The short answer: in the UK, website hosting costs about £3 to £10 a month for basic shared hosting, £10 to £30 a month for better shared or cloud hosting, and £30 to £100 or more a month for managed hosting, where someone else looks after the server, security and backups for you. If your hosting is bundled into a done for you monthly website, there's no separate hosting bill at all.
Those numbers only make sense once you know what each level buys and who does the work, so this guide explains what hosting actually is, why it sits apart from design, and what changes when it's bundled into a single monthly fee. By the end you should be able to compare two quotes like for like, even when they're structured completely differently.
| Typical cost per month | Who looks after it | Suits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic shared hosting | £3 to £10 | You | Simple sites with light traffic, run by someone happy to tinker |
| Better shared or cloud hosting | £10 to £30 | Mostly you, with some backups included | Sites that need steadier speed |
| Managed hosting | £30 to £100 or more | The host | Businesses that rely on the site and want problems handled |
| Bundled into a monthly website | Included in the fee | The studio | People who want the whole site handled, not just the server |
What website hosting actually is
A website is a set of files. Hosting is renting space on a computer, called a server, that stays switched on all day and every day so those files are available whenever someone visits. Without hosting, your site simply doesn't exist on the internet. It's the difference between owning furniture and renting the room to put it in.
That's why hosting is a monthly or yearly cost rather than a one-off. The server has to keep running, keep getting security patches, and keep serving your pages quickly. Design is a job that finishes. Hosting is a service that never stops. Understanding that split is the first step to reading any website quote properly.
Design is a job that finishes. Hosting is a service that never stops.
Why hosting is a separate cost from design
A designer or agency builds your site once and hands it over. What happens next is up to you. Some people buy their own hosting and manage it themselves. Others pay the designer to handle it. Others use a platform like Wix or Squarespace where the hosting is part of the subscription and you never see it as a line item.
This is where confusion creeps in. A cheap build quote can hide the fact that you still need to arrange and pay for hosting, a domain name, security certificates, and updates on top. A single monthly fee can look expensive until you realise it already includes all of those things. The number on its own tells you very little. What matters is what sits behind it.
Website hosting cost per month in the UK, from cheap to managed
At the bottom end, shared hosting in the UK often runs from about £3 to £10 a month. Your site shares a server with hundreds of others. It's cheap because it's crowded. That can be fine for a simple site with light traffic, but when a neighbour on the same server has a busy day, your pages can slow down, and support is usually a ticket queue rather than a person.
In the middle sit better shared plans and cloud hosting, often £10 to £30 a month, with more reliable speed and some backup included. At the top is managed hosting, which can be £30 to £100 a month or more. Here someone else handles the server, security, backups, and updates for you, and you get real support when something breaks. You're paying for someone to own the problem so you don't have to.
The gap between cheap and managed isn't really about the server. It's about who does the work and who answers the phone. Speed matters too, and a slow site quietly costs you visitors, which is worth understanding in why website speed matters.
Cheap hosting isn't cheaper server space. It's you doing the work that managed hosting does for you.
What you actually get at each level
Cheap shared hosting gets your files online and little else. Speed is variable, security is basic, backups may not exist unless you set them up, and support is slow. If something goes wrong, fixing it is your job. That's a real cost in time even when the monthly figure looks tiny.
Managed hosting is the opposite. Fast, sensible security, automatic backups, and a person who deals with problems before you notice them. For a business that relies on its website for enquiries or bookings, the difference isn't a luxury. A site that's down or crawling on a Monday morning costs you real work, and no amount of saving £5 a month makes up for that.
What a bundled monthly fee really includes
When hosting is bundled into a managed monthly fee, you stop paying for hosting as a separate thing. One price covers the hosting plus the work around it. At Build 76 there's no setup fee, plans run from £20 to £200 a month plus VAT, and there's no minimum term. Every plan includes fast hosting on a global network, an SSL certificate, daily backups, security, updates and changes made for you, with UK support. There's no separate hosting bill, no domain admin to chase, and no update you're expected to run yourself.
To compare that fairly against a cheap host, add everything up. A £5 host plus your own time on updates, plus paying someone each time you need a change, plus sorting security and backups yourself, is rarely as cheap as it first looks. A bundled fee isn't automatically better value, but it's honest about the full cost. You can see what each plan includes on our pricing page, and how the model works on the pay monthly website page.
Owning a site outright is the other honest option. You pay a larger sum once for a one off build and own it, then either arrange hosting and maintenance yourself or pay someone to handle it. It costs more at the start but nothing is spread over time. The right choice depends on cash flow and how hands on you want to be, not on which sounds cleverest.
So which should you choose?
If you're comfortable with servers and enjoy tinkering, cheap self managed hosting is a genuinely good deal and you should take it. There's no shame in doing it yourself, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. Bundled managed hosting is for people who want the site to just work and their time spent on their actual business instead.
If you're leaning towards having it all handled, the easiest way to judge is to see the work first. When you order with us, the first step is a prototype of your new homepage, usually within three working days, and nothing's charged until your site is live. How it works has the full picture, and you can decide in your own time.