How Much Does It Cost to Host a Website? | Compare 2023 Prices

Every hosting provider out there has its own extensive list of pricing plans which may seem a little overwhelming at first. However, from our own experience, it’s actually a lot simpler than it looks – they are spread out to accommodate different sizes of websites.

Take a look at the different prices you can expect to pay for each type of hosting below. Here we’ve selected the top performers for each type of hosting along with the bucks you’ll potentially be spending – click each type to get a speedy overview.

In a hurry? Find the ideal hosting pricing plan for you in less than a minute.

Keep in mind that as your web hosting plan increases in features, it will usually increase in cost. Take a look at our top-rated web host Bluehost as an example. Bluehost’s shared hosting plans range from $2.95 to $13.95 per month, and you unlock more features the more you pay. The key is to find the plan that fits your budget and provides you with the features you need.

If you start on Bluehost’s cheapest Basic shared plan for $2.95 per month, you can use it for one website. You also get a free domain for a year, a free SSL certificate for a year, and you get 10GB of storage. In contrast, with Bluehost’s higher-tiered shared plans, such as the $13.95 per month Pro plan, you have unlimited websites and domains at your disposal, 100GB of storage – plus extra features such as automatic daily backups, optimized CPU backups, and a free dedicated IP.

More Information:

Not sure which hosting type is best for you? You can read our comparisons of:

• VPS vs shared hosting
• VPS vs dedicated hosting
• WordPress vs cloud hosting

Now let’s take a closer look at the costs of different types of hosting. A lot of the pricing you’ll see here is initial promotional pricing, where you pay a specific price for a certain amount of months or years of service. Once your promotional period is over, your monthly cost may go up.

From our own experience, we’ve shown the prices for 12-month contracts, as we believe this is the fairest representation of the provider’s price. Some providers offer cheaper rates for contracts up to 36-48 months, but we know this is a long commitment and a large upfront payment for small businesses on a budget.

Shared Hosting

$2.95 – $13.95 per month

Shared hosting is where most people start their web hosting journey.

Of the top five shared hosting providers, HostGator offers great shared hosting plans –  it offers unlimited bandwidth on all plans and comes in first overall with a 4.7 out of 5.

In second place is Bluehost with 4.5 out of 5, which has the highest average rating across all categories. Bluehost also comes has an Online Store plan for $9.95 per month, making it ideal for those wanting to start a small online business.

VPS Hosting

$2 – $110 per month 

VPS hosting is the next step up from shared web hosting when traffic starts to increase on your website.

Of our top five VPS hosting providers, Bluehost may not have the cheapest VPS hosting plan at $23.99/month – but it is very feature-rich, coming in with the third-highest features score in our research. This is because it comes with a free IP address and rare unlimited domains. Bluehost also scores well for its help and support and has a stellar online reputation – in fact, it came out top in our market analysis.

If you are looking for the cheapest provider, that would be Hostinger. While IONOS does start at only $2 per month, that is for the first six months (after that it is $10 per month). Hostinger’s VPS entry pricing of $5.99 is good for the entire 12 months and is our choice if you wanted the lowest-cost hosting provider.

However, cheap isn’t always as cheerful as the breadth of features you get with Bluehost or HostGator.

Dedicated Hosting

$89.99 – $739.99 per month

Dedicated hosting is for businesses and websites that are growing. If you’ve decided to pay for your own server, traffic must be getting pretty serious, and your needs are outgrowing the lower-tiered hosting plans.

From our own expertise and time spent comparing the prices of different hosting types and plans across the market, we can tell you that dedicated hosting is the most variably priced kind. A price range of $89.99/month to $739.99/month is wild! But of our top five dedicated hosting providers, Bluehost is what we would recommend. It scored the highest overall in our research with a 4.9 out of 5, mostly due to its pricing being the best value for money versus feature offerings.

Cloud Hosting

$2.99 – $360 per month

Cloud hosting is what you turn to when even the slightest downtime could prove fatal to your business. The best cloud hosting providers make sure there’s always a server on hand, ready to provide your website to the world.

Cloud hosting is relatively inexpensive. Of our top five providers, the most affordable plan comes from A2 Hosting at just $2.99/month. However, we should mention that Hostinger’s cloud hosting plan is made specifically for start-ups. When we reviewed Hostinger, we found it effective for new businesses trying to begin their online journeys, as you can create up to 300 websites on all of its plans.

*A2 Hosting doesn’t offer traditional cloud hosting – instead, it offers unmanaged VPS Hosting.

WordPress Hosting

$2.95 – $16.99 per month

These plans are for those who need dedicated and specialized services designed just for WordPress sites and blogs.

From our own experience, there can be quite a difference in what you get from one WordPress hosting plan to another, and this is reflected in the price. Of our top five WordPress hosting providers, Bluehost offers the cheapest plan at $2.95/month. On the other side, InMotion’s top-tier plan is the priciest at $16/month.

It’s worth noting these are the discounted WordPress hosting prices, so prices can go up to around $30, especially for renewals.

More Information:

• Don’t know who to go for? Read our Bluehost vs Hostinger article to see which one is truly better for you.
• Read our Bluehost review here for our in-depth look into the provider.

A hosting package is one thing, but there are often some “hidden” fees that you may not really think about until you’re already up and running. Beyond the hosting package, you need to own a domain name, for example. Sometimes your domain name registration is included in your hosting package, while other times, you turn to a domain registrar.

Based on our own findings, here’s a breakdown of a few of the extra costs you should consider.

Domain Name Registration

Typically costs $10 to $15 per year

When you run a website, you need a domain name. This is the web address that you put on your business cards, shopping bags, and other company marketing materials. Most people opt for a .com domain name, but you can also choose from .net, .biz, or country-specific suffixes such as .ca or .us.

Domain name registration has some extra fees of its own, such as privacy protection, which keeps your name and address out of public WHOIS listings (database of all registered domains).

It’s also worth pointing out that keeping your domain name registration with your web hosting provider is not always the best choice. If you should ever want to leave your web host, having your domain registered with services such as Domain.com or GoDaddy makes that easier, as you’ll avoid the hassle (and potential cost) of transferring your domain to a new registrar.

More Information:

• Check out our full breakdown of domain name costs for more information.
• Discover your options with our ranking of the 6 best domain name registrars.

Office 365 or G Suite

Adding business email and productivity suites typically costs $6 to $15 per month

Not all hosts provide this service, but a number of them allow you to purchase business accounts for G Suite or Office 365 at good prices. The end result is that you can have your business email in Gmail or Outlook.com.

SSL Certificates

Vary from free to $450 per year, with the average price around $50

When you have an SSL certificate, your website gets that little green lock in the URL bar of a browser. This is a must have for any webpage handling financial transactions, or where users need to login to the website. Many websites choose to use SSL even when they’re just simple pages displaying information, because Google often favors sites using SSL over those that don’t.

These days, most web hosts provide free SSL certificates with their mid-to-high-tier plans. In our research over the years it used to be more common for web hosts to make you buy your own, but these days we’re very surprised when we find a web host that doesn’t include SSL for free, for at least a year, even on their cheapest plans. Usually, this is a basic version, but provides the basics needed to secure your site and also keep Google from flagging your site.

Keep in mind that if you have the technical know-how to deal with the command line, you can get a free SSL certificate via Let’s Encrypt.

More Information:

• Explore our guide on how to get an SSL certificate.
•  How much an SSL certificate costs.
• Want to save on security? Check out our ranking of the 10 best free SSL hosting providers.

SiteLock

Typically costs about $24 per year

Not all web hosts offer SiteLock added security as part of its services, but those that do usually charge about $2 per month. SiteLock offers features such as daily malware scans, web application firewalls, and DDoS attack protection. Whether SiteLock is worth the money is something of a debate online, but we won’t get into that here. Some web hosts also offer SiteLock services for free as part of its packages.

Automated Site Backup and Restore Services

Website backups with web hosts are often free, but may cost $2 per month or more

Just like your PC at home, it pays to have your website files copied to another location that is not your web host server in case the worst happens. Some plans include backups for free, while others won’t charge to save the backup, but may charge you a restoration fee should your data disappear.

Keep in mind that you could backup the site yourself, but that usually takes a little bit of technical know-how. You’ll also need to manage your backups to make sure they’re working and copying correctly.

More Information:

• Check out our guide to Website Maintenance Costs to see where web hosting fits in with other expenses.

For many different reasons, you may want to transfer your website hosting to a new provider, but how much will that set you back?

If you have the required skills (and time to spare), you can switch hosting providers yourself at no cost. However, we’re sure that most of you simply don’t have the time to migrate your whole website to another server among your other tasks. Thankfully, you can pay your new host to do all the legwork for you.

Typically, migrating your website to another host will cost between $150 and $400, depending on the host, and the number of files, extensions, and images your website contains.

Now you know how much web hosting should cost, based on the type of hosting you require, from the services we recommend. There is certainly a wide range of pricing options, with hosting costing from as little as $2.95 to more than $739.99 per month.

From what we’ve seen, if you opt for a higher-priced plan, or for a whole lot of years at a lower price, many web hosts offer a limited-time money-back guarantee. These often last between 30 and 90 days. That way you can try out the service, and if you don’t like it, you can walk away without losing your investment.

To review, here are the five types of web hosting we looked at, along with the overall price ranges:

Cost to Host a Website:

• Shared Hosting: $2.95 – $13.95 per month
• VPS Hosting: $2 – $110 per month
• Dedicated Hosting: $89.99 – $739.99 per month
• Cloud Hosting: $2.99 – $360 per month
• WordPress Hosting: $2.95 – $16.99 per month

The important issue to remember with web hosting is that the type of website you’re running will often dictate the type of web hosting you need.

Beginner sites in almost all categories should go with shared hosting. VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting are for more active websites, with the latter being more important for websites that can’t afford any downtime. WordPress hosting, meanwhile, is specifically for WordPress-based sites that want the specialized support and features which managed WordPress hosting services provide.

Once you’ve got your hosting plan picked out, don’t forget to consider those extras we discussed. You’ll be on your way to running an active and well-maintained website in no time.