How much does it actually cost to host a website?

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Hosting cost comparisons online are often either outdated or quietly comparing different kinds of product. Here's a real breakdown by hosting type, with every number confirmed directly against the vendor's own current pricing page as of October 2026.

Vendor prices by hosting type

Shared hosting (simple WordPress sites)

Bluehost, a widely used shared web hosting company built heavily around WordPress, runs its Starter plan at $3.99 a month on an introductory 36-month term, renewing at $9.99 a month, with 10GB of storage and up to 10 sites. SiteGround, another major WordPress-focused hosting company, starts its StartUp plan at $2.99 a month intro, renewing at $17.99, with 10GB storage and support for roughly 10,000 monthly visits on one site.

Managed WordPress hosting (busier WordPress sites)

WP Engine, a managed WordPress hosting company that handles server configuration and updates for you, starts its Essential plan at $28 a month billed annually for one site with 25,000 monthly visits and 10GB storage, scaling to $400 a month on its Business plan for 400,000 to 800,000 visits.

Website builders (design and host in one place)

Wix, an all-in-one website builder where you design, edit and host your site through its own drag-and-drop editor with no code, runs its plans from $17.77 a month (Light, 2GB storage) to $39.77 (Business, 100GB storage and standard e-commerce), billed yearly. Squarespace, a similar all-in-one builder known for strong design templates, runs $19 a month (Basic, monthly billing) or $12 annually, up to $36 monthly ($25 annually) for its Advanced plan with zero transaction fees on every sale type. Moving off it is covered in how to move a site from Wix or Squarespace to Netlify.

Code-based hosting (static sites and frameworks)

Netlify, a platform for deploying sites built from actual code, static sites and frameworks like Next.js or Astro, runs a free tier at $0 a month (300 credits), a Personal tier at $9 (1,000 credits), and a Pro tier at $20 a month (3,000 credits, unlimited team members), with usage metered by credits rather than a flat monthly fee once you're paying. Vercel, a hosting platform built by the team behind the Next.js framework, offers a free Hobby plan covering 1 million requests and 100GB of transfer a month, with Pro at $20 a month per developer seat. Cloudflare's developer platform, a hosting product built on Cloudflare's own global network, never charges for bandwidth and starts its Paid tier at $5 a month. Other hosts are compared in Netlify alternatives.

E-commerce hosting

Shopify, a hosted platform built specifically for running an online store, runs its Basic plan at $32 a month ($24 billed annually), up to $399 a month ($299 annually) on its Advanced plan, plus card transaction fees from 2.9% down to 2.5% as you move up tiers.

How the real number changes as your site grows

The honest total cost of hosting isn't static over a site's life. It tends to move through a few recognizable stages:

• Launch, low traffic: most platforms on this page, shared hosting's entry tier, a builder's starting plan, or a code-based host's free tier, handle this comfortably for $0 to $20 a month. Free options are compared in best free website hosting for small business.
• Growing, steady traffic: this is usually where shared hosting starts straining (SiteGround's StartUp tier caps around 10,000 monthly visits before an upgrade makes sense), where a builder's mid-tier plan becomes worth its higher price for the extra storage and features, and where a code-based site might start seeing real credit or bandwidth usage beyond a free tier's included amount.
• Established, revenue-driving traffic: this is where managed WordPress hosting's $28-plus-a-month tiers earn their price over cheaper shared hosting, where a Shopify store's transaction fees start meaningfully adding up against its base plan price, and where a care or maintenance plan (covered in more detail in my website maintenance guide) starts being worth paying for on top of pure hosting.

Most small businesses overestimate the launch-stage cost and underestimate the established-stage cost, since a launch budget search tends to surface the lowest advertised intro price, while the established-stage cost (higher renewal rates, added maintenance, transaction fees at real volume) only shows up once you're already committed to a platform.

Hidden costs that change the real number

• Renewal rate jumps. Shared hosting intro prices are frequently 50 to 70% lower than renewal rates. Bluehost's Starter plan nearly triples from $3.99 to $9.99 at renewal; SiteGround's StartUp plan rises from $2.99 to $17.99, a far bigger jump than most people budget for when they first sign up.
• Annual vs monthly billing gaps. Squarespace's Basic plan is $19 a month billed monthly but $12 a month if you commit to a year upfront, a meaningful difference if you're comparing a monthly price on one platform to an annual price on another without noticing.
• Domain registration, if not bundled. Some plans include a free domain for the first year only, after which renewal typically runs $10 to $20 a year separately.
• Transaction fees on e-commerce. A platform's base monthly price is only part of the real cost if you're selling anything; card processing fees (2.5% to 2.9% on Shopify, up to 7% on certain content types on Squarespace's Basic plan) add up fast at real sales volume.
• Usage overages on credit or metered plans. Netlify and similar credit-based platforms bill extra once you exceed your plan's included credits, metered by actual builds, bandwidth and compute rather than a flat cap you simply can't exceed.
• Email hosting, often separate. Many hosting plans don't include business email by default, or only for a first year, adding another recurring cost once that promotional period ends.
• Someone to actually maintain it. A hosting bill covers keeping the site technically online, not keeping it updated, backed up, and checked regularly. That's a separate cost, whether it's your own time, a freelancer's retainer, or a dedicated care plan, covered in more detail in my website maintenance guide.

A real budget example: a small service business site

Say you're running a simple 8-page site for a local service business, with a blog and a contact form, moderate traffic (a few thousand visits a month). Three realistic budgets:

• Cheapest realistic setup: shared hosting on Bluehost or SiteGround's entry plan (roughly $3 to $18 a month depending on intro versus renewal pricing) plus a domain (around $12 to $20 a year), landing around $5 to $20 a month once you average in the renewal jump.
• Builder-based setup: Wix or Squarespace's mid-tier plan, roughly $27 to $30 a month on annual billing, with a domain and basic email often included for the first year.
• Code-based setup: a static or lightly dynamic site on Netlify's free or Personal tier ($0 to $9 a month), with Netlify Forms covering the contact form at no extra cost, plus a domain separately.

The honest range for this kind of site, across all three approaches, lands somewhere between $0 and $30 a month for hosting itself, before counting a developer's or AI tool's time to actually build the site in the first place, which is almost always the bigger real cost for a new site than the hosting bill.

How I'd approach this

When I help a client budget for a new site, I separate the build cost from the hosting cost deliberately, because hosting is genuinely the smaller number for almost every small business, and conflating the two leads to either overestimating the ongoing cost or underestimating what a proper build actually requires. For most sites I build as real code, Netlify's free or entry-paid tier covers hosting comfortably, which means the real conversation with a client is almost always about what the site needs to do, not what it costs to keep running once it's live.