Cloud Hosting

In this section, were going to explore the average cost of different types of website hosting in 2020.

To do this, weve sourced price ranges from five top level, representative hosting providers, and investigated any typical additional costs that they charge to their customers.

Below is a breakdown of the basic, intermediate, and advanced plans offered by each provider for shared, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting. All prices are given as the cost per month (with the renewal cost in brackets afterwards), and exclude VAT.

Shared hosting is so cheap because your website shares the server its stored on with multiple other websites. This means its only suitable for small, low-traffic websites.

At its cheapest, youll likely spend just over 2/month for the first three years. According to our researchers, InMotion is the best provider for shared hosting. Indeed, InMotions basic shared plan is the cheapest, while HostGators are the cheapest on average over three years.

Hostingers shared plans are the cheapest overall but bear in mind that youll be tied into a four year commitment.

*Hostinger doesnt offer a 3-year plan

VPS hosting stores your website on a virtual server. This acts as a dedicated server, but you are in fact sharing the server with several different websites. Its suitable for larger, higher traffic sites, as more resources are available for your website.

Despite its slightly costlier shared plans, Bluehosts VPS plans are among the most affordable over three years, ranging from 14.16 to 44.74/month. It also renews at the cheapest rate after the first term (89.49/month). HostGators prices are comparable, with plans ranging from 15.49/month to just 31.

A2Hostings VPS plans start at a higher price than rivals', and it only offers a two year subscription.

Dedicated hosting dedicates an entire server to your website. That means you get 100% of the servers resources. This makes dedicated hosting the most suitable choice for large, complex websites, with lots of media and lots of traffic.

Its not hard to see which provider offers the best value dedicated plans Bluehosts are cheapest across the board, and by quite some margin. Its plans start at just 59.66/month, and go up to a very affordable 89.49/month.

In contrast, InMotions plans go from 108.66 all the way up to 410.49/month and thats just for a one year subscription. It doesnt offer longer terms, either.

*Doesnt offer a 3 year dedicated plan **Doesnt offer dedicated hosting

Instead of being hosted on one physical server, cloud hosting spreads all your website data across a number of different servers that are all connected. All this data is then accessed through a virtual server. The advantage of this is that multiple servers are more reliable than just one server.

Theres a real range of prices for cloud hosting. HostGator and A2 Hostings cloud plans are the cheapest, which start from just 3.89 each, and go up to just 7.82 and 11.66 respectively.

Hostinger, which is usually the cheapest provider, offers plans starting from 7.99 and going all the way up to a not inconsiderable 36.99.

WordPress plans offer specialised tools and services for websites built on WordPress.

The following are all managed WordPress plans, meaning the provider manages the server and deals with all the maintenance and security.

Bluehosts WordPress offering is the cheapest for basic and intermediate plans (from 2.20 to 4.06/month), though it has a range of significantly more expensive advanced plans.

HostGator offers the cheapest advanced WordPress plan at 7.72/month.

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The cost of website hosting for small businesses in 2020 - Startups.co.uk