What a server actually costs, with real numbers

Hosting is sold like airline tickets: the number on the banner is not the number you pay. Here is what each tier actually costs, including the parts nobody advertises.

Shared hosting: 3 to 15 euros a month

You share a machine with hundreds of other sites. Fine for a brochure site with low traffic. The hidden cost is that you have no control: if a neighbour gets attacked or runs heavy queries, your site slows down and there is nothing you can do.

The other hidden cost is the renewal. Almost every provider advertises a first-year price and then triples it. Check the renewal rate before you commit, not after.

VPS: 5 to 40 euros a month

A slice of a machine that is yours. Real control, real performance, and the price is honest. But it arrives empty: no panel, no backups, no monitoring, no security. Everything you get automatically on shared hosting, here you build.

That is the real cost of a VPS — not the 10 euros, but the hours of someone who knows how to set it up and keep it patched. If you have that person, a VPS is the best value in hosting. If you do not, it is a liability waiting to happen.

Managed cloud: 40 to 300 euros a month

You pay someone to run the VPS for you. Sensible when uptime genuinely costs you money and you have no technical person in-house. Watch for bandwidth billing — that is where cloud invoices surprise people.

The cheapest hosting is the one that never costs you a sale. We have seen businesses lose more in one afternoon of downtime than they saved in three years of cheap hosting.

How to decide

Ask one question: if the site is down for four hours on your busiest day, what does that cost? If the answer is "nothing much", shared hosting is fine. If it is a number that hurts, you need a VPS with monitoring and someone accountable — and that is the real budget line.