You've got the name. Where does the site live?
Registering a domain and hosting a website are two different purchases. Here's an honest read on which hosting you actually need for a brand-new site — including when the answer is “none yet.”
The short answer
- →Building on Shopify, or any hosted site builder? You don't need hosting. It's included. Stop here. (AI builders like Blink and Base44 count too.)
- →Just parking the name for now? You don't need hosting either. A domain is yours whether or not anything is served from it.
- →Building on WordPress? Managed WordPress hosting is worth the few dollars over shared — it removes the maintenance work that makes people abandon sites.
- →Something custom, or not sure yet? Start on shared hosting. It's the cheapest way to have real hosting, and moving later is easy.
The options, compared
| Host | Roughly | Best for | Skip it if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Namecheap Shared Hosting | From ~$1.98/mo on a 2-year term | A first site on a tight budget, or anything that isn't WordPress. Cheapest way to get real hosting with a control panel. | You expect serious traffic soon, or you don't want to manage updates and backups yourself. |
| IONOS | $1/mo for the first year, then $14/mo | Getting a site live for almost nothing in year one. A free domain, email, and SSL are bundled in, and the EU and UK data centres are useful if your audience is there. | You'll forget to diarise the renewal. The intro price is genuine, but it ends — budget for $14/mo in year two, not $1. |
| EasyWP (Managed WordPress) | First month free, then from ~$2.91/mo | A WordPress site where you'd rather not think about updates, caching, or backups. The best value-per-dollar on this page for a new WordPress build. | You're not using WordPress. It does one thing. |
| WordPress.com | Free plan, paid from ~$4/mo | All-in-one managed hosting and site builder directly from Automattic. Security, updates, and maintenance handled for you out of the box. | You need un-sandboxed server root access or custom PHP extensions. |
| Pressable | Starting around $19/mo | Official managed WordPress cloud hosting built on Automattic's infrastructure. High reliability and 99.99% uptime for business sites. | You want budget shared hosting for a zero-traffic side project. |
| WP Engine | Starting around $20/mo | A business site where downtime costs money. Staging environments, strong support, and performance tooling built in. | This is a side project or a site with no revenue yet. You'd be paying for capability you won't use. |
| Kinsta | Starting around $35/mo | Sites that have already outgrown cheaper hosting — high traffic, or a developer team that wants proper tooling. | You're launching your first site. This is genuinely overkill on day one, and we'd rather say so. |
Prices are indicative and change with promotions — check the host for current pricing. Links to hosts on this page are affiliate links; it doesn't change what you pay, and it doesn't change the recommendations above.
Namecheap Shared Hosting
From ~$1.98/mo on a 2-year term
A first site on a tight budget, or anything that isn't WordPress. Cheapest way to get real hosting with a control panel.
Skip it if: You expect serious traffic soon, or you don't want to manage updates and backups yourself.
IONOS
$1/mo for the first year, then $14/mo
Getting a site live for almost nothing in year one. A free domain, email, and SSL are bundled in, and the EU and UK data centres are useful if your audience is there.
Skip it if: You'll forget to diarise the renewal. The intro price is genuine, but it ends — budget for $14/mo in year two, not $1.
EasyWP (Managed WordPress)
First month free, then from ~$2.91/mo
A WordPress site where you'd rather not think about updates, caching, or backups. The best value-per-dollar on this page for a new WordPress build.
Skip it if: You're not using WordPress. It does one thing.
WordPress.com
Free plan, paid from ~$4/mo
All-in-one managed hosting and site builder directly from Automattic. Security, updates, and maintenance handled for you out of the box.
Skip it if: You need un-sandboxed server root access or custom PHP extensions.
Pressable
Starting around $19/mo
Official managed WordPress cloud hosting built on Automattic's infrastructure. High reliability and 99.99% uptime for business sites.
Skip it if: You want budget shared hosting for a zero-traffic side project.
WP Engine
Starting around $20/mo
A business site where downtime costs money. Staging environments, strong support, and performance tooling built in.
Skip it if: This is a side project or a site with no revenue yet. You'd be paying for capability you won't use.
Kinsta
Starting around $35/mo
Sites that have already outgrown cheaper hosting — high traffic, or a developer team that wants proper tooling.
Skip it if: You're launching your first site. This is genuinely overkill on day one, and we'd rather say so.
Shared hosting vs managed WordPress: what you're actually buying
Shared hosting rents you a slice of a server. You get a control panel, some disk space, and the freedom to install whatever you like — along with the responsibility of keeping it patched. It is the cheapest real hosting available, and for a site with no traffic it performs perfectly well.
Managed WordPress hosting is narrower and more opinionated. It runs WordPress and only WordPress, and in exchange it handles the parts people forget: core and plugin updates, caching, daily backups, and the security patching that turns neglected WordPress sites into spam relays. The difference in monthly cost is usually a couple of dollars. The difference in hours spent is considerable.
The honest framing: if you already know WordPress is your CMS, managed is the better buy. If you don't know what you're building yet, shared hosting keeps your options open for less.
When premium hosting is worth it — and when it isn't
WP Engine and Kinsta both cost roughly ten times what EasyWP does, and both are genuinely better products. Staging environments, edge caching, real support engineers, and performance monitoring are not marketing — they matter once a site earns money and downtime has a price attached.
They are also the wrong purchase for a site that launched last week. The capability you're paying for is capability under load, and a new site has none. Start cheap, prove the idea has traffic, then upgrade. Moving a WordPress site between hosts is a well-trodden path, and most premium hosts will migrate you for free precisely because they want the business.
You might not need hosting at all
This is the part most hosting comparisons leave out, because hosting comparisons are usually written by people selling hosting.
If you're building a store, Shopify bundles hosting into the subscription — buying hosting alongside it is a straightforward waste. If you want a single page with a link, a bio, and a contact form, a one-page builder does that for a few dollars a month with no server to think about. And if you registered the name to protect it while you decide, you can leave it parked indefinitely. A domain doesn't expire because nothing is served from it.
Hosting is only genuinely required when you're running your own software. That's a narrower set of cases than the industry likes to imply.
Common questions
Do I need hosting to own a domain name?
No. Registering a domain and hosting a website are two separate purchases. You can own a name for years without paying for hosting — plenty of people register a name to protect it long before they build anything. You only need hosting once you have actual files or a CMS to serve.
Can I change hosts later without losing my domain?
Yes, and this matters more than picking the 'perfect' host on day one. Your domain lives at your registrar, not your host. Moving hosts means repointing a DNS record — an afternoon of work at worst. Don't over-think the first choice; the switching cost is genuinely low.
Is shared hosting good enough to start?
For a brand-new site with no traffic, yes. Shared hosting's weaknesses — slower response under load, noisy neighbours — only bite once you have meaningful traffic. Paying for premium hosting before you have visitors is optimising for a problem you don't have yet.
What's the difference between shared hosting and managed WordPress?
Shared hosting gives you a slice of a server and leaves the software to you. Managed WordPress handles WordPress specifically — updates, caching, backups, and security are done for you. Managed costs more per month but removes maintenance work. If WordPress is definitely your CMS, managed is usually worth it.
Do I need hosting for a Shopify store?
No. Shopify includes hosting in its subscription. The same is true of most hosted site builders. Hosting is only a separate purchase when you're running your own software — WordPress being the common case.
Still deciding on the name?
Hosting can wait. Check the domain and every social handle in one pass first — it's much cheaper to change a name now than after you've built on it.
Check a name →