Verizon vs. Comcast Business Internet: What’s the Best ISP for Small Business?

If you’ve been shopping for business-grade internet, you’ve probably encountered plans from two well-known internet service providers (ISPs): Verizon and Comcast.

Both of these mega-corporations offer high-speed internet access to businesses across the nation. But which one should you choose to carry your precious business data? According to our research, that’s an easy decision.

With Fios business internet, Verizon offers faster plans at lower prices and outstanding customer experience.

But you shouldn’t dismiss Comcast business-class internet. Despite the company’s poor reputation with certain pockets of the public, business customers can find a lot to like about the company.

In this post, we compare internet plans from both companies so you can decide on the right business ISP for you.

Verizon Communications, a child of the late-twentieth-century breakup of the colossal Bell Telephone Company,¹ is a US-based, international telecommunications organization. Verizon provides landline and wireless internet, phone, and TV services to businesses and residents across the globe. Business internet plans from Verizon, depending on location, include digital subscriber line (DSL) and fiber-optic internet connections.

Read more in our Verizon Business internet review.

Comcast is a national provider of TV, phone, and internet services. The company is probably best known for its cable TV service, which uses the the Xfinity brand name. As an international conglomerate, Comcast owns NBCUniversal and many other media companies. Depending on the location, American business customers can purchase Comcast cable or hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) internet plans.

See our Comcast Business internet review to learn more.

Verizon and Comcast plans: DSL, HFC, and fiber

It can be difficult to compare the business internet plans that Verizon and Comcast sell because the connections they use can be significantly different. It’s true that in some areas, both companies offer what some call “purely fiber-optic” plans, which use glass fiber-optic cables to deliver blazingly fast internet speeds.

If you compare only these fiber plans, Verizon came out on top. Verizon offers fiber plans from $84.99 to $214.99, with download speeds from 75 to 940 Mbps.

Comcast, on the other hand, sells fiber plans starting at $69.95 for 25 Mbps. The top-speed Comcast plan—Business Internet 1 Gig—reaches download speeds at a full 1,000 Mbps (or 1 Gbps), but it’ll cost you $300 more per month than the similarly fast Verizon plan.

Data effective 6/1/2018. At publishing time, pricing and speeds are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

Both companies’ fiber plans are symmetric, which means their upload speeds match (or nearly match, in the case of Verizon’s fastest plan) their download speeds. Fast upload speeds are essential if your business commonly uploads or shares large files or hosts lots of video conferences.

Data effective 2/13/18. At publishing time, pricing and speeds are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

When it comes to the more widely available business internet connections, the comparison is trickier. Verizon’s DSL plans use copper phone lines to provide internet. Comcast commonly uses HFC technology, which combines traditional coaxial cables—the same that deliver cable TV—with fiber-optic connections. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. (Comcast also offers purely coaxial cable internet, but we didn’t include them in this post.)

Yet some things are clear: First, Verizon’s DSL plans are—on average—cheap, but slow. Verizon’s most affordable plan is $39.99. Still, that gets you speeds of only 1 Mbps download and 384 Kbps (only about one-third of 1 Mbps) upload. We wouldn’t recommend an internet plan that slow to our worst enemies.

Data effective 6/1/2018. At publishing time, pricing and speeds are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

Second, Comcast’s HFC plans tend to be pricier than Verizon’s, but they offer excellently fast download speeds. With download speeds ranging from 25 to 1,000 Mbps—alongside acceptably fast upload speeds—they’re worth considering for most businesses.

Data effective 2/13/18. At publishing time, pricing and speeds are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

Finally, Verizon business internet plans are limited to only a few areas in the US. Fios is available in just 10 eastern states and DC. The other high-speed internet plans are also available in only these 10 states and DC, but solely in areas where Fios isn’t an option. So although many of Verizon’s plans are faster and cheaper than Comcast’s, you’re far less likely to have access to Verizon.

*Uptime and latency guarantees confirmed from online chat conversations with internet service provider representatives.

When choosing between business internet service providers, you should consider the guarantees they offer. We contacted customer service and sales representatives from both companies to find out what—if any—guarantees they make about internet uptime and latency.

Although Verizon’s 99.99% uptime guarantee is better than average, Comcast boasts one more digit. Comcast’s 99.998% may not sound much better, but it means that over the course of a year, you can expect a Comcast business internet plan to be up and running over 40 minutes longer than Verizon’s.

However, Verizon does offer a 45 ms latency guarantee while Comcast has no such agreement for business customers. Latency, sometimes called ping, refers to how long it takes a package of data to make one round trip between two ends of an internet connection. The lower your latency, the fewer delays you’ll experience in your connection, which can be especially crucial for real-time computing applications.

Data effective 8/1/18. At publishing time, pricing and speeds are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

Like most high-speed internet service providers, Comcast and Verizon love to bundle. Internet bundles combine internet with other services like phone or TV, saving you a bit of money on the total package.

Verizon and Comcast offer similarly priced phone and TV bundles, but they differ in the type of services you get. With Verizon, you can get access to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which delivers phone service via your internet connection. Comcast provides traditional business phone services using copper-wire connections.

One extra perk of Verizon is that it’s also a wireless phone provider. With Verizon Wireless, you can get talk and use data with plans starting under $20 per month.

Verizon offers superior customer service

Our final area of focus is customer service. Business customers need to rely on their internet service provider to quickly and effectively troubleshoot problems, handle billing issues, and repair broken connections.

In this area, Verizon rules—literally. J.D. Power, an internationally recognized collector of corporate customer service data, conducts an annual “Business Wireline Satisfaction Study.” The study ranks business internet service providers by using surveys of the companies’ customers.

In the latest J.D. Power study, Verizon ranked first in every business segment surveyed.² If you’re looking for an internet company you can trust to keep you a happy customer, Verizon seems pretty good.

How much speed do I need for business internet?

We’d all like to have the fastest service at the lowest cost. But nobody’s budget is infinite, and every business owner looks to cut costs where they can.

But how can you know which internet plan will give you enough speed to keep your business running smoothly and your customers paying? We broke down internet download speeds to provide you with a better idea.

Remember, these figures signify only download speeds or the rate at which you receive data from your broadband internet provider. Upload speeds, which represent how fast you can send data up to the internet, are different. If you need fast upload speeds, fiber-optic network plans that offer symmetric download and upload speeds are your best bet.

What’s the difference between dedicated and shared internet connections?

It’s true: your internet plan is probably seeing other people. Most internet connections are shared, which means your service provider is sending data to more than one customer through a single line.

Shared internet can become a problem for businesses if you depend on high, reliable bandwidth for things like file sharing, video conferencing, and VoIP, because your fellow customers can hog the line.

Older internet technology like DSL and cable is prone to clogged bandwidth on shared lines. With fiber-optic technology, shared lines aren’t as much of a problem because data is sent at nearly light speed anyway.

Still, some businesses choose to purchase dedicated internet. With these connections, your internet connects to you and only you. No other customers can suck up that precious bandwidth.

Verizon and Comcast both offer dedicated internet plans for business customers. You’ll have to contact a sales representative to get pricing, but if you’re a data-heavy internet user, you may want to consider the option.

The takeaway

In the Verizon versus Comcast match up, Verizon is the winner. Although Comcast Business offers decent plans at affordable rates, it can’t beat Verizon’s superior customer service. And Verizon’s top fiber plans are faster and better priced than Comcast’s.

If you’ve been a Verizon or Comcast business customer, please tell us about your experience in the comments below.

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.

Sources

1. Verizon, “History and Timeline”

2. J.D. Power, “Business Wireline Satisfaction Study (2017)”