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Hosting is the one recurring bill of an owned website — and it's a competitive market that works in your favor. Judge any provider on six things:
Managed WordPress or one-click install. You should never see a server configuration screen. Most reputable hosts install WordPress for you in minutes.
Daily automatic backups. The entire point of owning files is that your site can be restored, anywhere, anytime. Backups make that real.
Free SSL. Standard everywhere now; treat its absence as disqualifying.
Real support hours. Read recent reviews specifically about support response, not features.
Honest renewal pricing. The industry's oldest trick is a first-year price that doubles at renewal. Judge every plan by its year-two price.
Server location or CDN. Hosting near your customers matters; a host with a CDN included matters more.
What you can safely ignore
"Unlimited" anything — a small business site uses a fraction of any modern plan. Bundled theme marketplaces and page-builder licenses — dead weight when you own a custom theme. Most paid performance add-ons — a clean theme with no builder runtime is fast on ordinary hosting, because speed is a property of the site, not a hosting upsell.
What it should cost
$5–15/month buys excellent small-business hosting from multiple reputable providers. Set against a $30–45/month builder subscription, the math is not close — and only one of the two paths ends with you owning anything.
Your three directions are already free.
Brief the studio in five minutes. If nothing on the board feels like your brand, walk away having paid nothing.
Open the studio →