How much does website hosting cost for a small business?

How much server a 5-page trade website needs

Hosting is the computer that stores your site and sends it to visitors. Most hosting pages sell you storage, bandwidth and visitor limits. A small service business site uses very little of any of them.

Here's a data point from our own site. The sample HVAC page on vladier.com is a single HTML file of about 30 KB with no photos. Job photos add the most size. Compress them and a 5-page site still uses a small part of the 10 GB to 20 GB of storage that entry plans list.

Visitor limits are generous too. WP Engine's cheapest plan is built for 25,000 visits a month. That's more than 800 visits a day. Check your own analytics before you pay for a bigger tier.

So compare entry plans on what happens when something breaks. Ask how backups work, how you restore one and who you can reach.

Website hosting cost per month, by type

These are the main types, with public prices we checked in September 2026. The vendors are examples, and we don't rank them. Prices are in U.S. dollars, before taxes, and some sites show different prices depending on where you visit from.

Full disclosure: Vladier sells the last type, and our $99 and $199 monthly plans include hosting.

Builders and shared hosting: the low-cost end

A builder is the simplest setup. You pay one bill and the company runs the servers, security and software. Squarespace says all its plans include managed cloud hosting and SSL. A yearly plan also comes with a custom domain, free for the first year.

The catch is moving later. Wix says a Wix site has to run on Wix's servers. If you ever want to leave a builder, plan on rebuilding the site somewhere else.

Shared hosting is the cheapest paid option at renewal, around $10 to $11 a month. You get more freedom, but you're now running WordPress or site files yourself. The low number on the pricing page is an intro price that needs years paid upfront. Our website maintenance cost guide shows that intro vs. renewal math and a full yearly budget, so we won't repeat it here.

Managed WordPress, VPS and free static hosting

Managed WordPress hosting costs about three times what shared hosting renews at. The extra pays for servers set up for WordPress, automatic backups and WordPress support. Kinsta lists 14 days of backup retention and unlimited free migrations on its plans. If your site runs on WordPress and nobody on your team wants to touch it, this is the type worth comparing.

A VPS (virtual private server) looks cheap at $4 a month. That price is for a bare server with 512 MiB of memory. You or someone you pay installs the software, keeps it patched and sets up backups. Backups cost 20% of the server price weekly or 30% daily. For a 5-page site, the time costs more than the server.

Static hosting, which serves plain site files, can be free. Cloudflare says requests to static assets are free and unlimited, and its free Pages plan allows 500 builds a month. GitHub Pages has a soft limit of 100 GB of bandwidth a month. GitHub's rules also say Pages isn't meant to be free hosting to run an online business. Read the terms before you put a company site there. A static site has no editor you log into, so each change means editing files or asking whoever built it.

Hidden costs the pricing page doesn't lead with

Add these before you compare two plans:

• Renewal prices. The shared plans above renew at about 2.5 to 3.7 times their intro price.
• Email. Kinsta says it doesn't provide email as part of its hosting plans. Bluehost's Pro Email is a one-month free trial that renews at $2.50 a month. Hostinger's mailboxes are free for the first year. Google Workspace Starter bought through Squarespace is $7 a month per user on a yearly plan, or $8.40 month to month.
• Backups and restores. Included backups may run weekly or daily, or be kept for a set number of days. Ask whether a restore is free and who does it.
• Visitor limits. WP Engine's support page lists $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors on several of its plans. Check your analytics against the limit before you pick a tier.
• The free domain. Builders and hosts often include a domain for the first year only. After that you pay the regular renewal.
• Moving later. Leaving a builder can mean a rebuild, and moving between hosts can mean paid help. Some managed hosts include free migrations.

What to pay for instead of more server

Cheap hosting is fine for a small site. The expensive problem is a site that stops working while nobody is checking.

We checked 1,000 trade business websites in September 2026. Of the 898 listed websites we could check, 164 (18.3%) didn't work at all when we loaded them. We didn't test why, and a listed address can be out of date. For a customer who taps the link, the result is still a dead end.

Whoever runs your site, make sure these are covered:

• Backups that run on their own, and a restore you've actually seen work.
• Someone reachable when the site goes down or the contact form stops sending.
• Renewals for hosting and the domain on auto-pay, billed to a card you still use.
• The domain registered in your business's name, so you can move hosts.

If you're weighing a monthly service against doing it yourself, our website subscription vs. buying guide covers ownership and exit terms.

Questions to ask before you buy hosting

Get these answers from the pricing page, the terms or a support chat before you pay:

1. What is the renewal price, and how many months do I have to prepay to get the advertised one?
2. Is business email included, and for how long?
3. How often are backups made, how long are they kept, and does a restore cost extra?
4. What happens if I go over a visit or bandwidth limit?
5. Who updates WordPress, plugins and the server, if anyone?
6. How do I reach a person, and at what hours?
7. Can I move my site to another host later, and what do I get to take with me?
8. Is the domain in my name, and when does it renew?

To see hosting next to build and upkeep costs for your own site, try our website cost calculator.