The Best SharePoint Hosting: What’s the Best for Your Site? [Updated: 2024]
Many businesses place a high value on their SharePoint sites for housing everything from historical HR (human resources) manuals to interactive live projects. See which web hosting providers support SharePoint with Windows web servers.
Key factors to take into account when selecting a SharePoint host include the number of user accounts included, the bandwidth allowed for data transfer, and the amount of space provided for document storage.
We’ve reviewed a wide range of hosting plans and selected the ones which have Windows hosting plans and SharePoint. We then shortlisted the hosts which offer great performance, high levels of uptime, and responsive customer service.
Then we also consulted our database of independent customer reviews spanning over 380 hosting providers and ended up with the top hosts for SharePoint.
What Is SharePoint?
SharePoint is a CMS (content management system) and collaboration tool for businesses. It allows business and enterprise clients to set up an internal web-based collaboration portal.
Employees can share ideas, read company-related news, share documents, and collaborate. SharePoint’s interface is similar to that of the Microsoft Office suite. The technical demand is minimal; this set of web technologies supports collaboration and the streamlining of projects.
SharePoint offers a great variety of features, such as the following:
Document and file management
Intranet portals
Social networks
Business intelligence center
Security
Websites
How To Choose SharePoint Web Hosting
Because most hosts only offer Linux hosting and SharePoint requires a Windows server, you’re limited on options. When choosing a SharePoint web hosting provider, you might consider some of the following key features to find the hosting provider that best matches your needs:
Document and file management: DMS (document management system) is a metadata system where users can upload and manage documents based on keywords. SharePoint’s DMS is considered a useful tool for large enterprises.
Intranet portals: You can build and manage intranet portals with ease. This helps both you and your company manage your data and applications in a personalized manner.
Social networks: Colleagues can create internal social networks for sections, teams, and departments. It’s equally as useful for private and personal use.
Business intelligence center: The business intelligence center offers pre-built lists and libraries, as well as creates valuable data connections. Again, a useful tool to have for enterprises of any size.
Security: Administrators have access to a variety of individual user restrictions. With tight control measures, data is certainly safer with SharePoint.
Websites: Manage your websites seamlessly with a simple website management interface. This allows webmasters with multiple projects to eliminate the hassle of balancing multiple websites simultaneously.
HostGator is a stable host for SharePoint at a good price. They offer Windows-dedicated packages specifically geared towards SharePoint 3.0. You get the same features on every plan, but the price depends on how much document storage and bandwidth you need, as well as the number of required email accounts.
You get free nightly backups, SSL, Office 2010 integration, and setup. You also get 24/7 support, and HostGator currently claims they have a 99.9% network uptime track record.
Pros and cons of HostGator
Pros
Reliable uptime and fast response times
Affordable hosting plans
Plenty of room for growth
No restriction on bandwidth, disk space, and emails
Rock-solid security
Free Weebly site builder
A great control panel with a ton of features ranging from a web-based file manager to more advanced features such as cron jobs, image manager, error logs, and Apache handlers
Cloud hosting option
Flexible email management
Free shared or private SSL certificate on all hosting packages
Why it’s best: Page load speeds up to 20 times faster than standard drives
As a solid host, A2 Hosting offers the choice of Windows Server 2012 or Linux as an operating system for all plans (shared or VPS [virtual private server]). Windows plans operate on Windows server 2012 and come with a free SSL certificate and SSD space. A2 Hosting's main focus is on speed. On top of the SSDs, certain plans have a “turbo” feature to speed up your SharePoint server even more. It also has 24/7 support if you run into any issues. Overall, A2 Hosting’s pricing is reasonable and a good middle ground between budget and performance.
Pros and cons of A2 Hosting
Pros
24/7/365 high-quality, English-speaking, expert support staff available via phone, email, and live chat
Choose a server location in Europe, North America, or Asia
Unmanaged and managed plans with plenty of options
Free SSDs included
Shopper Approved reviews reveal that 96% of the reviews posted on their site certainly would suggest friends and family use A2H.
Ideal for users of WordPress and loads pages six times faster
Compared to several hosting providers, A2 Hosting performs at high speed. There may sometimes be unresponsive pages, but they don’t happen often. Lags and load delays are also present, but they’re almost unnoticeable.
Cons
Mod_perl, Plexum, HTMLDoc (hypertext markup language Doc), PDFLib (portable document format Lib), MS SQL (Microsoft structured query language) and ColdFusion not supported
Limited datacenter locations
Limited hosting plans for Windows
Slightly more expensive than other hosting plans (but prices are still competitive)
Why it’s best: SSD disk space included for free and 99.9999% uptime guarantee
Hostwinds is a modern, flexible, high-performance host that has plans supporting SharePoint. They offer both managed and unmanaged Windows VPS plans, where you can choose from Window Server 2008, 2012, or 2016, depending on your version of SharePoint.
The plans are relatively expensive compared to the other posts here. However, they’re very fast, with SSD disk space included for free and tons of bandwidth. The VPS plans include a 99.9999% uptime guarantee and free nightly backups.
Pros and cons of Hostwinds
Pros
Offers a wide range of payment options and services, including Skrill and bitcoin
24/7 support is available through live chat, email, phone, and a great knowledge base
It’s one of the few hosts to offer both Windows and Linux hosting, as well as managed and unmanaged options.
SSDs and other features are available on many plans to speed up your website.
Cons
Hostwinds offers two U.S.-based data centers (Seattle and Dallas) and one in Europe (Amsterdam); if your site’s visitors are from outside these areas, your site may load more slowly.
Refunds have strict conditions and the money-back guarantee only applies to specific plans and services.
SharePoint is an enterprise-level web application framework and platform that provides content management, intranet, project management, and document management services. SharePoint is developed and sold by Microsoft.
What operating systems can I use for hosting SharePoint?
SharePoint is available for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012. It cannot run on Linux hosting.
What web servers are supported by SharePoint?
SharePoint works with Microsoft’s IIS (internet information services) web server.
Who uses Microsoft SharePoint?
SharePoint is primarily used by large- and mid-sized organizations with enterprise computing needs.
What does SharePoint do?
SharePoint provides a single platform for a large organization’s data and communication. It offers integrations with Microsoft Office and a rich programming API (application programming interface) for building business applications.
Is SharePoint available for free?
Yes. SharePoint Foundation is a freeware version of SharePoint. It does not include all the available features.
Do I have to host SharePoint myself?
No. Microsoft offers a SharePoint cloud services edition as part of their Office 360 subscription service. Additionally, many third-party vendors provide managed cloud-based SharePoint hosting plans.