Cities with Fewer than 500,000 Population Evaluated Across Nine Categories

Nexcess, the premium provider of managed hosting and cloud solutions optimized for managed WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento, released a ranking on the top 10 most innovative cities across the U.S.

The ranking analyzes cities with fewer than 500,000 population and evaluates them on nine areas of innovation. Categories include universities, technology, emerging brands, non-profits, infrastructure, education, healthcare, sustainability, and livability.

In the past, major metropolitan areas have dominated headlines as leaders in innovation — but with global shifts occurring over the last several years, innovation is emerging in mid-size hubs in big ways.

The top rankings are as follows:

1. Atlanta, Georgia
2. Raleigh, North Carolina
3. Minneapolis, Minnesota
4. Cambridge, Massachusetts
5. Oakland, California
6. St. Louis, Missouri
7. Honolulu, Hawaii
8. Madison, Wisconsin
9. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
10. Miami, Florida

You no longer need to live in San Francisco or New York City in order to capitalize on innovative business ideas. With the recent acceleration of ecommerce due to the pandemic, and emerging technologies making it easier than ever to build a business online, the success of individuals is no longer limited to their geographic location.

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“At Nexcess, our goal is to help innovators and entrepreneurs who want to make money online,” says Terry Trout, SVP of Marketing. “For nearly 23 years, we’ve helped organizations of all sizes start, manage, and expand their online businesses.”

As digital commerce experts and the industry’s trusted leader in open source ecommerce, Nexcess empowers individuals to open and build high-performing online stores. Known for their strong expertise and innovation in Magento, WordPress, and WooCommerce, Nexcess also developed StoreBuilder, a no-code site building solution to make it even easier to get started.

Nexcess delivers high-quality cloud hosting, premium software plugins, and site management tools. A fully managed hosting experience provides infrastructure management that keeps hosting secure and up to date and comes with built-in monitoring that alerts customers when there is a problem with performance. An important differentiation for Nexcess is their support that goes beyond the server which is critical to SMBs and their creators. Customers can count on faster speeds, stronger security, inherent scalability, and help when they need it.

“It is intriguing to see innovation represented across the country in more areas than technology alone. We’re seeing nearly every sector of business innovate and hope that by giving them a spotlight we can inspire even more transformation to come. Our goal is to help them dream big and do more online,” says Trout.

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