Pick the wrong host and you'll spend more time managing renewals and fixing slow load times than actually running your business. UK small business owners face a particular version of this problem: hosts targeted at this market frequently lure you in with sub-£3 pricing, then hit you with a 4x or 5x renewal increase at the end of year one.
If you want to start quickly, GoDaddy's UK hosting from £3.99/month is a recognised and reliable choice. But IONOS at £1/month for your first year and Hostinger's LiteSpeed-powered infrastructure are serious alternatives depending on your priorities.
We tested all three on a real WordPress installation, checking setup time, dashboard usability, page performance, backup reliability, and how support actually behaves when something goes wrong. The differences between them are more significant than the pricing pages suggest.
For a full breakdown of all the hosting providers we have rated, visit our UK web hosting comparison.
Most buyers focus on the headline monthly price. That's the wrong place to start. The price you pay in month 13 is the one you'll pay every month thereafter, and the strongest-looking deals in this market can hide renewals that are three to five times the introductory rate.
Six things actually matter when you're choosing a host for a UK small business.
GoDaddy is the most recognisable name in this comparison and, in our testing, one of the more predictable to set up. The Economy plan starts at £3.99/month for the first year on annual billing, which includes 100GB of web space, a free domain for the first year, a free SSL certificate, and cPanel access.
The cPanel inclusion is worth emphasising. If you work with a developer, or plan to in future, cPanel is the control panel they will almost certainly already know. Installing WordPress, setting up email accounts, managing databases, and creating subdomains are all handled through an interface that has been the default in the industry for decades.
GoDaddy also offers Windows hosting, which is relevant only if your business uses ASP.NET applications or Windows-specific server software. For most small businesses running WordPress or a standard CMS, this won't matter, but it's an option the other two don't provide.
Where GoDaddy is weaker is on raw performance. In our WordPress benchmark, load times were competitive but not the fastest we measured. Support on live chat is responsive, though during peak hours we experienced some wait times. Renewal pricing is the main watch point: plan to budget for a meaningful step up at year two.
For a detailed walkthrough of GoDaddy's hosting and website builder offer, see our GoDaddy review.
IONOS has been running hosting infrastructure for over 30 years. Their entry-level hosting starts at £1/month for the first year, with a free domain, free SSL, and a feature no other provider at this price point offers: a dedicated personal consultant assigned to your account from day one.
The personal consultant is a real person you can call. When you're setting up hosting for the first time, that access to a human expert carries practical value that a ticket queue or chat bot does not. In our testing, the consultant service was responsive and genuinely useful for setup questions.
The data centre infrastructure is IONOS's other strong suit. UK and EU locations are ISO 27001 certified, daily backups are included on all plans, and IONOS publishes a 99.99% uptime SLA. In our testing across a six-week period, uptime matched that figure.
Two things to be aware of. The renewal price after year one sits at approximately £9/month, a significant jump from £1, though still competitive against GoDaddy's standard rates. IONOS also uses Plesk as its control panel rather than cPanel. If you or your developer has never used Plesk before, expect a short orientation period. Cancellation can also be complex, so read the contract terms before committing to a long-term plan.
Read our full IONOS review for our in-depth testing notes.
Hostinger is the performance pick of this comparison. Their shared hosting runs on LiteSpeed servers with NVMe SSD storage, and in our WordPress benchmark that combination consistently produced the fastest page load times of the three providers. For an SEO-focused site or any business where load speed directly affects conversion, that matters.
Plans start at £2.99/month with a free domain included, and free SSL certificates are included across all plans without restriction. UK server locations are available when you're setting up your account, which keeps your data within the region and gives your UK-based visitors lower latency.
The hPanel control panel is Hostinger's own creation. In our testing it's cleaner and faster to navigate than cPanel for everyday tasks: adding email accounts, managing files, and adjusting PHP settings are all a few clicks rather than a navigation exercise. The trade-off is that advanced configurations some developers rely on aren't available, and the support documentation is smaller than cPanel's decades-deep community archive.
Two weaknesses are worth calling out before you commit. Daily backups are only included on the Business plan and above. If you sign up on the Premium plan to save money, you're getting weekly backups on a live business site, and you should set up independent backups via a plugin to cover the gap. Renewal prices also jump significantly at the end of your introductory term. Budget for that increase from the outset.
No phone support is available. Support is handled through live chat and an AI assistant. For most routine queries this is workable, but if speaking directly to a person when problems arise is important to your business, IONOS is the better fit.
Read our full Hostinger review for the complete performance breakdown.
Here is how the three hosts compare on the metrics that matter most for UK small businesses.
The performance gap between Hostinger and the other two is real but not dramatic on low-traffic sites. It becomes more significant at higher traffic volumes or on content-heavy sites where every second of load time affects bounce rate.
The right choice depends less on headline pricing and more on what you're actually building and how you plan to manage it.
For most UK small business owners starting from scratch, IONOS takes the overall win. The year-one entry price is the lowest we tested, the personal consultant removes the biggest frustration of early-stage hosting management, and the ISO 27001 certified UK data centres handle GDPR compliance without additional effort. The renewal jump at year two is a real cost to plan for, but the standard renewal rate remains competitive.
Hostinger is the pick if performance is your primary concern. LiteSpeed servers and NVMe storage deliver faster page loads than the other two hosts in this comparison, and free SSL across all plans keeps the total cost predictable. Use the Business plan from the start if daily backups matter to you.
GoDaddy is the right call when cPanel compatibility is a requirement, you're already in the GoDaddy ecosystem, or Windows hosting is on your list.
All three offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can test your preferred option with low risk. For our full list of UK hosting providers and their ratings, visit our web hosting comparison, or read our individual reviews of IONOS and Hostinger.
