So you’ve decided you want to set up a website. Be it a personal website, or an ecommerce to support your business – as soon as you get your feet wet, that sixty-four-dollar-question is going to hit you: How much should I spend on web hosting?
The Total Cost of Hosting a Website
Different costs involved in building a site
There are a number of factors that you need to consider when calculating the cost of a website, and all of them can vary wildly, depending on how complex or simple your needs are. That said however, the cost to build a website basically boils down to the following items:
- Web hosting
- Domain
- Content creation
- Graphic design
- Web development
- Marketing and others
In this article, we will specifically look into item #1 – the cost of renting a web host.
Web hosting is an important factor for your website because it affects not only the potential performance of your site, but also factors into the overall cost. And you’ll pay web hosting fees for however long you own your website.
How much to pay for a web host?
Quick answer: A shared web host is usually cheap – expect to pay $3 – $10 per month; VPS hosting on the other hand costs $30 – $55 per month.
There are many kinds of web hosting, all at different price points and offering different features and options. You need to find not only the right features and price, but also choose a reputable host. The right combination can lead to a lifetime of bliss, but the wrong one can end up costing you much more money than you expected.
What is the cheapest way to host a website?
Hostinger, Interserver, and TMD Hosting are some of the cheapest hosting in market.
Check out list cheap hosting I recommend here. Note that cheap hosting often comes with various problems – make sure that you also read my suggested solutions with these problems at the bottom o the article.
To help you make the right choice, we studied 100 shared and VPS hosting companies and compiled the following guide.
How Much to Pay for Shared Web Hosting?
Shared Hosting Prices
Summary
- Entry level: Signup price = $3.40/mo, renewal = $4.94/mo
- Mid-range: Signup price = $8.44/mo, renewal = $10.86/mo
- Highest plan: Signup price = $21.66/mo, renewal = $24.95/mo
Details
The shared hosting industry is a highly competitive playing field – which is a good thing for consumers like you and me. Not only that shared hosting is usually cheap, many of them also come with excellent server performance and great features.
On average, entry level shared hosting (usually allow only one website) cost $3.40/mo during signup while mid-range shared hosting (usually allow up to 10 websites) cost $8.44/mo. For higher end shared hosting plans, the average signup price jumps to $21.66/mo.
Bear in mind that cost is a very delicate matter when it comes to web hosting since most providers offer various plans. As such I advise you to look beyond the cost to the exact features that a web host is offering before considering the price.
Recommended shared hosting at this price range
| Entry Plan | Mid Level Plan | Highest Plan | Order | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 A2Hosting | $3.92 | $4.90 | $9.31 | Get A2 Hosting |
 Hostinger | $0.80 | $2.15 | $3.45 | Get Hostinger |
 InMotion Hosting | $3.95 | $5.99 | $13.99 | Get InMotion |
 InterServer | $5.00 | – | – | Get Interserver |
 TMD Hosting | $2.95 | $5.95 | $12.95 | Get TMD Hosting |
All five hosting companies listed above charge below market rates but perform better than average in our tests. You can get more details from our reviews – A2 Hosting, Hostinger, InMotion Hosting, Interserver, and TMD Hosting.
Where do my numbers come from?
We did not pluck the numbers from the cloud. Here is the data (updated July 2019) we gathered from 150 hosting plans offered by popular web hosts, including DreamHost, FastComet, GreenGeeks, HostPapa, KVC Hosting, Mocha Host, Rose Hosting, and so on.
More about shared hosting
By far the most commonly available and frequently chosen option, the term shared hosting is quite literal. Your hosting space shares the combined resources on a single server.
Let’s take for example when a host tells you that your shared account will be on a server with an twin 8-core Intel Xeon processors, 128GB of RAM and RAID Storage with unlimited SSD storage. Sounds great doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, since you are on a “shared” account, you will be sharing those resources with as many other people as your host decided to put on that same server. It could be anything from between tens to even hundred of shared accounts on a single server.
Shared Server Performance
Because all resources on the server are split between the different accounts, in many cases performance is a little bit spotty. If you happen to share a server with lots of other dormant accounts that don’t take up much resources, you will be fine. If you are on a server with many active high-activity accounts, performance may be more limited as you must wait for your share of time for resources.
Typically, shared hosting providers manage this by placing restrictions on resource usage on shared servers. If you end up taking up too much server resource time, you may be forced to upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Service Levels
Shared hosting plans are normally the cheapest you’ll find (aside from free hosting, but that is an entirely different story). As a result of that, you will discover that most shared hosting plans come with limited service levels.
This includes possibly lower or no guarantees on uptime and more limited customer support channels.
Shared Hosting Renewal Price
The web hosting business is incredibly competitive, and many hosting providers often fight for market share in new customers. Price is one of the features they may opt to fight with.
This means that they will often have fantastic buy-in offers for new customers. If you are not paying attention and get taken in by these fantastic offers, you may end up paying a premium in fees when it comes time to renew your hosting plan.
Take for example the case of the cheapest hosting plan that SiteGround offers. New customers are offered a buy-in at only $3.95 but the plan renews at an eye-watering $11.95. Always pay attention to the regular prices that a plan charges and don’t get taken in by buy-in discounts. These should be taken as a bonus, not the main reason you take up a plan.
How Much to Pay for VPS Hosting?
VPS Hosting Prices
Summary
- Entry level: Signup price = $17.20/mo, renewal = $20.01/mo
- Mid-range: Signup price = $54.79/mo, renewal = $61.52/mo
- Highest plan: Signup price = $164.27/mo, renewal = $170.75/mo
Details
Due to increased features backed with better service-level agreements and customer support, VPS hosting often comes at a premium above shared hosting. At the same time, expect to pay a lot less than what you would expect to for a dedicated server.
Based on our pricing study – At the low end of the scale, some VPS plans such as that from Hostmalabar based in India can start from as low as 52 cents per month. At the high end of the scale, the price of VPS hosting may stretch all the way up to the $399.95 price tag that SmarterASP.NET is looking for on its highest plan.
Top VPS hosting at this price range
| Entry Plan | Mid Level Plan | Highest Plan | Order | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A2 Hosting | $5.00 | $32.99 | $32.99 | Get A2 Hosting |
 GreenGeeks | $39.95 | $79.95 | $159.95 | Get GreenGeeks |
 HostPapa | $19.99 | $109.99 | $249.99 | Get HostPapa |
| InMotion Hosting | $24.99 | $39.99 | $59.99 | Get InMotion |
| TMDHosting | $19.97 | $39.97 | $64.97 | Get TMD Hosting |
Note – There's a known limitation in our VPS hosting pricing data that you should know – we did not include cloud hosting providers (similar service to VPS) like Digital Ocean, Vultr, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud, etc in our study. In some scenarios, for instances if you are running a SaaS business or your site traffic is heavily affected by season changes – then cloud might be the better option (cheaper and more flexibility).
Amazon AWS provides a handy cost calculator for those who need to estimate their cloud hosting cost – go play with it.
VPS hosting pricing data
More about VPS hosting
Where in the past the only choice up from shared hosting was to get your own dedicated server, today you can opt for VPS. VPS gives you the illusion of having your own server even though the entire environment is simulated.
VPS servers offer all the flexibility and features of a fully dedicated server. The only limitations are those imposed on the VPS account by the host – usually in terms of physical resources such as processor, memory and storage.
With these features, VPS are extremely cost-effective solutions for those who still are not sure if they require the immense resources that come managing a dedicated server.
Server Performance
This is one of the key differentiators between shared hosting and VPS hosting. VPS hosting accounts are isolated, meaning that the resources allocated to that account are only for that account. If another WPS account on the server is using a lot of resources, your VPS account won’t be affected.
More importantly, VPS server often allow full access to functions that shared accounts do not typically have such as root access, self-chosen control panels to even direct control of what versions of some scripts are running.
These features make it seem as though you are running a fully-fledged dedicated server. Unfortunately, they also require you to know what you are doing you are responsible for very detailed server configurations. Getting it wrong my cause you a ton of headaches.
Learn how VPS hosting works in this guide.
Service Levels
VPS accounts are often taken up by hosts which have more active websites that cater to higher traffic. As such, many web hosting providers know that they may require more attentive support – and in part are paying higher fees for such.
VPS accounts are often backed by higher uptime guarantees and support levels.
Renewal Price
VPS accounts are no different from shared accounts in the sense that web hosts are fighting for market share of new customers. As such, it is not uncommon to find steeply discounted plans for new customers.
Again, it helps to look past this and towards the features of the plan and their actual renewal prices rather than the initial discount. The discounts for new customers can be just as steep as those found in shared hosting plans.
Some VPS hosting providers like Hosting24.com use a large discount as a hook, but their renewal prices scale up by as much as 450%.
Other Costs to Consider When Building a Website
As mentioned above, web hosting is only one segment of the true cost of building a website. To create a truly successful website, the project needs to be looked at holistically as an entire business, not just a standalone item.
Aside from planning and creating the website, consideration also needs to be put into other factors such as longer-term content development, marketing, eCommerce fees (if applicable) and so on. And of course, the domain that will point to the website sitting on the web hosting space.
Once you factor in all of these additional components of the business, then you will have a more realistic idea of the true cost of building a website.
