ and it turned out we couldn’t,” one user we interviewed said. ADP PricingSimilar to Paychex, ADP makes you give them your contact information to get the ball rolling. If you’re a small business that wants a simple, straightforward approach to payroll services at a reasonable price, this alone might turn you off. However, if you’re a payroll or HR manager at a bigger company, this is probably something you expect. Negotiating for procured services is part and parcel of your role. So despite including small businesses as a target audience on their website, this suggests ADP is really looking for mid- to enterprise-level customers. Still, ADP makes an effort to woo businesses of all sizes, offering two tiers of service. Each tier offers different packages. RUN is a product aimed at businesses with less than 50 employees. ![]() We sussed out at least basic information about RUN, so you wouldn’t have to dig through ADP’s website and give up your own contact information.
For companies with 50 or more employees, ADP offers ADP Workforce Now. ![]() Workforce Now includes all RUN features, plus compliance reports, tailored service and custom implementation, and country-based record keeping. Pricing is by consultation only. Bottom line: ADP is a great option for companies whose experienced payroll teams won’t need much hand-holding no matter how big the business grows. Learn more about ADP. The Review ProcessThere were multiple criteria each product had to meet to make it onto my list. What It Took to Be IncludedFor any software to garner a spot in the top six, it had to:
Beyond these key criteria, the software tools I included in the top six all tackle basic payroll management tasks with ease. These baseline requirements include:
What Was ExcludedI didn’t consider any software that:
Once the list of possible top software candidates was whittled down, my research team conducted in-depth interviews with actual users of the software. Here’s some insight into my team’s process. How We Found Active UsersMy team combed through public review sites and social media to find individuals who shared their experiences with one or more of the platforms that made our shortlist. The team confirmed the users’ identities via LinkedIn. This was a crucial step, since there are countless fake reviews on the internet. This ensured we were dealing with real people who work for real companies. Once we established contact, we confirmed they were actively working with one of the tools on our list or had worked with it in the past. This first-hand experience was critical to the validity of their comments. Who We InterviewedThe users we interviewed came from a variety of backgrounds, including solopreneurs managing a small number of contractors to business owners with less than 10 employees to HR professionals responsible for teams of 20-60 to operation managers with a staff of more than 100. Interviewees ranged in age from early 30s to late 60s. They all had differing levels of payroll experience, with some having little to others with vast HR experience. The companies they owned or worked for ranged from small healthcare clinics to large family businesses, solo therapy and coaching practices, colleges, and growing start-ups. The interviews typically lasted 45 minutes to one hour, and we compensated interviewees for their time. The goal of our personal interviews was to go beyond every payroll service’s marketing hype. We wanted to independently verify whether the service lived up to their claims. What I Learned Choosing the Best Online Payroll ServicesPayroll management is a complex subject and a critical part of any business. While users each have unique needs, all our interviewees touched upon a few common themes during our conversations. The reviews we studied also reinforced these recurring themes. It Must Be Easy for Administrators…There wasn’t a single person that downplayed how crucial it was for an online payroll service to be easy to use for the person managing payroll. This ease of use included the initial onboarding process, day-to-day activities, and ongoing support. There were four key areas we looked at when it came to ease of use:
Of course, easy is a subjective idea. A lot depends on how much experience in payroll and HR a user has. Experienced HR managers don’t need or want the same sort of hand-holding that someone with no experience at all might expect. This diversity among users is why some tools are better than others in specific situations. For the solopreneur, someone new to payroll, or a business owner forced to manage payroll out of necessity, tools like OnPay, Gusto, and QuickBooks are exceptionally popular. They each have user interfaces designed with these types of users in mind. ![]() As one therapist in her 30s, running a solo practice and using QuickBooks Payroll told us, the confidence to be able to do these tasks herself was wonderful. An HR manager in her 50s, overseeing multiple $1 million businesses, agreed. “Anybody can do payroll if it’s with Gusto,” she said. At the other end of the spectrum, Paychex and ADP are more complex tools that generally assume the administrators will have some basic knowledge of payroll. These bigger, more robust tools don’t pay as much attention to guiding the inexperienced user. And this can make things difficult for those less experienced users, like the de facto HR person at a small company that uses Paychex. “I’m having to figure it out a little bit on my own,” she told us. …And for Employees, TooEase of use isn’t limited to the administrator side of the equation. Businesses want to streamline the onboarding process for new users, too. Not only because it helps new hires start off on the right foot, but it also saves the company time and creates efficiencies. When it came to assessing this factor for each product on our list, we considered three key areas:
Gusto was one of the top contenders in this regard. The fun interface simplified all things employee-related, making it easy for even the most tech-challenged employees. ![]() One HR manager we spoke to broke down exactly how easy employee onboarding and self-service are with Gusto. “A lot of times I’m hiring people that don’t have a lot of [tech] experience, but they don’t have trouble.” The bigger players in payroll, like ADP, get high marks in this regard, too. One college administrator in her 50s noted, “I have [no issues] with onboarding, time management, and attendance. The core of human resources, ADP has captured that.” Robust Reporting Is a Real RequirementAnother important facet of a great online payroll service is how efficiently a user can pull data from the system. Whether it is to verify PTO or satisfy an IRS audit, getting the right information without drama is really important. We scrutinized each of these factors when we assessed each tool’s reporting function:
All the tools on our list delivered when it came to pre-built reports and how easy they are to find and generate. As the owner of a 100-person family business noted about Paychex, “They have a pretty extensive catalog of reports. I can’t imagine that if there wasn’t something that you could find, you could probably build it pretty easily.” ADP Workforce Now, the company’s payroll solution for over 50 employees includes fairly deep reporting features. You can create your own dashboards with their drag-and-drop interface, so no code is necessary. ![]() Some of the lighter tools don’t give you nearly as much freedom to create your own dashboards. Customized reports were the wild card in this category. Users consistently complained on all five platforms when it came to not being able to find the specialized data they wanted. Make Sure It Has Your Back at Tax TimePerhaps the most critical part of any online payroll service is how well it keeps a business out of trouble with the tax authorities. Tax troubles can quickly escalate to expensive penalties. This can cripple a business. We looked at how each tool handled all things tax:
Most surprisingly, ADP seemed to struggle with tax management. One user we interviewed noted that ADP dropped the ball on managing a straightforward tax law change, causing their pay stubs to be out of compliance. It took the company’s attorney to catch the error. While that user stuck with ADP, others left after experiencing tax issues with the behemoth. One who manages HR for multiple businesses said she left ADP for Gusto after ADP didn’t correctly report taxes, causing her company to receive an unexpected tax bill. “That was the end of our contract with ADP,” she noted. “I just don’t really want to mess around with anything having to do with taxes.” Paychex, on the other hand, was praised for fixing tax issues quickly. “We once had a hiccup with some reporting at the end of the year,” she said. “Paychex took full responsibility and credited us a couple months of fees.” The Top Online Payroll Services in SummaryThe best online payroll services accurately pay both salaried and hourly workers. Pay runs are accurate every time, and all of your tax obligations are calculated automatically. In some cases, payroll taxes are even filed for you—ensuring compliance. For small business owners and experienced HR professionals alike, online payroll software makes your life easier. Gusto and Paycor are our top recommendations, but any service on our list is a viable option to consider. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-online-payroll-services/ Want to jump straight to the answer? Here are the 6 types of hosting and best web host for each type:
The web hosting type you choose is incredibly important for the website you want to create. If you’re starting out, you should learn about the different types of web hosting. That way you can figure out which option is the best for your website. Don’t rush this process. Choosing the wrong web hosting type can cause big problems for your site down the road. Some of you might be unhappy with your current web hosting situation, so you’re looking to switch. That’s what brought you to this page. This guide will explain everything you need to know about your web hosting options. Once you figure out the type of web hosting you want, then you can review the best web hosting providers and select a plan to meet your needs. What is Web Hosting?Websites are hosted on servers, which are powerful pieces of hardware that house websites and data related to those sites. Every component of your website is stored on a server and accessed through your web host. This includes elements like files, text, images, videos — everything. Servers are physically located in data centers, which are typically run and managed by different web hosting companies. Web hosts provide the technology and server space required for your website to be accessed on the Internet. This allows users to search for your site and view your web pages online. Different Types of Web HostingAll websites are different. That’s why there are different servers to meet their needs. Multiple websites might share a single server. Meanwhile some websites have a server to themselves. There are four main types of web hosting: Reseller hosting and WordPress hosting are also specific types of hosting that fall within these categories. We’ll cover all six types of web hosting as we continue. How do you know which hosting option is best for your website?The type of server you choose impacts elements like performance, security, scalability, and management level of your website. Your decision also depends on the type of website you have and the amount of traffic you get. For example, a small personal blog with 5,000 monthly visitors has different hosting needs than a large ecommerce site with 250,000 visits per month. It’s also worth noting that different hosting options are offered at varying price points. So it’s important that you find an option that falls within your budget as well. I’ve outlined and explained the six different web hosting options below. You can use this information to figure out which hosting type is the best choice for your website. Shared HostingShared hosting is the most basic type of web hosting. It’s cost-effective and the best choice for small or entry-level websites. As the name implies, websites using shared hosting will be sharing resources with other websites on a single server. This works well because the vast majority of websites don’t need a whole server of their own. That’s how shared hosting remains so cheap. By splitting resources, it’s less cost for the web host. As such, each website on the server will have a limited amount of resources as defined by their specific hosting plan. Think of it as renting an apartment with roommates. You have your own bedroom, but you and your roommates will share resources like water, electricity, and common spaces throughout the house. The nature of sharing a server with other websites has its drawbacks. If another website on your server has a traffic spike, it can potentially cause performance issues with your site. These situations are out of your control. So while shared hosting is a great option if you want to save some money, it definitely won’t deliver the most high-quality web hosting experience for you or your website visitors. Learn more about shared hosting compared to other types of hosting options. Who is Shared Hosting For?Shared hosting is a great choice for beginners and smaller websites. It’s cost-effective and doesn’t require lots of technical knowledge to get started. I’d recommend shared web hosting for simple websites–it’s all you need–or folks that are on a tight budget. Bloggers and small business owners are great candidates for shared hosting. Any website that doesn’t require too much on-site interaction or lots of resources will be fine with this hosting type. If you’re not expecting more than 10,000 or 20,000 monthly visits to your website, you can save some money by selecting a shared web hosting plan. Shared web hosting pros:
Shared web hosting cons:
Best Shared Web Hosting Provider — Hostinger![]() Our recommendation for shared hosting is Hostinger because they have some of the best uptime rates in the industry. Plus, they make it affordable and easy enough for anyone to use. Single websites start at $1.99 per month. Weekly backups of your site are free, and there is a 30-day money back guarantee. Premium packages start at $2.99 per month, and come with a free domain (normally $12-$20 per year), free SSL certificate, and free marketing credits for Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. If you have questions, problems, or need any assistance, you can contact Hostinger support 24/7 via live chat. VPS HostingVPS stands for “virtual private server.” This hosting type is a step above shared web hosting. When a website outgrows their shared plan, it’s common for owners to upgrade to a VPS. With a virtual private server, your website will still be sharing a single server with other websites. However, the number of websites you’ll be sharing it with is significantly lower. The main server is split into multiple virtual servers—hence the name. These virtual servers can be customized by individual websites. For those of you who want to run custom configurations to your server, you can get optional root access with your VPS hosting plan. Your site will perform better due to having more resources. This means you’ll benefit from faster loading times and higher uptime rates. You won’t have to worry about another website causing your site to crash. Most websites do not need a dedicated server (we’ll get to that next). But a VPS gives you some of the benefits of dedicated hosting at a fraction of the price. A virtual private server is like renting an apartment on your own. You won’t be sharing a kitchen, bathroom, living room, or other common spaces with any roommates. This gives you much more freedom and flexibility to do what you want with the space. However, you’ll be sharing some resources with the other units in the building. So there will still be some limitations. Who is VPS Hosting For?VPS hosting is best for small or medium-sized businesses that can’t afford to have unexpected downtime on their website. It’s a great option for website owners who have outgrown the resources of a shared hosting plan. A virtual private server can benefit website owners who are tech-savvy and want to make custom changes to their server configuration. Websites with large files like videos and images should consider a VPS. Interactive websites with complex files will perform better on a VPS as opposed to a shared server. VPS hosting pros:
VPS hosting cons:
Best VPS Hosting Provider — InMotion![]() Lots of hosting providers offer VPS plans, but InMotion is our top recommendation for this type of web hosting. The VPS plans offered by InMotion come with root access, which gives you the ability to make custom changes to your virtual server. This is a great option for those of you who are more technically advanced. InMotion offers options when it comes to managing your VPS. You can choose from cPanel or Control Web Panel (CWP), making it easy for anyone to view and manage their VPS. ![]() You’ll also have the option to choose your data center for maximum speed. InMotion has VPS plans that are optimized for ecommerce shops as well. All VPS plans from InMotion come with a 90-day money-back promise, which is one of the best satisfaction guarantees that you’ll find in the industry. WordPress HostingWordPress hosting optimizes for WordPress as your content management system. You’ll see two different types of WordPress hosting offered by providers.
Shared WordPress hosting works the same way as regular shared hosting, except WordPress might be pre-installed. Managed WordPress hosting provides added benefits like enhanced security, server caching, staging, and faster loading speeds. The best WordPress hosting plans come with one-click WordPress installations as well. WordPress hosting usually has added security that’s specifically designed for websites that are running on WordPress. Since WordPress is the most commonly used CMS across the globe, those websites are a higher risk for cyber crime. So that added security is definitely a great benefit. Who is WordPress Hosting For?This isn’t rocket science. WordPress hosting is for WordPress users. If you want your hosting to be optimized for your WordPress site, then you should look into this type of web hosting. WordPress hosting pros:
WordPress hosting cons:
Best WordPress Hosting Provider — WP Engine![]() I’m a little biased here. We use WP Engine here at Quick Sprout, so naturally, this is my top pick for the category. It’s not necessarily the best choice for beginners. But for those of you who have some experience with web hosting and plan to build a blog or business website with high-traffic, WP Engine is your best bet. WP Engine has WordPress hosting plans starting at $30 per month. This is another reason why I don’t think it’s the best choice for a beginner. There are other WordPress hosting plans out there starting for less than $5 or $10 per month. The speed and security is the best part of WP Engine. They offer managed WordPress hosting services, so everything is handled at the server level. This means that you won’t have to install lots of extra plugins that can weigh your site down. Another reason why I recommend WP Engine is because they have excellent customer support. All plans come with 24/7 live chat, and some of the higher-tier plans even come with 24/7 phone support. ![]() I’ve been impressed with the quality and level of service whenever I’ve needed to contact them. Dedicated HostingDedicated servers are typically considered the best choice in web hosting. That’s because you have a dedicated server that belongs to you, and you alone. You typically get more benefits with dedicated hosting too such as more uptime and faster speeds. However, it comes with a catch: This is the most expensive type of web hosting. Since you won’t be sharing resources or anything else with other websites, your site will operate at peak performance. Websites being hosted on a dedicated server have complete technical control over the server settings. You choose the software, configurations, and anything else you need. If you get a dedicated server, you should expect extremely high uptime rates and lightning fast loading speeds. You won’t have to worry about traffic from other websites impacting your performance. A dedicated server is like owning a house. If you want to build a fence, plant a tree in the yard, build a patio, or renovate the kitchen, everything is completely up to you. Who is Dedicated Hosting For?Dedicated hosting plans are typically reserved for enterprise-level websites. That means more than 100,000 monthly visits — not to mention plenty of revenue coming in to afford the server. Don’t even consider this type of hosting if you’re still struggling to pull in a few thousand in traffic each month. Large ecommerce sites and enterprises should consider a dedicated hosting plan because they can have complete control over the functions of their server. Sites that require the highest levels of security, such as websites that store financial data or medical information would benefit from a dedicated server. Dedicated servers come with varying management levels. You can look for a hosting provider that will manage your server for you, or you can manage it on your own. The downside of managing the server on your own is that you’ll be responsible for installing updates and monitoring everything for glitches or errors. Only consider a dedicated server if you can afford it. In most cases, a dedicated hosting plan will be out of your price range, especially if you are starting a new website. These servers can cost up to $2,000 per month. Dedicated hosting pros:
Dedicated hosting cons:
Best Cloud Hosting Provider — SiteGround![]() If you’re interested in cloud hosting, look no further than SiteGround. Siteground has always been an industry leader in web hosting. Their cloud plans are suitable for a wide range of businesses and website sizes. Their entry-level cloud plan comes with 4 CPU cores, 8 GB of memory, and 40 GB of SSD space. But you can fully customize a cloud with up to 32 CPU cores, 128 GB of memory, and 1 TB of SSD space. Although most of you won’t need all of that, it’s nice to know you have those customizable options to deliver exactly what your website requires. SiteGround’s cloud plans are fully managed. Their IT team will take care of all of the technical aspects of your hosting experience. This allows you to focus on everything else. You won’t have to worry about patches or updates, as SiteGround’s team of experts takes care of all the maintenance. You’ll also benefit from their proactive security measures, which will keep your site hack and spam free. All cloud plans come with a free SSL, free CDN, private DNS, and daily backups. You’ll also benefit from SiteGround’s advanced priority support if you ever need assistance. Cloud HostingCloud hosting is like a hybrid version of a VPS—but more cost-effective. Cloud hosting plans come with multiple remote servers. Each server has different responsibilities. If one of the servers is compromised or has a problem, the other servers on the network will take over those responsibilities and pick up the slack. That’s what makes cloud web hosting such an appealing alternative to traditional web hosting. With cloud servers, your website will have higher uptime rates and won’t have as much unexpected downtime due to server errors. Your site will remain fluid and perform at a high level. The best part about cloud web hosting is scalability. With traditional hosting, there is always a constant dilemma between server resources and price. You don’t want to overpay for a plan with resources that you’ll never use, but at the same time, you don’t want to exceed the resources of a lesser plan and negatively affect the performance of your website. Unless you know exactly how many page views your site will get per month, then this is nearly impossible to predict. But website traffic is never an exact science. At times, you’ll experience spikes or surges to your site—which is great news. You just need to make sure your plan can accommodate that traffic. That’s why cloud hosting is the ultimate solution to this dilemma. The best cloud hosting plans allow you to scale your resources on-demand. You pay for what you use, and you can always adjust these resources within your admin dashboard. Who is Cloud Hosting For?Cloud hosting is the best option for medium and large business websites that are growing at a rapid rate. If your website traffic is unpredictable and you’re planning on it scaling at a steady rate in the coming months or years, then you should consider a cloud hosting plan. Any website with more than 50,000 monthly page visits could consider a cloud plan. Websites that have outgrown their shared plan and need to upgrade could seek cloud hosting as an alternative option to a VPS. Cloud hosting pros:
Cloud hosting cons:
Best Dedicated Hosting Provider — HostGator![]() HostGator is my top recommendation for dedicated server plans. While dedicated hosting definitely isn’t cheap, the plans offered by HostGator are actually pretty affordable. Introductory pricing specials for their dedicated servers start at $118.99 per month. One of the reasons why I like HostGator is because they offer fully managed plans. If you want, their team of technicians can handle system monitoring, software patching, updates, offsite backups, data migrations, and more. You’ll have access to 24/7/365 priority customer support as well. So if you think your website needs a dedicated server, check out the plans and options offered by HostGator. Reseller HostingReseller hosting involves selling hosting services to clients. As such, it is definitely not for everyone. If you’re building a small website from scratch or just looking to host a website on your own, you’ll want to look elsewhere. But if you want to sell web hosting to other sites, then you should look into reseller hosting plans. Reseller hosting is basically white label web hosting. You buy hosting from a provider and then resell those services to your clients. As the reseller, you get to choose the pricing options for your clients. Since you’ll be paying wholesale rates to the provider, then you have the opportunity to make substantial profit margins. Who is Reseller Hosting For?For the most part, reseller hosting is for agencies, web designers, and web developers. These are people who already have clients in this space, so they can just add web hosting to the services that they currently offer. You can make it easy on your clients by allowing them to get all of their website needs in one place, as opposed to finding a web hosting plan on their own. One of the best parts about being a reseller is sustainability. If you design a website for someone, they won’t necessarily need your services forever. But if you can get those clients to buy web hosting services from you, then you’ll benefit from a steady monthly income for the lifetime of that website. I wouldn’t consider reseller hosting unless you’re planning to manage at least 10 different websites. Otherwise, it probably won’t be worth it for you. Reseller hosting pros:
Reseller hosting cons:
Best Reseller Hosting Provider — A2 Hosting![]() A2 Hosting is known for speed, which is one of the reasons why it’s my top recommendation for reseller hosting. When you white label hosting to your clients, you want to make sure that you deliver high performance. Even though the hosting technically isn’t coming from you, any problems will be a poor reflection of your personal brand. But with A2 Hosting, your clients will still get high uptime rates and fast loading speeds on a shared server. Another top benefit of A2 Hosting is that WHMCS comes free with all reseller plans. You’ll definitely need this to effectively manage all of your clients and their resources. Other hosting providers charge extra for this. Overall, client management with A2 Hosting is the best I’ve seen in the industry. You can even set up simple hosting support as well. A2 Hosting also offers a 99.9% uptime commitment to you. So you can pass that along to your customers. What is the Best Hosting Type For Your Website?This answer will be different for everyone. It depends on the type of website you have, the resources you need, your budget, and traffic. I gave my top recommendation for each category in this guide, so that’s the best place for you to start your search. Once you know what you need, you can narrow your options. To figure out what category you fall in, here’s a quick recap of the different hosting types and who they are for:
via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/types-of-web-hosting/ Want to jump straight to the answer? The best shared hosting company for most people is Hostinger or DreamHost. Shared web hosting is the perfect solution for new websites. As an entry-level service, it’s also ideal for simple websites or anyone with a tight budget. The best hosts don’t feel like they’re shared. That means uptime, speed, and support are so good you won’t even notice you’re sharing a server with other sites. Compare the Top 9 Best Shared Hosting Companies
![]() Good shared hosting is about more than just getting a good deal. You want to make sure you have room to grow and the tools you need to build your site. Read on for in-depth reviews of the best shared web hosts on the market today. I’ll tell you in plain language what you need to know about each one. After the reviews, I also include a framework to help you assess which one is best for your needs. Whether you’re launching a new site from scratch or looking to change hosting providers, there’s a solution for you here. Hostinger – Best Web Hosting for Tight Budgets
Hostinger offers one of the most affordable hosting services I’ve seen. In fact, its plans start at $1.99 per month for its Single Shared Hosting plan. Its most expensive plan is the Business Shared Hosting Plan that’s just $3.99 per month. Yes, you read that right. That’s rock-bottom pricing. The catch? These are promotional rates. When you renew, the price jumps up—but it’s still just $3.99 each month for the single shared hosting. ![]() To lock in the lowest price, you have to sign up for 48 months, which stretches out your discount as long as possible. And when you renew, it’s still going to cost less than most other shared hosting providers. Alongside that unbeatable pricing, Hostinger promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee and their site speed is more than serviceable. Here’s a peek at Hostinger’s plans, with pricing for a four-year upfront commitment: Single Shared Hosting – $1.99 per month
Premium Shared Hosting – $2.99 per month
Business Shared Hosting – $4.99 per month
All plans come with managed WordPress, which is an excellent inclusion if you want to use WordPress as your CMS. That means even with these low, low prices, you get one-click WordPress installation, the WP Starter site building wizard, auto-updates, and a lot more. If you’re looking for a decent shared web host on a tight budget, Hostinger is a fantastic option. DreamHost – Best Shared Hosting That Leaves Room to Grow
DreamHost offers cost-effective shared hosting without sacrificing performance. There are actually three big reasons why DreamHost stands out to us:
![]() DreamHost’s interface is user-friendly and its plans are quite affordable, coming in two flavors: Shared Starter – Starting at $2.95 per month (annual contract)
Shared Unlimited – Starting at $3.95 per month (annual contract)
The Shared Starter plan is the best option for brand-new websites. You get plenty of site storage and five subdomains. The biggest downside is that email accounts from your domain aren’t included, but you can add that option in checkout. Personally, I recommend the Shared Unlimited plan. It comes with added benefits I like, such as email accounts bound to your domain, unlimited subdomains, and unlimited SSD storage. Both plans come with WordPress pre-installed, a WP site builder, and a free SSL certificate. DreamHost guarantees a 100% uptime rate. If it fails to meet that promise, you’ll receive compensation for every hour of downtime, which is up to 10% of your next pre-paid renewal fee. It also offers a 97-day money-back guarantee. In my experience, 30 days seems to be the industry standard, so DreamHost really stands behind its product by tripling that period. For those of you who already have a WordPress site, the DreamHost experts will migrate the site to your new account for a $99 fee. If you fall into this category, I strongly recommend taking advantage of this service. No matter what, go with DreamHost if you’ve got lofty goals for your site’s future. Bluehost – Best for Creating Your First Website
Bluehost is a favorite of ours at Quick Sprout, ranking high on our lists for best web host, best VPS host, and best dedicated host. While there are many reasons we like it, the reason we most often recommend it is that it’s the perfect option for beginners. With one-click WordPress installation, an intuitive dashboard, and award-winning 24/7 customer support, Bluehost will hold your hand through the entire setup process. That means zero development or web design knowledge is needed. Just sign up and go. You’ll have a website up in less than 20 minutes. That’s why we highly recommend them if you’re creating your very first website. And if you need more help, be sure to check out our article all on how to create a website. ![]() Bluehost offers four different plans: Basic – Starts at $2.95 per month
Choice Plus – Starts at $5.45 per month
Online Store – Starts at $9.95 per month
Pro – Starts at $13.95 per month
My pick for most folks is the Choice Plus plan. It’s a little bit more than the Basic plan, but the increased SSD storage and unlimited websites is more than worth it. If you’re running an ecommerce business, then definitely go with the Online Store option. You get $450 worth of plugins included in the monthly price. This means you can hit the ground running and start selling right away. Bluehost is also highly scalable. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to switch plans easily. So, if your site is brand new and you’re not planning to prioritize traffic for a couple of years, then you can definitely get away with the Basic plan for the time being. Bluehost’s pricing plans are straightforward, but they will charge you for add-ons. To get the best possible rate, you need to lock in your plan for 12 months. But, like all other hosting providers, you’ll see a jump at renewal time. So, if you know you’re in it for the long haul with Bluehost, you may want to opt for a 36-month commitment instead. Yes, you’ll pay a bit more per month that way, but you’ll avoid the renewal price increase for three years rather than one. Try Bluehost on for size today with its 30-day money-back guarantee. A2 Hosting – Best Shared Host for Sites With a Need for Speed
A2 Hosting is one of the fastest shared hosting services available on the market today. That’s all due to its powerful servers that offer the best loading speeds and uptime rates. If you’re looking to deliver content swiftly to your audience, this is the hosting plan for you. ![]() Here’s a side-by-side comparison of their four shared hosting plans: Startup – $2.99 per month
Drive – $5.99 per month
Turbo Boost – $6.99 per month
Turbo Max – $12.99 per month
For those of you who have a need for speed, the Turbo plan will be best for you. It’s probably the fastest shared hosting plan offered by any provider on our list. A2 is already known for its speed, and Turbo is its top-of-the-line shared plan. While it ends up being $20.99 per month when you renew, it’s still cheaper than some of the other high-end plans we’ve looked at. Overall, A2 Hosting is priced in the middle range compared to the competition. You can also check out my full A2 Hosting review for more on their other features and plans. Furthermore, A2 Hosting offers free site migrations on all shared plans. Other providers charge an added fee for this service. ![]() It also has excellent customer support and a money-back guarantee, which are helpful bonuses. Tap into A2 Hosting’s turbo-charged shared servers today to feel the thrill of speedy loading times. InMotion – Best Shared Hosting for 24/7/365 Customer Support
InMotion Hosting is a fantastic option for anyone who loves—or knows they’ll rely heavily on—quality customer support. Seriously. Take a look at any reviews for this company. Nine times out of ten they’re going to mention the support—and for good reason. InMotion boasts an incredibly responsive customer support team that’s available at all hours of the day. You can reach them via chat, phone, email, or through your customer portal. These reps can help you in case your site experiences any issues like cyberattacks or if it crashes. They’ll even help you migrate your site if you need it. InMotion also has a fantastic knowledge base in case you want to take care of things yourself. You’ll be able to learn about anything from transferring a current domain to setting up Mac Mail, Outlook, or email on your phone. InMotion has four shared hosting plans for you to choose from, and the company recently adjusted the services included within each plan. Core – $2.99 per month (all prices require committing to a 2-year plan)
Launch – $5.99 per month
Power – $5.99 per month (yes, the same as Launch due to a specific discount offer)
Pro – $13.99 per month
Unlike other plans we’ve seen, InMotion’s entry-level plan offers hosting for more than one website, unlimited disk space, and unlimited email. This is a great value for the price. The Launch plan is the best option for beginners. Power is made for small business websites, and the Pro plan is made for developers and growing businesses. Like we said before, though, compared to some of the other providers on our list, InMotion really stands out when it comes to their customer support. This is definitely something to keep in mind as a new website owner. For those of you who decide to go with the Pro plan, you’ll get a 99.9% uptime guarantee. If InMotion fails to deliver on that promise, you’ll get credits toward free hosting. Speaking of credits, InMotion’s Launch Plan—and all the other plans higher than it—come with $150 in free advertising credits, which can be very useful for a new website. It’s a great way to gain some exposure through popular search engines Go into your web hosting knowing that you have a helping hand all the way by choosing InMotion. HostGator – Best Shared Hosting for Building Your First Ecommerce Store
If you’re looking to create a website that features an online store, then look no further than HostGator. This shared hosting plan gives you all you need to create an online store quickly and easily and start selling products ASAP. HostGator’s ecommerce site builder is simple and user-friendly, and becomes even more friendly when you learn about the included $150 Google Ads credit that will help you get your marketing off the ground. If you’re looking for more customization, HostGator provides you with cPanel access, which isn’t something that you’ll get with some other shared hosting providers. With this cPanel access, you have the power to customize your online store to be exactly what you want by installing a variety of different plugins and tweaking settings until they’re just right. ![]() HostGator’s plans are as follows: Hatchling Plan – $2.75 per month
Baby Plan – $3.50 per month
Ecommerce Plan – $5.25 per month
Note: HostGator often offers flash sales—so the price might actually be even lower when you visit their page than what we have here. ![]() Both the Hatchling and Ecommerce plans include some great marketing benefits, including credits for Google and Microsoft ads. And if you go with the Ecommerce plan, you also get professional migration service included. I love the value this company offers. The new customer rates are definitely on the lower end of the spectrum, and the renewal rates aren’t too expensive either. Plus, you can lock in the introductory rate for three years. If you’re considering HostGator, I’d recommend the Ecommerce Plan. Yes, even for beginners. It’s not often that I pick the top-tier pricing as the go-to plan for everyone. But, with HostGator, I think that the value for that plan is the best. The add-ons that come with the Ecommerce Plan are worth the higher pricing. Ultimately, it’s still less than $17 per month, even after you renew. In addition to 24/7 server monitoring and 24/7 live chat and phone support, HostGator also has more than 500 video tutorials and nearly 700 help articles if you want to learn how to do things on your own. It also offers pretty solid cloud hosting. Get your web store started on the right foot by choosing HostGator for your hosting. SiteGround – Best Host for When Your Audience Grows Big
SiteGround is a great choice for growing websites because each plan gives you different options depending on your monthly visitor load. It also offers unmetered traffic with every single plan. That means you don’t have to worry about how big your audience gets or how many people you have coming to your website. You can get a spike in traffic and not see your resources throttled or your price jump at your next bill. ![]() Beyond that, SiteGround makes it easy to scale up to a bigger, better plan if your site’s newly massive audience becomes the new normal. Here’s a brief overview of SiteGround’s three shared hosting plans: StartUp – $1.99 per month
GrowBig – $3.99 per month
GoGeek – $5.99 per month
If your website is brand new, you probably won’t be getting 10,000 monthly visitors for quite some time. But with that said, I’d still recommend the GrowBig plan over the StartUp option. The GrowBig plan comes with on-demand backups and a free site transfer. That’s an important feature for those of you who are switching to SiteGround from another hosting provider. The StartUp plan is for small, simple websites that are not expecting tons of website site traffic. I’m sure the majority of you won’t fall into this category, but if your needs are super simple, it’s still a solid offering from SiteGround. GoGeek comes with three levels of super-caching, advanced priority support, white-label and client management services, and pre-installed Git. All three plans come with a 100% renewable energy match, too! There’s a plan for everyone in SiteGround’s shared hosting, and for a limited time, they’re offering free site migration with all plans. Get started today to be ready for when your site blows up in popularity. iPage – Most Affordable Shared Hosting for a Customizable Online Store
iPage offers a very straightforward pricing plan with just one plan for shared web hosting. For real, it’s dead simple: The plan costs $1.99 per month when you sign up and $7.99 per month when you renew. Overall, this definitely puts them in the running for the best cheap web hosting. But iPage’s standout feature is a highly intuitive ecommerce store builder that comes with $200 worth of ad credits to use on Google or Bing. That’s more than even HostGator gives you. ![]() It also offers a ton of unlimited features like disk space, bandwidth, and domains. It’s easily the best deal when it comes to creating an online store. Even though the prices are low, iPage has great features like:
That’s a lot of “frees” and “unlimiteds” for such a low-cost plan. Overall, iPage is best for smaller websites and stores. Think stores where you’re only selling 1-5 products. Be aware, it does charge extras for things like site transfers, but that’s expected for a low-cost web host. Get with iPage to host your ecommerce store on the cheap. GoDaddy – Best Shared Hosting for Bundling Domain and Email
GoDaddy is a popular and well-known brand in the hosting industry. It’s an excellent option if you’re looking to bundle a great email service and domain with your hosting. In fact, that’s why we included it in our best domain registrars, too. Its email service is especially great if you already use Microsoft as your email provider. It’s worth noting that Microsoft 365 is only offered for free in the first year—though you can cancel your automatic renewal at any time. ![]() GoDaddy offers four shared hosting plans. Each one is made for different types of websites. Economy – $5.99 per month
Deluxe – $7.99 per month
Ultimate – $12.99 per month
Maximum – $17.99 per month
As you can see, all of the GoDaddy plans are affordable. There’s something for everyone on this list, and it’s very straightforward. If you’re starting a simple blog from scratch, you can get away with the Economy plan. You always have the option to level up if you need more resources. GoDaddy will actually send you an alert if you’re getting close to exceeding things like your memory or CPU. That way you can stay on top of things. Read my full Godaddy hosting review here to get a deeper view into what makes them work. For those of you who have a small business and expect heavy site traffic, you’ll be better off with the Ultimate plan. It’ll give your site the processing power you need to succeed. Knock out hosting, a domain, and email service in one fell swoop by going with GoDaddy. What Is Shared Web Hosting?If you’re just starting out in the world of running a website, you might be wondering what shared hosting is and how it works. A web host carves out a spot for your website in the massive world of the internet. It’s what publishes your site, allowing other people to access it. So every website needs a host. There are several types of hosting plans, but shared hosting plans have been around for a while and are often the most affordable web hosting choices. As the name suggests, a shared hosting plan means your website will be hosted on the same server as other websites. Essentially, shared hosting is like renting a bedroom in a house with other roommates. You have your own room, but you’re sharing supplies and resources with everyone else who lives in the house. If one of your roommates has a bunch of friends over and they eat all of the food or use all of the soap, there won’t be anything left for you. This is the major downside of shared hosting. If another site on the same server has tons of traffic, it can slow down the loading speed of your website. This is why shared hosting is so cost-effective compared to VPS hosting or dedicated hosting plans. Shared hosting is an entry-level service offered by most web hosting providers. How to Find the Best Shared Hosting for YouPricing and promos aside, most web hosting providers offer similar shared hosting services. So how can you find the best plan and provider for your unique needs? Use the following considerations as a buying guide as you’re shopping around and comparing providers. It’s the same criteria we used to create this guide, and you can use it for your own research to help influence your decision: Reliable Uptime Rates and Fast Loading SpeedsUptime and loading speed will always be the two most important factors for any type of hosting.
If your site goes down unexpectedly, you can’t make any money or reach your audience. It’s also a poor reflection of your brand if people try to reach your site but can’t connect due to an outage. Many web hosting providers offer an uptime guarantee—something along the lines of a 99.999% uptime promise. But make sure you read the fine print to see if the provider is actually being held accountable to keep this promise. I’d much rather have high uptime rates than a small refund or credit for the site going down. Loading speed is important because it has a direct impact on the user experience. We’ve all been there. Think about how often you’ve gotten frustrated or left a site because it was taking just a little too long to load. Fractions of a second make a huge difference here. Fortunately, all of the web hosting providers on our list have solid uptime rates. But some are definitely faster than others. If speed is your top priority, you can’t go wrong with A2 Hosting. Set-It-and-Forget-It Web HostingIf it’s your first time building a website, it’s easy to be intimidated and frustrated by the process. That’s why you want to find a provider that makes web hosting a breeze for you. In fact, it should be something you don’t really have to think about at all once you set it up. That’s why we love options like Bluehost so much. It’s incredibly easy for beginners to create a website, especially with features like one-click WordPress installation. InMotion’s Launch plan is also another beginner-friendly hosting solution that we highly recommend. It’ll walk you through the entire setup process and, by the end of it, you’ll feel like a pro with your very own website. If you do want to get more hands-on with your host a bit more, you’ll want to find a host that gives you an easy-to-use and easy-to-navigate platform. This is another area where Bluehost shines. High-Traffic Hosting CapacityIn the ideal world, you’ll get a ton of traffic to your website right off the bat—but the reality is it likely will take you a while to get there. When you do arrive, though, you’ll want to make sure that your web host can manage your heightened traffic load. Luckily, all of the shared hosting providers on this list can manage a decent amount of traffic— but some of them do so better than others. For example, web hosts like Bluehost and HostGator give you unmetered bandwidth. That means you won’t get penalized (in terms of a poor visitor experience or additional fees) when you have a flood of traffic coming to your site all at once. As we mentioned before, though, shared hosting is a fairly entry-level hosting solution. If you see your website easily attracting at least 200,000 monthly visitors, you’ll want to upgrade to VPS, cloud hosting, or a dedicated server to handle this routine strain on resources. This is also an area where you’ll want to take a look at the uptime assurances of each web host. Most of them will offer you uptime in the neighborhood of 99.99%. Some, such as Hostinger, will refund you for any time your website goes down due to a spike in traffic. Though you want your website up as much as possible, it’s good to see a web host put some skin in the game in order to assure you that it’ll work to keep your site up and running—and compensate you generously if it can’t. Customer Service at a Moment’s NoticeCustomer support is something that is sneakily important when it comes to web hosting. After all, you don’t ever want to need it. But, when you do, you’ll want it to be the most helpful and comprehensive support you can get—especially if your website is making money for you. When researching your shared web hosts, take a look at what each host offers for customer support. Some questions to consider:
Customer support isn’t just about calling someone up when something goes wrong, either. It can also come in the form of tutorials, guides, or user forums to help answer any questions you have. It could also be the tools available to build and support your website. For example, iPage offers an easy-to-set-up ecommerce integration that works great if you’re creating an online store. Plans for When You’re Ready to Upgrade Your WebsiteShared hosting is often seen as the entry point for a lot of websites. It’s an easy way to get a site live even if you have no experience with building a site or using a web host. If you have bigger goals for your website, like becoming a wildly popular destination, creating an ecommerce store, attaining boatloads of leads, or a combination of all these things, you’re going to eventually want to upgrade your host. VPS hosting is a common step up from shared hosting, as it provides servers with more resources to work with. If you eventually get to the point where you’re drawing in millions of readers each month, you might want to consider getting a dedicated host. Virtually all of the hosts on this list offer an easy way to take the next step up from shared hosting. For example, Bluehost offers both VPS and dedicated hosting for when you’re ready to really level up your website. DreamHost offers cloud hosting, as well as managed WordPress hosting. Each one of these hosts has a dedicated customer support team that’ll help you easily upgrade your hosting service—and, often, you don’t have to worry about a lengthy and painful migration process because it’s still from the same company. Double win! What Type of Website Do You Want to Build?The right web host for you also largely depends on what you’ll actually be using the website for. If you just want to build a single website for a portfolio or information about your business, each of the hosts on this list can easily handle that for you. But if you want to, say, open an online store, we highly recommend you use a host such as iPage. They give you a free online store, PayPal integration, and tons of other ecommerce features. GoDaddy also offers an online store builder along with hosting and domain plans. You’ll be able to easily create a great-looking store on their site with just a few clicks. If you want to get into blogging, DreamHost and Bluehost are great solutions. They offer great WordPress integrations to help get your blog up and running and attract tons of new readers. Consider what you want to do with your website and see what each host has to offer for your goals. The Top Shared Hosting Plans in SummaryAll shared web hosting services are not created equal. Some providers offer better plans than others. When comparing packages side-by-side, you should consider speed, power, performance, support, and scalability. The best shared hosting plans typically offer great deals for new websites. Just make sure you choose a plan that can accommodate your traffic. You’ll likely need to upgrade your web hosting down the road, but you can put that off for a while if you choose the right starter plan today. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-shared-hosting/ Our top recommendation for most people is Constant Contact because it offers the most value of any email marketing provider. Try Constant Contact free for 60 days, no credit card is required. Email is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. It can drive engagement, build relationships, and deliver a higher ROI than every other type of marketing campaign. Success with your email strategy starts with finding the right email marketing service. Whether you’re starting a new list from scratch or just need an easier way to reach your audience, this guide has a solution for you. Top 13 Best Email Marketing PlatformsBest of 2023: AWeber, Campaigner, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, Drip, GetResponse, HubSpot, MailerLite, Moosend, Omnisend, Salesforce, Sendinblue, and SMPT.com. I’m confident recommending all of my top picks to different businesses in different situations. However, our research team found a handful of providers that quickly rose to the top of the list. Of the top 13, our favorite email marketing platforms for 2023 are:
Whether you’re looking to streamline multiple marketing channels, start a new email list, sink your teeth into automation, or nurture and grow an existing list, you’ll likely find everything you need and more in one of the eight platforms above. ![]() Keep reading to learn more about our favorite platforms as well as other top contenders for different situations. Email Marketing Service ReviewsConstant Contact – Best Overall
Constant Contact is our recommendation for most users. Beginners will find a complete toolkit that’s easy to use, and veteran email marketers will recognize immediately how much time Constant Contact can save their team, especially when it comes to marketing automation. Don’t take my word for it. Constant Contact lets you try the full email marketing platform risk-free for 60 days, with no credit card required. And forget about needing to be good at designing emails. The intuitive drag-and-drop email builder allows you to easily create new emails that look good and on-brand—no coding knowledge is needed. Adding text, images, videos, coupons, polls, and events to any message is simple and straightforward. It’s a really welcoming platform to work with. People who aren’t “techy” will quickly find themselves producing much more polished newsletters. There are more than 100 pre-built, mobile-optimized templates. ![]() Automation is another key benefit of Constant Contact. A lot of the legwork can be set on autopilot. For example, you can trigger welcome messages for new subscribers and set up drip campaigns based on their actions. How much time can you save list building with beautiful templates and simple marketing automation? Constant Contact excels as an email list service, but it’s so much more. And as soon as you hit send, Constant Contact is recording results in real-time. You’ll see everything from open rates to click-through rates, as well as data for each individual subscriber. This is so important–how else are you going to know which strategies are working and which need to be put on pause? ![]() Pricing for Constant Contact’s email software is straightforward. There are two plans for you to choose from—Core and Plus. Like most email marketing platforms, your rate will be based on the number of subscribers on your list. Both plans allow you to send unlimited emails. Here’s what some of the prices look like for each plan: Core
Plus
Both plans offer pricing tiers for up to 50,000 subscribers. For basic and professional emails, the cheaper plan will be fine. But for those of you who want to get the most out of your email campaigns, I highly recommend Email Plus. This plan comes with more advanced features like subject line A/B testing, dynamic content, and automated behavioral campaigns. You’ll also get access to personalized demographic data, coupons, polls, and surveys. Learn more and sign up for a free 60-day trial at Constant Contact. MailerLite – Best For the Essentials at an Affordable Price
MailerLite offers all of the essentials with none of the frills. It’s free to use for up to 1,000 subscribers, so there’s no commitment if you’re looking to test it out. It’s a great option for anyone who wants a straightforward email marketing service. You’re a creator who doesn’t need a ton of bells and whistles. You just need the tools to start your newsletter or manage a simple campaign. It’s also nice for teams. Nobody is going to be intimidated by this platform, which means everyone is going to use the core features at their disposal. The platform still offers tools for automation, landing pages, pop-ups, and surveys, so it’s not like you’re extremely limited. But even the UI for each one is fairly spartan and straightforward. MailerLite has a drag-and-drop editor, which makes it easy for anyone to design a high-quality message. Segment your subscribers to enhance personalization and optimize your campaigns with features like A/B testing. ![]() I’d recommend MailerLite for those of you who want simple email software at an affordable rate. MailerLite offers four pricing plans: Free — $0 per month
Growing Business — $10 per month
Advanced — $21 per month
There is also an Enterprise plan for businesses with over 100,000 subscribers. Pricing is by quote only. MailerLite offers a 15% discount if you sign up for annual billing, making it one of the most affordable options on our list. Start sending emails with MailerLite for free. Salesforce – Best for Scaling as Your Business Grows
Salesforce is a behemoth in the world of customer relationship management (CRM) systems. It has a well-earned reputation as cloud-based software that manages everything from sales and marketing to customer service and commerce for some of the biggest companies in the world. Yet, despite being the backbone of many enterprise-level businesses, Salesforce also recognizes that smaller companies need the same type of support on a smaller scale. Which is where Salesforce Starter comes in. ![]() With Salesforce Starter, even the smallest startup can have access to powerful sales, service, and email outreach tools. It doesn’t require much setup, and onboarding is a breeze with simple, built-in guides to help you every step of the way. Once you’re up and running, you can automate your email activities and segment your customers so that the right people get the right messages at the right time. You’ll also get proven, pre-built sales process templates that your team can use to convert those email leads into deals. The best part? As your business grows, so does Salesforce, especially when it comes to email marketing. The Salesforce Email Studio lets you quickly build sophisticated, visually appealing messages with a simple drag-and-drop interface. You can also include interactive content, like carousels and weather reports, to keep readers engaged. You can start from scratch or use one of the many customizable templates. It is also easy to optimize your messages so they look great no matter what device a recipient uses. And once you build the perfect email, you can save the whole thing or individual content blocks to reuse again and again. ![]() There are also other features to help you build and execute email campaigns that deliver results, including:
Once you reach a size where Email Studio makes sense for your organization, you’ll have virtually unlimited power for your email marketing efforts. Until then, you can still maximize your efforts with Salesforce Starter. Salesforce is not going to be the cheapest solution on our list. But for companies poised for rapid growth, it is an excellent solution that lets you stay with the same software through all your growth phases. Pricing is as follows: Small Business Solutions
All of the prices for these small business solutions are per user, per month and require an annual contract billed annually. Marketing Cloud Engagement
All prices for these packages require an annual contract billed annually. The Growth, Plus, and Advanced packages include up to 10,000 contacts. Premium gives you up to 75,000 contacts. Salesforce pricing can get complicated fast once you move beyond the small business packages. So it is best to contact them to discuss specific needs. But if you’re in the small business phase, you can try Salesforce for free for 30 days. No credit card is required, and you won’t have to install any software. Be sure to check out our full Salesforce review for even more information. HubSpot – Best for Automated Email Marketing
HubSpot is the king of marketing automation–so it’s no surprise they offer a fantastic email marketing solution for any size business. HubSpot’s tool allows you to quickly and easily create, personalize, and optimize your emails without the need for designers or IT. Where the software really shines is in the automated workflows. This allows you to easily set triggers for your email subscribers and nurture the leads into customers (or whatever else you want them to do). Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure journey that you set for your subscribers. Depending on the specific actions they take, you can have them branch off to experience different, targeted things via email. The email marketing service is just one tool in the Swiss Army Knife that is HubSpot. It can stand alone or be used in tandem with other offerings such as Marketing Hub and their CRM. Your email marketing only becomes stronger when coupled with those products, too. HubSpot also has plenty of pre-made email templates to help you get the results you want. With their drag-and-drop builder, you can create great emails with no coding or development knowledge needed. HubSpot is simple to use and allows you to customize your layout, add calls-to-action and images, and modify your content and colors to match your brand. Use their advanced personalization tools to personalize your emails in order to boost your open and clickthrough rates with ease. You can use any information in an email subscriber’s contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls to action. Their A/B testing tool is top-notch. Use it and dive into the in-depth analytics after you send your emails to see which performed better—and why. ![]() Use this data to determine which subject lines get the most opens and the content and calls-to-action that will earn you more sales. You can also leverage this with landing pages and signup forms to accurately get a sense of the ROI of email campaigns. The HubSpot email tool is free for up to 2,000 email sends per month, with paid plans starting at $50/month. Join HubSpot for free to create and send email campaigns that look professionally designed and display perfectly across any device—all by yourself. Omnisend – Best Email and SMS Marketing Combo
Omnisend is a simple yet powerful marketing solution that’s perfect for ecommerce shops. The platform comes with a wide range of features for automated email and SMS messaging designed to convert leads into customers. Conversions are achieved by going one step further than most solutions. Omnisend combines text messages, web browser push notifications, email marketing, Google Customer Match, and Facebook ad retargeting to ensure you connect with as many customers as possible. ![]() All of these channels allow for campaign segmentation. This means you’ll be able to target the exact customers you need for specific products and services. Omnisend also offers pre-built automations based on actions a customer might take. For example, let’s say you send them a cart abandonment email. If they don’t open that message, Omnisend can automatically send them a cart abandonment text message. ![]() Omnisend has a vast library of drag-and-drop templates to choose from. You can browse by theme as well—simplifying the process of creating gorgeous, on-brand emails. Here’s a closer look at Omnisend’s plans and pricing. Prices are based on the number of contacts you need: Free — $0
Standard — Starts at $16 per month for 500 contacts
Pro — Starts at $59 per month for 500 contacts
Like most email marketing platforms, the cost per month increases as your contact list scales. So all the rates above are month-to-month, and Omnisend does not offer annual contracts. The Free plan isn’t really viable for most businesses, so most of you will be evaluating the Standard and Pro options. For low-volume SMS needs, the Standard plan will be fine. But the Pro plan is definitely better for larger contact lists and businesses that want to use SMS marketing combined with email campaigns. Standard and Pro plans both come with a customer success manager, and the Pro plan gives you access to 24/7 priority support. Sign up now to get started for free. Sendinblue – Best for Growing Your Customer Base
Sendinblue offers everything you need to launch and track an email campaign. Add your content to their machine and watch your outreach take flight. This is a mature platform–it’s got all of the features you expect and more. You can add live chat to your site and grab new email addresses from folks browsing your store or learning about your company. ![]() There’s a lot to like. More than 40 customizable templates, simple tools to build workflows, and a built-in CRM with room for as many contacts as you like. You can use the free forever version of Sendinblue and send up to 300 emails per day without paying a cent. Once you see how it drives, you’ll understand why it’s so popular. In terms of reaching more people, Sendinblue has everything you need. They provide a host of lead nurturing tools to help you grow your contact list:
Make it as simple as possible to build that list with eye-catching forms that turn website traffic into subscribers. Sendinblue’s intuitive interface makes embedding a form no harder than a few clicks. ![]() It’s easy to see how these tools help you cultivate an audience, leads, and customer growth. And, unlike other email marketing services, Sendinblue can support chat and SMS if you want to drive leads on your site or by text. The platform is available via a fantastic free plan that gives you unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails per day. That’s a pretty great deal—especially if you’re running a bootstrap startup or solo operation. Their email builder has a beginner-friendly editor that allows you to easily create the look and feel of your email. They currently offer four different pricing tiers: Free — $0 per month
Starter — $25 per month
Business — $65 per month
Enterprise — Customized pricing
The Starter plan should be more than enough for most small businesses and startups. However, as your business scales, the Business plan is always a great option. That comes with even more marketing features, such as Facebook and retargeted ads, along with telephone support. Try Sendinblue today. Start out for free, and upgrade when it’s time to grow. SMTP.com – Best for High-Volume Email Marketing
SMTP.com offers one of the most trusted email relay services that supports email at high volume. It doesn’t matter how many hundred or million emails you need to send. Payments or purchases? Not a problem. Dealing with email deliverability problems is the worst. You put so much time into your list, segmentation, email design, and then some IP issue grinds your machine to a halt. With SMTP.com email relay service, you can avoid deliverability issues entirely. Kick off your campaigns with confidence. ![]() Think of SMTP.com as a final mile delivery service for email campaigns. Ensure the maximum number of emails reach their intended destination, track all the important metrics, and report back. It’s not here for designing, strategizing, or project managing your email marketing. Instead, it’s a focused product that ensures your careful work is carried directly to the recipient’s inbox. You can implement SMTP.com in a variety of ways. Teams that want a hands-off experience can use managed services, and those that want more control can implement the email relay API. However you choose to deploy SMTP.com, the software is secure and built to scale. Integrations are minutes, not days, and support is available 24/7. It’s a great solution for companies that send a lot of transactional emails for billing, accounts, ecommerce, and so on. These emails have to be fast in order to keep customers happy and their information secure. With SMTP.com, you know the message is going to make it safe and sound. Pricing for SMTP.com services is broken into several packages, with custom pricing available for high-volume senders:
Notably, the Essential plan comes with a shared IP. All other plans have a dedicated IP. For people looking to send over 250 million emails each month, SMTP.com offers a custom high-volume plan that comes with its own dedicated IP and mail transfer agent (MTA). Any plan may add on SMTP.com’s Reputation Defender service, which monitors and protects your IP against soft and hard bounces. This is a very focused solution that can help email marketers put deliverability issues behind them. Get started with SMTP.com today. Campaigner – Best for Marketing Teams
Campaigner is the perfect tool for a team with experience that’s outgrown lightweight, beginner-facing email marketing options. The sophistication of this tool keeps it out of the beginner camp, but it’s not so advanced as to require a developer by any means. You’ll be able to customize your email segmentation, personalization, and customer journeys. Capture the info you really need and capitalize on it. Campaigner automates a lot of the busy work, giving you more time to dive into the pre-built reports on open rates, conversion rates, and so on. ![]() Everything from an email marketing service you would want is built into the platform. Total rookies might be overwhelmed by how much you can do, but if you’ve run some campaigns, you’ll recognize how easy it is to stay on track with Campaigner. Deliverability is exceptionally high, even among top services, and there are plenty of tools to keep your contact lists groomed and your email in good standing. Send transactional emails reliably with Campaigner’s SMTP relay service. Track opens, clicks, and specific links within your email. Figure out exactly what works and compound your success. The built-in A/B testing features let you experiment with subject lines, senders, dynamic content, send times, and more. Campaigner is available in several packages, but you can always contact them for a custom plan. You can also sign up for a 30-day free trial, which gives you access to the entire Campaigner platform. Here’s how the plans break down:
The Starter plan comes with a trim set of segmentation tools, autoresponders, and the drag-and-drop email editor, among other tools. Upgrading your plan gives you a higher number of contacts and more advanced email marketing features. Off the shelf, Campaigner is going to work fine for just about any email marketing use case. It gives you the tools and visibility to find wins and fine-tune your campaigns over time. Get started with Campaigner for free today. More Great Email Marketing ServicesAWeber – Best Value For Low Subscriber Count
AWeber is a traditional email marketing service that’s reliable and very affordable. Where AWeber really shines, though, is its simple pricing structure. Aweber Free is ideal for those with small lists (500 subscribers or less). Unlike other platforms that add features and capabilities for plans at different price points, AWeber offers all of its features with every plan. Pricing is based strictly on the number of subscribers on your list. So you’ll get the same features whether you have 20 contacts or 20,000 contacts. Here’s an overview of the pricing tiers.
![]() With AWeber, you’ll get all of the basic features that you expect with an email marketing service:
AWeber is an industry leader in email deliverability rates. They make sure that your content is optimized to reach your subscribers’ inboxes. You can try AWeber for free. GetResponse – Best for Automated Lead Generation
GetResponse is a bit more than a basic email marketing service. It’s more of an all-in-one solution that specializes in automation. And when we say all-in-one, we mean it. With tools and features such as audience segmentation, autoresponders, landing page builders, automated emails, advanced analytics, and even webinar software, you’ll be able to collect beaucoup leads, put them in the right workflows, and turn them into returning customers. One standout tool that GetResponse offers is called Autofunnel. It can be used to create funnels for sales, leads, webinars, and more. It’s fully automated and very easy to use. Funnels include things like emails, landing pages, exit popups, marketing automation, Facebook ads, and ecommerce integration. It all depends on your goals and how you want to set them up. But GetResponse provides all the tools you need to grow your subscriber list and monetize those contacts. Once a user enters your funnel, everything is fully automated by GetResponse. It’s the perfect way to guide customers through the conversion process with multiple digital touchpoints. ![]() Let’s take a closer look at GetResponse’s plans and pricing. Email Marketing — Starting at $19 per month
Marketing Automation — Starting at $59 per month
Ecommerce Marketing — Starting at $119 per month
These prices are all based on 1,000 subscribers. The rate will increase as your list grows. As you can see, even the entry-level plan offered by GetResponse comes with advanced features like autoresponders, signup forms and pop-ups. All plans come with unlimited monthly email sends, inbox preview, click tracking, and 24/7 live chat support. GetResponse offers discounts for annual and 24-month contracts if you pay in advance. At the very least, you can try GetResponse free for 30 days. ConvertKit – Best for Influencers, Bloggers, and Creators
ConvertKit is one of my favorite email marketing services. It’s a perfect choice for creators of all stripes. That includes influencers, bloggers, video producers, musicians, artists, and more. That’s because their platform focuses more on engaging your audience and nurturing them with landing pages, ecommerce platforms, and membership sites. You’ll be able to create leads out of casual visitors to your social media accounts, blogs, YouTube videos, Facebook pages, and more. For those of you who want to build automated email funnels at an affordable price, ConvertKit will be a top option for you to consider. ![]() To set up automated emails, you’ll be guided through a simple visual flow chart. Instead of having multiple lists of contacts, ConvertKit groups all of your subscribers into one list. But you’ll still be able to tag them manually for segmentation purposes or with auto tags based on their behavior to improve the personalization of your campaigns. That’s great for creators with big audiences. ConvertKit is best for sending quick emails with clean formatting. There are no complex designs or distracting elements here. ConvertKit offers three pricing plans:
As you gain subscribers, the monthly price will increase accordingly. If you pay annually, you can get two months free. ConvertKit has more than 70 third-party direct integrations, customizable forms, and custom reporting. Email and live chat are available for 12 hours per day, Monday through Friday, with limited support on nights and weekends. Still not sold? Take advantage of ConvertKit’s free 14-day trial to test it out on your own. Drip – Best for New Ecommerce Businesses
Drip is a relatively new platform. It’s a CRM that offers email marketing for ecommerce businesses. I like Drip because they’re great for new ecommerce merchants since they focus on offering smaller, independent shops the same powerful automation and segmentation tools for email marketing as larger ecommerce stores. As such, they’re great for newer brands looking to get a leg up. With Drip, you can track valuable commerce metrics related to customer intent and purchase behavior. You’ll be able to segment new website visitors from returning customers. Drip also lets you target users who abandoned their carts. Get nitty-gritty without hours of data mining–Drip gives you tools that make it easy to target the right people with timely offers. ![]() Their CRM helps you reach customers through multiple touchpoints online, including email. Drip also has a revenue attribution feature, giving you a clearer view of which campaigns are actually making you money. Again, this is ideal for ecommerce shops. With personalization capabilities, powerful segmentation options, and detailed analytics, Drip has everything you need to succeed with email marketing. Pricing is based on the number of customers in your account. All plans come with the same features and benefits.
This stretches all the way up to plans that allow for up to 180,000 subscribers before pricing becomes custom. All Drip plans come with 24/7 live chat and email support. You can try it out free for 14 days and have access to all of the features. Moosend – Best for Ecommerce
Moosend offers an email marketing solution no matter if you’re a complete beginner or if you’re a seasoned pro. If you have an online store, this is the perfect tool. From their easy drag-and-drop email builder to their easy segmentation tool to their accurate real-time analytics, they have all the features you need to nail your email marketing campaigns. Our favorite thing about Moosend is their ecommerce AI. It leverages machine learning and collaborative filtering to target customers with products they might like based on the shopping habits of similar customers. ![]() You’ll also be able to easily cross-sell based on customer shopping habits and keep track of how often they buy certain products (e.g., perishables), so you can regularly promote the products they need when they need them. A lot of otherwise great email list services really struggle to give you this insight, if they can do it at all. Moosend makes it easy with a simple interface that lets any ecommerce business looking to level up its targeting and segmentation game. ![]() Moosend also does the basics of email marketing very well. Their advanced personalization features allow you to create unique emails for your target customer. Their segmentation tool allows you to spit your audience by purchasing behavior, cart abandoned products, and more. They don’t offer that many themes, with just 40 responsive themes to choose from. However, they’re all highly customizable and eye-catching. Pricing starts free for a 30-day trial, with their premium plans starting at $9 per month. More detailed information is below: Free — $0/first month
Pro — $9/month
Enterprise — Custom pricing
Try Moosend for free for 30 days. How to Find the Best Email Marketing Service for YouThe best available email marketing service is going to be unique to you. After all, the multi-million dollar info product business is going to have very different needs than the humble blogger. But there are specific factors that we took into consideration because we believe that they tend to be the most important ones for most businesses. I’ll break down the details of our process for making this list and explain what matters, what doesn’t, and what you need to know to find the best option for you. Use our methodology to help guide your ultimate decision. And while we don’t recommend using price as a deciding factor, if you’re just starting out and need to watch every penny, there are some solid free email marketing tools to consider, too. Plenty of Email TemplatesThere are a lot of reasons to want an email marketing service. You might want to create your first sales funnel and incorporate email into your marketing strategy. Or maybe you just want to send the occasional newsletter out to subscribers. Whatever your reason, you want your emails to look good while you do it. That’s why you should find an email marketing service that takes the stress out of things like formatting and typesetting by giving you a list of great email templates for any of your needs. Many of the offerings above offer drag-and-drop email templates to help take the headache out of designing a great-looking email. With tools like MailChimp’s email builder, you’re filling out the basic info, and a stunning email takes shape on its own. ![]() They’ll also offer a variety of different email template types to fit specific purposes. For example, HubSpot comes with a library of pre-built sales email templates ready for you and your business to use. If you want, they’ll even allow you to create your own templates unique to your business. You can customize them to your exact needs and save them for use whenever you need them. MailChimp is another great service with tons of different email templates for different needs, such as selling a product or promoting a blog post. It’s also highly customizable, allowing you to create specific ones for your brand’s goals. Simple SegmentationAs your business grows, you’re going to want to target different parts of your audience for different products. After all, if you offer a variety of different services and products, not everyone on your list will want the same thing. A good email marketing service gives you easy but powerful ways to segment your audience. For example, a service like MailChimp allows you to tag segments of your audience depending on how they subscribed to your email list. That way, you can put those segments into specifically targeted funnels easily and automatically. ![]() A service like Omnisend (pictured above) allows you to send segmented campaigns based on things like your subscriber’s interests, demographics, email open rates, and the products they’ve purchased. It’s important to note: If you want segmentation features (and if you’re serious about email marketing, you should), you’re going to have to pay for it. This often doesn’t come with a service’s free plan. However, it’s well worth it, especially if you’re focused on growth and conversions. Seriously–all the marketing automations, striking templates, and great writing in your campaigns depend on your ability to understand your audience. The perfect message is still an airball if it’s sent at the wrong time or to the wrong person. Segmentation and other aspects of an email list service aren’t as flashy as some of the other features, but they are absolutely critical. In-Depth AnalyticsAs the old business adage goes: “If you can measure it, you can improve it.” To that end, a good email marketing service will give you all the reporting tools you need to provide you with in-depth metrics and KPIs. Knowing this information will give you vital data about where your subscribers live, who they are, and what they want from your business. It’ll also help you create better services and marketing strategies in the future. For example, you’ll be able to better segment your audiences with the right analytics. HubSpot has some of the best traffic and conversion analytic tools available. Along with their A/B testing feature, their analytics tools will let you know exactly how each of your emails performs and why. ![]() Easy AutomationThere’s nothing quite like the “set it and forget it” approach to business. When an email marketing service is automated, you don’t have to worry about making sure that each and every one of your new subscribers is in the right sales funnel. Once you’ve set it up, they’ll receive the emails they should receive automatically. That’s why you want to find an email marketing service that will let you easily set up automated emails without a lot of fuss and complex tagging schemes. ![]() Constant Contact (pictured above) is a standout when it comes to automating emails. It lets you trigger welcome messages for any new subscribers and put them into specific drip campaigns depending on their actions. The simple design allows you to do this easily, too, with no headaches involved. GetResponse is another option to definitely consider if automation is your game. Its Autofunnel platform allows you to easily create fully automated sales, leads, and webinar funnels in just a few clicks. Top Email Marketing Providers for 2023 in SummaryWhat’s the best email marketing service? I wish I could point you to just one, but your strategy, goals, audience, and budget are going to determine the right solution. Use the reviews and methodology in this article to hone in on the perfect one for you. Here’s a recap of our top eight picks:
Whether you’re starting a new list from scratch, switching providers, or looking for a full-service CRM, there’s an option for you above. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-email-marketing-services/ Want to jump straight to the answer? The best restaurant payroll software for most people is Gusto or Paycor. Running a restaurant can be a payroll nightmare. Tracking dozens or even hundreds of shift hours, shift changes, tips, and overtime payments across multiple locations is complicated and time-consuming. Thankfully, there’s payroll software that caters specifically to restaurants. This software can ensure you’re paying your employees accurately and on time each month—and some are even free. The Top 6 Best Restaurant Payroll Software
![]() Here’s a closer look at each software and what makes each of them stand out. Gusto — Best For Automated Payroll
Your restaurant may not need a robust payroll system, but automating payroll tasks can streamline otherwise monotonous and repetitive payroll tasks. That’s where services from Gusto thrive. If you’re jumping ship from another payroll system, Gusto can help you make that transition by taking care of data transfers and setup. Once you’re onboarded, you’ll have access to detailed onboarding checklists to ensure each of your employees is in the payroll system and ready to go. ![]() Gusto can automatically file your state and federal taxes when the time comes—and sends you automated reminders if tax laws in your state happen to change. This makes filing taxes easy. Gusto includes this service in its pricing. With Gusto, you also don’t have to worry about keeping accurate track of deductions, hourly or salary wages, or payday deposits, as it automatically pays every employee registered in your payroll system. Once you’ve set up and customized how you want to run your payroll system, Gusto quietly runs in the background as you take care of the running of your restaurant. Pricing levels for Gusto:
The most convenient payment tier for your restaurant will depend on the features you’d like access to. You’ll have to pay a fee per employee regardless of the tier you choose. A good place to start is with the first tier, Simple, at $40 a month. Simple comes with access to full-service payroll in one state, along with health benefits administration, accounting, time tracking, and employee self-service. Once you’re in need of more features, you can always level up. Paycor — Best for Building Employee Engagement
Employee turnover in restaurants is higher than most other industries—a whopping 75%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One way to reduce churn is to keep your employees engaged and satisfied. Paycor helps accomplish this with features like streamlined onboarding and flexible payroll options to meet individual needs. Paycor also offers tools to help expedite the recruiting and hiring processes, too. ![]() Paycor’s employee onboarding experience engages employees from day one. A mobile-optimized approach lets new workers fill out information, acknowledge required documents, and complete all the necessary paperwork without ever touching a piece of paper. They can onboard at a time and place that works best for them, be it your front of house or their own home. This approach gives new employees a great first-day experience with your brand. Employees continue that positive experience by choosing the best way for them to get paid. Paycor offers the usual direct deposit or pay card options. But it goes a step beyond with its OnDemand Pay feature. This lets employees see how much accrued pay they have at any time, even if payday is still days away. Then they can pay out up to 50% of their accrued pay at any time. This can be a lifesaver for employees if they need a boost until payday and a benefit they likely won’t find at your competitor down the street. Pricing options for Paycor:
These prices are not displayed on the Paycor website, and are subject to change since the time of research. Also important to note, there are additional setup fees for all but the Basic plan. Square Payroll — Best For Seasonal Restaurants
Are you running a seasonal restaurant that works with contract employees? Square Payroll has features that make contract payroll tracking an easy process. It takes the manual work out of tracking employee hours, timecards, taxes, and tips in one centralized dashboard, whether your employees are permanent or just with you for the season. ![]() Square Payroll automatically files forms like 1099-MISC and lets your contractors set up direct deposit. Once your contractors download the Square app, they can clock in and out right from their phones and you can easily import their hours into your system. Do they want to see their payroll history? All of that information is available to them in the app. With Square, you can also choose when you pay your contractors, with no limits to the number of times you pay throughout the month. Moreover, if you’re ever stuck at any step of the process, Square Payroll has a team of US-based payroll support specialists standing by to answer any of your questions. Pricing options for Square Payroll:
Square Payroll’s pricing is straightforward. With it, you get access to features like unlimited pay runs per month, automatic payroll tax calculations, time cards, an employee app, and even live support to help you set up your account. You also have a variety of options for paying your workers, including direct deposit, check, or Cash App. And, if your restaurant is seasonal, Square doesn’t charge you for inactivity. Square Payroll is a great option if you’re already using other Square software, as it all integrates seamlessly, allowing you to focus on running your eatery. Ready? Get started with Square Payroll here. Toast — Best All-In-One POS and Payroll System
An all-in-one restaurant solution like Toast is perfect if you’re looking for software that covers your point-of-sale system needs, employee payroll, and even employee self-onboarding. Now, that seems like a lot to unpack. If you’re a smaller restaurant just starting out, Toast might not be for you. However, if you’re managing a group of employees in the double digits and it’s taking you hours at a time to figure out accurate payroll, Toast helps make the process a lot easier so you can focus on growing the restaurant. ![]() As far as running a restaurant goes, Toast is a robust solution that connects everything from your POS system to your back-of-house inventory count, online ordering system, and yes, employee payroll, too. With Toast’s payroll and team management system, you’re able to automatically keep track of when your employees punch in and out, record hourly wages and credit card tips as sales are processed, have digital onboarding, and more. Here is what the Toast pricing looks like:
Toast offers a free tier for small restaurants that need to get up and running, though notice that it does not include payroll software. Essentials and Growth tiers both offer the Payroll and Team Management add-on package. This is one of four add-ons you may want to select. The others are:
You can either get started with Toast here or watch a demo first. Restaurant365 — Best For Large, Established Eateries
Larger, well-established restaurants need payroll help, too! If you run one of those, Restaurant365 helps you take care of more than just the basics, regardless if you’re an independent restaurant, a multi-concept restaurant, or even a franchisee group. Fast-paced restaurants juggling a ton of employees can take advantage of Restaurant365’s onboarding and hiring features that ensure you’re making the best decision with its built-in applicant tracking system. Once you’ve onboarded your employees and their paydays, you can be sure your payment calculations are error-free because of the software’s automated workflows and validation rules. ![]() Restaurant365 also offers timely tax table updates, wage garnishment services, overtime pay, and tip-to-minimum calculations. Its payroll tools come integrated with HR features, so while your new employees can get onboarded by filling in all the necessary information through a self-service portal, they can also have access to payroll information that they can configure as needed. These are the four pricing tiers:
With Restaurant365, each tier is specifically crafted around a general goal, as outlined above. For instance, if your restaurant is at a place where it needs to streamline efficiency, the Core Accounting tier can help you make that goal a reality by enabling you to bring together back-office systems. On the other hand, if you’re looking to simplify processes once you have a working system down, the Professional tier can be a more appropriate option. I recommend you head over to the pricing page to get a more comprehensive look into exactly what tools you get with each tier. Restaurant365 also offers a useful online calculator where you can estimate the ROI of using its systems once you enter some key information. You can also schedule a free demo to get a feel for its systems before making a final decision. Get started with Restaurant365. Payroll4free — Best Free Payroll Option
If you’re looking for a free payroll solution, you can use software like Payroll4Free. If you’re an established restaurant, this option isn’t for you, as you’ll likely be in need of more robust features. However, if you’re a small restaurant that’s running on a shoestring budget, then Payroll4Free can be worth a try. ![]() Once you create an account, you’ll have access to features like the ability to pay both employees and contractors, vacation time tracking, employee portal for self-servicing, reporting features, direct deposit, and tax calculations. When you’re ready to file your taxes, Payroll4Free gives you access to filled-out tax forms you can review before turning them in. If you feel uncomfortable filing your own taxes, Payroll4Free can file them for you for a $15 monthly fee. Keep in mind that Payroll4Free can only run on a Windows operating system. Moreover, Payroll4Free caps its services at 25 or fewer employees. Any more than that and you’ll have to onboard another payroll system. Ready to take care of payroll for free? Get started with Payroll4Free here. How to Find The Best Restaurant Payroll Software For YouFinding the best payroll option for you highly depends on the specific needs of your restaurant business. Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all solution isn’t in the books here. Besides the size of your business, your number of employees, and how much you plan on budgeting for payroll software, here are some additional pointers to think through to help you make the optimal choice. Employee Self-ServicePayroll software with an employee self-service option can be a huge time saver. It makes the onboarding process easier since employees can log on and fill in their personal details and proper HR paperwork. A payroll self-service feature also allows employees to sign in and check out their payroll history for their own reference. They can easily change their personal information in the self-service portal as well, without needing to file paperwork or schedule time-consuming meetings with HR. TaxesMost robust payroll software comes with plenty of features that can help you take care of your taxes easily and accurately. It’s good practice to ensure your payroll software can take care of both employee tax filing and 1099-MISC if you plan on working with contractors or have a seasonal business. Some payroll software will even go as far as automatically filing your taxes for you. This is an extremely useful feature if your restaurant is in its early stages and can’t quite afford an in-house accountant. It can also be a way to avoid paying additional service fees for outside accounting services. Payroll SupportSome payroll software providers are better at this than others. Generally, you’re better off going with payroll software that also comes with plenty of user support. This can come in the form of an easy-to-access knowledge base, free on-demand webinars, an online chat support feature, or a customer support team you can easily reach by phone. While some payroll software will come with plenty of onboarding support, you want to make sure that support extends past the initial welcome process. When in the middle of the chaos that running a restaurant can sometimes be, the last thing you want is a failing payroll system that’s malfunctioning without any access to timely help. The Top Restaurant Payroll Software in SummaryIf you’re looking for an all-in-one restaurant payroll system that also has employee onboarding features, go with software like Toast. Want to give employees more options on when and how they get paid? Paycor is a great option. Don’t need payroll year-round for a seasonal restaurant? Square Payroll can help you get the job done. Gusto is a great option for restaurants that need everything automated. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-restaurant-payroll-software/ The best way to form an LLC for the majority of our readers is Incfile because of its low price and straightforward process. Register your LLC in any state starting at $0 plus state fees. Limited liability companies (LLCs) are a popular option for entrepreneurs nationwide. Unlike other types of business structures, LLCs can be formed in any state, regardless of your company’s physical presence. Some states offer significant financial advantages compared to others. This guide will take a closer look at the best states to form an LLC and ultimately help you determine the best state of formation for your business. Foreign LLCs vs. Domestic LLCsIf you form an LLC in your state of residence (your home state), it’s known as a domestic LLC. When you form an LLC somewhere other than your home state, you’re required to register that business as a foreign LLC in your home state. To be clear, the term “foreign” has nothing to do with a business being owned by a non-US resident or outside the US. It just means that the company is doing business outside of its home state. Why is this important? Starting an LLC in another state might require you to form two LLCs—one in the state of formation and another in your home state. For example, let’s say you live in Indiana but want to form an LLC in Wisconsin. You’d have to register that company as a foreign LLC in Indiana to do business in your home state. With two LLCs, you’ll have double everything. That includes two state filing fees, registered agents in both states, two annual reporting fees, and more. Maintaining two LLCs can quickly double your costs and double your headaches. You can dive deeper into the differences between foreign and domestic LLCs, to determine which is right for you. And if you’re not sure whether an LLC is right for your business right now, we’ve outlined the differences between an LLC and sole proprietorship and DBA vs. LLC to explain things. Forming an LLC in Your Home StateAre some states better to form an LLC than others? Absolutely. But for the vast majority of people, registering an LLC in your home state will be the best option. Most people hear or read something online that says, “Nevada has no corporate income taxes,” and assume it’s the right state to form a business. While the former may be true, the latter is not always the case—especially for anyone who lives outside of Nevada. (We’ll talk about Nevada in greater detail shortly). Why? Remember, you’ll still be required to register a foreign LLC in your home state. So, you’ll still have to pay taxes in your home state, on top of the additional fees required for maintaining two LLCs. The idea that you can form your LLC in a “no-tax” state, elect to be taxed as a corporation, and not pay income taxes in your home state is essentially misinformation. For most people, your home state will always be the best place to form your LLC. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to save money by registering an LLC elsewhere, and it will likely cost you more money in both the short-term and long-term. Whether you choose to form an LLC in your home state or in one of the states on this list, we recommend using an LLC formation service to help you get started. You can read our full reviews of the best LLC services here. 5 Best States to Start an LLCWith all of that in mind, five states stand out amongst the rest as the best locations to form an LLC, so if you live in one of these states—great. If you don’t live in one of these states, don’t automatically think it’s a good idea to form an LLC here (for the reasons discussed above). The type of business you’re starting will be a factor, as well. For example, an online-only consulting business with no physical facilities or storefronts could consider forming an LLC outside of their home state. But a retailer with a physical storefront in a shopping center probably wouldn’t have as much flexibility. Below we’ll dive deep into the pros and cons of forming an LLC in the “best” states. 1. DelawareDelaware has a longstanding reputation for being one of the most business-friendly states in the nation. According to the Delaware Division of Corporations, nearly 67% of Fortune 500 businesses are incorporated there. While this doesn’t necessarily apply to LLCs, it definitely conveys a draw for organizations to form a business in Delaware. In 2021, 247,003 LLCs and 24,588 LPs/LLPs (limited liability partnership) formed in Delaware compared to 62,510 corporations. Why? For starters, the initial state filing fees and franchise taxes are lower than other states. Delaware doesn’t impose taxes on out-of-state income, either. The filing process is simple and allows LLCs to get up and running quickly. The state keeps it easy after that, too, with online filing of LLC taxes and reports. ![]() Another unique standout of Delaware is the Chancery Court. This is one of three constitutional courts in Delaware (alongside the Supreme Court and Superior Court). The Chancery Court is only for business cases. This means that business-related cases are resolved much quicker than in courts that hear cases in all categories. Plus, the judges in the Chancey Court have much more experience in business hearings. Delaware doesn’t require shareholders, directors, or officers to be residents of the state. Furthermore, one person can be named in all of these roles. It’s also one of the only states that allows you to exclude your personal identity from the formation documents. Pros of Forming an LLC in Delaware:
Cons of Forming an LLC in Delaware:
If you live outside of Delaware and want to form an LLC there, it could ultimately be more expensive than starting an LLC in your home state. Aside from having to maintain two LLCs, your administrative costs may also be higher. An accountant in your home state may not be familiar with Delaware structures, so you’d likely have to retain two accountants. Need help? Visit Incfile to form an LLC in Delaware today. 2. NevadaNevada is another state that draws a lot of attention from business owners who want to avoid paying high taxes. That’s because Nevada doesn’t impose taxes on personal income, corporate income, or franchise taxes. With that said, Nevada does require business owners to pay annual license fees and annual filing fees. In terms of privacy, Nevada is arguably second to none. They are one of the only states that allow for complete anonymity with public filings. In short, your LLC can remain anonymous in any public registration filing. Furthermore, Nevada does not have an information-sharing agreement with the IRS. Since the state doesn’t have an income tax department, there’s no information to share. Maintaining an LLC in Nevada is easy since they don’t require annual meetings or operating agreements. ![]() The registration process is simple and also requires fewer steps compared to other states nationwide. Pros of Forming an LLC in Nevada:
Cons of Forming an LLC in Nevada:
As you can see, forming an LLC in Nevada isn’t always ideal, especially if you’re in another state. You’ll still have to create a foreign LLC in your home state and maintain two registered agents for each LLC. Need help? Visit Incfile to form an LLC in Nevada today. 3. WyomingWyoming is another state with policies aiming to be as business-friendly as possible. For starters, they don’t impose strict reporting obligations for business owners. Similar to other states on our list, Wyoming doesn’t tax personal income or corporate income. There aren’t any franchise taxes either. Wyoming offers something really unique compared to other states—a lifetime proxy. With a lifetime proxy, you’re able to appoint another person to represent your shares or stock in a company on your behalf. This means that business owners in Wyoming can benefit from complete anonymity. Aside from no individual or corporate taxes, the sales tax rates in Wyoming are very low. ![]() As you can see from this graph, Wyoming ranks 44th in the country for local tax rates. Of the 46 states that impose sales tax (four states don’t have any sales tax), Hawaii and Alaska are the only two with lower averages. Pros of Forming an LLC in Wyoming:
Cons of Forming an LLC in Wyoming:
Wyoming is definitely a great state to form an LLC for entrepreneurs who live in the state. But do the pros outweigh the cons if you’re living elsewhere? Your home state will still require a foreign LLC registration, so you can’t avoid taxation altogether. Need help? Visit Incfile to form an LLC in Wyoming today. 4. AlaskaAlaska—the last frontier. While Alaska is best known for its cold weather and thousands of miles of uninhabitable terrain, it’s also a top location to form a business. The largest state in the Union (and one of the last to join), it is an appealing place to start an LLC. For starters, there is no state income tax or sales tax in Alaska. However, it’s worth noting that cities can collect local sales taxes (although these are generally low). ![]() Depending on your new business’s industry, you might be entitled to certain tax credits as well. Examples include film production credits, frontier basin credits, new area development credits, qualified oil and gas service industry expenditure credits, minerals exploration incentives, and more. However, most of these require you to actually do business within the state. Alaska also provides new business owners with great loan programs. In October 2022, the State of Alaska, alongside the University of Alaska and the Alaska Small Business Development Center, announced the launch of a new financing program with $59.9 million in funding. These funds will be available to Alaska small businesses over the next ten years. But similar to the tax credits, they are intended for businesses operating with a physical presence in Alaska. The state fees associated with forming an LLC in Alaska are fairly inexpensive compared to other states. Here’s a list of some common LLC fees from the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development website: ![]() Pros of Forming an LLC in Alaska:
Cons of Forming an LLC in Alaska:
If you live in Alaska and your business operates in Alaska, it’s definitely a great place to form an LLC. But it’s not always a practical solution for out-of-state LLC owners. Need help? Visit Incfile to form an LLC in Alaska today. 5. South DakotaLike other states on our list, South Dakota does not have any state income taxes (a common theme on our list). Another advantage of starting a business in South Dakota is its 0% corporate tax rate. So, this is a great option for creating an LLC that gets taxed as a corporation. South Dakota has several other tax advantages as well, including no personal property taxes, no inheritance tax, and no business inventory tax. The filing process is easy, affordable, and can be completed online without strict requirements. ![]() Pros of Forming an LLC in South Dakota:
Cons of Forming an LLC in South Dakota:
Most of the advantages associated with forming an LLC in South Dakota are for state residents and companies operating within the state. Anyone else would still have to maintain a foreign LLC in their home state. Need help? Visit Incfile to form an LLC in South Dakota today. What to Expect When You File For an LLCRegardless of your state of formation, there are certain expectations for LLC filing that remain constant across the board. First, expect to pay some type of filing fee to the state. These typically range anywhere from $50 to $500, and payments are due upon filing your Articles of Organization. Many states also require you to file an Operating Agreement. This is a legal document that explains how your LLC will be run and managed. Even if your state doesn’t require you to file an Operating Agreement during the formation process, it’s still in your best interest to do so, as it will help prevent internal conflicts amongst LLC members. Be prepared to appoint a registered agent during the filing process as well. You could technically name yourself as the registered agent, but it will make your life much easier if you use a professional registered agent service. Once everything has been filed, it’s just a matter of waiting until the state officially recognizes your LLC as a legal entity. The exact time varies by state, but the typical range is anywhere from three to ten business days. Most states let you expedite your filing for an additional fee, which can also be facilitated through your business formation service. ConclusionLLC formation is not universal from state to state. As you can see from this guide, some states have advantages compared to others for LLC owners. With that said, it doesn’t mean that you should automatically form an LLC in one of these states. So, while you may get tax breaks in one state, you’ll still have to pay them in your home state. Plus, maintaining two LLCs comes with its fair share of headaches, like extra fees, multiple accountants, multiple lawyers, and multiple registered agents. In most cases, the pros won’t outweigh the cons when it comes to forming an LLC in a state other than your own. As always, consult with your accountant and attorney before deciding where to form an LLC. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-states-to-form-an-llc/ Our recommendation for most people is WordPress with Hostinger because it’s easy to set up and there are no limits to what you can do. Host your WordPress site on Hostinger for $1.99 per month. Building a great blog starts with choosing the right platform—and there are only a handful truly worth considering. Here are the best options, complete with in-depth reviews and a guide to help you decide which works best for you. The 5 Best Blogging Platforms and Blog Sites for 2023Best of 2023: LinkedIn, Medium, Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress with Hostinger. While there are dozens of places that allow you to easily and quickly start blogging, my top picks are the most fruitful options for businesses. To help make your decision even easier, I handpicked some of my favorites for 2023, including:
Whether you want to start affiliate marketing to drive sales, a blog to bring in new business, or showcase your creative portfolio, you’ll get everything to build an entire website in one place with any of the options above. ![]() If you want to turn a profit on your blog, use WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. You’ll be in complete control of your site and everything that’s on it. For people who want to blog with WordPress, we recommend using Hostinger as a web host to keep your speed high and costs low. We’ll also cover options like Medium and LinkedIn that are great for hobby blogs and making connections–but not blogs for making a living. They are free, but you don’t get to choose how your blog looks, and adding your style is half the fun. What makes these blogging platforms great? Where could they be better? To find out, we interviewed active users of each platform about where these platforms excel, and where they are falling behind. WordPress with Hostinger – Best OverallWordPress is the best overall blogging platform because it’s free, easy to use, and customizable without limitations. Get started now for free. WordPress is the most popular blog platform out there—for starters it’s free, you just have to pay for hosting. We recommend Hostinger for WordPress hosting because it’s the best price for a simple setup. You’ll have a WordPress site in a few minutes with Hostinger. It’s a highly customizable content management system (CMS) for bloggers who want to build out a site for their business. It’s also great if you plan to scale your blog for profit. The reason? WordPress is open source. That means they don’t keep their source code a secret. Developers can go in and create widgets, plugins, and other tools to customize WordPress blogs—so you can create any kind of blog you want. ![]() What this means for WordPress users is that no matter the action or functionality they need, there is probably a plugin or widget already available that does it. And it is incredibly simple to add that functionality to your website. You simply find the tool you need, install it with just a few clicks, then easily customize it to your specifications. This dramatically streamlines your website customization and eliminates the need for you to know how to code or hire a developer to create something for you. Chances are, there’s a plugin already out there that does exactly what you want. It doesn’t get much easier than that when it comes to making your website your own. One user on our panel, who has stuck with WordPress for four years, describes the CMS as “blogger-friendly” with plenty of SEO features baked in. Their experience is echoed by many of our other users. That said, there is a bit of a learning curve. To get the most out of WordPress in terms of customizability, you’ll need to be more hands-on with the plugins and widgets you choose and how you manage the backend. However, even this is fairly straightforward in WordPress—and it didn’t take long for our users to learn the ropes at all. “With no knowledge of WordPress when I started, it was a bit of a steep learning curve but I figured everything out quickly enough,” said one user. “WordPress is very intuitive and if you can’t figure something out, you just have to Google it or check on YouTube and you will likely find an answer.” Another echoed that sentiment. However, they also said that “it’s fairly easy to use” after blogging on the platform for a few days. ![]() The tradeoff is well worth it, as you’re able to get a fantastic website fully customized to your exact specifications. That’s what makes it perfect for creating a website that’s primed for audience growth and profit. One user was also able to promote items for third parties in order to generate even more revenue. “I was able to monetize my blog using affiliate marketing, along with info products like ebooks and minicourses once my audience got big enough,” they said. They were also able to leverage plugins to help them build their audience—and generate revenue growth. “One thing that helped with that was creating an email subscriber list and a newsletter using the Mailchimp plugin,” they added. “It’s a must-have if you really want to monetize your blog.” With the sheer number of plugins and the ability to customize your site, you will be able to find any option you want to include on your site. As your blog and audience grow, you can continue adjusting your site to accommodate it in whatever direction you want to go. Blogging with WordPressConfession time: WordPress is actually the CMS we use here at Quicksprout—so we’re a bit biased. In fact, we’re very biased. If you plan on building out a blog that draws in thousands or even millions of readers—not to mention monetizing it—we can’t recommend WordPress enough. But the users are right when they say it’s a bit tricky to learn at first. At first blush, the blog dashboard for WordPress seems more complex than most. But once you jump in, it’s fairly easy to wrap your mind around. And you’ll get used to it relatively quickly. The WordPress Gutenberg editor makes the blogging and editing process very straightforward. You really don’t have to know HTML unless you want to get crafty. All the fundamentals you need to publish a blog are point and click. Sure, it’s not quite like the drag-and-drop functionality as Wix and Squarespace have since you can’t edit the entire page—but it’s pretty darn close. ![]() I’ve also found WordPress to be incredibly scalable. No matter what you want to build or how big you get, the platform will grow with you as long as you choose the right plugins. A quick tip: Don’t make the rookie mistake of downloading a ton of plugins and widgets. It’s easy to think you need everything—but sometimes, less is more. Plus installing a ton of plugins is an easy way to sloooooooow down your page’s loading speed. One plugin we do recommend you get is the Yoast SEO plugin. This is an incredibly popular WordPress plugin that helps you set up your posts to be as SEO-friendly as possible with a few guided steps. It’s honestly a must-have if you’re using WordPress. ![]() You can check out our guide on the best WordPress plugins for more recommendations. And if you really want, you can start changing the code yourself. Since WordPress is open-source, that means you can do whatever you want with it. If you know PHP or are willing to hire a developer, you can change WordPress however you like. One user put it best: “WordPress gave me everything I needed to create the blog I wanted. It gave me an easy interface to post my blogs, as well as everything I needed or wanted in my blog: a subscription box, an author area; just the look I wanted and the flexibility to change things as needed.” Choosing a HostTo build your own site using WordPress, you’ll need to buy a domain name, get web hosting, and set up your account. There’s more information on our posts about the best web hosting and the best web hosting for WordPress, which is about selecting a managed host that’s designed for WordPress. The quick answer: Go with Hostinger. ![]() Hostinger is one of the most popular web hosts, especially for WordPress users. That’s because they run servers that only have WordPress sites on them–this allows Hostinger to configure servers specifically for WordPress security and performance. This means–with no extra work on your part–you can have a faster, safer WordPress site simply by signing up with Hostinger. With just one click, you’ll be able to get your WordPress site up and running within minutes. I’m serious. You simply select WordPress as your desired CMS during the signup process, and it’s automatically installed for you. The price was a big factor for most of the users we spoke with. Hostinger comes in at the very low end price-wise, yet it’s jam-packed with features to help you grow. Starting at $1.99 per month, you’re going to get the ability to:
If you want to create additional sites or email people from a professional address @yourdomain.com, that’s going to cost extra with some of the other platforms. Another helpful aspect of going with Hostinger is the 365/24/7 support via live chat. Most of your WordPress-related questions can be answered with a simple Google search–as the world’s most popular blogging platform, there’s a ton of info out there. Cons of Blogging with WordPressThe user panel gave me varying feedback about WordPress’s beginner-friendliness. Some said that it was easy enough, while others pointed out that it was tough on novices at the beginning. “I don’t like how it does take a bit of a learning curve to use,” said one user. Their thoughts showed that WordPress won’t be the easiest option, especially when building your first site. “Sometimes I’d like to have my hand held more through the blog creation process rather than having to look up a bunch of YouTube how-to videos to learn how.” After testing and building sites myself using WordPress, I can say that it takes a bit to get the hang of it—but once you do, you’ll be glad you put the work in. But even if you’re uncomfortable with it at first, it’s still the best option if you’re willing to learn and grow into the role of managing your website site. Another flaw that one of our surveyed users mentioned is that WordPress lacks comprehensive customer support. “I wish there was a help desk that you could contact either by email or by chat,” one user told us. That is one other good aspect of signing up with Hostinger. There is someone you can reach out to via live chat any time of day or night. Their support teams handle a lot of common WordPress questions and may be able to help you out. Final Thoughts on WordPressAlong with performing very highly across all criteria, WordPress with Hostinger is a great place to start if you really want to build a blog that will grow with you no matter how big you get. This is especially good if you plan on monetizing your blog and optimizing it for traffic/growth. Eventually, you’ll need to add more resources some other platforms might not be able to offer you. WordPress and Hostinger can do that. Some WordPress users had minor issues with the platform’s learning curve, they all said that they were able to create their ideal blog once they got the hang of it. They especially liked WordPress’s level of customization — with some of them monetizing their websites using the site builder’s many plugins and widgets. Bottom line: Building a WordPress website takes more time than a Wix website. However, the tradeoff is your website is much more customizable (and powerful). And Hostinger makes it easy to host your WordPress site. As such, we highly recommend this combination for bloggers who want to really grow their traffic and/or profit margins. Wix – Best for Beginners Building a Professional BlogWix is perfect for beginners because it doesn’t require any coding skills and you can start a new blog in minutes. Sign up for a free Wix account today. Wix gives beginners a way to make it look like professionals designed their blogs—all without needing to learn code or web development. In fact, one user told me, “I think it’s as straightforward as it can get for people with no coding background.” They created their site with ease without running into any stifling restrictions. Another user called out the drag-and-drop editor’s intuitive UI and its tools to create individualized layouts and designs. We jumped in and tested it out for ourselves and found they were right. You can create a blog in just a few minutes. Wix even walks you through the entire process step-by-step if you need it. ![]() They offer hundreds of templates across many different categories of websites. For example, they have templates for travel blogs, simple portfolios, or photography galleries. We love how you don’t need to have any coding knowledge to move assets around and create the blog you want. Another user agreed that Wix offered a very intuitive blog-building experience while adding, “If I’m unsure about a certain topic, it’s quick to find it via their support.” Wix offers both live support via a 24/7 callback service (if you’re in the United States) and a massive knowledge base with articles to help beginners out when they’re stuck. ![]() But you can also just let Wix’s ADI builder handle most of the dirty work entirely. This tool leverages artificial intelligence to help you build the exact website you want by just answering a few questions. And, if security or reliability is a concern, Wix nails both with a robust 99.98 percent uptime rate and a team of security professionals on the job 24/7 monitoring the Wix ecosystem for potential cyber threats. All this protection lets you focus exclusively on creating great blog content. Blogging with WixWix’s blog manager is indeed simple and intuitive, with analytics and SEO built right in. It’s simple to add the basic features you might want on your blog, too—elements like social tools, likes, comments, hashtags, categories, and subscriber forms. ![]() There’s a blog template category, which is a great place to start. Once you have your template selected, I suggest updating the font, colors, and logo to personalize your template and help it stand out from the rest. Writing a post is as simple as clicking Create a Post, writing your copy, and adding images. You can save drafts or even give other contributors writing privileges for your site. This is all just as easy from a mobile device as from a desktop—no app required. The blogging process is as intuitive and easy to use as folks described—but there were also some other additions that surprised me. ![]() You can easily add alt tags to images and nofollow tags to links without getting into the HTML. This stuff is really important for ranking high in search results, and with Wix, you don’t have to know a whole lot to get your SEO ducks in a row. For more tips like this, you can refer to our SEO for blogs guide. All your posts automatically get a read-time count to show readers roughly how long it’ll take to go through your post (something Medium also offers) and is a great feature to have for readers. We also like the ability to use live chat to interact with your readers in the Wix app. If you build a real community in your blog or are open to answering reader questions in real time—say, about an online course you’re offering or a webinar that’s coming up—then it’s a cool feature. Most Wix blogs tended to look great across mobile, tablet, and desktop—something our users said helped them draw in readers. “Since my website runs very smoothly on any device,” said one user, “it made it easier for an audience to browse through my work and contact me immediately.” Cons of Blogging with WixThere are a few downsides to Wix — but even from our panel of users, it seemed their major complaints boiled down to a couple of points. The platform sometimes doesn’t play well with mobile devices if you’re trying to do more ambitious scrolling designs, like parallax scrolling. One user said that “my scrolling effect cannot be achieved on mobile so I had to make a simpler version [of my website] separately.” There’s also the matter of the subscription fee that—while fairly affordable—could cause some burgeoning bloggers to cringe (especially if you plan to be more bootstrap). If you plan on recouping some of that money with their ecommerce tools, you’ll still have to account for paying for a pricier plan for that functionality. The panel of users rated Wix fairly low on monetization too—but that’s not to say it can’t be done. Occasionally Wix will feature stand-out blogs that use their platform, and that can lead to new opportunities as was the case with one of our users. “Being featured on Wix did get me some freelance opportunities, and ultimately landed me my full-time job,” they said. Ultimately, we think that despite the downsides, Wix is absolutely worth it for the platform’s ease of use and out-of-the-box blogging features. Final Thoughts on WixWix offers the best blogging platform for beginners. It offers a wide array of themes that’ll fit any type of blog and website you want to build. You’ll also be able to easily change the look and feel of those themes to make your blog look the way you want it to—no coding knowledge needed. The users we talked to praised Wix’s ease of use and the ability to customize their blogs on the platform. Our own hands-on research verified that. We could create a great-looking blog with zero experience with Wix in literal minutes. Imagine what you could do with more time. And if you really want to take the guesswork out of designing your website, you can even let Wix take care of it for you by answering a few questions and letting their advanced AI take care of the rest. ![]() When you choose to let Wix create a site for you, the Wix AI website-building platform, called Wix ADI, basically does the rest. You simply identify a theme you like, from multiple color and font combination options, and then Wix prompts you with a variety of homepage designs to choose from. From there, you choose the pages you want to include on your site and that’s it. Your site is up and running in less than two minutes. Of course, all elements of your new AI-designed website are still fully customizable, so you’re not locked into anything. But this is a great option for those who don’t want to devote time to building their site from scratch. Bottom line: We highly recommend Wix to beginner bloggers who want to easily build a great-looking blog that’s both reliable and secure. Even experienced website builders will find there’s a lot they can get out of Wix. And with tools like its ecommerce functionality and Wix email marketing, you can grow and shape your website to optimize for things like profit and audience growth. For even more insights, refer to our in-depth Wix review to see how it works and how to get started. Squarespace – Best Blog Builder for Artists and DesignersSquarespace is ideal for creative professionals because it has stunning designs and built-in tools for monetizing blogs. Sign up now to start your free trial. The first thing I notice whenever I go onto a Squarespace blog is how gorgeous it typically looks. Photography and graphic designs seem to leap off the screen. The blog owners themselves seem to always be artistically-minded like illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, home decor experts, and more. Our panel was no exception. They were made up of a website design expert who teaches readers how to make stunning sites, a gardening influencer who frequently showcases mouth watering photos of his homegrown vegetables, and an interior designer who likes to flex their room designs off in gallery posts. And there’s a reason they all chose Squarespace as their platform. The trio rated Squarespace very highly across the board. Many of the users had glowing words to say about its ease of use and designs. “I think I had my blog up and running within a day,” said the user who runs an interior design blog. Their site frequently showcases captivating photographs of eclectically designed rooms. “Squarespace offers clean, beautiful templates that you can easily tweak.” ![]() Their claims are backed up by my own research of hundreds of Squarespace blogs. Each of the platform’s templates is created by their team of exceptional designers—and they all look stunning. Blogging with SquarespaceEditing your blog—from the contacts page, to the about page, to the home page, to your portfolio, to the actual blog itself—is very easy with Squarespace. Like Wix they have a drag-and-drop tool. And unlike WordPress, users don’t have to deal with an occasionally confusing backend editor. “They have a great What You See Is What You Get builder,” said one user. “That means when you’re building the page, you see what the page will look like as you’re building it.” ![]() That user is also known as Paige Brunson. She discovered the wonders of Squarespace years back and loved it so much she created a thriving career helping other people design on it too. She believes that Squarespace’s backend editor is superior to that of WordPress because you can see changes as you make them. “Sometimes, like in WordPress, you’re editing your site in the backend, but then you have to go to the front end to see what it’ll look like when you’re finished,” she said. “With Squarespace, as you’re building the blog post, you’re seeing the changes happen at the same time. And I think that’s really, really useful. That’s one aspect that makes it really easy to use.” Squarespace also gives you tools to add an ecommerce portion to your blog along with a newsletter integration. That can really help you scale and transform your blog for profitability and audience growth. ![]() “There are quite a few built-in features in Squarespace to build your business the way you want like a shop, integrated email marketing, a members area and podcast support,” said another user. “Plus they have many resources on their website about every feature and how to use them.” Cons of Blogging with SquarespaceWhere our panel of users found Squarespace lacking can be boiled down to one word: Customization. While the platform does offer ways to add email marketing, ecommerce, and membership functions to your site, it’s still relatively limited when it comes to overall customization when compared to a CMS like WordPress. “Custom CSS is only available in the Business Plan,” said one user. “It’s doable for my website, I found some great tutorials on the internet for extra CSS customization and I had to buy a sidebar plugin because it wasn’t integrated in my template. For more complex websites this might be a problem.” While Paige is an evangelist for Squarespace, she believes that it could be better when it comes to its mobile customization. “The mobile editor is the thing which my students find the most annoying,” she says. “With Squarespace, building a website takes time [on desktop], and then you have to literally go build the thing a second time [for mobile]. It’s just a lot more time consuming of a process.” Another user also had minor issues with Squarespace’s intuitiveness saying, “It could be more obvious what to perform certain actions. Sometimes you have to hunt and click here and there. Every now and then I’ve accidentally deleted a blog because I’ve clicked the wrong button.” Final Thoughts on SquarespaceSquarespace users had extremely positive things to say about the platform’s stunning templates and overall usability. Users might be turned off by the platform due to its lack of features. You also can’t access tools like the Yoast SEO plugin from WordPress. On top of all that, you need to pay a higher price for access to custom CSS. It will cost you a bit more to maximize Squarespace’s ecommerce capabilities, as you need to opt into a more expensive plan. If you’re interested in this blogging platform, check out our step-by-step guide on getting started with Squarespace. Bottom line: Squarespace offers great looking templates, easy drag-and-drop designs, and an opportunity to show off your art, photographs, and more. Give Squarespace a try today. LinkedIn – Best for NetworkingLinkedIn offers a simple way to share your industry expertise and become a thought leader directly from your profile. Start blogging on LinkedIn with a free account today. LinkedIn gives you a built-in audience of over 740 million business professionals. The audience comes from all stripes, including HR, digital marketing, finance, tech, and more. Many of them are highly active on the site, frequently sharing thought leadership and articles with one another via their LinkedIn feed. So if you’re interested in establishing yourself as an influencer or thought leader in your business space, the audience on LinkedIn is your bread-and-butter. The platform has a ready-made culture and set of expectations that a business blogger would dream of creating on their own site. The challenge for you is creating compelling and share-worthy content to build a following. ![]() After all, LinkedIn is a social network. Your influence grows in proportion to the size of your network. The more posts you publish, the more connection requests and followers you’ll attract. Since it’s a social network for industry professionals, that makes it a great channel to access prospects and get quick feedback from peers on your B2B-style articles. You have an opportunity to put your thought leadership in front of everyone from potential clients and customers, to recruiters, to influencers in your field. And, you can turn your audience into partners and customers. Each of the users on our panel leveraged LinkedIn blogging to make key networking connections and develop an audience. “So far, I have experienced getting higher-quality clients through LinkedIn by blogging and writing content on the platform,” said one user I talked to. It might seem painfully obvious, but not a lot of people realize that the platform can be incredibly lucrative if you’re in business. The folks on LinkedIn are typically high-earners. They’re C-Suite executives. They’re industry movers and shakers who want to innovate and build lasting businesses. And they’re willing to pay a premium to the right person who will get them there. Said one user, “I can probably make $1,000 or so from LinkedIn every month indirectly if I really tried.” Blogging on LinkedInCreating a blog on LinkedIn is very simple and just requires a profile, which is free. From there, it’s just a matter of clicking on a Facebook-like status button and creating an article. Like Medium, LinkedIn uses that Gutenberg-style editor that’s fairly intuitive. Our panel also found it very usable, with one saying, “The article feature is pretty easy to use. I simply add images, write the text, and publish—and I’m done. No crazy misalignment or formatting issues.” It’s also worth noting that there are differences between a LinkedIn post and article. A post is a smaller update you’d share with your feed and connections. Think along the lines of a quick anecdote or pro tip. They’re limited to 1,300 characters, which is about 5 lines. Articles are longer and more in-depth, of course. They’re something that the broader LinkedIn audience would be interested in reading. And who knows, maybe your post will get picked up by one of LinkedIn’s blogs on marketing or sales. ![]() A person who reads your article can also follow you from there, so they’ll be alerted when you publish your next article. Any articles you publish will appear in the Articles section of your LinkedIn profile. Is one better than the other? It depends, of course. After all, you might have a great idea for a long-form article that your audience will love. But, one of the users on our panel thinks that the shorter the better. As such, they recommend avoiding making articles entirely. “Go all in on multimedia posts and short status update posts,” said one user. “Do not post full articles here. If you want to get a lot of traction, post the right kind of content and figure out a way to divert that attention away to products or services that you can sell people on.” Cons of Blogging on LinkedInWhile LinkedIn does offer a lot of opportunities for building your brand and creating thought leadership, it lacks in some vital areas. For one, there’s no intuitive way for folks to access an archive of your past articles like you might find in Medium or a normal Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress blog. Instead, the article will live in your Activity feed, which requires you to click on your profile, then your Activity feed, and then scroll down to your article. That’s a lot of work to find just one article. “There’s not great discoverability for people who want to read my past blog posts on LinkedIn in my opinion,” said one user who went on to opine about the lack of a newsletter feature to help promote their blog. That user also had a strong condemnation of blogging on LinkedIn as a whole, saying, “Articles notoriously get horrible reach in the feed. Creating an actual blog on LinkedIn, for me, is worthless.” You also shouldn’t be using LinkedIn blogs a tool for attracting candidates. It’s much easier to use recruiting software. Final Thoughts on LinkedIn BlogsLinkedIn is a social networking platform first and foremost. Everything else comes secondary to that goal. The same goes for their articles. It’s not a blogging platform per se in the traditional sense—but it can be a very effective blogging tool to grow your network and make connections. And some of our users have made a lot of money by using their blogs to make these connections. “I make money indirectly from LinkedIn. I have to make a post, then throw a link to a webinar in the comments section. Some people sign up and then purchase my course through the webinar later on,” one user explained. But ultimately, it’s not a very effective blogging platform if blogging is all you want to do. We’d recommend going with any of the previous options if that’s your goal and supporting your blog by sharing your posts on LinkedIn. Bottom line: LinkedIn is a decent blogging platform only if you’re using it to support a platform you own, like your business’s website. You can’t directly monetize it, and you’re entirely dependent on an algorithm for reach and engagement. But if you’re blogging about business subjects like management or marketing, LinkedIn is a good opportunity to grow your network and audience. There’s a pre-existing community of people there talking about those topics and ready to read your posts. Medium – Best for Writing to a Built-In AudienceMedium is great for people that want don’t want to build an audience from scratch because it already has over 60 million readers and the opportunity to get paid through their partner program. Sign up now to try Medium for free. Medium is easily one of the most polarizing platforms out there—and it’s certainly the most controversial one on our list. It’s home to bloggers focused on crafting niche content for readers. It’s also where you can find some of the most thought-provoking, incendiary content online. What really makes Medium stand out for writers is its built-in communities of readers. People can browse a vast library of publications and topics, find your blog, and subscribe to it with a single click–they can even choose to get your blog posts sent to their email inbox every time you post. Writers can post pieces under their personal account, a publication they own and run, or submit their writing to publications for a chance to be published on other Medium blogs and put in front of even more readers. “It’s just plugging and chugging and going,” one user told us. “Even if you have no writing experience, and just want to write, it’s not hard to get started and find an audience.” The ability to tap into a well of readers was a draw for many users—especially after their less-than-stellar experience on another platform on this list. A huge draw of Medium is not having to try to drive traffic to your own independent website. “I definitely recommend not even starting with a traditional WordPress blog,” one user said. “Just go on Medium because it works as a blogging tool and a social media platform. Naturally, there’s going to be a much larger audience there for people to read your work.” Medium also gives you the ability to get paid for writing through the Medium Partner Program. This allows writers to get paid for their work based on the amount of engagement their articles get. Some bloggers routinely make six figures a year from their posts—though even Medium is quick to point out that only 7% make more than $100 per year. All this makes it a good platform if you want to find and cultivate an audience of fans of your writing, and make a little bit of cash along the way. ![]() Blogging on MediumThere are two primary ways to blog on Medium:
After using Medium to do both, I can attest to it being incredibly simple to use. All you have to do is click “Write a Story” and you can get started writing a Medium article. The dashboard is a lot like WordPress’s Gutenberg editor, so it’s fairly intuitive. Once you’re finished, add a few tags and click “publish” and it’s out in the world. Submitting to other publications is a good way to access audiences. However, you’ll be writing on spec. And there’s a chance they might reject your article entirely. The alternative to that is creating your own Medium publication which I definitely recommend. This gives you the option to add other writers and editors to your blog, along with the ability to accept submissions. This can really help pad out your editorial calendar with little effort on your part—so you can have access to a stream of content for your readers. ![]() One of the users on our panel actually helped found one of the biggest and most popular publications on Medium: The Writing Cooperative. In fact, they currently boast about 226,000 followers on the site and publish multiple times each and every day. “The Writing Cooperative began on Medium in 2014. In some regards, we’ve grown up with the platform” said co-founder Justin Cox. “[…] The Writing Cooperative’s content is often recommended in user feeds, which is a great way to grow an audience.” Justin went on to say that he doesn’t make a living off of the Writing Cooperative, but he and his co-founder are able to generate some income by setting up a Patreon for the publication as well as launching a coaching program for their community. “Everything we do is geared towards supporting and encouraging writers,” he added. You also have the option to accept submissions from other writers when you create a publication. That could be really great to help grow your blog while making connections with more users. Cons of a Medium BlogWhile our panel of Medium bloggers found that the platform was overall easy to use, they had varied perspectives on how it ultimately works to build an audience. One of our users was simply not happy with the way the platform compensates them and signal boosts (or rather, doesn’t signal boost) their content. “Medium did help me grow my audience by pushing my best content towards external promotions and new Medium users, but lately, this has stopped and I presume it is because of the large volume of new writers,” the user said. “When it comes to attracting new readers, I feel like Medium can do a lot more.” They went on to explain how they were also frustrated by the platform’s payment system and the lack of transparency surrounding it. In fact, they even had to go a step further to help better market their blog. “I had to invest money from my own pocket to publicize the publication which I think attracted new readers, but my efforts didn’t really get recognized by Medium,” they explained. Another user expressed a similar opinion in regards to the payment program. “I make a few bucks,” they told me. “It does not pay nearly enough to justify the time and effort I put into writing.” Inherent to the platform’s structure is a very Hunger Games-style of gaining readers and making money. You’re constantly competing against other articles for people’s attention, and fighting against bigger and more established publications. This can be very discouraging for some bloggers—especially if you’re trying to launch a publication for the first time. “Sometimes, even if your article is posted into those huge exclusive publications, they don’t even get much engagement in the first place,” said another user. “So, it’s kind of like you’re fighting for nothing.” That’s some strong criticism that I can’t help but agree with to a certain extent. Medium is a platform for bloggers willing to put in the hours and craft content that people want to read, but it can be very discouraging both at the outset and after you start to gain traction. Final Thoughts on MediumMedium is a big player in the blogging space with the likes of former President Barack Obama and A-list celebs like Chrissy Teigen using the platform. Big brands like Patagonia also leverage the site to host their own blogs. It’s a good platform for building an audience if you’re diligent at it and publish consistently—but its lack of transparency when it comes to the algorithm, as well as its Partner Program, resulted in a lower rank on the list. Bottom line: Medium is a good all-around traditional blogging platform that gives you the opportunity of getting your writing in front of more people and potentially make some money blogging. Like our user panel said: It’s a blogging platform along with a social media platform. The downside is that there are limits on how high you can go as a part of Medium. You won’t own the traffic, and you won’t be able to do things like sell ad placements, for example, so your profit potential is quite limited. You can use Medium to get a feel for blogging, find your voice, and start attracting an audience. But once you gain a following, you’re better served jumping ship to another platform, like WordPress, that you have full control over. How We Chose Which Products to ReviewWe chose our top five blogging platforms by focusing on four essential qualities:
Tip: You can jump down below for an even more in-depth look at these criteria. We researched dozens of the most popular and prominent blog builders and platforms using the four elements above as a way to judge the blog builder’s quality. This process involved “lighter” research that looked different from platform to platform. We created accounts and built out simple test blog pages. We also looked at each of the platform’s features and tools across their payment plans if they had them. By doing this, we were able to get a sense of each blog site’s strengths, weaknesses, and target users. Finally, we narrowed down our list from 12+ to five once we felt like we had a set of products that exemplified each of the criteria in unique ways. We had a good amount of general knowledge, and some insights into the user interface for each platform at this point. But we didn’t know what it was like to use each product for years or what it was like to depend on these blogs for business. So we set out to find people who did. How We Reviewed Each ProductThe best way to understand the quality of a blogging platform is by talking to actual users. They’re the ones who have hands-on experience with the product, having spent anywhere from hours to years building their blogs. They know what’s working, what they love, and what needs to be improved. To get real reviews from real users, we reached out to users across each of the platforms in order to attain a panel of three users each. In all, we reached out to 116 users in order to gain our results. To verify they were actually users of the blog platform, we:
Once verified, we asked each user if they would be willing to either be surveyed or interviewed about their experience on the blog platform. What We Learned on Choosing the Best Blogging PlatformOur biggest takeaway from our research: There simply isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to blogging. A person using Medium is going to be a different blogger than a person using WordPress. The right platform for you is ultimately going to be unique to your needs. However, there are a few elements that we believe are universally applicable when it comes to looking for the right blogging platform. Easy Learning CurveIf you’re a new blogger, you probably don’t want to start out with an overly complex platform. You might feel ambitious and want to learn how to create a big website, but I highly recommend not doing so for two reasons: 1. You’re going to get burned out—fast. It’s easy to bite off way more than you can chew in the beginning. When that happens, you’re going to end up getting tired of your blogging project very fast. You might even abandon it completely as a result. 2. There are much easier (and better) ways to do it. All of the platforms on this list are easy to use, but some are easier to pick up than others. So find a platform that lets you launch quickly, cheaply, and easily. Medium and LinkedIn are fairly straightforward to get started: You just create an account and you can start publishing immediately after. You also don’t have to worry about things like domain names, web hosting, or even page customization with these choices. The platforms take care of all that for you. But if you’re a beginner who wants to own their platform with a personal blog site, Wix is the standout choice. Add a button, image, or embed a video–it only takes a few clicks. ![]() They have the easiest learning curve of any blog builder we’ve seen yet. And the users that we talked to had glowing reviews of their own experience using the platform. “[Wix’s] very intuitive and has great tools to create individual website designs,” one Wix user told us. So if you’re not afraid to get your hands a little dirty, then I highly recommend Wix. They’ll ultimately give you the best combination of simplicity and website power. Niche-Friendly CustomizationPerhaps the most important decision you can make for your blog is what topic you’ll be writing about. This is going to determine your audience, its size, and your ultimate success. No matter what you choose, you’re going to want to make sure that your blog allows you to customize its look and feel to fit your topic’s niche. This helps develop your blog and brand’s identity, and create a stronger relationship with your audience. As you can see above, the websites that we reviewed do not all have the same level of customization. For example, WordPress gives you many more opportunities to customize everything, from your website’s colors and article layouts to your domain name and the fonts that you use. If there’s something you can’t do right from your dashboard, you can simply install a plugin or a widget to get it done for you (or get your hands dirty with a little code). Both Wix and Squarespace follow WordPress in terms of customization. Each of these platforms offers thousands of themes you can use in order to choose the exact look and feel you want from your blog. They’re the best option if you want to go for a more traditional blog and own your own platform. Platforms like Squarespace even offer native tools to do things like add an ecommerce store to even further customize your blog. ![]() “One of the reasons why I recommend Squarespace to small businesses or bloggers is because you don’t need to go get a third-party plugin to add a shop or to have your Instagram in the footer, or create your email newsletter collection,” said Paige Brunton, the Squarespace design coach on our panel. “It’s really an all-in-one system, which is really wonderful.” Websites like LinkedIn and Medium offer limited customization options, only giving you the ability to change your logo and the images in your blog posts. However, the tradeoff is that they offer better ways to grow your audience. Audience-Building ToolsGood blogging platforms offer you different tools to grow your audience. This could come in the form of SEO tools (to help your posts rank better in search results) or they could help connect you with new readers on their own platform. For example, Medium is a great blogging platform if you want to tap into a large, existing audience and go viral. Be warned: It’s going to take work—and even then, success isn’t guaranteed. You’re beholden to their algorithm and that’s always going to come with risk. “Medium did help me grow my audience by pushing my best content,” one user told us. “But lately, this has stopped […] When it comes to attracting new readers I feel like Medium can do a lot more.” Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress have a variety of marketing tools, such as integrations with Google Analytics and SEO dashboards to help grow traffic. In fact, any tool that helps you elevate your search engine rankings can really help turbo-charge your audience building efforts. There’s a reason WordPress’s Yoast SEO tool is as popular as it is. When you focus on getting organic traffic, it saves you money you’d otherwise spend on digital ads on Facebook or Google. Overall, this is great if you want to have a much more hands on, under-the-hood approach to your growth strategy. Platforms like LinkedIn lack these tools. However, they can be a part of a bigger growth strategy by allowing you to make vital connections with influencers and change-makers in your industry. Those connections can really help grow your blogging reach as well. Profit PotentialLet’s be real: You want to make money with your blog. That’s totally fine. In fact, we encourage you to do so. However, the blog platform you ultimately choose is going to have a massive impact on how much money you can possibly make and how you make it. For example, with LinkedIn, you’ll be the most limited in your profit making potential. That’s because the platform won’t allow you to implement typical blog profit-making strategies such as on-page advertising—but you can still make money by promoting things like webinars, ebooks, and online courses. Medium offers its Partner Program that allows writers to earn money on their articles based on “member engagement.” That means if other people read, comment, and like your story, you’ll be paid by Medium on the strength of that. But, you still won’t be able to earn money from advertising. And also, their Partner Program seems to be a fairly difficult way to make a living of any sort. We even had one user tell us that they had to invest their own money to publicize their publication. Of course, you can still use those sites to make money via strategies like affiliate marketing or coaching and other freelance services. But remember: You’ll also be completely beholden to their algorithm for traffic. That means one algorithm change can mean the difference between making money and completely shuttering your business. That’s not an exaggeration either. Algorithm changes have been notorious for shutting down once successful blogs by throttling their traffic. If making money is important to you, then I highly recommend controlling your own platform by building your own blog with WordPress. You’ll be able to fully customize your site and build out your blog to optimize for profit. Platforms like Squarespace and Wix offer native ways of monetizing your blog by giving you tools to add ecommerce stores to your website. However, they don’t boast the same level of customization that WordPress does—and so you’ll be more limited in how you can make money and grow your blog. Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace give you a way of truly owning your blog at the end of the day. It’s your platform, so you can do with it what you want. You won’t have to worry about algorithm changes ruining your traffic. You’ll also be able to implement as many or as few profit-making methods as you please. The Top Blogging Platforms and Blog Sites in SummaryYour unique needs will determine the blogging platform you ultimately choose. I can see how some people would naturally gravitate to Wix as the easiest drag-and-drop blogging tool. But WordPress has everything you need to get the most out of your blogging experience. You’ll be able to find what you’re looking for using our list above and methodology to guide you. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/best-blogging-platforms/ |
Sean BrianWhile radishes deter certain insects naturally, they require similar growing conditions as carrots. Although the crops both have roots, radishes grow and germinate quicker, allowing carrots to continue growing in the soil space available when the radishes are harvested, Archives
April 2023
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