Do I need web hosting? The three cases, and the one that is a yes

Do I need web hosting? Every site needs somewhere to serve its files from. That is not the same as needing to buy hosting as a separate product, and the difference is where this question usually goes wrong: the definition that owns this query's first page answers with a summary line — "Yes, web hosting is necessary for any website to be visible and functional online" — while the section underneath it is headed "Do You Always Have to Buy a Separate Host?" and says you do not always have to. A beginner reads the summary and concludes they need a second subscription for the thing they have already bought.

There are three cases, and only one of them is a yes.

What web hosting actually is

Strip the marketing off and it is a mechanism with four parts:

1. A server — a machine that stays on and answers requests.
2. A process — something on that machine that turns a request into a

page.

1. A domain pointing at it — so a visitor's browser can find that

machine.

1. A certificate — so nobody on the way can read the connection.

Every one of those four is hosting. What varies is who runs them and what they cost you, and that is the whole of the decision. What managed website hosting is is the arrangement where somebody else runs the machine; static sites and App Hosting is the split between a process that serves files and one that runs your code.

Do I need web hosting? The three cases

One page. A landing page, a portfolio, a link-in-bio replacement, a page that says who you are and what you do. There is no state to keep, no code to run per request, and nothing to administer. One page is free forever here with the domain registered through us — and the domain is the only recurring bill, because it has its own clock and its own renewal price.

A static site of any size. A marketing site, documentation, a blog, a course. Still files, still no per-request code, still nothing to administer — so the only thing that scales is the page count, and static hosting is metered by pages rather than by traffic. That is the second case, and it costs a fraction of the app tier rather than a second subscription.

An app. Accounts, sessions, a database, bookings, payments, a queue, a scheduled job, a webhook receiver. This is the case where hosting is not optional, because there is code that has to run when somebody asks for something, and the machine running it has to stay on.

When you do need a server

The question is worth answering precisely, because the three cases map onto three different answers and only one of them is "buy a server":

• Your site holds state. A record you can look up later — a customer, a

booking, an enquiry, a saved draft, a login. Static files cannot do that; a server with a database can.

• Your site runs code per request. A form handler that does more than

send a mail, a page that reads from a database, an API another service calls.

• Your site has a schedule or a queue. Something has to happen at 3am,

or something has to happen without a visitor asking. That is a worker, and workers run where the code runs.

• Your site has to be reachable privately. Another service has to call it

and it must not sit on the public internet.

If you are not sure which of those you have, you are not in this case yet. The cheapest way to find out is to publish the thing as a static site and see what breaks — most of the time the answer is "nothing", and the site you have is the one you wanted.

What it costs, and what renews

Two bills, and they tick at different times. The domain renews on the registrar's clock, at the price printed beside the first-year price — the domain price page prints what eighteen TLDs cost over five years, because the market's "ten to twenty dollars a year" describes a .com and settles nothing about the other seventeen. App hosting is a flat monthly rate that renews at the same number — 1.0× — because a flat rate that steps up in year two is a different product. How to read a renewal table is the audited version of that, and the market's own prices are printed beside ours.

As of: 2026-10-21. Every rate on the pricing page is real and published, but this deployment is not connected to a payment provider, so there is no button that takes money.

If your site is the first case, you are looking at the domain bill and nothing else. If it is the second, the hosting bill is small and the page count is what scales it. If it is the third, the app tier is the one that has to pay for itself — and it is the only one of the three where the question has an unambiguous yes.

What happens when you leave

The last thing to check, and the one that decides whether the answer above still holds in year two: what do you take with you?

Here the site is an open JSON document, and the live content is readable over a public API without a key. There is no export fee and no export tier, and leaving is a build you run rather than a download you wait for — the export guide is our own answer to that question, and the three models builders use puts it next to the two that do not work that way.

If the answer to "do I need web hosting" is "no, because the thing I bought already includes it", then the answer is only true if what you bought keeps working when you leave. That is the question worth asking before you sign.