Compare Web Hosting Plans: Speed, Storage and Cost
To compare web hosting plans properly, ignore the first-year discount and line up storage, RAM, traffic limits, backups, email, support hours and the renewal price. Shared hosting in the UK often starts around £3 to £15 a month on offer, then rises. VPS, cloud and managed WordPress cost more because you get more isolation, headroom or someone else handling updates.
Start with the renewal price, not the advert
Most UK hosts sell on a cheap first term. A plan at £2.99 a month for 12 months can renew at £7.99 or £11.99. When you compare web hosting plans, write down the renewal price after the offer ends. That is what you pay in year two unless you move.
Monthly billing costs more per month than a 12 or 24 month prepay. Pay monthly if cash is tight. Prepay if you already trust the host. A cheap year is a poor bargain if support is slow and you cannot leave without downtime.
The four types you will actually see
Almost every small business quote is one of these.
| Type | Typical renewal | Fits | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | £6 to £15 a month | Brochure sites, light WordPress | Other sites on the same server can slow you down |
| Managed WordPress | £12 to £30 a month | WordPress that needs updates handled | Less control; extras add up |
| VPS | £20 to £60 a month | Busier sites and shops | You or a developer must mind the server |
| Cloud | £15 to £80 or more | Traffic that spikes | Usage pricing is easy to underestimate |
Reseller and unlimited plans still sit on shared hardware with inode and CPU caps. Unlimited almost never means unlimited. Read the fair use policy.
Specs that actually stop a site working
Headline storage is a weak way to rank plans. A 50 GB SSD with a 250,000 inode limit can fill up from mail and backups long before 50 GB. Compare the limits that cause suspensions.
Storage, inodes and backups
A typical small business WordPress site with a few dozen pages is fine on 10 GB of SSD or NVMe if backups sit off-server. Trouble starts when daily backups or mailboxes share that quota. Ask whether backup storage is extra, how many days are kept, and whether you can restore one file.
Inodes count files and folders. WooCommerce, cache plugins and email chew through them. Caps of 200,000 to 500,000 are common on cheap shared plans. If the plan hides the cap, ask before you pay.
RAM, CPU and PHP workers
Shared plans often quote CPU cores you do not own. What matters is throttling when a plugin or a sale hits. 1 GB of RAM is light for modern WordPress; 2 GB is more comfortable. One or two PHP workers means only one or two PHP requests run at once; the rest queue and the cart feels slow.
Time to first byte under 200 ms from a UK test is a fair target for a cached page. Test a trial or demo, not the host's own marketing site. Those pages are cached harder than yours will be.
Traffic, CDN and visitor caps
Terabytes of bandwidth rarely matter for a local business site. Visitor caps and CPU seconds do. Some cheap plans advertise unmetered traffic then suspend you for resource use. Check the acceptable use policy, and assume spikes if you run ads or a sale.
A CDN sits in front of the server and cuts load. Some plans include Cloudflare; others add £5 to £15 a month. Put that in the spreadsheet so you are not comparing a naked server with a plan that already has a CDN.
SSL, PHP and the control panel
Free Let's Encrypt SSL is standard. Paid SSL is rarely worth it unless a payment provider still demands a named certificate. Confirm it auto-renews. An expired certificate is a public outage.
You want PHP 8.2 or 8.3, easy version switching, and a panel you can use. cPanel is familiar. Custom panels sometimes hide SSH, cron and php.ini. For a one-off build I need enough access to set caching, cron and redirects. Locked-down website-builder hosting usually fails that test.
Email on the plan, or elsewhere
Count mailboxes, per-box storage and sending limits. Ten accounts at 1 GB each fill up fast. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 Business Basic are around £6 per user per month in the UK. Many firms host the website in one place and run email separately. A £8 host with weak mail is not cheaper than a £6 host plus £6 for proper email.
UK price bands to use as a yardstick
These are typical public prices, not a recommendation of one company.
- Budget shared, first year: £2.50 to £5 a month, renewals often £8 to £15
- Mid shared or entry managed WordPress: £8 to £18 a month on renewal
- Managed WordPress with staging, daily backups and more RAM: £20 to £45 a month
- Small unmanaged VPS: £12 to £30 a month, plus your time or a sysadmin
- Managed VPS or small cloud: £40 to £80 a month
Keep the domain at a registrar you control. A .co.uk is often £8 to £15 a year and a .com £10 to £15. Buying the domain inside hosting can make a later move messy.
Location, uptime and support
For UK visitors, a UK or nearby EU data centre usually beats a US one on latency. Ask where the servers sit. Global often means US-primary. 99.9% uptime is 8.7 hours down a year. 99.99% is about 52 minutes. SLA credits are usually a slice of the monthly fee, not cover for lost work.
Support is what separates similar specs. Check live chat hours (24/7 versus 9 to 5 UK), whether you reach a human without a bot, phone if you need it, and any published first-response time. Open a pre-sales ticket about inodes, PHP workers or backup restores. Time the reply. That beats a star rating.
A simple method to compare two or three plans
- Write the renewal monthly price and the contract length.
- List RAM, storage, inode cap, PHP version, PHP workers, and whether backups sit inside the quota.
- Note email: count, storage, and whether you will use Google or Microsoft instead.
- Check data centre location and whether a CDN is included.
- Read fair use, visitor caps, and what happens if you leave.
- Test support with one technical question.
- Add extras you will actually buy: extra backup, staging, mailboxes, malware scanning. Those turn a £9 plan into a £20 plan.
If two plans still look equal, pick clearer limits and a panel you can log into without training. Vague unlimited copy is a warning, not a benefit.
Hosting on its own, or bundled with the website
You can buy hosting yourself and pay for a one-off website build. You keep the keys, you pay the host, and you or a maintainer handle updates. That suits you if you have the upfront budget and someone to look after WordPress, plugins and PHP.
If there is no upfront budget, a pay-monthly website plan is the other route. I charge a setup fee then a monthly price that includes hosting, updates and ongoing management, so the site is genuinely hands-off. Exact figures are on arlowebstudio.com.
Neither is automatically cheaper over three years. One-off plus cheap shared hosting wins if you stay on top of updates. Pay monthly wins if updates would slip, or if you do not want to own the hosting relationship. Compare the whole cost of keeping the site live, not the hosting line alone.
Frequently asked questions
Is cheap shared hosting enough for a small business site?
Yes, if the site is a brochure or a light WordPress build, traffic is modest, and you accept that a noisy neighbour can slow you down. Move up if you run WooCommerce, membership, or paid ads that spike visits.
Should I compare the offer price or the renewal price?
Always compare the renewal price and the contract length. The first-year figure is a discount. Year two is the real monthly cost unless you migrate, and migration has its own time cost.
When do I need a VPS instead of shared hosting?
When shared plans throttle you during normal use, when you need a guaranteed RAM and CPU slice, or when a shop or booking system cannot queue on two PHP workers. Unmanaged VPS also means you pay someone to patch the server.
What does unlimited mean on a hosting plan?
It does not mean unlimited. Fair use policies still cap inodes, CPU seconds and mail sending. Ask for the numbers in writing. If they will not give them, treat the plan as a cheap shared account with unpublished limits.
If I pay monthly for a website, do I still buy hosting separately?
Not on a pay-monthly website plan from me: hosting sits inside the monthly price, along with updates and ongoing management. If you buy a one-off build, you do need a separate host, and you should compare plans using the checklist above.
Can I change host later without rebuilding the site?
Usually yes if you own the domain at a proper registrar and the site is standard WordPress or HTML, not locked to a website builder. Budget a day or two for DNS, email cutover and a backup restore test. Builder platforms are the ones that trap you.