Comparing web hosting prices is a lot like choosing a restaurant. You can spend $8 on a simple burger — or you can pay $30 for all the fancy ingredients that make the burger unrecognizable.
In my view, a good burger (and shared hosting plan) should offer simplicity, with all the elements working toward the goal of the perfect bite. Web hosting is similar; expensive options are popular because the price tags come with brand names whose reputations promise a five-star menu of web hosting options.
But some of the lesser-known hosting providers offer similar performance and functionality compared with bigger competitors at much more reasonable prices. Let’s compare!
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1. Hostinger Web Hosting Prices — Starting at $2.24 / Month
As the competition in the affordable shared hosting industry continues to tighten, Hostinger somehow manages to give customers tons of extra features while still keeping its website hosting cost among the lowest around.
While unlimited storage and bandwidth are the norms elsewhere, Hostinger also throws in limitless websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domain names for most customers.
Hostinger.com
- Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
- FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
- FREE daily or weekly backups
- Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
- SSH access & unlimited FREE SSL certificates
- Get started on Hostinger now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 100 GB SSD – 200 GB NVMe | FREE (1 year) | 3 minutes |
Hostinger users can choose a weekly or daily backup and an optional SSL certificate for added security protections.
We especially appreciate the growth potential Hostinger affords site owners. You can start with a no-frills, stripped-down plan for one site.
Or, you can quickly add and customize your options to include domain and email hosting, with optimized configurations for WordPress before scaling to an equally affordable cloud or VPS hosting plan.
If you’re interested in seeing what the industry’s upstart hosting option is all about, click here to learn more about Hostinger.
2. 1&1 IONOS Web Hosting Prices — Starting at $1.00/Month
Touting page load speeds faster than many other top providers in the industry (we’re talking the likes of Bluehost and GoDaddy), 1&1 IONOS delivers stunning performance for a similarly remarkable rate.
For just $1.00 per month, customers will enjoy unlimited storage, along with freebies such as domain registration, SSL certificate, email, and daily backups and recovery.
IONOS.com
- $1/month for 12 months
- No hidden fees, pay just $12 at checkout
- Easy setup and 24/7 expert support
- FREE domain or transfer, plus FREE SSL certificate
- Unlimited storage and databases with most plans
- Get started on 1&1 IONOS now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
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30 days | 10 GB – Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
Beyond speed, we love the care 1&1 IONOS takes in protecting customers’ data. In addition to the standard 99.9% uptime, the company maintains georedundant datacenters — meaning your website is mirrored in two locations.
Extended PHP support increases application compatibility, leaving you to use whatever technologies you want without worrying about updates and maintenance.
When in doubt, the popular services and support of 1&1 IONOS are at the ready to help 24/7 via phone, live chat, and email.
3. InMotion Hosting Prices — Starting at $1.99 / Month
Geared toward site owners looking for quality in their cheap web hosting provider, InMotion Hosting perfectly blends upgraded infrastructure with attractive prices and features.
The hosting company packs in the freebies right from the start, giving users a drag-and-drop site builder with hundreds of design templates, along with free domain registration, SSL certificate, and hassle-free site migration.
InMotionHosting.com
- FREE BoldGrid site builder and templates
- FREE website, domain, and cPanel migrations
- SSD storage makes your site load up to 20x faster
- Security suite includes SSL and hack protection
- Unlimited bandwidth and email accounts
- Get started on InMotion now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
90 days | 100 GB SSD – Unlimited SSD | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
Even better, InMotion has among the best customer service teams in the business, with 24/7 support available via chat, phone, and email.
Right off the bat, InMotion Hosting customers are set up to create their perfect blog, online store, portfolio, or appointment-booking service to boost their business profile. Plus, a lengthy 90-day money-back guarantee gives you ample time to see if the web hosting company is the best fit for you.
If powerful yet affordable and user-friendly web hosting is what you seek, look no further than InMotion Hosting.
4. SiteGround Web Hosting Prices — Starting at $2.99 / Month
Disclaimer: The SiteGround renewal rate is noticeably higher than others on our price comparison list. Why include them?
Because, with SiteGround, you’ll get a world-class cloud hosting experience powered by Google Cloud Platform. That means incredibly fast performance, unmetered bandwidth, and unrivaled uptime.
SiteGround.com
- FREE website transfer service to get started
- 99.9% uptime guarantee and unlimited traffic
- User-friendly WordPress installation
- 24/7 support featuring custom systems
- 4 caching options plus staging and Git
- Get started on SiteGround now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD – 40 GB SSD | FREE (1 Year) | 6 minutes |
The hosting company is known for creating custom solutions for customer support, promising sky-high satisfaction rates and customer retention.
SiteGround is perfect for those with a burgeoning WordPress website, as the web host’s services are recommended by the content management system‘s leadership team.
The hosting company’s reliance on the cloud means services aren’t broken down into shared, VPS, or dedicated hosting plans. Rather, you can tailor your plan to your specific needs.
5. Bluehost Web Hosting Prices — Starting at $1.99 / Month
When you think of Bluehost, the first thing that comes to mind should be big value at a low premium. The host’s shared web hosting service is a great way to get the most bang for your buck.
Bluehost allows for simple domain management, allowing users to track, transfer, or update domains in a centralized location. Unlimited email accounts are also included and come with filters, secure POP3, and third-party client compatibility, among other features.
Bluehost.com
- Cheap shared hosting from a trusted provider
- Ideal for hosting a WordPress website
- FREE Weebly website builder and Cloudflare CDN
- Unlimited traffic and 24/7 live chat support
- Get 75% off today with our Bluehost coupon
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD – 100 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
Site owners can rest assured their sites and content are safe, as Bluehost creates hosting account backups daily.
Bluehost also ensures optimal site performance — even in a shared server environment — by recognizing sites that are consuming a lot of resources and temporarily reassigning them to another web server.
If you’re looking for a cheap, scalable website hosting solution, Bluehost may be for you.
6. HostGator Web Hosting Prices — Starting at $2.29
HostGator hit the scene in 2002 when Founder Brent Oxley knew he could offer site owners top-tier hosting at a fraction of what the competition was charging. He devised a business plan in his dorm room and, within a year, was welcoming thousands of customers.
HostGator is known for its budget-friendly web hosting plan that web entrepreneurs and businesses leverage to build an online presence.
HostGator.com
- Host up to unlimited websites on a single plan
- FREE SSL certificate included on all plans
- Unlimited bandwidth & email addresses
- 1-click WordPress installs & FREE blog tools
- Get 77% OFF by buying 36 months upfront
- Get started on HostGator now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB SSD – 40 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
The host’s proprietary website builder provides a drag-and-drop environment and a wide range of templates that make getting a site up and running a cinch.
HostGator also gives customers access to a number of CMS and eCommerce platforms, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento, among others.
At a starting price of just $2.29 per month and a 45-day money-back guarantee, there’s not much to lose by signing up for services with HostGator.
To learn about all the perks HostGator customers enjoy, be sure to read our full review.
7. A2 Hosting Prices — Starting at $1.75 / Month
If you’re seeking a powerful engine to rev up your site and optimize loading time, look no further than A2 Hosting. The host prides itself on the reliable, high-performing hosting service it provides.
A2 Hosting’s Starter hosting package will get you one website, five databases, unlimited storage and transfer, and the popular cPanel control panel. Higher-tiered plans come with unlimited sites, databases, storage, and transfer, and free SSL and SSD.
A2Hosting.com
- FREE Cloudflare CDN and SSD speed boost
- Optimized caching and 1-click installs
- Unlimited email, domains, and databases
- Advanced security and FREE HackScan
- 24/7 support via phone, chat & tickets
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 100 GB SSD – Unlimited SSD | New or Transfer | 4 minutes |
The host’s Turbo package does just what its name implies. With Turbo, sites run up to 20 times faster because of A2’s fine-tuned server. This package also comes with a site accelerator, boosting speeds even more.
Extending its reputation for performance to professional email hosting services, A2 Hosting is one of our favorites to recommend for growing businesses (where money and milliseconds matter!). While one may start with a shared server plan, business owners can confidently scale and advance to one of the company’s VPS hosting or dedicated server options. The competitive pricing, performance, and support will scale with you.
With this kind of performance optimization and a support team ready to help around the clock, A2 Hosting might be a great choice for your site.
If you’re still on the fence, read our comprehensive take on A2 Hosting.
Other Popular Web Hosting Service Prices
Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Rackspace are three recognizable names that offer stellar web hosting services (we’re skipping Microsoft Azure for now).
But the prices and advanced technologies can be a tough pill for beginners to swallow — and understand.
Each service computes its hosting prices differently, based on different sets of included features, and often requires customers to custom-build their environments.
On the bright side, you’ll get exactly the amount of resources you need. However, building and operating cloud instances is not for beginners or the faint of heart.
That’s why we’re also highlighting Cloudways, Kamatera, and Hostinger, which all offer hosting services at flexible prices.
8. Kamatera — Starting at $4.00 / Month
Upgraded infrastructure doesn’t have to break the bank. Many cloud hosting providers, such as Kamatera, offer an introduction to high-class hosting without the lofty price tags.
In fact, you can even try Kamatera for FREE with a 30-day trial. The company gives new customers a $100 credit to test their custom-built cloud instance.
Kamatera.com
- Ultimate scalability with limitless customizations
- Create and deploy servers in 60 seconds
- Easily add load balancers and firewalls
- Stellar 99.95% uptime guarantee
- Sign up today for a 30-day FREE trial
- Get started on Kamatera now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
5 minutes | 20 GB SSD – 4 TB SSD | 1 – 32 cores | 1 GB – 128 GB |
Upon signing up, customers can launch cloud servers in as little as 60 seconds. Kamatera gives a dizzying array of options — including more than 100 operating system server images — to enable site owners to get exactly what their heart desires.
Load balancers, firewalls, and private networks are easy add-ons, as is selecting which of the company’s 18 datacenters to deploy to.
Kamatera guarantees 99.95% uptime, along with 24/7 customer support available in several languages.
9. Cloudways — Starting at $8.25 / Month
We know Google and Amazon have incredible cloud services — as do industry leaders such as Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr. However, these ala carte services can be hard for rookies to set up, configure, and maintain.
That’s where Cloudways comes in. The cloud hosting provider connects customers to all the modern technologies and capabilities of the cloud titans — as well as the hands-on support and technical experience to make your move to the cloud as stress-free as possible.
You can try the provider’s cloud web hosting services for free for a short period of time.
Cloudways.com
- Managed cloud hosting with 24/7/365 monitoring
- Choose from 5 popular cloud providers
- Auto-healing cloud servers with FREE backups
- 3-day free trial with no credit card required
- Host unlimited apps with no contract lock-in
- Get started on Cloudways now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
8 minutes | 20 GB SSD – 4 TB SSD | 1 – 96 cores | 1 GB – 384 GB |
Simply choose which provider and geographic regions you wish to host your website or application through, and Cloudways handles the rest.
You’ll still enjoy the same pay-as-you-go cloud pricing model, which starts out remarkably affordable and scales as high as your traffic demands.
Sure, Cloudways is often a touch more expensive than if you go to the cloud services providers directly, but we’ve found that the time savings more than offset any additional costs.
You’ll be much happier with the 24/7/365 responsive support, user-friendly account dashboards, automated offsite backups, and free SSL certificates and site migrations.
10. Amazon Web Hosting Pricing — Starting at $12.00 / Month
Although Amazon Web Services does include a free web hosting tier with many popular services, it’s not a permanent solution. Let’s take the time to examine the pricing surrounding their full-strength, premium services.
Similar to Google Cloud Platform, AWS offers enterprise-grade scalable environments in which to deliver their sites and apps.
We published an article covering the AWS flexible, pay-as-you-go model for its cloud infrastructure service. For businesses that don’t want to commit large chunks of their budgets to hosting services in the long term, AWS might be a good fit.
AWS does come in as one of the more confusing options on our list, though, as the organization offers dozens of specialized services to run your website or application.
If you’re looking at AWS for hosting your business website, you’ll probably want to go with EC2. A cloud server with the same specs as our Google Cloud machine (2 vCPUs and 8GB memory) will cost $0.0168 per hour or a touch over $12 per month.
We found that Lightsail, a more recent (and affordable) offering that enables users to simply deploy a virtual server, doesn’t quite have the oomph to live up to the rigorous demands of a larger audience. This service is best for personal sites and side projects.
All in all, your AWS costs can vary based on features and how much traffic your site gets. So, if your online business is scaling rapidly, AWS’s hosting costs might impact your bottom line.
11. Google Web Hosting Pricing — Starting at $49.00 / Month
The newest of the major providers, Google Cloud Platform’s pricing model is more straightforward than competitors. The web host certainly isn’t the cheapest, but we appreciate the familiar interfaces and streamlined approach to hosting.
Site owners can expect to pay roughly $50 per month for Google’s most basic cloud server, which comes with 2 vCPUs and 8GB of memory.
As a highly configurable cloud service, Google bills customers by the gigabyte of storage used. Last we checked, customers will spend $0.040 per month for standard disk space, $0.170 for high-speed SSD storage, and up to $0.340 for regionally optimized SSD space.
TechRepublic published a great breakdown of Google’s pricing when compared with AWS, which showed the former was cheaper by 15 to 41% a few years ago. Prices fluctuate pretty widely, so be sure to do your research when you’re ready to sign up.
All in all, Google fares pretty well when it comes to the war on price and performance among the big cloud providers — though it might not seem like it after learning about the cheaper alternatives above.
12. Rackspace Web Hosting Pricing — Starting at $74.00 / Month
Rackspace offers a number of hosting solutions and managed services. The company’s premium brand means you’ll see superior hardware and infrastructure and some of the industry’s best support and managed services.
However, hosting your site in a cloud environment with Rackspace will cost quite a few pretty pennies. Rackspace offers a price calculator to provide estimates on this. For our purposes, let’s see how low we can get the cost.
The host’s base, general-purpose server — significantly smaller than those we compared with AWS and Google — comes with 1 vCPU and 1GB of RAM. Fortunately, Rackspace does charge for storage separately; our configuration comes with 20GB SSD.
This bare-bones configuration costs a little more than $24 per month. However, you’ll need to add the company’s required managed services for a monthly charge of $50, bringing the total to $74.56 last we checked.
The managed support add-on seems extreme, but this is what sets Rackspace apart.
Helpful support agents can be tough to come by with AWS and Google, but the friendly staffers at Rackspace will take on all the tedious server management tasks, leaving you more time to create and run your business.
The online magazine Ecommerce Guide gave a pretty good overview of Rackspace’s different hosting options and broke down the company’s dedicated hosting costs. Going to this option increases prices exponentially.
What Are the Average Web Hosting Prices for Each Plan Type?
As evidenced in this post, the cost of web hosting can vary wildly — from $2 to upward of $200 per month. Of course, the cost of the service correlates to the server resources, third-party integrations, and support personnel promised in the package.
On average:
- shared server hosting plans cost less than $10 per month
- WordPress hosting plan prices hover around the cost of standard shared hosting packages
- virtual private servers or VPS hosting plans go for $5 to $17 per month
- dedicated server prices run the gamut, from a $50 monthly price tag to hundreds or thousands spent on custom-configured machines
Note: Anywhere you see the word “managed,” expect an inflated price. Managed hosting providers, including those offering managed WordPress hosting, charge higher rates due to the added peace of mind of hands-off server maintenance, advanced troubleshooting support, and increased access to support staff (e.g., live chat or even a personal account representative).
Which Web Hosting Provider Offers the Lowest Price?
At the time this article was last updated, 1&1 IONOS is in the lead for the lowest hosting price tag. At $1.00 per month, the company’s shared hosting plans lower the financial barrier to entry for first-time website owners. As the web host continues to capture more market share, we suspect the price-for-performance value is paying off.
IONOS.com
- $1/month for 12 months
- No hidden fees, pay just $12 at checkout
- Easy setup and 24/7 expert support
- FREE domain or transfer, plus FREE SSL certificate
- Unlimited storage and databases with most plans
- Get started on 1&1 IONOS now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
30 days | 10 GB – Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
Hostinger presents a close second with shared hosting plans starting at $2.24 per month; coming in third is iPage ($2.95/month), and the remaining budget web hosting providers tend to offer packages in the less-than-$5 range.
Consider one of our favorite low-cost, high-value hosts for the best web hosting service offered at the lowest rates. You’ll notice some familiar brand names.
What Factors Impact Web Hosting Prices?
You can get a hosting plan for as little as $1 or as much as thousands per month. The price all depends on the type of server you choose, how big your website is, and what features you need. Some of the biggest price-influencing features are:
- Whether you choose shared, VPS, cloud, or dedicated hosting.
- How much RAM, storage, and bandwidth your plan offers.
- Managed services such as managed WordPress hosting.
- Additional features, like domain privacy protection, daily backups, and a content delivery network.
Of all these factors, the server type is usually the most significant determinant of your plan’s price. Shared hosting is the ultimate budget-friendly option, while dedicated servers flash a high price tag.
Use Promo Codes and Get Rewards for the Best Server Deals
So, here’s the skinny: As is the case with hamburgers, the most expensive hosting options with all the bells and whistles may not necessarily provide the perfect bite (byte?).
Rackspace, Google, and AWS might be good fits for large, enterprise-level organizations, but cheaper alternatives provide a similar level of service at a fraction of the web hosting cost.
Until you’re ready to graduate to the likes of Google’s Cloud Platform or an Amazon cluster in the cloud, consider campaigns a budget host whose service menu is packed with competitive features. Better yet, use one of our discount codes to earn up to 70% off popular plans.
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