Best High-Speed Internet Providers for Small Businesses of 2023

The bottom line: The best high-speed internet provider for small businesses is Verizon. Verizon does a great job ensuring affordable prices, fast speeds, and customer service. Verizon customer service outranks all other competitors. 

Every business is different, though, and there are excellent brands other than Verizon that also might meet your more specific needs or concerns. We recommend Frontier for best budget, AT&T for speed, and Comcast for tech support. Of course, your business is outside of the city and in more of a rural area, we recommend Viasat. 

Here's how we arrived at the list above. We included only plans with download speeds of 25 Mbps or more to match FCC guidelines for broadband internet. We also left out any plans that were extraordinarily expensive for the download speeds they provide—they're just not worth the money.

In the end, our list of best broadband service providers includes several major companies with cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), and fiber-optic plans.

Verizon serves up the best combination of business internet speeds, reliability, and support.

Although Verizon sells a few business DSL plans, none have speeds at 25Mbps or more. For truly fast speeds, fiber is hard to beat. Verizon's fiber plans, branded Fios, offer you a chance at near-gigabit connections.

What do we mean by “near gigabit”? Verizon’s fastest plan—Fios Gigabit Connection—gives you maximum download speeds of 940Mbps with upload speeds up to 880Mbps. That’s lightning fast by today’s standards, but it doesn’t quite reach 1,000Mbps, the true definition of gigabit speed. Yet with fiber plans that consistently meet the speeds Verizon advertises, and then some, we’ll let that bit of fudging slide.

Another feather in Verizon’s cap is its customer service. We understand that most internet providers have poor reputations. But the fact that industry-rating juggernaut J.D. Power gave Verizon second place for customer satisfaction among small to medium-sized businesses should give you warmer feelings.

Verizon’s fastest plan is priced at about $249 per month. That may be a bit expensive for some very small businesses, but it’s far better than the nearly $500 that Comcast charges for gigabit speeds.

Many Verizon plans offer symmetric speeds, which means you get the same speed for downloads and uploads. Fast upload speeds can significantly improve activities that require sending data from your device, including videoconferencing in real time and uploading large files to cloud storage.

One gripe: contracts. While some ISPs—like Spectrum and AT&T—offer contract-free plans, Verizon uses a 12-month agreement that renews automatically. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s something you should know in advance.

The bottom line: Verizon Fios offers an impressive array of high-speed internet plans to fit businesses of just about any size.

If you saw the plan prices for our picks above, you may be worried that an affordable high-speed internet connection is beyond reach. With plans priced at the hundreds of dollars per month, budget-conscious businesses need an alternative.

Plus, each plan comes with free access to Frontier Business Suite. This is regularly an $800/year plan that includes SmartVoice line and Wi-fi enabled phone, access and backup of 200GB of data in the cloud anywhere you are, a multi-device security pro and, finally, an optimized Wi-Fi router. 

You can also add Frontier Internet Backup to your high-speed plan for an additional fee. Using a cellular modem, Frontier Internet Backup keeps your business—and all of your devices—online when internet outages occur for seamless operations and uninterrupted productivity.

All of Frontier’s high-speed internet plans come in under or just above $150 per month.

Now for Frontier’s major shortcomings. Frontier’s customers lodge a lot of complaints against the internet service provider. One common grievance is high latency. Latency, which refers to data transfer delay time, can cause serious headaches for businesses that require fast and reliable connections. Activities like video streaming are at risk of disruption from high latency.

Despite customer service and reliability concerns, you should consider Frontier if getting a low price for high-speed plans is your No. 1 priority.

If you’re focused on finding the fastest business internet plans possible, we recommend AT&T. Business plans from AT&T soar all the way up to 1,000Mbps download and upload speeds, offering you true gigabit connection potential.

Several of AT&T's fiber plans give you the option of symmetric speeds—but at a lofty price. If your business is a frequent user of upload-heavy applications and real-time communication software, you should consider one of these plans with symmetric speeds.

AT&T partially makes up for its high pricing in great customer service rankings. AT&T is currently our top pick for great internet service, and J.D. Power agrees: In 2021, AT&T ranked first for customer satisfaction in the small to medium-sized business category—though only third for very small businesses.³

There’s a lot to like about Comcast, including fiber plans with symmetric speeds up to 1Gbps. And its pricing, while not the cheapest, is competitively matched against other providers like Verizon and AT&T.

Plus, Comcast plans come with zero-cost installation, a 30-day trial period, and access to tons of extra apps, software, and tools for Wi-Fi, security, and more. We especially like that Comcast offers free 24/7 tech support. Some providers charge extra for top-notch customer care, but Comcast, as far as we can tell, offers solid help any hour of the day or night.

We couldn’t talk about Comcast without mentioning its dreadful reputation with residential customers. However, Comcast business customers don’t rate their ISP nearly as harshly as their home-based counterparts.

We breathed a bit easier when we realized that Comcast truly does offer a solid internet option that’s super reliable and super fast.

As the only satellite internet provider on this list, Viasat’s widespread availability makes it the best for rural businesses. Even if you operate out of locations that other ISPs don’t touch, you can almost certainly get Viasat’s satellite internet service.

Unlike the satellite internet providers of the past, Viasat offers both availability and speed. Its business internet plans, with download speeds ranging from 35Mbps to 100Mbps, can compete with most other broadband providers.

Plus, Viasat’s state-of-the-art satellite technology minimizes other rural internet issues, such as latency, so you can keep your business up and running—no matter where you operate.

Even with its improved technology, Viasat does still have data limits. It doesn’t use hard data caps—that is, Viasat won’t simply switch off your internet after you use all your data—but it will throttle (slow) your internet if you use more than your allotted daily data. If this poses a problem, you can always upgrade to a plan with more data.

Now, we still don’t recommend satellite internet for everyone. If you have other ISPs in your area, you can probably get the same speeds for a lower cost from a different provider. But if you’ve got a business high in the mountains or out on the plains, then Viasat provides a solid option (even if it’s the only one).

Want high-speed internet for your office but feel squeamish about signing a long-term contract? Spectrum will connect you to cable internet speeds up to 1000Mbps (wireless speeds may vary) totally contract-free.

Spectrum, a Charter Communications brand, provides cable internet to U.S. businesses. The upside to cable internet is that you access it through the same cable modems used to deliver cable TV, which makes this internet widely available. Spectrum provides fiber connections in some areas, but the service is so limited that we haven’t included the plans here.

Spectrum offers three high-speed cable options to business customers: 100, 300/400, and 1000. Each plan denotes the download speed you can expect from your connection in megabits per second.

Where Spectrum falters is its upload speeds. Cable technology limits how much upstream heft you can get, and Spectrum’s plans can get you up to only 20Mbps upstream.

Another trouble spot is customer service. Spectrum has been embroiled in legal troubles for the last few years, especially in the state of New York, where it failed to follow through on service promises made with its acquisition of Time Warner Cable. We’re keeping an eye on the situation—poor customer satisfaction could knock Spectrum down in our books.

But if you’re outside of New York or less bothered by poor customer service ratings, Spectrum cable Internet appears as a rosy alternative to expensive DSL and fiber providers that lock you into lengthy contracts.

Verizon is our pick for the best overall high-speed business internet provider. But just because the ISP is our number one choice doesn’t mean it’s the right one for your business. Consider the factors important to you—cost, contracts, customer service—and then choose the one that best fits your business’s demands.

Make sure you can get the ISP you want—find business internet providers near you.

Speed and bandwidth are another two more ambiguously used terms in internet parlance. But we can define them a bit clearer than broadband internet and high-speed internet.

• Speed is the rate at which an internet connection transmits data from one end to the other. Measured in bits per second, most modern high-speed internet speeds range between 25 megabits (about 1 million bits) and 1 gigabit (about 1,000 megabits) per second.
• Bandwidth refers to the maximum capacity of a connection to carry internet data. Although ISPs often use speed to market their plans, they’re actually selling bandwidth. For example, a 100Mbps plan has the capacity to deliver data at 100 megabits per second. But beware—you may not actually experience the advertised speed all the time.

Now back to the question: How much speed or bandwidth do you actually need? The answer depends on the type and frequency of internet activity your business engages in on a day-to-day basis.

While guidelines on speed use vary, here’s our recommendation for the speed you’ll need to run your business smoothly.

Price and speed. That’s what matters when it comes to choosing a business internet provider, right?

Well, not entirely. The truth is that unless you have an unlimited budget (who does?) or run a supremely data-heavy business (not likely), you’ll have other factors to consider. Here are the ones we focus on.

• Connection type: Depending on your business’s location, connection type may be a key consideration. Some areas may have only a few internet connection choices—or even just one.
• Customer and industry ratings: Customer reviews of internet providers tend toward the hellish. But remember that businesses often have different experiences than residential customers. Make sure you understand how a potential ISP handles business customer complaints and concerns.
• Fees: Your customers hate hidden fees, and so should you. Check to see if you’ll be paying your provider extra for things like installation, static IPs, or early termination.
• Bundles: Most internet providers offer special deals for packaging more than one service under the same roof. Whether phone or VoIP or TV, consider bundles as a way to shave off some extra cost when you need several services.
• Data caps: You’ll run into limits on the amount of data you can use most often with satellite and wireless providers. It can be costly or disruptive to exceed these caps, so ensure you pick an internet plan that can accommodate your data needs.
• Cloud, security, and software services: From backing up your precious business data to running email, accounting, and e-commerce applications, many ISPs include or offer special rates on software and cloud-based services.
• Hardware: Each internet type requires a unique set of equipment to get up and running. Some setups are simple—just a modem connected to an office cable line. But others, like satellite internet, may require hefty hardware—and hefty costs too.

But others, like satellite internet, may require hefty hardware—and hefty costs too.

We analyzed each business internet service provider's affordability, overall value, suitability for growing businesses, ease-of-use, and customer service, among other factors.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.