How much should hosting cost a small business website?
For most small UK businesses, somewhere between £8 and £30 a month. Here is what decides where you land, and the catches hidden in the cheap headline prices.
19 October 2026
The short answer
A simple brochure site, a few pages saying who you are and how to get in touch, should cost £8 to £15 a month to host once any introductory offer ends. A site you edit yourself, or one that takes bookings or enquiries into a database, usually costs £15 to £40. An online shop or a web application is more, often £20 to £60 and sometimes far beyond that, because it does more work and holds data that matters.
If you are paying well above those figures for a small site, it is worth asking what the money buys. If you are paying well below them, check what happens at renewal.
The four kinds of hosting, and what they cost
Prices below are monthly, from the public price pages of large hosts and website builders and from independent UK price guides, checked in October 2026. They are a guide, not a quote: every provider words its plans differently.
| Kind of hosting | First year | After that | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | £1.49 to £3.29 | £8 to £14 | A simple site you are happy to set up and look after yourself |
| Website builder | £12 to £36 | £12 to £36 | Building and editing the site yourself in a drag and drop editor |
| Managed WordPress | £10 to £40 | £15 to £40 | A WordPress site where someone else handles updates and backups |
| Cloud or virtual server | £20 to £60 | £20 to £60 | Online shops, web applications and busier sites |
The catches in the headline price
The cheapest prices need years paid up front. At one of the biggest shared hosts, the £1.49 a month plan is the price for a 48 month term paid in one go, and it renews at £7.99 a month. That is more than five times as much, and the jump arrives after you have built everything around it.
VAT is often not included. Many hosts show prices without it, so a £10 plan costs £12 at the till.
Your domain is extra. A .co.uk or .com usually costs around £10 to £15 a year, and some hosts give it free for the first year only.
Email may be extra. Business email at your own domain is often a separate charge per person, each month.
Cheap rarely includes help. Low cost plans assume you will keep the software updated, take backups and fix things yourself. That is fine if you know how, and expensive when something breaks and you do not.
SSL, the padlock in the address bar, should not cost anything now. Free certificates are standard, so be wary of a host that charges for one on a simple site.
What does your site need?
Answer two questions and we will show the kind of hosting that usually fits, and a fair monthly price for it.
£8 to £14 a month
Shared hosting fits a simple brochure site, if you are comfortable setting it up and keeping it updated.
With us, a site like this is our Site plan at £12 a month.
After any introductory offer, before VAT and your domain. A guide from public prices, not a quote.
Where our hosting fits
We host small sites ourselves, on a fast global network, at three plain monthly prices: £12 for a brochure site, £29 for a site you edit or that keeps enquiries or bookings, and from £59 for an application. There is no introductory price, so there is no jump at renewal, and your domain stays in your name. A named person answers your questions by email in working hours.
That is not the cheapest way to put a site online, and for some sites it is not the right one. If a website builder or a simple shared plan suits you better, we will say so.
Where these figures come from
- Shared hosting first year and renewal prices: a large shared host's UK price page, checked 19 October 2026.
- Website builder prices: a large website builder's UK price page, checked 19 October 2026, and Startups.co.uk's guide to website builders.
- Managed WordPress and server ranges, VAT and domains: independent UK guides from HostPick, WebDevKev and Expre.
Not sure what your site needs?
Tell us what your site does and what you pay now. We will tell you plainly whether it is a fair price, and what we would do.
hello@moonlathetechnologies.com