What Should I Pay For My Web Hosting?
How much should you be paying for web hosting? This is a difficult question. After all, some plans start as low as $1 a month, while others are over $2000 a month. Can your site perform with a hosting plan that only costs $1, or would you be better off spending $2000? To complicate matters even more, there are over 300,000 web hosting providers to choose from. Is your head hurting? Not to worry, we can fix that. Read on to learn what you should expect to pay for your web hosting.
How Much Does Shared Hosting Cost?
Shared hosting is the most affordable hosting type. With this type of hosting, your website shares a physical server with other sites. The server’s resources are shared by all the accounts, which is why prices for this service tend to be very low. In fact, most shared hosting plans are less than $5 per month. Additionally, shared hosting plans are very easy to set up. Many of these plans come with built-in DNS management and a one-click email setup.
However, shared hosting does come with some downsides. For starters, because the server’s resources are shared, your site will have limited access to them. This means if you want resource-intensive functionality, you may be out of luck. This lack of resources also means that your site may be sluggish. Furthermore, if your site starts getting a lot of traffic, you might get shut down. This is because hosting providers have controls to shut down sites if they use too many resources. Therefore, if you expect to receive a lot of traffic, shared hosting, despite its price, is not the solution for you.
How Much Does WordPress Hosting Cost?
A WordPress hosting plan offers you features that cater specifically to this platform. For example, these hosting plans will typically offer single-click software installation. This makes getting started with this CMS a lot simpler. Additionally, most hosting providers will offer automatic WordPress updates. Basic WordPress hosting plans will be similar to shared hosting and generally start around the same price (i.e., under $5 per month). More complex plans will be necessary to host more complicated sites, such as eCommerce sites. These plans generally start at around $5 per month.
How Much Does VPS Hosting Cost?
A virtual private server (VPS) is a machine that’s been virtually partitioned to act as several separate server units. This means that although multiple websites exist on a single physical machine, your VPS and its resources are reserved for you and only you. As a result, you get a hosting plan that’s a step up from the frugality and limitations of shared hosting.
VPS hosting can be managed or unmanaged. Managed VPS hosting means that everything about the server’s administration is taken care of by the host. For this reason, this form of hosting is more expensive than unmanaged hosting, which requires that you take care of all server administrative duties. However, this means you’ll need to have some technical server knowledge. If you aren’t tech-savvy, you’ll find server management and maintenance difficult, and this may affect your site’s performance. In general, managed VPS hosting plans start around $20 a month, while unmanaged VPS hosting begins at around $10 a month.
How Much Does Dedicated Hosting Cost?
With dedicated hosting, you get an entire physical server to yourself. This means all the resources are yours to use. For this reason, dedicated servers are the most expensive of the hosting types we’ve listed here. On average, they cost between $100 to $2000 a month.
What Should I Pay for My Web Hosting?
We’ve reviewed what each web hosting type costs on average, but deciding what to pay for your web hosting really depends on what services and resources you need. The more you need, the more you should expect to pay. (Unlike the adage, quality over quantity, here quality and quantity go hand in hand). Additionally, you should expect to pay more for quality. A quality host is one that offers an uptime of at least 99.9%. They should also offer 24/7/365 customer support. Moreover, they should provide exceptional security, including daily backups, SSL certificates, and robust firewalls.
