Anyone that’s ever launched a blog has gone through the process of having to pick a web host and choose what plan to sign up for. It’s something that should be simple, but the sheer number of options at your disposal means it can take a while. Plus, hosting plans come in all shapes and sizes, so knowing how much you really need to spend is complicated.
A brand new blog doesn’t need expensive hosting to run like a charm. However, that doesn’t mean you can pick any provider you want or look for the cheapest plan around.
Ultimately, it’s possible to find great hosting at reasonable prices. In this article, we’re going to talk about how much hosting costs in general. Then I’ll walk you through how much you should spend on hosting depending on your needs. Let’s talk numbers!
How Much Hosting Usually Costs
If you’re working on websites for a while, then you know hosting costs have gone down drastically over the past few years. However, services have improved quite a lot as well, which is something you don’t see in a lot of industries.
The thing is most people that look for hosting want to pay as little as possible. Providers understand this, so they adjust accordingly by making budget shared hosting plans available to remain competitive. These days, it’s not uncommon to find that type of hosting plan starting at below $5 per month.
As you may know, shared hosting stands for the type of plan where you share a server with other users. That means there are fewer resources to go around, but it’s what enables providers to keep hosting costs down.
Once you move beyond shared hosting, then costs start to rise and prices are all over the place depending on what you’re looking for. I’ve come across Virtual Private Servers (VPSs) that are as cheap as shared hosting, while others will easily cost you three or four times as much.
Beyond that, you can also find dedicated plans. Dedicated hosting, in particular, tends to be very expensive since it’s the kind of plan you opt for when you’re running a resource-hungry site.
Ultimately, web hosting as a whole tends to be rather cheap, at least for new blogs. Let’s talk about what some of the most common price points are!
How Much You Should Spend on Hosting For Your Blog
For this section, I’m going to break down hosting plans into three different price ranges, which should cover most providers. Let’s find out which one is best for you.
Less than $10 Per Month
A budget of fewer than $10 per month puts you squarely in the ‘budget hosting’ category. However, there’s an astoundingly large number of options within this tier. The problem is, there are a lot of providers that don’t offer a quality service for their cheapest hosting plans, so you need to do your homework to find the best ones.
Within this range, you’ll mostly find shared hosting plans. I’ve also run across several decent VPSs that cost well below $10, but they tend to be unmanaged plans. That means you’ll need some server management experience to get the most out of them, which can get tricky.
Over the years, I’ve tried out a lot of ‘starter’ shared hosting plans from several companies. My favorite is Bluehost, followed by A2 Hosting and SiteGround. You’re in great hands with any of those three, and their shared plans hold up very well, even for mildly popular websites.
Between $10-30 Per Month
If you have between $10-30 per month to spend on hosting, then you’re well within the sweet spot in the industry. Within this range, you can experiment with more advanced plans, such as VPSs, cloud hosting, and even WordPress-specific offerings.
The best bang for your buck, in my experience, comes with VPS. I run a VPS that costs me around $12 per month, and I use it to host three websites. The performance is better than what I got from shared hosting, and the cost is more than reasonable for the use I give it.
VPS costs can scale depending on your needs, though. For about $30, Bluehost offers a dual-core server with 4 GB of RAM and 60 GB of SSD storage. That’s more than enough to power a website with a lot of traffic and probably more than one, which goes to show how much bang for your buck you can get.
SiteGround and A2 Hosting also offer VPS plans. However, I’m more partial to VPS-only hosting providers, such as Vultr or Digital Ocean, but that’s only because I like tinkering with servers.
Over $30 Per Month
Once you move beyond the $30 per month mark, you’re firmly in the camp of “I spend a lot of money on hosting.” Right off the bat, I can tell you there’s no reason to spend this much money on hosting unless you run a successful website.
Beyond the $30 per month mark, costs can vary a lot. However, you usually get very powerful servers that can handle a ton of traffic. Take Bluehost, for example – their dedicated hosting plans start at around $80 per month and go up to $120.
That’s a lot of dough, but it makes sense since you’re renting an entire server to yourself. On the other end of the spectrum, you have web hosts such as WP Engine, which offer WordPress specific plans starting at around $35 per month. For that price, you get access to managed hosting, which means they take care of any problems that pop up and make sure your blog is always running smoothly.
If you really have a lot of money to spare, there are even bespoke WordPress hosting solutions, such as Pagely, which target massive websites with large budgets. For example, their most basic cloud hosting plan starts at $299 per month. Naturally, that’s way overkill for a new blog, but it gives you an idea of how much people can spend when it comes to hosting.
Conclusion
If you’re starting a new blog, then it doesn’t make sense to blow your budget on hosting. These days, even cheap shared hosting plans can easily power a growing blog as long as you choose a good provider.
When your blog starts gaining traction, you’ll want to upgrade your hosting plan to a VPS. In most cases, a robust starting VPS will set you back around $10-20 per month, which is the sweet spot when it comes to hosting. However, when you’re just starting, it doesn’t make sense to spend more money than you need to, so go for shared hosting instead if this is your first blog.
Do you have any questions about how to find the right web host for your blog? Ask away in the comments section below!
Image credit: Pixabay.