How to choose a web host: the six questions that decide it

Most guides for this query list what to look for — traffic, storage, uptime, page-load time, support — and stop there. A list of criteria is not a method. You cannot execute "check the uptime" against a price page; you can only ask the vendor and take their word for it.

Here is a method that runs the other way. Six questions, each one answerable from numbers the vendor has already published, in the order that disqualifies the most hosts first.

Does the site need a server at all?

Most sites do not. A site that is a set of pre-built pages — a portfolio, a brochure, a landing page — needs somewhere to put files and somewhere to serve them from, and that is not a server you rent by the month. The first hosting decision is whether you are buying hosting at all. One page is free forever here, and a static site of any size costs a fraction of what the app tier costs. Static sites and App Hosting has the difference, and it is the one question that disqualifies more hosts than any price comparison does.

What does the site have to do?

The type of site, the traffic, the storage, and what runs on the server rather than in the browser. This is the first thing every guide on the page lists, and it is the one that decides which kind of host you need — not which vendor. A site that is a few pages of text and a form does not need a VPS; a site with accounts, a database and a checkout does not fit on shared hosting's promise of a hundred concurrent visitors.

What can the vendor actually show you?

Uptime, page-load time and support are the three factors hosts themselves name when they tell you how to choose one. They are also the three you cannot check: every vendor publishes a number, and the number is the vendor's. So ask for the measurement and not the marketing — a status page, a measurement from a third party, and a number with a date on it. This site publishes its own, and the ones we publish are in the edge network guide.

What does the price leave out?

A headline rate is one cell of a table you have to build yourself. Six cells matter, and every one of them is obtainable from a public pricing page without logging in:

How to read a hosting price honestly has the method in full, and it is meant to be used on us as much as on anyone else.

What does it renew at?

The entry rate is a marketing number and the renewal rate is the bill. Across the 51 audited builders and hosts published on this site the renewal step runs from 1.51× to 33×, and the largest jump sits on the plan with the smallest sticker. Two more facts decide it: the term (a forty-eight-month prepay buys the headline rate and the renewal decision four years out; a twelve-month term buys the ability to re-price every year) and the date (Verisign's .com wholesale rate steps up on 1 November 2026, and every registrar passes it on). Web hosting price prints the published renewal step for the major hosts, and the renewal policy is ours.

Can you leave, and what does leaving cost?

Two questions the lists on this page almost never ask. Can you leave? A host you cannot leave is not a host, it is a subscription, and the exit price is whatever they decide on the day you ask. Look for export in the plan, not in the support article: how to export your website is the shape of the answer, and the document should be a file you can run with, not a ticket you open.

And what does leaving cost? The domain is a separate product on a separate clock, it does not come free with the hosting, and it renews at the registry's rate rather than the host's. Email, backups and staging are the same story. The second invoice is the one that surprises people, and it is the reason "how much should I pay to have my website hosted?" has more than one number in it.