How Much should you Be Paying for Web hosting?

Like storage and bandwidth, the price of hosting has dropped so much that it’s almost irrelevant these days. However, if you’re paying more than you need to, it’s quite relevant, so this question is designed to make
sure that you don’t pay too much.

Because most readers of this book will be going the route of shared hosting (your site is on a server with hundreds of others), that’s what I’ll be talking about here. The bottom line? For an average website, you
shouldn’t need to pay more than $10.95 per month for quality shared hosting.


Still, be sure that you’re not comparing apples and oranges. For example, a web designer who has set up hosting for a client might be charging $19.99 per month, but they personally handle tech support, set up client e-mail, and do things such as back ups. In other words, the client isn’t just paying for hosting, but for services as well. You might do everything yourself and pay only $5.99 per month on a multiyear contract, but you can’t compare the two rates.

Here are pricing basics for some other types of shared hosting:


 E-commerce hosting—If you’re hosting your own shopping cart system, you’ll want a package that off ers things such as added security. So you might be paying $14.99 per month and upward, depending on all the features you want.

Video hosting—There are lots of free video hosting sites (the most popular is YouTube). They generally work very well, and the price is right, but you might want to consider how long smaller startups are going to be around. There are paid services, such as Amazon’s S3 hosting, which typically charge by the amount stored and the amount of traffic.


Specialty software hosting —If your site needs to run JavaServer Pages (JSP)—fi les with a .jsp extension—or some other special soft ware, you might find that prices are a bit higher for those types of hosting accounts, say in the $12.95 range and upward.

Turnkey websites or hosted applications—If you’re gett ing a special website system, such as for Realtors or travel agents, the cost of hosting will be part of the monthly system fee. Expect to pay a bare minimum of $29.99 for these types of site management programs, more likely $39.99 and up.


When you see advertisements for web hosting that’s only $4.95 a month or even less, they’re likely based on signing a multiyear hosting contract. Assuming that you’ll get all the features and services offered by a company that charges $9.95 on a month-to-month basis, make sure the contract terms are reasonable.

What are the penalties for leaving early? Multiyear contracts usually have penalties if you terminate early. Find out what the host’s policy is. Can you terminate if it violates uptime or other guarantees?

If you choose to leave, will you get back some portion of the money you paid up front, and on what is that portion based?