How much does website hosting cost?
Free if you use a free service, $10–$35 a month for a website builder, $3–$12 a month for shared hosting, $15–$80 for managed WordPress. A one-page brochure site for a local business should cost between nothing and about $20 a month.
Hosting prices are quoted in a way designed to be compared badly: huge first-year discounts, annual-only pricing, and renewal rates buried three clicks deep. Here's the plain version.
The tiers
| What you're buying | Per month | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Free service (page built for you) | $0 | One-page site, sub-address, no technical work |
| Builder, cheapest plan | $10–$18 | Own domain, several pages, do it yourself |
| Builder, mid plan | $18–$35 | More pages, forms, sometimes email included |
| Shared hosting | $3–$12 | WordPress or files you upload yourself |
| Managed WordPress | $15–$80 | WordPress where somebody else handles updates |
| VPS | $10–$40 | Real traffic, or custom software |
Prices vary by provider and change often. The shape — free, cheap, middling, expensive — has been stable for years.
What "per month" usually doesn't mean
Most cheap hosting is priced per month but billed annually, up front. So $3.95 a month is $47.40 today, not $3.95 today. That's not dishonest, but it does mean the real cost of entry is higher than the headline.
Builders are more often genuinely monthly, and some have an annual discount of 15–25%. If you're unsure whether you'll keep it, pay monthly for the first few months even if it costs a little more.
The renewal trap
The single most common surprise: year one at $2.95 a month, year two at $11.99. Over three years that's roughly $350 instead of $106.
Before you buy, find the renewal price. It's usually on a separate pricing page, sometimes only in the terms. If you can't find it, that's information too.
Some providers — Cloudflare for domains, a few hosts for hosting — sell at a flat rate with no introductory discount. Boring, predictable, often cheaper over five years.
What's included, and what's extra
Usually included: SSL certificate, some storage, a subdomain, basic visitor statistics, email support.
Usually extra: your own domain ($10–$20/yr), business email ($6–$8 per mailbox per month), backups on cheap plans, priority support, ecommerce features, removing the builder's ads (on free tiers).
Often wrongly assumed included: a domain name. Builders sometimes bundle one for the first year and then charge for it — check.
What you can skip
- Dedicated IP addresses — irrelevant for a small site.
- "Unlimited" storage — you'll use a gigabyte.
- CDNs and performance add-ons — a five-page site doesn't need one.
- Paid SSL certificates — free everywhere.
- Site "security" subscriptions at $20 a month for a site with no login and no customer data.
The five-year view
For a one-person trade business:
- Free service: $0 for five years, plus $50–$100 if you later add a domain.
- Builder: about $700 over five years, plus a domain.
- WordPress on shared hosting: about $500 over five years, plus a domain, plus your weekends.
That framing is worth sitting with. The difference between free and a builder is roughly the price of a used trailer, spread out. If the builder earns you one extra job a year, it pays for itself; if it doesn't, it's a hobby.
What to actually do
If you're starting: use the free thing. Move to a $10–$16 builder plan when you need your own domain and more than one page — which is a real need, but usually a later one.
If someone quotes you $75 a month for hosting a five-page site with no shop, ask what the extra $60 buys. Sometimes it's a real person who answers the phone. Sometimes it's a reseller markup on a $6 plan.
Related: the full cost of a small business website, including the parts that aren't hosting.