"Which hosting should we buy?" comes right after "how much does a website cost" in our list of most common questions. Hosting providers don't make it easy, with dozens of plans, confusing limits and introductory prices that triple at renewal. Here's how we think about it.
Shared hosting
Your site lives on a server along with hundreds of other sites, sharing its resources. You get a control panel (usually cPanel or similar), email accounts and one-click installs.
Good for: Brochure websites, small blogs, new businesses, sites with modest traffic.
Typical cost: ₹2,000 to ₹6,000 a year.
Watch out for: "Unlimited" plans that aren't really unlimited, slowdowns when a neighbouring site gets busy, and introductory prices that jump significantly at renewal. Check the renewal price before you buy.
Managed WordPress hosting
Shared or semi-dedicated hosting tuned specifically for WordPress, with automatic updates, caching, staging sites and better support.
Good for: Business WordPress sites where you want less maintenance hassle.
Typical cost: ₹6,000 to ₹25,000 a year.
VPS (Virtual Private Server)
A slice of a server with guaranteed resources: a set amount of CPU, memory and storage. You (or your developer) have full control.
Good for: Custom web applications, busier e-commerce stores, sites that need specific software, background jobs or multiple apps.
Typical cost: ₹6,000 to ₹30,000 a year for the server, depending on specs and provider.
Watch out for: Unmanaged VPS plans mean you're responsible for security updates, firewalls, backups and everything else. That's either your developer's time or a managed plan's fee. An unmanaged, unmaintained VPS is a security risk.
Cloud hosting (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and others)
Highly flexible infrastructure that can scale up and down, with many services available: managed databases, storage, CDNs, load balancers.
Good for: SaaS products, apps with unpredictable traffic, businesses with technical teams, anything that needs high availability.
Typical cost: Highly variable, from a few hundred rupees a month for a small instance to lakhs for large setups. Billing is usage-based, which is flexible but can surprise you.
Watch out for: Complexity. Cloud platforms are powerful but easy to misconfigure, both for cost and security. Set billing alerts on day one.
Things that matter more than the plan type
- Data centre location. For an Indian audience, a server in India (Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Chennai and so on) or nearby Singapore keeps response times low.
- Backups. Does the host take them automatically? How long are they kept? Can you restore them yourself?
- Support quality. Try contacting support before buying. Slow pre-sales support usually means slow support later.
- PHP versions and SSL. Make sure you can choose current PHP versions and get free SSL certificates.
- Email. Many businesses are better off using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for email instead of hosting email, which often has deliverability problems.
Our usual recommendations
- Simple business site: good shared hosting or managed WordPress hosting, server in India.
- Online store with steady sales: managed WooCommerce hosting or a managed VPS.
- Custom application or portal: a managed VPS, or cloud if the team can handle it.
- SaaS product: cloud, with proper monitoring and backups from the start.
Cheap hosting isn't always a false economy, but the cheapest plan on a host's page usually is. Pay for reasonable resources and good support, and you'll rarely think about your hosting again, which is exactly how it should be.
