If you're in the market for web hosting, one of the first questions you're going to ask is how much will this cost me? If price is your main concern, then a shared hosting package will be your best bet, costing between £1–£15 per month. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're hosting some big projects or very busy websites, you'll want to look at a dedicated server. These can cost anywhere from £60 per month up to over £300 per month!
But what if you're somewhere in the middle? We're going to talk you through the different types of web hosting in detail, what they can do, who they're suited to, and of course, how much they cost. All to help you make the best decision for your project.
The cost of web hosting
As stated, the cost of your web hosting will depend entirely on the package you choose. Depending on the scale and needs of your project, you may only need an affordable web hosting solution, or you may need to invest in something more serious. We're going to talk you through all of the options below.
1. Shared hosting (£1–£15/month)
This is the most economical and popular type of plan, and the one that most people begin with.
With a shared hosting plan, your website will be on a server that’s shared with multiple other tenants. Although it’s not the most powerful type of hosting, it’s more than sufficient for many users who need to sustain a low-traffic website. For many people with smaller projects that are less demanding, sacrificing features for lower costs is well worth it.
2. Virtual private server (VPS) hosting (£20 – £100/month)
You’ll typically pay between £20 and £100/month for a VPS, depending on the configuration. It’s often seen as a stepping stone for those who need a website with more power and security than shared hosting, but can’t quite stomach the price of a dedicated server. Normally, this is when a smaller project has started to outgrow the resources that are available on a shared hosting server and requires more from their server.
The key difference compared to shared hosting is that, through a process called ‘virtualisation’, many of the benefits of having your server are emulated, even though in reality you’re still sharing a server with other tenants. The advantage of a VPS is that there's no competition for resources which results in better performance for your website.
The higher performance garnered from VPS is a must-have for some users, as their website needs to be able to handle higher traffic. There’s also the added benefit of better security. While no hosting plan is completely invincible to hackers, a VPS is definitely on the more secure end of the spectrum. This is because each VPS is its own, independent, virtualised environment making it similar to a dedicated server in that your files, software, and dedicated operating system are detached from other tenants on the physical server.
The benefits of higher performance, better security and affordability make VPS hosting a tempting option, especially for those using a website to sell online.
3. Dedicated hosting (£100/month or more)
Dedicated hosting is a top-tier hosting plan. One of the benefits of dedicated servers is that you’ll have an entire server ‘dedicated’ to you, and only you, and that explains its premium price tag of £100/month or more.
But if you're willing and able to deal with the price, it's well worth it because you’ll have access to a server with less downtime and more power than anything else out there. Like most plans with hosting providers, the power and features that you have are completely scalable, and depending on what configuration you pick, this will dictate what you pay. Security-wise, you’ll also be in the clear. Because the server isn’t shared with anyone, you eliminate the possibility of sharing a server with tons of tenants – and your website being infiltrated this way.
The general rule of thumb is that medium to large businesses (500 people or more) that deal with a lot of data or have highly sensitive information should consider a dedicated server. Although the prices are inevitably higher, we often find that projects which need servers have sufficient traffic going to their site to make their money back and more.
4. Cloud hosting (£5-650/month)
Cloud server hosting works using virtualisation to split a physical server into multiple virtual machines called cloud servers which then connect to a single network for hosting a website.
This type of hosting is the most flexible of them all in terms of pricing. The monthly pricing for cloud hosting typically starts at £5/month for a small server configuration with 1GB of RAM, 25GB SSD storage and 1 CPU core. As you increase the amount of storage, bandwidth, CPU cores, and memory for the server, the costs will start to increase. For example, a cloud server with 128GB of RAM, 3TB of storage, and 24 CPU cores can cost as much as $650/month.
Because of its pricing flexibility, cloud hosting can be a great fit for both small and large businesses. For small businesses, it offers an opportunity to integrate innovative cloud technology, unlimited scalability and uninterrupted access to apps and data via the internet, at affordable prices. For bigger businesses, it can be scaled up to run even the most resource-intensive tasks such as industrial networking, IT infrastructure and software development.
5. WordPress hosting (£4-25/month)
To put it simply, WordPress hosting is hosting that’s specifically optimised for WordPress, the world’s most popular content management system (CMS). This is the main differentiator compared to regular web hosting plans, which aren’t tailored to a certain CMS. Because this type of hosting uses a platform designed for WordPress websites, you’ll get the highest levels of performance and tech support, as well as access to a range of benefits, such as tools and services tailored to WordPress websites.
6. Bare Metal hosting (£50-620/month)
Bare Metal servers are similar to a dedicated server, in a sense that it is a physical server devoted to a single user. When it comes to Bare Metal vs dedicated servers however, unlike the latter, Bare Metal servers can provide an array of advanced tools and features, with the added bonus of down-to-the-minute billing that you’d normally get with cloud servers. Plus, you can virtualise your server with Hyper-V and Windows Server Datacenter, or set up isolated VMs and operate them in parallel on a single system, each with their own OS!
And if you already own a cloud server or two, with a Bare Metal server, you can take on heavier loads and work together with your other virtual machines too.
Web hosting costs at a glance
|
Type of hosting |
Cost per month |
|---|---|
| Shared hosting | £1-15 |
| WordPress hosting | £4-25 |
| VPS hosting | £20-100 |
| Dedicated hosting | £60-320 |
| Cloud hosting | £5-650 |
| Bare metal | £50-620 |
