Even though the business is online, starting a business can be expensive. If you are wondering how much it costs for a website to be hosted and built, you are not alone. This guide will help you determine how much web hosting costs today and over time.

Let’s get started.

Why website hosting costs are so important

Hosting companies often offer discounts that can offset the cost of starting a business. What happens when those discounts end? Then you get a huge hosting bill that you didn’t expect.

Many users end up locking themselves in long-term contracts that they don’t understand and then breaking them after a few months.

This can double or triple the cost of your web hosting at an important time for your business growth. We don’t want to do that, and neither does anyone else. This is why this guide was created.

It’s important to consider more than just the price of hosting packages. Quality and performance are critical factors in your bottom line. It’s not always cheaper.

Slow loading times are one of the possible effects of subpar hosting. This can cause more bounces and fewer conversions (as high as a 7 percent drop in conversions, to be precise).

If your site isn’t performing well, saving a few bucks every month won’t be worth it. Finding the right balance between quality and affordability is critical to reducing costs and impact.

Here are some quick tips to help you reduce your website hosting costs today

Our web hosting experts have found simple ways to get affordable web hosting started right away. These tips are easy to follow, no matter what your web hosting experience or technical skills.

Tip #1 – Choose a reputable web hosting provider

There are 330,000+ web hosting providers all over the world. It is impossible to research all these options. You don’t have to do all of that research. Our experts have done all the research.

To find the right provider for you, check out our guide to the top web hosting services.

Hostinger offers low-cost, reliable hosting services starting at $1.99 per month.

Hostinger’s low price doesn’t mean poor performance, unlike other hosting providers. Hostinger’s entry-level plan allows for up to 10,000 monthly visits. Hostinger has seven servers located in seven regions and has global data centers. Hostinger has seven global data centers with servers in seven different regions. This ensures your site is reliable and low-latency, no matter where it comes from.

Hostinger can help secure your site and protect it from DDoS attacks. It also optimizes your website for search engines. This hosting provider is the best in terms of speed, performance, and reliability, at an affordable price.

Hostinger offers VPS, cloud, WordPress, and other hosting options to suit everyone’s needs, all at an affordable price.

Tip #2 – Avoid “Free” Web Hosting

It might be tempting to search for a free web host service if you are price sensitive. This category will be found in a quick Google search. This tempting option is rarely as appealing as it seems.

There’s always a catch with free hosting. These companies will eventually make money at your expense.

Free web hosts will often display advertisements on your site and limit your traffic. They may also try to sell you another service or lock you into a contract. These “free” services can end up costing more in the long term.

Do not sign up for web hosting unless you are launching a personal website or a test site.

Tip #3 – Lock in a long contract

It may seem counterintuitive, despite everything you have been taught in the past. However, a longer contract can be a great way to save money on web hosting.

Hosting providers often offer low rates to new customers. Your plan will likely be renewed at a higher price after the expiration of your first contract. You should lock in the discount intro rate as long as you can to offset higher costs.

Let’s assume you are interested in Hostinger’s shared hosting plan. It starts at $1.99 monthly. This low rate can only be obtained by signing a 48-month contract and then paying upfront for the next four years.

Comparing this to the monthly rate, you would only get five months of hosting at the same cost. Plus, you’d have to pay a setup fee.

Long-term deals can be risky. It is human nature. A reputable web host will offer you a deal for less than $100 for four years of web hosting. You may want to upgrade to a higher tier because the deal is so great. This will allow you to handle higher traffic volumes and increase the website’s performance. 

Hosting providers that are the best stand behind their services. Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with your order.

Tip #4 – Bundle Domain Registration with Your Hosting Plan

It is best to keep the web hosting and domain registration separate in many cases. It can be a good idea to have both domain registration and web hosting under one roof if you are a beginner trying to save money or don’t want to complicate things.

Many web hosting companies offer domain registrations for free with certain plans.

Hostinger is one of many web hosts offering this type of promotion. You’ll get a no-cost domain if you sign up for either a Premium Shared Hosting or Business Shared hosting plan with an annual contract.

This promotion has a great benefit beyond the low cost. It won’t take long to register your domain with a third-party domain registrar, and then connect it to your hosting service later. This process can be overwhelming for beginners. It is easier to get your domain name and hosting service from one place.

Tip #5 – Look for freebies and avoid upsells

Hosting a website is only one aspect. You will need other services and products to make sure your website is running at its best. To protect your visitors’ data and keep hackers away, you will also need to secure the website.

Many web hosting packages include freebies that can be a huge value. An SSL certificate, for example, is a necessary component to run a legitimate website. Instead of paying a certificate authority for one, you can get a hosting package with one for free.

CDNs (content delivery networks) are also very useful. It prevents page loading delays due to the geographical location of your visitors by leveraging a distributed network of servers. CDNs are often included in hosting plans.

These upsell can generally be ignored. They are rarely necessary for your website’s performance. Although you may need to select something differently or perform a few more clicks to avoid being charged, these additional fees can help you keep your hosting costs down.

Tip #6 – Start with shared hosting

Shared web hosting will work well for most new websites. This is a low-cost, entry-level hosting option that will allow you to keep your costs down in the beginning. A shared plan is sufficient to meet your needs unless you are expecting large traffic volumes immediately.

Not all shared hosting offers top-of-the-line performance. This is not necessary for most websites.

This will allow you to share resources with other websites that are hosted on the same server. This can lead to slow loading times and other performance problems. It’s a problem to have if your traffic exceeds your shared plan’s capacity. You might have to upgrade your plan. This may increase your costs but it is something you will gladly pay to see how many people visit your website.

You might consider a VPS or cloud hosting plan if you have a highly-traffic website or ecommerce store. If you don’t have the budget for a VPS plan or cloud hosting package, consider a shared plan.

Tip #7 – Don’t skimp on Support

Many website owners don’t have the technical expertise to fix problems. It’s unlikely you will be able to fix your website if it crashes, is hacked, loses data, or has other problems.

You should look for web hosting services that offer 24/7 expert support.

Imagine your website going down on Friday night. But your hosting support team was not back at the office until Monday morning. A site that goes down for more than 48 hours could be disastrous for your business. Too many people have tried to save money on web hosting and this has been a constant reality.

You won’t get the best support if you sign up for a free hosting plan or with an unknown provider.

The best hosting companies will also offer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all plans. Premium hosting providers offer VIP support for customers who have a higher-tier plan. You will feel more secure knowing that you can reach an agent at any hour. This will help you avoid expensive downtime.

Strategies for lowering website hosting costs long-term

These are just a few of the tips that I have shared. There are also some bigger-picture strategies you need to keep in mind. Web hosting is not a short-term goal. It’s a moving target that becomes more complicated as your site gains traction.

Let’s look at some long-term considerations that you should be aware of.

Strategy #1 – Scale your traffic and upgrade to a VPS

There must be a balance between hosting costs and website performance, as we have already mentioned. You don’t want your site to load in ten seconds if it costs you too much. If your site receives fewer than 2,000 visits per month, then you don’t necessarily need a dedicated server costing $500 per month.

It is difficult to drive traffic to your website, especially if you don’t want to pay for advertising. Content creation, technical SEO, and off-page optimization are all important. There are many tasks ahead of you, including publishing blog posts on an ongoing basis and ensuring that your site structure follows the logical hierarchy.

Assume that your site won’t get much traffic at first. You can save money by getting a shared plan that is affordable. Once your SEO strategies are paying off and your traffic is increasing, you can upgrade your VPS to increase your site’s performance.

A recent study found that VPS hosting provides a significant decrease in page loading times for the most popular CMS platforms.

This is a huge benefit. Numerous studies have shown that potential site visitors will abandon a website if it doesn’t load in two to three seconds.

You will need a host to support your popularity once you have regular traffic and visitors.

A virtual private server (VPS) will cost you more than a shared plan. However, you will have your resources and won’t be affected by traffic spikes from any other sites.

This cost increase is worth it in the end. This will result in fewer bounces and higher conversions. Your site visitors will also be happier, which makes it easier to make more online.

Strategy #2 – Monetize your website to offset hosting costs

If your website is self-sustaining, the cost of web hosting will not be a problem. Your monetization strategy will determine if you see a return on investment within a matter of hours after your website is launched.

It’s not always possible to make money online. You need to make sure your website is secure, trustworthy, and well-designed. Finding a niche and driving traffic to your site is also important. Then, you will need to figure out how to monetize this traffic.

These are some of the most common strategies for monetizing websites:

• Affiliate marketing
• Advertising space for sale
• Selling digital products (like ebooks)
• Sponsored posts
• Exclusive or premium content
• Webinars paid
• Paid directory of partners or members
• Online selling

This list could go on. Some of these are more difficult than others. All of these require some work, but they can all be worth it. It is much easier to run ads on your website than start an ecommerce site. To generate revenue from those ads, however, you will need to drive a lot of traffic to your site.

These techniques aren’t related to your web host in any way. No matter what hosting company you use, you can get sponsors, affiliates, and visitors to pay for a website.

However, if your goal is to convert your website into an e-commerce site or offer services such as webinars or access to events on your site, your web host must have the right tools and resources to support ecommerce.

The bottom line is that hosting costs are not an issue if you make money with your website.

Strategy #3 – Keep your website clean regularly

As you upgrade to premium themes, create new content, leverage plugins, and add more functionality and features, your website will change.

These are good growth indicators. These are positive growth indicators, but they should not be ignored. Every new element that you add to your website increases your server load as well as your hosting costs.

You don’t need to update your hosting plan if your website isn’t in good condition. These are some of the most cost-saving strategies you can use:

• Switching to lighter-weight and optimized themes and plugins
• Unused themes and plugins can be deleted
• Use caching plugins
• Unused media files like images, videos, or gifs can be deleted
• Non-performing ads removed
• Optimize your website database to remove spam comments, old posts drafts, and revisions, as well as other unneeded content

Website cleanup can be a great way of reducing your hosting costs over the long term. It can also help improve website performance and SEO.