Website Hosting and Email Packages: What You Really Get
A typical UK website hosting and email package puts your site on a shared server and gives you mailboxes on your own domain. Shared plans usually cost about £3 to £15 a month after any intro offer, while Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is billed per person on top. The cheap bundle works for a brochure site, not for mail you cannot afford to lose.
What the package actually includes
Most UK small-business plans are shared hosting plus a handful of mailboxes. You share a server with other customers. You get a control panel (often cPanel, Plesk or a custom dashboard), SSL, FTP or a file manager, and PHP so WordPress can run. Disk is commonly 10 GB to 50 GB. A local service business will almost never hit the traffic cap.
Email on these plans is IMAP and SMTP with webmail. You create addresses such as hello@yourdomain.co.uk. That is not Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Those are separate products with calendars, files, chat, 30 GB to 50 GB mailboxes and stronger spam filters.
The domain is usually sold next to the package but it renews on its own. A .co.uk or .uk name is typically £8 to £15 a year. A .com is often £10 to £18 a year. The first year discount is not the real price.
UK price bands
Ignore the headline intro rate. Use the price you will pay in month 13. These are the bands I see most often:
| Type | Typical renewal | |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting, 10 to 20 GB | £8 to £15 a month after intro of £1 to £4 | 5 to unlimited mailboxes, often 1 to 10 GB each |
| Business shared | £12 to £25 a month | More accounts, sometimes better support |
| VPS | £20 to £80 a month | You install mail yourself |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | £5 to £7 per user per month | 50 GB mailbox, web apps, Teams |
| Google Workspace Business Starter | £6 to £8 per user per month | 30 GB pooled, Gmail, Meet |
VAT is extra if you cannot reclaim it. Annual billing is cheaper than month to month. Five people on Microsoft 365 will spend more on email than on the website host.
When host email is enough
Keep the mailboxes that come with shared hosting if you have one to three people, light volume, and you are happy with webmail or a phone mail app. You must still set SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Without those records, Gmail, Outlook and the banks will treat your messages as junk.
Move to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace if you need shared calendars and files, you send quotes or invoices that must arrive, you want 30 GB to 50 GB mailboxes rather than 1 GB to 5 GB, or you have already lost mail to a full inbox or a host outage.
The usual setup for a growing firm is split. Website files stay on the host. Staff mail runs on Microsoft 365 or Google. Change the MX records and leave the website A record pointing at the host.
How to point mail without moving the site
- Leave the A record and www on the web host.
- Add the MX record your email provider gives you.
- Add Autodiscover for Microsoft, or the records Google lists.
- Add one SPF TXT including spf.protection.outlook.com or _spf.google.com. Never run two SPF records. Merge them.
- Add the DKIM records they generate, then a DMARC TXT starting with p=none.
- Keep the old MX until a test message arrives, then remove it and wait for DNS TTL (one to 24 hours).
If you cannot edit DNS because someone else locked it, fix that first. You need the zone file, not only WordPress.
Mailboxes, aliases and storage
A mailbox is a real inbox with a password and a storage cap. An alias forwards a name such as sales@ into that inbox. A catch-all accepts every string before the @. Catch-alls collect spam and hide which addresses you published.
For most small firms I would create one mailbox per person who needs private mail, aliases for hello@ or info@ pointing at a real person, no catch-all, and a separate mailbox for the website form if you want enquiries kept apart.
Attachments fill a 1 GB mailbox in months. Check the per-mailbox limit, not only total disk. On many cheap plans, website files and mail share that disk, so a full inbox can take the site down. If you send PDFs and photos, a 1 GB cap is the wrong product.
Traps at renewal
Hosts advertise £1.99 a month. Read the price after 12 months. IONOS, 123 Reg, Fasthosts and similar often move you to £10 to £15 a month, sometimes charging extra for a control panel or SSL that was free in year one. SSL should be free through Let's Encrypt. If SSL is an add-on, pick another host.
- Unlimited mailboxes with a 1 GB cap each
- Backups sold as an extra. You want daily backups in the plan, or copies you take off-server
- Send caps of 100 to 500 messages a day. Use Brevo, Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor for bulk mail. Never send a campaign from a normal inbox.
- Poor deliverability because you share an IP range with spammers
- Builders such as Wix and Squarespace reselling Google or Microsoft mail with a markup. Compare with buying 365 or Workspace direct.
One supplier or two
One company for hosting and email means one invoice, which suits a one-person firm. An outage can take both down, and leaving means changing DNS and MX together. Splitting survives faults better: host for files, Microsoft 365 or Google for mail. Write down where DNS is controlled.
How this fits a new website
If you buy a one-off website, you still pay for hosting and mail every year. Budget the renewal, not the intro offer. A brochure site is fine on a shared plan at £8 to £15 a month, plus £5 to £8 per person if you need proper business email.
The other route is pay monthly: a setup fee, then a monthly price that includes hosting, updates and ongoing management so the site is genuinely hands-off. That suits a small business with no upfront budget for a build, and no interest in patching WordPress. I publish current figures on arlowebstudio.com rather than repeating them here. Email remains a separate decision. You can use light host mailboxes, or point MX records at Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Check these numbers before you pay
- Renewal price including VAT, for hosting and for the domain
- Mailbox size, and whether mail shares disk with the website
- Whether SSL and daily backups are included
- Daily send limit
- Support hours, and whether you get a UK phone line or tickets only
- How you export mail and site files if you leave
- Whose account the domain sits in. It must be yours
- Whether you can add SPF, DKIM and DMARC if mail will live elsewhere
If the sales page will not state the renewal price, the mailbox size and the send limit in plain figures, do not buy it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use free Gmail with my own domain?
You can forward incoming mail to Gmail. Sending as your domain from a free Gmail account is unreliable because SPF and DKIM will not line up. Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is the clean way to keep your domain in the From line.
How many mailboxes does a small business need?
One per person who needs private mail, plus aliases for info@ or hello@. Two or three people usually need two or three mailboxes, not ten. Do not pay for unused addresses if the host charges per box.
Do I need web hosting if I only want email on my domain?
No. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace do not need a website host. You still need a domain and DNS access. Buy hosting when you have a site to put on it.
What happens to email if I change website host?
Nothing, if MX records already point at Microsoft or Google. If mailboxes live on the old host, export them over IMAP, recreate them on the new host, update MX, then cancel. Move mail before you close the old account.
Is the free email bundled with a domain worth using?
As a temporary holding address, sometimes. For daily business mail the storage is small, support is thin and deliverability is patchy. Treat it as a stopgap.
Should hosting and email come from the same company as the website?
Only if you also control the domain login and can export everything. One invoice is convenient. Split the website host from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace if mail reliability matters more than simplicity.