How much does web hosting cost per month?

The hosting market runs on teaser pricing. The first term is cheap. After that you pay the regular rate. Hostinger charges $2.99 a month if you prepay four years and $10.99 at renewal. Bluehost goes from $3.99 to $9.99. SiteGround goes from $2.99 to $17.99. Compare hosts on the renewal price. That is the rate you pay for years.

Some hosts stay cheap after the first year. Namecheap renews at a modest $55.88 a year. IONOS renews at a reasonable $8 a month. With them a cheap start stays cheap in year two.

Paying more makes sense once your site earns money. Kinsta and WP Engine sell managed WordPress hosting from $29.17 a month on annual billing. They handle updates and backups for you. They also look after security and speed. For a hobby site that is more than you need. For a business site it costs less than one day a month of your own troubleshooting.

Shared hosting today costs $2.28 to $5.99 a month in the first year. After that it costs $4.66 to $17.99 a month. Namecheap is both the cheapest way in and the cheapest to stay. SiteGround is the most expensive to keep.

The multi-year cost tells you more. Take one promo year plus two years at the renewal rate. Three years of shared hosting then costs $138.64 (Namecheap) to $467.64 (SiteGround). The median across the eight hosts is $269.22. Use that figure for your budget.

Managed WordPress hosting is a different tier. It is not a pricier version of the same thing. Kinsta starts at $29.17 and WP Engine at $28 a month on annual billing. That buys server-level caching, staging and daily backups. You also get support from people who do nothing but WordPress.

Cloudways sits between the two worlds. Its smallest DigitalOcean server costs $11 a month. There is no limit on how many sites you put on it. If you run more than one site, that changes the cost per site completely.

Promotions change often. Check the renewal price on the provider’s site before you buy. Treat these figures as a guide rather than a quote.