Your website is a set of files. That's all it is.
And storing files is nothing. Your entire website would fit on a memory stick you could leave in a drawer.
The hard part is that anybody, anywhere, has to be able to ask for those files at three in the morning and get them back in about a second. That needs a computer that's on all the time, connected all the time, and never asleep.
That's all hosting is. You're renting a computer that never turns off.
Storing the files isn't what you're paying for
The answering is.
That's also the bit that separates hosting from your domain name. Your domain is the address. Your hosting is the thing the address points at.
Switch the hosting off and your domain still exists, still renews, still belongs to you, and points at absolutely nothing. Let the domain lapse and the hosting carries on running perfectly, serving a site nobody can reach.
Two different suppliers, two different renewal dates, two different problems.
What a server actually is
The computers built for this are called servers, and a server is far less exotic than it sounds.
It's a computer. No screen, no keyboard, sat on a rack in a building full of other racks, with backup generators, air conditioning and a very fast internet connection. All it does, all day, is wait for somebody to ask for your site and hand the files over.
Your laptop could technically do the job. It would just have to never sleep, never restart, never lose the wifi and never move.
That's what a data centre is for: keeping a lot of those machines running without interruption, which is difficult and expensive and precisely what you're renting a slice of.
What it should cost
For a normal small business website, standard shared hosting is usually about £10 to £20 a month.
Those are the renewal rates advertised by four UK hosts, all checked in August 2026:
| Host | Entry plan | Mid plan | VAT as stated |
|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS | £6 | £9 | Excluding VAT |
| Krystal | £7 | £11 | Including VAT |
| Hostinger | £7.99 | £10.99 | Excluding VAT |
| 20i | £10 | £20 | Not stated |
That's the renewal, not the sign-up offer. Nearly every host advertises something like £1 a month for the first year. Look at what it becomes afterwards, because that's the number you'll pay for as long as the site exists. Same trick as the first-year penny domain.
Check whether VAT is in the number. Half of the hosts above quote before VAT and half after. Two headline figures aren't comparable until you've normalised that.
Those are third-party prices, not ours, they move constantly, and you should check them yourself on the day you buy. We're not affiliated with any of them.
Why managed hosting costs more
You'll also see managed hosting, and it's a fair bit dearer. That isn't a bigger hard drive.
You're paying for somebody to actually look after it:
- Keep the software updated
- Take the backups, and check they work
- Watch the server
- Fix it when it falls over at two in the morning
On unmanaged hosting, all of that is you. Or, realistically, nobody, which is how sites end up running software that hasn't been touched in three years. That's how most small business sites get hacked. Not a targeted attack, just an automated scan finding an old plugin.
It's a straight trade: cheaper hosting and your attention, or dearer hosting and somebody else's.
Does hosting affect your Google ranking?
Yes.
Google states that Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems. How fast your server answers is the first thing that has to go right for those scores. Google's own guidance is that the first byte should arrive within 0.8 seconds, and that the main content should appear within 2.5 seconds.
Google's documentation also says that if Googlebot keeps meeting 500, 503 or 429 errors on the same URL over multiple days, that URL may be dropped from the index.
Dropped, not demoted. A host that falls over for a weekend every couple of months is quietly undoing the SEO work you may well be paying somebody else to do.
What bad hosting actually looks like
The most common sign is the first thing a visitor sees:
Not secure. That's Chrome telling every visitor, before they've read a word, that this site has no SSL certificate. The padlock is missing because nothing is there to produce it.
The certificate itself can be issued at no charge by Let's Encrypt, and any decent host sets one up automatically and never mentions it. So a site sitting there marked "not secure" isn't usually a business that decided against security. It's a business whose hosting isn't doing the basics.
Hosting that skips SSL usually skips the rest of it too:
| What you see | What's actually happening |
|---|---|
| "Not secure" in the address bar | No certificate, so visitors are warned off before the page loads |
| The site is slow to appear | An overloaded server, which also drags down your Core Web Vitals |
| It's down now and then | Repeated errors, which can cost you pages in Google's index |
| Nobody has updated it in years | Out-of-date software, which is how most small business sites get hacked |
| No recent backup exists | When something does break, there's nothing to restore |
It's what happens when nobody is looking after the machine.
What we charge, and who we'll host for
| Our hosting | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Starter | From £15 |
| Managed | From £40 |
Some sites sit above those, because we bundle website maintenance in rather than selling it separately. If you want copy changed, a new page added, photos swapped or something fixed, that's covered rather than quoted for each time. What it comes to depends on how much of that you actually need, and we'll go through it on a call.
We only host sites we've built or that we manage. You can't have somebody else build you a site and then hand it to us to keep online.
When a site is on our servers, its security is our problem. We can't take responsibility for code we've never seen, plugins we didn't choose, or a build we can't vouch for, and a site that gets compromised rarely only affects the business that owns it. If you've got an existing site you want us to take over, we'll happily look at it, but that conversation starts with rebuilding it, not just moving it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is web hosting?
Your website is a set of files. Hosting is keeping those files on a computer that never turns off, so that anybody can ask for them at any hour and get your site back in about a second. Storing the files is trivial. Having them permanently available is the job, and that's what you rent when you pay for hosting.
What is a server?
A server is a computer built to do one job and never stop. It has no screen and no keyboard, it sits on a rack in a data centre with backup generators, air conditioning and a very fast internet connection, and all it does is wait for someone to ask for a website and hand the files over. Your own laptop could technically do it. It would just have to never sleep, never restart and never lose the wifi.
How much does web hosting cost in the UK?
For a normal small business website, standard shared hosting is usually about £10 to £20 a month. That range comes from the renewal rates advertised by IONOS, Krystal, Hostinger and 20i, all checked in August 2026. It's the renewal that matters rather than the introductory offer, since most hosts advertise around £1 a month for the first year, and roughly half of them quote before VAT while the others quote after.
Why does managed hosting cost more?
Because somebody does the work. On managed hosting the provider keeps the software updated, takes the backups, monitors the server and fixes it when it breaks. On unmanaged hosting all of that falls to you, or realistically to nobody, which is how sites end up running software that hasn't been updated in years. You're not paying for a bigger hard drive, you're paying for somebody's attention.
What is the difference between a domain and hosting?
Your domain is the address people type and your hosting is the thing that address points at. They're usually bought from different companies and they renew separately, so they can fail separately. If your hosting stops, your domain still exists and still belongs to you, it just points at nothing. If your domain lapses, the hosting keeps running but nobody can reach it.
Does web hosting affect SEO?
Yes. Google states that Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, and how fast your server responds is the first thing that has to go right for those scores. Separately, Google's documentation says that if Googlebot keeps meeting 500, 503 or 429 errors on the same URL over multiple days, that URL may be dropped from the index. So a host that keeps falling over is a search problem, not just an inconvenience.
How can I tell if my web hosting is bad?
If the browser shows "Not secure" in the address bar, the site has no SSL certificate, and any decent host sets one up automatically at no charge. Beyond that, look for pages that are slow to appear, occasional downtime, software nobody has updated in years, and no recent backup you could restore from. They tend to arrive together, because nobody is looking after the machine.
How much does WAT Websites hosting cost?
Starter hosting is from £15 a month and managed hosting is from £40 a month. Some sites sit above those because we bundle website maintenance in rather than selling it separately, so copy changes, new pages, photo swaps and fixes are covered instead of quoted for each time. What it comes to depends on how much of that you need, and we'll go through it on a call.
Will you host a website you didn't build?
No. We only host sites we've built or that we manage. When a site sits on our servers its security becomes our responsibility, and we can't take that on for code we've never seen, plugins we didn't choose, or a build we can't vouch for. A site that gets compromised rarely only affects the business that owns it. If you've got an existing site you want us to take over, we'll look at it, but that conversation starts with rebuilding it rather than simply moving it.
