Are you trying to find out how much WordPress hosting costs? Then, this guide is for you. In this guide, I will dive deep into how much a WordPress hosting costs.
When I first created my website, I also had the same type of questions such as:
- How much does WordPress hosting cost?
- Which hosting type is best for my site? Should I go with Shared, Managed, or VPS Hosting?
- What are the different hosting providers and which one should I choose to purchase my hosting?
In this guide, I’m primarily focusing on how much WordPress hosting costs and what are the factors that affect the hosting cost.
How Much Does A WordPress Hosting Cost?
The actual hosting pricing depends on various factors, such as first-time pricing, renewal rates, hosting provider, location, hosting type and plans, and additional features. So, before I answer how much WordPress hosting costs, we need to briefly understand these factors one by one. And I will also explain how these factors affect the pricing of WordPress hosting.
1) The First-time Hosting Pricing & Renewal Rates
Almost every hosting provider offers you a huge discount when you’re purchasing a hosting from them. But keep in mind that this discount price is only valid for your first billing cycle. After the first billing cycle, you have to pay for the hosting as per their renewal rates. (which is going to be your actual hosting price after the first billing cycle).
Let’s take the example of Bluehost, As you can see in the screenshot, Bluehost hosting starts from $2.95/month but this is the first discounted price that you have to pay.
Once your first billing cycle is completed, it can be 1 yr, 2 yr, or 3yr based on for how many years you have purchased the hosting during your first purchase. Once that first-time payment cycle is completed. After that, you have to pay as per their renewal rate. In the case of Bluehost, it starts at $11.99/month for a basic WordPress hosting plan from Bluehost as you can see in the screenshot.
From here, you can take the idea of how much your hosting will cost you over time, first, you can just get hosting at $2.95/month which is the discounted rate. But after that, it’s going to cost more as per the hosting provider’s renewal rate.
nce your first billing cycle is completed, it can be 1 yr, 2 yr, or 3yr based on for how many years you have purchased the hosting during your first purchase. Once that first-time payment cycle is completed. After that, you have to pay as per their renewal rate. In the case of Bluehost, it starts at $11.99/month for a basic WordPress hosting plan from Bluehost as you can see in the screenshot.
From here, you can take the idea of how much your hosting will cost you over time, first, you can just get hosting at $2.95/month which is the discounted rate. But after that, it’s going to cost more as per the hosting provider’s renewal rate.
Pro Tip
The tip here is if you’re serious about hosting a website through a particular hosting provider then choose a longer period for purchasing a hosting for the first time. This way you can save a lot of money by getting hosting for multiple years at a discounted rate.
2) The Hosting Type
You might already know that there are different WordPress hosting types offered by hosting providers. The most common types are: Shared hosting, VPS, Managed WordPress hosting, and Dedicated server hosting.
The pricing of all these hosting types differs from each other and out of all these, shared hosting is the cheapest hosting. Below is the brief about all these hosting types and what affects the pricing of these hostings:
Shared Hosting:
As the name suggests this hosting is shared with other sites. In this hosting a single server is shared with multiple sites and that’s why this hosting is the cheapest hosting type as compared to the other hosting.
Due to the cheapest cost, the shared hosting is perfect for the beginner who has low-traffic sites. But it might not be a great choice for heavy-traffic sites. Because the resources are shared with other sites and the server may not be able to handle huge traffic.
Managed WordPress Hosting:
In Managed WordPress hosting, your hosting provider manages the backend tasks of your WordPress site and server including its performance, security, backups, and monitoring tasks.
This is a good choice only if you don’t want to mess with WordPress website maintenance and your hosting provider can take care of those things. But if you prefer managing your WordPress website then instead of choosing managed WordPress hosting which costs more, you can go with shared hosting which is more affordable.
VPS Hosting:
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server Hosting. This hosting will cost you higher than shared hosting. In VPS hosting you will get a dedicated space on a server but the server is still shared with other sites. This type of hosting is perfect for medium to high-traffic sites. But again this will cost more as compared to the shared WordPress Hosting.
Dedicated Server Hosting:
In this, you will get a dedicated server for hosting your site and your server will not shared with any other site. This means you have full resources to easily handle a huge traffic for your site. But this type of hosting is the most expensive as compared to any other hosting type.
3) Hosting Provider
Another thing that might affect your hosting pricing is from where you are purchasing hosting for your site. In the market, there are several different hosting providers, and their pricing also differs for WordPress hosting.
Here is a brief breakdown of top WordPress hosting providers, how much is their starting price for first-time users, and then how much it costs you for renewal.
| Hosting Provider Name | Starting Price for First-time Users | Starting Renewal rate as per their site |
| Bluehost | $2.95/month | $11.99/month |
| Siteground | $2.99/month | $17.99/month |
| A2 | $2.99/month | $12.99/month |
| Hostinger | $2.49/month | $12.19/month |
| Hostgator | $4.50/month | $16.49/month |
| Dreamhost | $2.59/month | $5.99/month |
As you can see the price of each hosting provider varies, and their renewal rates also vary. These rates are going to decide your actual hosting price. So, from here you can have an estimated idea of how much is WordPress hosting.
4) Location and Server
Almost every hosting provider offers you a hosting price in your currency rate. So, make sure to switch the hosting provider site to your location and see how much that particular hosting is going to cost you in your particular currency based on your location.
As we know the Bluehost starting price is $2.95 but if I switch it to other currencies, it will accordingly show you the prices.
The other thing that might affect the hosting price is for which location you want to purchase a server and accordingly, you have to pay for that. So, for the server choose the location/country you targeting and from where the most visitors will come. Let’s suppose you’re living in another country but your site is targeting the United States audience. So, in this case, having a U.S.-based server is a great choice because, from the nearest server, your site will load more quickly.
5) Taxes
While estimating how much WordPress hosting costs, you can’t ignore Taxes. Along with the hosting price, you might have to pay taxes as per your country’s rules and regulations. On the pricing page, the hosting provider just shows you the hosting price, but in most cases that does not include Taxes or VAT.
To know how much you have to pay for taxes or VAT while purchasing hosting, you can start going through the purchase process of that hosting provider. At the checkout page, you can check how much the hosting costs along with taxes if any.
Final Thoughts
I hope this guide will help you to understand how much WordPress hosting costs and what are the factors that affect the pricing of hosting.
Have relevant questions? Drop them in the comment box!