Basic shared hosting typically starts at about $2.25 a month on a long prepaid term and renews at about $7.50. An unmanaged VPS typically starts at about $5 a month, with little or no renewal increase. Managed WordPress from specialist hosts starts around $30 to $35, and a dedicated server typically starts around $47.
Those figures come from the 2,061 public plans we track from 20 providers, with prices checked on 7 October 2026. Euro prices are converted to US dollars at that day's rate (about $1.13 per euro), and prices exclude VAT and sales tax.
How we worked it out
A single "average price" for hosting is misleading, because every host sells a range from tiny to huge. A median across all of Hostinger's, Kinsta's and Cloudways' WordPress plans tells you more about how big their top plans are than about what a small site costs.
So for each type of hosting, we took each provider's cheapest plan, its entry plan, and calculated:
- Cheapest: the lowest price we track, with its term.
- Typical starting price: the median of every provider's entry-plan price, at the cheapest term they offer (often a long prepay).
- Typical renewal: the median of what those same entry plans renew at.
The median is the middle value, so one very cheap or very expensive provider doesn't skew it.
Web hosting prices by type
| Type | Providers | Cheapest | Typical starting price | Typical renewal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | 12 | $1.00/mo (12-month term, renews at $14.00) | $2.25/mo | $7.50/mo |
| WordPress hosting (shared-style) | 7 | $1.00/mo (12-month term, renews at $12.00) | $3.24/mo | $9.99/mo |
| Managed WordPress (Kinsta, Cloudways) | 2 | $29.17/mo (12-month term, no increase) | n/a | n/a |
| WooCommerce and ecommerce hosting | 4 | $3.99/mo (48-month term, renews at $16.99) | $9.49/mo | $19.99/mo |
| Unmanaged VPS and cloud | 17 | $0.48/mo (hourly, storage and IPv4 extra) | $4.69/mo | $5.00/mo |
| Managed VPS and cloud | 9 | $7.99/mo (48-month term, renews at $25.99) | $24.00/mo | $38.26/mo |
| Reseller hosting | 6 | $6.36/mo (12-month term, no increase) | $18.06/mo | $19.10/mo |
| Dedicated servers | 9 | $5.61/mo (plus a setup fee) | $47.00/mo | $66.39/mo |
The gap between the starting price and the renewal is the most important column. For shared and ecommerce hosting it roughly triples. For VPS and dedicated servers it's small.
Shared hosting: $2 to $4 now, $7 to $14 later
Shared hosting is the cheapest way to put a website online: the host runs the server, and you get a control panel, email and a share of the machine. Across the 12 shared hosts we track, entry plans start between $1.00 and $4.49 a month.
The headline prices need a long prepay. Hostinger Premium is $2.99 a month on a 48-month term, Bluehost Starter $3.99 on 36 months, and DreamHost and hosting.com $1.99 on 48 months. At the shortest term each host sells, which is monthly for most of them, the median entry plan costs $4.24, and big-brand monthly prices run from $4.99 to $15.99.
Then the renewal arrives. Of the 50 shared plans we track, 35 have an intro price, and the median plan with one rises by 180% when it renews. A typical entry plan costs about $27 for the first year at $2.25 a month and about $90 a year after that at $7.50.
The exceptions are mostly European budget hosts. OVHcloud, Hetzner and netcup charge little and raise prices little or not at all, but their plans are smaller or more basic. Our real 3-year cost ranking compares the cheapest small-site plans with renewals included.
WordPress hosting: two different markets
"WordPress hosting" covers two very different products.
Shared-style WordPress plans from Hostinger, Bluehost, DreamHost, SiteGround, hosting.com, Namecheap and IONOS cost about the same as shared hosting: a typical starting price of $3.24 a month, renewing at $9.99. Many are the same server with WordPress pre-installed.
Managed WordPress from specialist hosts costs ten times as much. Kinsta's entry plan is $35.00 a month, or $29.17 billed yearly, for one WordPress install with staging, CDN and backups, at the same price on renewal. Cloudways' Autonomous plans start at $99 a month. You pay for performance tuning, support that knows WordPress, and not having to think about the server.
VPS and cloud servers: about $5 to start, priced by RAM
Unmanaged VPS and cloud servers are cheap to start: the typical entry plan across 17 providers costs $4.69 a month, renewing at $5.00. Unlike shared hosting, most VPS prices don't jump. None of the 595 unmanaged cloud plans we track has an intro price, and the VPS plans that do rise by a median of 25%.
What you pay depends mostly on memory. Here is the cheapest and the median monthly price at each size, with no prepayment:
| RAM | Plans | Cheapest | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | 17 | $0.48 | $6.00 |
| 2 GB | 39 | $3.00 | $12.00 |
| 4 GB | 55 | $5.05 | $22.49 |
| 8 GB | 81 | $6.19 | $44.00 |
| 16 GB | 86 | $15.75 | $94.53 |
| 32 GB | 76 | $29.18 | $184.80 |
The gap between the cheapest and the median is huge, and it grows with size. Budget hosts like OVHcloud, netcup and Contabo sell 4 GB for $5 to $6, while the big hourly clouds (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Lightsail) charge $24. Our 4 GB VPS comparison breaks that size down.
The cheapest 1 GB server, Scaleway's STARDUST1-S at about $0.48 a month, comes with a catch: block storage and a public IPv4 address cost extra. The realistic floor for a usable server is $3 to $5.
Managed VPS, where the host looks after the server, costs more: a typical starting price of $24.00 a month, renewing at $38.26.
Dedicated servers: from about $47
A dedicated server gives you a whole physical machine. The typical entry plan across nine providers is $47.00 a month, and the median across all 370 dedicated plans we track, from modest to huge, is $215.50.
There are very cheap outliers. Scaleway's Dedibox Start-1-M-SATA is €4.99 ($5.61) a month with an older Intel Atom-class C2750 processor, 8 GB of RAM and a 1 TB hard drive, plus a €4.99 setup fee. OVHcloud's KS-B is €9.99 a month with a Xeon E5-1620v2 and 32 GB. These are older machines. For current hardware, Hetzner's AX41, with a Ryzen 5 3600, 64 GB and 2 × 512 GB NVMe, costs €59 ($66.39) a month with no setup fee.
Costs beyond the plan price
The plan price isn't the whole bill. From the data we track:
- Email. Hostinger's shared plans include email free for the first year only, DreamHost's include a 3-month email trial, and Scaleway's smallest web plan and Namecheap's EasyWP Starter don't include email at all.
- Backups. DigitalOcean and Vultr charge 20% of the server price for automatic backups.
- Location fees. Contabo's prices are for Germany; other regions add a monthly fee.
- Setup fees. Some dedicated servers, like the ones above, charge one on monthly billing.
- Licences. Windows Server costs extra at many VPS hosts, including OVHcloud, Vultr, UpCloud and Contabo, and so do control panels like cPanel or Plesk on a VPS.
FAQ
How much does web hosting cost per month?
For a small website on shared hosting, expect about $2 to $4 a month on a long prepaid term, and $7 to $14 when it renews. At the shortest term each host sells, the median entry plan costs $4.24.
How much does a VPS cost?
The typical entry-level unmanaged VPS costs about $5 a month. A 4 GB server costs from $5.05 at budget hosts to $24 at the big cloud providers.
Why is the renewal price so much higher?
Shared hosts discount the first term to win customers, then renew at the regular price. The median shared plan with an intro price rises by 180%. Our guide to renewal prices explains how to plan for it.
Is free hosting worth it?
We don't track free website hosting. The cheapest paid plans start at about $1 a month on a yearly term, but check the renewal: the $1 IONOS plan renews at $14.
The bottom line
A small website costs about $2 to $4 a month to start and $7 to $14 after the intro on shared hosting. A VPS costs about $5 a month and usually stays there. Managed WordPress starts near $30, and dedicated servers near $47. Whatever you buy, compare the renewal price, not the headline.
To compare current prices yourself, see the full, live rankings of cheap web hosting, cheap VPS hosting and cheap dedicated servers.