Web Hosting Costs Explained

Web hosting providers come in all shapes and sizes, with a wide range of features, price points, and hosting types that can make understanding the price difficult. Yes, there are a lot of technical aspects that relate to web hosting costs, but once you know exactly what you or your company needs, things get a whole lot clearer.

4 Types of Web Hosting

What type of web hosting option should you go with? Here are the four options and their prices:

• Shared hosting – Starts at $4 to $10 per month. Typically the least expensive option, as you'll be sharing server space with other websites.
• Dedicated hosting – Starts at $120 to $190 per month. Typically the most expensive option, as you'll have an entire server all to yourself.
• VPS hosting – Starts at $30 to $90 per month. The middle tier on price, as you'll be sharing server space, but you'll have your own section, so you won't be entirely affected by other sites.
• Cloud hosting – Starts at $5 to $45 per month. Price varies depending on needs, as your site will be hosted on a number of different servers, cutting down on outage times.

In addition to the type of hosting you need, you'll also have to decide on which features are important to you. If you're expecting a lot of traffic, you're going to want to make sure your provider can handle the bandwidth. If you're looking for a small personal site, you can probably get away with saving a few bucks on a plan with less site and email storage. It's all about what you need from a web hosting provider.

Web Hosting Cost Per Year

If you're serious about launching a website, you need to find a web hosting provider that meets your online needs. There are a number of high quality web hosting providers, offering a wide range of plans that can help you make your website dreams a reality.

Take a look at these helpful tables for shared and VPS hosting plans to get a clearer understanding of exactly how much web hosting costs from brand to brand and plan to plan.

Find out more – Best Web Hosting Providers

Shared Hosting

If you're looking to launch a personal website that doesn't require a lot of bandwidth or storage, going with a shared hosting plan is a good move. You'll be occasionally inconvenienced with the occasional outage or slow speeds, but overall you'll save money and enjoy a fairly unburdened online presence.

The brands below offer shared hosting plans at a variety of prices depending on what you're looking for. Take a look and get a better idea of how much web hosting might cost you.

Web Hosting Costs vs Domain Costs

As we've mentioned a number of times, getting a website up and running is a complicated process with a lot of complicated costs, and discerning the difference between getting a web hosting provider and picking a domain name is one of the reasons.

Don't get it twisted; web hosting and domain costs aren't the same thing. Web hosting is the process by which a provider will host your website on their server to make it go live online. Domain name costs referred to the purchase of a specific URL, like tech.co for example, that will be used to navigate to your website.

How Much Do Domain Names Cost?

The average domain name will cost a nominal fee that's anywhere from around $1 to $12, paid annually. Premium domains that are in high demand, however, are another thing entirely and could cost $5,000 or $10,000 to acquire.

The good news is that some providers will include the price of a domain name within their service. Make sure to check on this before making a decision, because you don't want to be left with the bill when the time comes.

Website Builder Hosting Plans

Because there are so many different moving parts when it comes to launching a website, all the different costs and fees can get a bit confusing.

The easiest way to get started, though, is to deal with a website builder that rolls all the costs into one.

In the same way some web hosting providers will include domain costs in their plans, website builders also include web hosting services within their platforms. You'll be able to design your website, purchase a domain, and host the whole thing on a server from a single platform. Wix, for example, houses all these features so you can get everything done without breaking a sweat.

Additional Website Costs (Beyond Hosting)

Once you've picked out the best web hosting service that's at the right price for you, offers the features you need, and comes with suitable customer support, you're not quite done. Hosting isn't the only factor to consider.

Here are the other costs that you'll need to keep in mind in order to stay on budget when running a website:

• Content – For about $30 a page, a website owner can pay for professional content writers to whip up some writing that signals the right brand values without any mispellings or grammar mistakes. This might be an ongoing cost, too, since the website will need to stay fresh.
• Design and development – Professional website designers start at under $500 but a large site can cost over $10,000, with plenty of prices in between. Check out our Website Designer Cost guide for the full rundown. If you or your pocketbook would prefer a lowkey alternative, a good website builder like Wix could cost as little as $8.50 a month.
• Marketing and advertising – These costs vary so much depending on your website's needs that it's impossible to give an accurate estimate. Social media and email marketing costs could be a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a month.

When considering each of these costs, think about how they'll impact your website's hosting needs. The size of the website changes what hosting service you need, and also determines the amount of content and the type of designer you'll need. Plus, keep your typical advertisement click-through rate in mind while approaching a web hosting service, as your website's servers will need to handle the traffic influx from marketing and advertising campaigns.

Website hosting prices can vary widely. Start with the recommendations and tips listed here, and you'll end with the beautiful website you need.