Website hosting costs $0 to $15 a month for most small sites, $20 to $100 for managed or VPS hosting, and $100+ for dedicated servers. Every hosting type compared, with intro vs renewal prices, September 2026.
Short answer (updated September 19, 2026): website hosting costs $0 to $15 a month for most small sites, $20 to $100 a month for managed WordPress or a VPS, and $100 to $500+ a month for dedicated servers. If you use a website builder, hosting is already included in the plan price.
Build your hosted website. Start free with a template site and publish it on a we.inc address, no card. Or describe your business in one prompt and the We.Inc AI builder drafts the whole site, on paid plans from $20/mo. Start building free, or start from a design made for electricians, landscapers or real estate agents.
The one trap to know about: many hosts advertise a low introductory price that only lasts for the first term. Budget for the renewal price, not the headline.
| Hosting type | Intro price | Typical renewal | Who manages it | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Builder free plan | $0 | $0 | Platform | Testing, personal sites |
| Builder paid plan | $15 to $50 a month | Same | Platform | Most small businesses |
| Shared hosting | $2 to $5 a month | $8 to $15 a month | Host, you manage the site | Small WordPress sites on a budget |
| Managed WordPress | $15 to $30 a month | $25 to $100 a month | Host handles updates and caching | Business WordPress sites |
| Cloud / VPS | $5 to $20 a month | $5 to $80 a month | You | Developers, custom apps |
| Static hosting (developer platforms) | $0 | $0 to $20 a month | Platform | Developer-built static sites |
| Dedicated server | $100+ a month | $100 to $500+ a month | You or a managed provider | High-traffic sites, strict requirements |
These ranges reflect published 2026 price pages from mainstream hosts. Intro prices usually require prepaying for one to three years.
The table below shows how a typical shared hosting deal plays out over three years. Numbers are illustrative of common pricing patterns, not a specific host.
| Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | 3-year total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting, intro deal | $36 ($3 a month) | $120 ($10 a month) | $120 | $276 |
| Builder plan with own domain | $240 ($20 a month) | $240 | $240 | $720 |
| Managed WordPress | $300 ($25 a month) | $480 ($40 a month) | $480 | $1,260 |
Shared hosting is clearly cheapest in cash. The builder plan costs more, but it also includes the site editor, security updates and backups, which on shared hosting are your job or extra add-ons. Compare total cost and total work, not just the hosting line.
If you are building on a hosted website builder, no. Hosting is part of the plan, along with SSL, backups and updates. That is the main reason builder plans look more expensive than shared hosting: they are selling a finished service, not a server.
You need separate hosting if you run self-hosted WordPress, a custom-coded site, or a web app built outside a builder. Our website builder vs WordPress comparison walks through that trade-off in more detail.
On We.Inc, hosting is included on every plan, including the free one, which publishes on a we.inc address with SSL. The Starter plan at $20 a month connects your own domain. Sites built on We.Inc are served from a global edge network, so there is nothing to configure.
Less than hosting sales pages suggest. A typical 5 to 20 page business site with photos weighs a few hundred megabytes at most and serves a few thousand visits a month. Any shared plan or builder plan handles that easily. The things that genuinely push you to a bigger plan are:
What matters more than raw capacity for a small site is speed. Visitors on phones leave slow pages, and Google uses page experience signals, including Core Web Vitals, in ranking. A fast host with a CDN and image optimisation beats a larger plan on a slow one. If you are unsure, start small: every host and builder lets you upgrade later, and very few let you downgrade a prepaid multi-year plan.
Agencies and freelancers often host client sites on one reseller account to keep costs down, then pass the cost on inside a care plan. A white-label website builder is the builder equivalent: all client sites on your brand, one bill. We.Inc's white-label Lite plan is $99 a month for 25 sites with your own domain, Launch is $499 for 250 and Scale is $999 for 1,000. The reseller margin calculator shows what that leaves you per client.
For a small business site, hosting should cost $0 to $15 a month on its own, or come included in a $15 to $50 builder plan. Always compare the renewal price, not the introductory one. For the rest of the budget, see how much it costs to build a website and website maintenance cost.
Build your hosted website free today. Sign up free, start from a template site and publish it free on a we.inc address. AI builds from one prompt on paid plans from $20/mo. Prefer a head start? Start from the design for electricians, landscapers or real estate agents.
We.Inc is an AI-powered website builder you can resell under your own brand. Launch a branded client dashboard, bill on Stripe Connect, and deliver AI-generated websites in minutes. White-label plans are custom priced, with no per-site fees.