Website hosting costs in the UK range from a couple of pounds a month to several hundred, and the price on the advert is often not the price you will pay in year two. For a small business, the good news is that you almost certainly need something at the cheaper end of the market, as long as it is run properly.
This guide explains what hosting is, the main types and what they cost, the renewal trap, and how to tell whether the hosting bundled into a web designer's monthly fee is fair.
What is website hosting?
Hosting is renting space on a computer (a server) that is permanently connected to the internet, so that when someone types your address, your website is there to load. Your domain name is the address; hosting is the building. They are often sold together but they are separate things, and they can be with separate companies.
The hosting company handles the physical machines, power, network and, depending on the plan, some or all of the software that runs on them. The more they handle, the more it costs, and the less you have to think about.
It helps to think about hosting in terms of what goes wrong when it is poor. Slow hosting makes every page take a second or two longer to start loading, which is most noticeable on mobile data. Unreliable hosting means the site is occasionally unreachable, often at night when nobody notices, and sometimes on a busy Monday morning when people are ringing round. Poorly secured shared hosting is how one hacked site can affect its neighbours. None of these problems show up on a pricing page, which is why the cheapest plan is not always the cheapest outcome.
Types of hosting and what they cost
| Type | Typical cost | How it works | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | £3–£15 a month | Your site shares a server with hundreds of others | Small brochure sites with modest traffic |
| Managed WordPress | £15–£50 a month | Host handles WordPress updates, caching, backups and security | WordPress sites where the owner wants less admin |
| Website builder (Wix, Squarespace etc.) | £10–£40 a month | Hosting is part of the subscription; you cannot move the site elsewhere | DIY sites built on that platform |
| Cloud / VPS | £20–£100+ a month | Your own slice of a server with guaranteed resources | Busy sites, shops, custom applications |
| Modern static or edge hosting | £0–£20 a month for small sites | Pre-built pages served from a global network | Fast custom-built sites; needs a developer to set up |
| Dedicated server | £80–£300+ a month | A whole physical machine for you | Large sites with heavy traffic or special requirements |
The renewal price trap
Budget hosting is often advertised at a heavily discounted first term, sometimes with a condition that you pay two or three years upfront. When the term ends, the plan renews at the standard rate, which can be two to four times the introductory price. It is not hidden, exactly. It is in the small print on the pricing page, usually next to an asterisk.
None of that makes the host a bad choice. It just means you should compare hosting on its renewal price, and multiply by the number of years you expect to stay.
A worked example: a plan advertised at £2.99 a month for the first 36 months, paid upfront, might renew at £9.99 a month. Over six years the average is closer to £6.50 a month than the advertised figure, and moving host at every renewal to chase another introductory deal has its own cost in time and risk.
What a small business website actually needs from hosting
A local business site with a few thousand visitors a month is a light load. You do not need a dedicated server, unlimited bandwidth or a 99.999% uptime guarantee. What you do need is reliability, speed and someone who notices when it breaks.
- A free SSL certificate that renews automatically, so the padlock never lapses.
- Daily backups kept off the server, with a simple way to restore them.
- Servers or a delivery network close enough to UK visitors that pages load quickly.
- Monitoring, so someone is alerted within minutes if the site goes down.
- Security basics: a firewall, protection against automated attacks, and up-to-date server software.
- Support that answers in hours, not days, from people who can actually fix things.
Extras hosts may charge for
- Daily backups and restores. Some budget plans only include weekly backups, or charge per restore.
- Paid SSL certificates. Standard free certificates are fine for almost every small business.
- Email mailboxes. Some hosts include basic email; many businesses are better off with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, billed per user.
- Malware removal if the site is hacked, sometimes charged as a one-off clean-up fee.
- Staging sites, for testing changes before they go live.
- Priority or phone support.
Hosting bundled with your web designer: fair or a mark-up?
Many web designers include hosting in a monthly fee rather than letting you buy it yourself. That can look like a mark-up when you see £5-a-month hosting advertised elsewhere, but the comparison is rarely like for like. A designer-managed plan usually includes the setup, the monitoring, the backups, the updates and somebody to ring when it goes wrong. Cheap hosting includes the server and a support ticket queue.
Where bundled hosting does become a problem is ownership. If the designer hosts the site, make sure the domain is registered in your name and that your contract says what happens to the site and content if you leave.
How to check what you are paying now
- Find the last hosting invoice or renewal email and note the annual cost after any discount ended.
- Check what is included: backups, SSL, email, support.
- Run your site through a speed test on a mobile connection. Slow hosting shows up as a slow first response.
- Ask your host or designer when the last backup was taken and where it is stored.
- Look up who your domain is registered to. Hosting can be moved in a day; a domain in someone else's name is harder.
Where we fit
Nerdsharks sites are hosted on modern infrastructure that serves pages from locations close to your visitors, with free auto-renewing SSL, daily backups and 24/7 uptime monitoring. Hosting is part of the monthly fee rather than a separate bill, alongside the updates, fixes and changes. You can compare our whole monthly cost, £99 on Monthly or £49 if you pay for the build upfront, against a host plus the time and help you would otherwise need.