Expert Reviews Best Business Broadband Awards 2023: The results

There are few things more critical to the efficient running of a small business than a fast and reliable broadband connection. Whether you’re working out of a home office or in dedicated business premises, getting the right connection at a decent price is key. After all, a day’s lost connection is often a day’s lost business.

We’ve used feedback from more than a thousand professionals to help you choose who to trust with your business broadband connection. We’ve ranked all the major providers in terms of speed, reliability, customer service and value for money to provide you with the key information required to make an informed decision.

Here, you’ll find a summary of the award winners in each category. But for greater detail on each of the four major providers in our roundup – including the different tariffs each one offers, as well as whether they feature such business-critical elements as 4G backup or phone lines – you should click through to the individual reviews.

There’s been a lot of change in the business broadband market in recent years, with major players joining forces to create new companies with fresh offerings. Our guide will give you the latest data on who’s performing well, and who needs to improve.

Expert Reviews Best Business Broadband Awards 2023

Overall winner: Vodafone Business

Highly Commended: BT Business

It wasn’t a difficult decision to make Vodafone Business the overall winner in the Expert Reviews Best Business Broadband Awards 2023 – the company completed a clean sweep of every category in this year’s awards.

More than eight out of ten Vodafone Business customers said they would be likely to recommend the company – a better score than any other provider here – and it’s not hard to see why, with 92.5% of customers claiming they’re satisfied with the customer service and 91.6% declaring themselves happy with speeds. Reliability is strong, too, with more than nine out of ten customers satisfied. Best of all, this high level of service doesn’t come at a stinging cost – more than eight out of ten were happy with the value for money they received.

BT Business, backed up by its mobile partner, EE, ran a close second. It won Highly Commended awards for reliability, value and speed, with only marginal differences in the scores between BT and Vodafone in all of those categories.

Read our full Vodafone Business broadband review for more details

Read our full BT Business broadband review for more details

Best customer service: Vodafone Business

Highly Commended: Sky Business

Vodafone’s customer service scores put it emphatically ahead of the pack. It was the only provider in our survey to have more than half of its customers declare themselves very satisfied with the customer service, with an overall satisfaction score of 92.5%.

The number of malcontents was low, too: 3.7% of Vodafone’s customers said they were dissatisfied with the service, and only BT Business did better here.

Sky Business is clearly doing things right when it comes to customer service as well. Not only does Sky generate the lowest level of complaints in the consumer broadband business, according to the latest figures from regulator Ofcom, but its Business team is clearly hitting the right notes too, as more than nine out of ten Sky Business customers were happy with the service in our survey.

Read our full Vodafone Business broadband review for more details

Read our full Sky Business broadband review for more details

Most reliable: Vodafone Business

Highly Commended: BT Business

A reliable connection is arguably the most important factor in business broadband provision – it doesn’t matter how fast your connection is if it doesn’t work – and Vodafone Business once again ticks the box.

More than nine out of ten Vodafone Business customers were happy with the reliability of their connection, with 43% declaring themselves “very satisfied” with reliability. Vodafone also had less than 3% of customers reporting dissatisfaction with their reliability, and not a single customer saying they were “very dissatisfied”.

BT Business pushed Vodafone close in this category, with an impressive 89.4% of customers happy with the reliability of their connection, and only 3.1% with cause for complaint.

Read our full Vodafone Business broadband review for more details

Read our full BT Business broadband review for more details

Best value: Vodafone Business

Highly Commended: BT Business

In tough economic times such as these, businesses are looking to squeeze every last bit of value from their suppliers. Given its dominance in all the other categories, it’s no surprise to see Vodafone Business picking up this award, too.

A solid 81.3% of Vodafone Business customers were satisfied with the value for money they were getting. That score was all but matched by Virgin Media Business, but Virgin had a far higher proportion of dissatisfaction. More than one in ten of Virgin’s customers were not happy with the value on offer, while it was less than one in 20 for Vodafone customers.

BT Business collects the Highly Commended gong – eight out of ten of its customers declared themselves satisfied with value for money – in what was a very closely contested category.

Read our full Vodafone Business broadband review for more details

Read our full BT Business broadband review for more details

Best speed: Vodafone Business

Highly Commended: BT Business

When you’re judging the speed of a broadband provider, it’s easy to be swayed by the headline figures that they advertise. However, the lived experience of customers is also valuable, and here Vodafone Business once again delivers impressive results.

No fewer than 91.6% of Vodafone customers said they were satisfied with the speeds they receive, with more than 40% very satisfied. Perhaps more impressively, especially for a technology with so many different factors that can potentially drag down speed, less than 1% of Vodafone Business customers had cause for complaint.

BT Broadband showed its pedigree here, too, with just a shade under 90% of customers satisfied by their speeds. It’s interesting to note here that both Vodafone Business and BT rely solely on the Openreach network.

Read our full Vodafone Business broadband review for more details

Read our full BT Business broadband review for more details

Methodology

Unless otherwise stated, all of the figures are drawn from a survey commissioned by Expert Reviews, with respondents and data supplied by Centiment. The total sample size was 1,053 business decision makers and the survey was carried out online.

We asked respondents how likely they would be to recommend their broadband provider to others and to rate its customer service, reliability, value and speed. Only the four ISPs with over 90 respondents are included in our results above.