01Hosting costs by type
| Type | Price | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Free static hosting | $0 | Portfolios, landing pages, small business sites |
| Shared hosting | $2.49 to $3.49/month intro on 48 months; renews $10.99 to $16.99 (Hostinger) | WordPress sites with modest traffic |
| Developer platforms | Vercel Pro $20/month; Netlify Personal $9, Pro $20 | Next.js, apps, teams |
| Website builders | Plans that include hosting | No-code sites |
| Managed WordPress | Usually higher than shared | Business-critical WordPress |
| VPS and cloud | From a few dollars to hundreds a month | Custom apps, full control |
03Developer platforms
Vercel's pricing has a free Hobby plan for personal, non-commercial use and Pro at $20 a month with $20 of usage credit, then pay-as-you-go. Netlify's pricing runs Free with 300 credits, Personal at $9 and Pro at $20. Cloudflare's free tier allows commercial use. For most marketing sites, usage stays within the included amounts; heavy traffic, image optimization and server functions are what raise bills.
04What most sites actually need
- A portfolio or landing page: free static hosting.
- A small business site with a contact form: free static hosting or a builder plan.
- A WordPress blog: shared hosting, then managed hosting as traffic grows.
- A Next.js marketing site for a company: a developer platform's paid plan.
- An online store: an ecommerce platform, where hosting is included.
- A web app with users and data: a platform plus a database service.
05Costs beyond hosting
Budget for the domain, email (Google Workspace or similar), any premium themes or plugins for WordPress, form or newsletter services, and your time maintaining things. How much does a website cost? covers the full picture, and how to host a website for free shows how far free gets you. Where to buy a domain covers domain prices, and how much does it cost to start an online store? covers shops.
06How to avoid overpaying
Most overspending on hosting comes from defaults and upsells rather than real needs.
- Check whether your site is static; if so, free hosting covers it.
- Compare the renewal price and full term total, not the headline monthly figure.
- Skip bundled add-ons like paid SSL, which modern hosts include free.
- Set budget alerts on usage-priced platforms.
- Review plans yearly; traffic and needs change.
- Do not pay for hosting twice: builders already include it.
What people who tried it say
Hacker News discussions of hosting costs often focus on surprise bills from usage-based platforms rather than headline prices, and many recommend static hosting with hard caps for small sites.
- Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static siteHacker News
A traffic attack on a static site generated a six-figure usage bill, prompting advice to choose hosts with spending caps.
- Tell HN: I DDoSed myself using CloudFront and Lambda Edge and got a $4.5k billHacker News
A developer's misconfiguration produced a large cloud bill, a reminder to set budget alerts on usage-priced services.
Looking for more first-hand opinions? Search Reddit for “how much does website hosting cost”. We link the live threads rather than summarizing them, so you read them in full.
Our take
most small sites should pay for a domain and nothing else for hosting. Pay for hosting when you need commercial-use rights, support or server features, not by default.
Where this falls short
Prices change frequently and vary by region and term. Figures were checked on providers' pricing pages in October 2026; usage-based platforms can cost more than their base price.
Orlume includes hosting on every plan: sites publish to name.orlume.site at no extra cost. The free plan includes 10 message credits.
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Sources
- 1.Web hosting plans · Hostinger
- 2.Vercel pricing · Vercel
- 3.Netlify pricing · Netlify
Researched and written by the Orlume team · Updated October 2026
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