Website hosting and maintenance cost: the real annual bill

Printed prices, verified

Working out the real annual cost

1. Start from the renewal, not the intro. A $2.99 entry price on a 48-month term is $143.52 up front and then, by the host's own page, $10.99 a month. Year one of a contract like that costs the intro; every year after costs the renewal. Take the renewal column from the table as the standing annual cost and treat the intro as a one-time discount.
2. Add the domain. Most shared plans include a domain for the first year and bill it at the registrar's renewal rate afterwards; managed and VPS plans usually do not include one. The website hosting and domain guide on this site sets out the honest route.
3. Price the maintenance. Updates, backups, a security scan and someone to call when the site breaks. On managed hosting this is inside the plan price; on shared and unmanaged hosting it is your time or a maintenance contract, and a maintenance contract for a small business site commonly costs more per year than the hosting itself.
4. Compare like with like. A shared plan at $11 a month renewed plus a maintenance retainer is a fair comparison to a managed plan at $30 a month with maintenance inside. The table gives the hosting half of the sum verbatim; the maintenance half is a quote you obtain, and this site does not invent one.

What the printed prices actually say

Every entry price in the index is quoted from the host's page with its term. Where a host prints a renewal price it is in the table; where a host prints only that the plan renews at the regular rate, the regular rate the page shows is recorded as the renewal. Nothing is inferred: a host that prints no renewal has no renewal cell, which is itself information about that host.

The stacks price differently. Shared hosting is cheapest up front and steepest at renewal; VPS hosting from the specialists prints monthly prices with short promotions; managed WordPress prints monthly or annual prices with little or no intro discount; dedicated servers print monthly prices at ten to fifty times the shared entry. The stack pages compare each group on its own terms.

Maintenance: what it is and who sells it

For a WordPress site maintenance means core, theme and plugin updates, off-site backups with a tested restore, uptime monitoring, security scanning and small fixes. Managed WordPress hosts sell most of it inside the plan; agencies and freelancers sell it as a retainer; a site owner with time does it for nothing but the time.

The cost of not doing it arrives as a compromised site, a broken update or a lost database, and it arrives at the worst moment. Budget the line even when the answer is your own time.

Common questions

How much does website hosting cost per year?

At renewal, most shared plans in the index print $8 to $12 a month, managed WordPress $25 to $35 a month for one site, and VPS plans $36 to $72 a month at the specialists; the entry prices are lower and require a term. Every figure is in the verified table with its source.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Inside a managed plan, nothing beyond the plan price; as a retainer, a quote from whoever provides it, which this site does not invent. The hosting half of the sum is in the table.

Why is my hosting renewal so much higher than the price I signed up at?

Because the sign-up price was an intro price for the prepaid term. The renewal column shows what each host prints for the same plan afterwards, so the year-two price is visible before you buy.

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• Compare Shared web hosting on printed prices
• Compare WordPress hosting on printed prices
• Compare VPS hosting on printed prices
• Compare Cloud hosting on printed prices
• Compare Dedicated servers on printed prices