AWS Website Hosting Cost: UK Prices and Trade-offs
AWS website hosting cost is rarely a single monthly figure. A small static site on Lightsail can sit around a few pounds a month, while a typical EC2 plus database plus traffic bill often lands between £15 and £80 plus VAT, and can jump when you forget data transfer. For most UK small business sites, AWS is more expensive in time than in list price.
What you actually pay on AWS
Amazon Web Services bills in US dollars, usually against a card or invoice, then you add UK VAT if you are VAT registered in a way that AWS charges it. Prices below are ballpark sterling equivalents at typical exchange rates. They are not quotes. AWS changes instance rates, and your bill is usage, not a tidy package.
Three parts dominate a website bill: compute (the server), storage, and data transfer out to visitors. Storage is cheap. Transfer is where surprise invoices come from. A quiet brochure site might stay under £10 a month. A busy site with images, video, or a database can multiply that without anyone changing the design.
Typical monthly ranges for a small UK site
| Setup | Rough monthly cost | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Lightsail small instance | £4 - £12 | Fixed VM, some transfer included, simple DNS |
| EC2 t3.small + EBS | £12 - £30 | Always-on server, disk, no database yet |
| EC2 + RDS MySQL small | £35 - £80 | App or WordPress with a managed database |
| S3 + CloudFront only | £2 - £20 | Static files and a CDN; no PHP or WordPress |
| Forgotten transfer / NAT / snapshots | £10 - £100 extra | Egress, backups, load balancer idle fees |
Free tier credits last 12 months on some products and do not cover everything. After that, a t3.micro that looked free still needs disk, a static IP, and outbound traffic. Lightsail is the honest starting point if you insist on AWS for a simple site: published bundles include a set amount of transfer. Go over that allowance and you pay per gigabyte.
Line items people miss
Elastic IP addresses can cost money if they sit unused. NAT gateways for private subnets are expensive relative to a £20 site. Snapshots and AMIs accumulate. CloudWatch logs grow. A load balancer with almost no traffic still bills hourly. Route 53 DNS is cheap but not free. Certificates via ACM are free on AWS load balancers and CloudFront, not automatically free on a raw EC2 box with nginx.
Data transfer out to the internet is the classic shock. Intra-region traffic is cheaper. Serving large photo galleries or PDFs from S3 without CloudFront caching, or from EC2 in eu-west-2 to every visitor, adds up. Budget a few pence per gigabyte outbound as a planning figure, then check the current AWS calculator because rates differ by region and service.
VAT, support and your time
AWS support on the basic plan is forums and docs. Developer support is a percentage of spend with a monthly minimum, which is rarely worth it for a brochure site. If you are not comfortable with Linux, security groups, and patching, you will either pay a freelancer by the hour or leave the box unpatched. That labour is the real AWS website hosting cost for a small firm.
UK shared or managed WordPress hosting typically runs £5 - £25 a month including a control panel, backups, and email on some plans. A VPS from a UK host is often £8 - £40. AWS only wins on price when you already know the platform, need scale, or are already in their ecosystem. For a five-page trade site, it usually loses on hours.
When AWS makes sense
Use AWS if you need auto scaling, multiple regions, tight IAM, or you already run other workloads there. Static marketing sites belong on S3 and CloudFront or on Lightsail, not on a hand-built EC2 stack. WordPress on EC2 is possible; you still patch PHP, the OS, and plugins yourself unless you pay for extra managed layers.
- Estimate traffic: pages per month and average page weight in megabytes.
- Pick the smallest Lightsail or EC2 size that runs the stack with headroom.
- Add database cost only if you need one; SQLite or a static site avoids RDS.
- Put CloudFront in front of public files to cut origin transfer.
- Turn on billing alarms at £10, £25 and £50.
- Delete unused volumes, snapshots and idle load balancers every month.
I build sites for small UK businesses and I do not put a typical client on raw AWS unless they already have an operations person. Pay-monthly website plans exist for firms that want hosting, updates and management in one bill without an AWS console. One-off builds still need somewhere to live; cheap UK hosting is usually enough. I will not quote AWS as if it were a simple package, because it is not.
Worked example
A plumber site: 8 pages, a contact form, 40 photos, a few hundred visits a month. On Lightsail 1GB, expect roughly £5 - £8 plus domain. Same site on EC2 t3.micro with a separate RDS instance can exceed £40 before anyone visits, which is waste. Same site on ordinary UK WordPress hosting: often £8 - £18 including backups. The AWS version only looks cheaper if you ignore the evening you spend on SSL, firewall rules and updates.
An ecommerce catalogue with 2,000 SKUs, search, and peak traffic is a different job. Then RDS, caching, and a CDN start to justify themselves, and monthly AWS spend of £50 - £200 can be rational. Still compare that with Shopify or a managed WooCommerce host before you assemble it yourself.
How to keep the bill boring
- Stay in one region, preferably eu-west-2 (London) for UK visitors and UK data residency habits.
- Prefer Lightsail or a single small instance over a textbook three-tier VPC.
- Cache aggressively; do not stream original images from EC2.
- Set a hard budget alarm. AWS will not phone you.
- Review Cost Explorer on the first of each month, not when finance notices.
If the calculator shows under £15 and you are confident patching Linux, AWS can be fine. If the calculator is low but you would need to learn IAM, security groups and backups from scratch, pay a UK host instead. The pounds on the invoice are only half the cost.
Frequently asked questions
Is AWS cheaper than normal UK web hosting?
For a small brochure or WordPress site, usually no once you count time, backups and transfer. Shared or managed UK hosting at £5 - £25 a month is simpler. AWS can be cheaper at scale or for static files on S3 and CloudFront.
How much is AWS Lightsail for a website?
The smallest Lightsail bundles are typically a few pounds a month at current dollar rates, with a block of transfer included. Go over the transfer cap or add extra disks and the price rises. Check the live Lightsail table; it changes.
Does AWS charge VAT on hosting?
AWS applies tax rules based on your account location and VAT status. Many UK customers see VAT on the invoice. Treat published dollar prices as pre-tax until your bill confirms otherwise.
Why did my AWS bill jump after launch?
Common causes are data transfer out, NAT gateways, load balancers left running, snapshot storage, and a database instance that never stops. Set billing alarms before you launch, not after the first invoice.
Can I host WordPress on AWS cheaply?
Yes on Lightsail or a small EC2 box, but you still handle updates, PHP, and security. A managed WordPress host in the UK often costs a similar amount with less operational work. Cheap AWS WordPress is cheap only if your time is free.
Should a small UK business use AWS for a five-page site?
Usually not. You get more reliability per pound from a straightforward UK host or a managed monthly website arrangement. Use AWS when you need its specific services, not because the brand sounds professional.