Website Hosting Cost [What Affects the Price]

Your business is already up and running, but now you want to create a website for it? Where do you begin? For your website to go live you need to use a hosting service. This is basically the online home for your site. But how much does website hosting cost?

As a business owner, you might think that website hosting is a costly endeavor. In this article, we will answer all your questions on how much it will cost to host a website. Different types of hosting have various prices, ranging from cheap to expensive.

What Factors Can Influence the Cost of a Website?

The total cost of a website is made up of various factors. The hosting costs for your website are only one part of it. Here are a number of other factors that could contribute to your website hosting costs:

Domain and Domain Registration

Getting a good domain name and keeping it is essential. There are hosts that offer free domain names, but these URLs are often mistaken for spam and are bad for business. Legitimate domains include:

• .edu
• .gov
• .com

If you want a legitimate one, such as YourName.com, you can purchase it through the best domain name registrars but please note that you will be charged a fee.

Content Creation

Another factor that could contribute to your costs is content creation. If you are writing a blog, the content will come directly from you. However, if you are building a business website, you will likely outsource the content writing and copywriting tasks to other companies or freelancers. This also includes supporting content such as photographs and multimedia.

Graphic Design

Graphic design is another expense that you will have to budget for in addition to the website host cost. The costs associated with this will depend on your service provider’s monthly fee, which will add to the cost of building your website.

Web Development

Aside from the content you publish on your website, web development is essential to create a user-friendly and attractive platform. There are free platforms available that allow you to put an entire functioning website together yourself. If you are after something more professional with complex settings, tools, and portals you might need to hire a web developer.

Marketing

Don’t forget marketing. Even the best website and web content will mean nothing if nobody sees it. In order for your website to be noticed, you’ll have to implement a variety of marketing strategies that include SEO optimization and eye-catching visuals. This is another additional service you will have to include in your budget.

How Much Does Website Hosting Cost?

Hosting price points differ depending on your needs and the options you choose. The average sum may be anywhere from $2.49 to $830 per month. This entirely depends on the type of hosting you decide to use:

• Shared hosting: $2.49-$15 per month
• VPS hosting: $20-$80 per month
• Cloud hosting: $4.50-$240 per month
• Dedicated hosting: $80-$300 per month

Website Hosting Cost: From Cheapest to Most Expensive

In order to help you choose the best fit for you, we’ll take a more detailed look at the different types of web hosting and their costs. The different types of hosting available are:

• Shared Hosting
• VPS Hosting
• Cloud Hosting
• Dedicated Hosting

Are you still wondering, how much does it cost to host a website? Have a closer look at our in-depth cost breakdown below:

Shared Hosting

This is the most commonly used option. In simple terms, shared hosting means your hosting space shares the combined resources on a single server. It is the cheapest alternative and prices can range as follows:

Entry-level shared web hosting:

• Average signup price: $2.91 per month
• Average renewal price: $3.63 per month

Mid-tier hosting plans:

• Average signup price: $5.24 per month
• Average renewal price: $6.21 per month

Shared web hosting is a cheap hosting option with the lowest hosting fees. It is a very competitive market, which means there are many options to choose from and many of them come with great server performance.

There are many options out there for someone looking for shared web hosting. One with particularly good reviews is SiteGround.

SiteGround Review

SiteGround offers excellent shared hosting options. Reviews of SiteGround unanimously praise its uptime. It has very reasonable monthly and annual fees. It lets users choose their server locations and offers excellent customer support.

VPS Hosting

While you technically still share a server, as with shared web hosting, you get a dedicated space that is all yours. It offers many more features compared with shared hosting. Spending that little extra with VPS hosting gives you more storage and bandwidth as well as stability. The average web hosting cost can vary as follows:

Entry-level VPS web hosting:

• Average signup price: $17.01 per month
• Average renewal price: $18.19 per month

Mid-tier hosting plans:

• Average signup price: $26.96 per month
• Average renewal price: $29.15 per month

There are many companies out there offering fantastic plans for VPS hosting. One such company is Bluehost.

Bluehost Review

Reviewers of Bluehost all agree that with Bluehost VPS hosting you get excellent uptime. The first term is offered at a promotional rate, giving you the opportunity to decide whether you want to continue using it in the future. Keep in mind that the standard hosting website cost is relatively high. Their storage offers are very generous so if you require more storage for visual-based content, it would be worth it to spend a little more on Bluehost VPS hosting services.

Cloud Hosting

You might ask, what is cloud hosting? Cloud hosting does not rely on a single server or machine to host your website. It utilizes many virtually interconnected servers. Let’s look at the average fees that you can expect:

Entry-level cloud web hosting cost:

• Average cost: $9.99 per month

Mid-tier hosting plans:

• Average cost: $29.99 per month

The top three cloud hosting options to consider include A2 Hosting, Cloudways, and Kamatera.

A2 Hosting Review

According to 2021 reviews, this is the number-one cloud hosting service to consider. It offers four different packages. The cost of hosting a website ranges from as little as $4.99 per month to $34.99 per month with even the cheapest package offering impeccable features.

Dedicated Hosting

For anyone aiming to take their online business to the next level, or for existing big companies with funds to dedicate to hosting, this is the ultimate choice. With dedicated hosting, users rent an entire server set aside only for them. It is obvious why this is the most expensive hosting option out there. Here are the average fees that one can expect:

Entry-level dedicated web hosting cost:

• Average cost: $79.99 per month

Mid-tier hosting plans:

• Average cost: $119.99 per month

If you are in a position to splurge on dedicated server hosting, you are in for many benefits. For one, your server is not shared. This means you are able to use the full resources available to you. You will enjoy enhanced performance and security, more flexibility, a truly unique IP address, and no overhead to buy and maintain equipment.

Studies and reviews agree HostGator is the perfect dedicated hosting service provider.

HostGator Review

HostGator wins time and time again as the best choice overall for dedicated server hosting. With excellent features such as great uptime and fantastic support, clients say that it offers great value for money. Most HostGator reviews are extremely positive, with users leaving positive feedback not only on its great service and speed but also its affordable prices.

What Factors Influence the Website Hosting Cost?

As you can see by now, costs associated with web hosting depend on and are influenced by many factors. Hosting a website is particularly complex and it’s better to use a hosting provider to make the whole process quicker and easier. Various providers have different costs that need to be taken into account when creating a budget for hosting.

These factors include the operating system you are relying on. Windows hosting tends to be a little more pricey compared with Linux. An important factor is file space. Websites that rely heavily on videos, pictures, or graphics tend to need more storage space, forcing you to turn to more expensive hosting.

Below are some more factors that influence the average website hosting cost:

• Database support
• SSL encryption
• Traffic volume
• Scripting language
• Email account
• Technical support

Should You Splurge or Save on Website Hosting?

When you start a business, it’s important to assign a budget for all your expenses. Depending on your business, it will be larger than others. What we’ve learned so far is that the cost to host a website is only one part of the overall expenses you can expect when starting your own website.

When considering how much you should or are able to spend on a reputable hosting provider, you must first look at your overall needs. Decide which website costs are more important and deserves a bigger percentage of your budget. Are your content and graphic design more important to you? Do you require more storage and data space? All these factors must be taken into account.

Bigger, established companies are the ones that can and should opt for the more expensive hosting options, such as dedicated hosting. Their security, storage, encryption, and management needs are much higher, as are their budgets.

For smaller startups, or even individuals trying something new, it is not particularly important to get the most expensive option. Consider lowering your website host cost by putting funds toward content and design, until you are off the ground. Then, you can upgrade.

Is Free Hosting Worth It?

If you are looking to make money or create a business out of your website, free hosting is not a good option. If you’re just experimenting with starting a personal blog or a small platform for fun, it’s worth giving the free hosting a try. As a beginner, it gives you the opportunity to experiment, explore, and decide if this is something you want to invest more time and money into.

For someone looking to start a business, free hosting not only comes with its own set of technical issues, but it also does not provide you with a trusty URL (such as a .com, .org, or .co.uk). Attracting customers to spend money on a website that has a strange URL will be tricky. For anyone wanting to use their website for business, the web hosting price should form a bigger part of their budget.

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of free web hosting:

PROS:

• No extra costs
• No contracts
• Termination of a contract or a free trial is usually immediate
• Excellent for beginners who want to dabble in website creation

CONS:

• Features are very limited
• Tools like auto-installers, software scripts, and email accounts aren’t included
• Hosting options are ad-sponsored
• Limited disk space
• Unreliable customer support services
• Security risks

If you come across a web host that offers unlimited features but its website hosting fees are little to none, make sure you check the credibility of this service.

Conclusion

When deciding what type of hosting you should opt for, consider what is important for your website and what you hope to get out of it.

If you are looking to open an online shop or business and security is important to you, consider looking at cloud or VPS hosting. These are more expensive than shared web hosting options, but by no means break the bank like the most expensive dedicated hosting options.