Web Hosting is an important factor for your website because it affects not only the potential performance of your website, but also factors into the overall cost. And you’ll pay web hosting fees for however long you own your website.
Be it a personal blog or web store to support your business – as soon as you get your feet wet, that money question is going to hit you:
How Much Does It Cost to Host a Website Today?
In summary: Shared hosting plans range in price from $2.51 to $4.63 per month. VPS Hosting is typically between $13.41 to $21.89 per month*.
The above information is based on our Q3 2022 web hosting market study. We collate pricing data from samples of over 1,000 web hosting plans annually (more about our data below). However, due to some hosting companies’ unique selling points, they may price hosting plans beyond the norm.
Below are some quick examples.
Shared Hosting Pricing
VPS Hosting Pricing
* Note: Prices listed in this page is in United States Dollar (USD); non-USD prices were converted into USD based on August 12, 2022 foreign exchange rates.
Web Hosting Cost Explained
Your website hosting cost depends mainly on the types of web hosting for which you sign up.
Generally speaking – shared hosting is the cheapest but with the lowest server capacity; dedicated hosting is the most expensive and most powerful; while VPS hosting stands somewhere in between shared and dedicated hosting.
You need to find the right features and price and choose a reputable hosting provider with good customer support. 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.
If your main concern is price, we’ve collected our recommendations for the cheapest hosting solutions on a separate list.
About Our Hosting Market Research
WHSR Research has spent a significant amount of resources analyzing over a thousand hosting plans. Offering these plans were 317 companies in the shared server hosting segment, with another 309 companies offering VPS hosting.
Shared hosting plans under review were exclusively entry to mid-level tier. For the purposes of our analysis, definitions wee simplified with entry level plans supporting a single domain while mid-level plans supported a minimum of 10 (usually 25) domains.
VPS plans were more complex due to the immense range of services available. We observed plans ranging from nano-sized package servers to high-end ones.
For transparency purpose, we are sharing all web host pricing data we collected below. Please let us know if you found an outdated data.
Shared Web Hosting Cost
We looked at more than 600 shared hosting plans in our latest market research. Here’s what we found about shared server hosting costs:
- Entry-level Shared Hosting: $2.51 – $3.72 per month
- Mid-tier Shared Hosting: $4.63 – $6.52 per month
Shared Hosting Cost Data
Table is sorted in alphabetical order.
Notes:
- Listed prices are per month, based on 2 or 3 year subscription periods, which ever is lower.
- For shared hosting, prices will almost always rise across the board on plan renewal.
- For providers that offer lifetime deal (aka, pay once and get hosted for life), we averaged the hosting prices with 5 year time range.
- One area we have yet to look more closely at has been the meteoric rise of website builders like Zyro, which costs between $2.99 – $14.90 per month. These companies offer a unique perspective on the web hosting market. Drag-and-drop functionality has expanded website building reach to a vast, new customer segment.
Our Observations
1. Shared hosting is cheap
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.
Entry level shared hosting plans averaged $2.51 per month on sign up. Mid-tier shared hosting prices stepped up significantly, averaging $4.63 per month.
For entry level shared plans users are usually allowed to host just one website. For mid-tier plans, most companies allow users to host unlimited domains.
2. Prices usually increase after signup
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 $10.69 but the plan renews at an eye-watering $39.99.
3. Shared hosting signup discounts are like honeymoon
Although companies offering entry-level and mid-tier plans respectively increasing prices on renewal (as mentioned in point #2), these companies also typically offered lower sign-up pricing than competitors.
Still, it is important to realize that signing up with a provider that offers significantly lower sign-up pricing offers users a ‘honeymoon period’ during which they have the opportunity to thoroughly evaluate the services provided before making a definitive long-term choice.
What is Shared Hosting?
In shared hosting, one’s web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU.
Shared Hosting 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 companies 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.
Shared Hosting Support Levels
Shared hosting plans are normally the cheapest you’ll find. 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.
VPS Hosting Cost
In 2022, we studied more than 600 VPS hosting plans offered by 309 hosting companies. Here’s what we found out about VPS hosting cost:
- Entry level VPS Hosting: $13.41 – $15.57 per month
- Mid-range VPS Hosting: $21.89 – $25.17 per month
VPS Hosting Cost Data
Table sorted in alphabetical order. Please visit hosting company’s website for best accuracy.
Notes:
- Listed prices are per month, based on 2 or 3 year subscription periods, which ever is lower.
- Some companies offer unmanaged VPS hosting, which is significantly cheaper.
- We did not include “true-cloud” hosting providers (similar to VPS) like Digital Ocean, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud, etc in this market study. For more details, please read my study on cloud hosting pricing.
Our Observations
1. VPS lives in between shared and dedicated plans
Due to increased features backed with better service-level agreements and customer support, VPS hosting often comes at a premium above shared server hosting. At the same time, expect to pay a lot less than what you would expect to for a dedicated server.
2. VPS hosting prices vary a lot
Based on our study – At the low end of the scale, some VPS plans such as that from Argeweb and HostNamaste can start from as low as $0.83 per month. At the high end of the scale, the price of VPS hosting may stretch all the way up to the $400 price tag.
3. No significant increment in VPS hosting renewal costrs
Website hosting companies offering VPS plans showed relatively low renewal price increases across the board, with entry-level plans up by less than 10% on average. Although prices averaged at $15.47/mo (entry) and $25.66/mo (mid-tier) it was also noted that the range was skewed heavily by providers of premium plans.
4. Basic VPS hosting prices are generally stable
Our research further noted that entry-level VPS plans have remained mostly stable while mid-level plan pricing has dropped by as much as 51% over the past years. A possible aberration in these numbers may have resulted from our increased sample size in previous years, which expanded the original 50 plans observed to more than 600.
However, it’s worth noting that many hosting companies are raising their VPS prices in 2021 and 2022. We suspect cPanel license pricing is the main reason behind this.
What is 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.
VPS Hosting 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.
Support 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.
Final Thought: Price is Only One of the Factors
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 name 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.
FAQs on Website Hosting Cost
Based on our latest market research: Shared hosting plans range in price from $2.51 to $4.63 per month. VPS Hosting is typically between $13.41 to $21.89 per month.
There are two ways to host a website with Google. The first is via Google Sites on G Suite, which starts at $5.40/mo per user. The second is Google Cloud Hosting for which prices vary greatly depending on your needs.
Typically a domain name costs $10 – $15 per year. Note that some hosting companies offer free domain with their hosting packages. Users can save money by signing up with these hosts.
The cheapest way to host a website is by using a free web host or site builder. These often also allow you the use of a free subdomain name (ie. yoursitename.wix.com), so your cost can essentially be $0.
However these are not generally recommended for various reasons. Most importantly of all is that free solutions are often extremely limited and more often than not will force you to carry the branding of the host on your site.
In short – yes, you can turn your computer into a server and host your own website. However, it requires significant investment to build a server that is reliable and fast. The better and more reliable you want your own hosting to be, the higher the cost. Otherwise, you can host your website with a provider.
No, Google does not offer free web hosting. Here’s the list of free web hosting if you are looking for one.
Free hosting is often not just highly limited in terms of resources like storage space and memory, but also usually comes with many risks and many restrictions. For example, some free hosting plans won’t allow you to run ads, while others may prohibit you from using certain applications or plugins (in the case of WordPress).
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. Here are all the factors we consider when choosing a web host.
Hosting your website in a local server is complex and can be very expensive. It is also often less reliable than hosting with a service provider and not always possible in residential environments.
