THE PUBLISHED BILL

What does a small UK business website actually cost to host?

Four hosts answer four different questions. One publishes a monthly price and a UK phone line. One charges the same at renewal. One lets you leave after a month. One advertises the lowest first term, if you pay four years up front.

Prices checked 30 October 2026 on each provider's own pages. Pound figures below are copied from those pages. Where a page excludes VAT, the 20% column is HostingLinks arithmetic for a UK customer who pays the standard rate and does not reclaim it. It is not a second quote. A VAT registered business may reclaim the tax. The order summary is the amount that counts. How we separate published figures from estimates.

Affiliate disclosure. HostingLinks may earn a commission from some links elsewhere on the site, at no extra cost to you. The provider links in this guide go to each company's own site. No affiliate code is attached. A later affiliate agreement would not change these prices or the job each plan is picked for. The terms explain how affiliate links are treated.

Pick a job, then read the renewal

This comparison is for one small organisation with a modest WordPress or brochure site and a few mailboxes. HostingLinks did not load test these servers, open support tickets, or restore a backup. If you are still choosing between shared hosting, a VPS and a managed service, start with the hosting type guide and who does the maintenance.

Krystal Ruby: someone who will take a phone call

Choose Ruby when the useful question is who answers if the contact form breaks, and you want that service as a normal monthly or yearly bill. On 30 October 2026 the Krystal hosting page showed Ruby at £11 a month with the Include VAT control off. The same page data lists £110 for a year and £198 for two years. The terms say service prices exclude VAT where it applies. Annual billing is the page's advertised 16% saving. Two years is the advertised 25% saving.

Ruby lists 2 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM, 5 sites, 25 GB of NVMe, unlimited bandwidth and databases, and unlimited mailboxes. Daily snapshot backups, free SSL and a domain for the life of the plan are included. Outbound mail is capped at 1,000 messages an hour. Phone, live chat, email and tickets are included. The 24 hour emergency phone line starts on higher plans, so Ruby does not include it. There is a 60 day refund, with domain costs kept back.

The FAQ says lower plans have 5 GB mailboxes and higher plans have 50 GB. It does not name the plan where 50 GB starts, so this guide does not assign a size to Ruby.

Krystal Hosting Ltd is a UK company, and the hosting page describes the support staff as UK based. The technology page says this shared hosting runs as cPanel virtual servers on Katapult, and that they currently operate from a hall at Netwise East in East London. The same page names Iron Mountain sites in New Jersey and Amsterdam. If the website and its mail must stay in the UK, ask for that in writing. The marketing page is not the contract.

Mythic Beasts Web 50: the second year costs the same

Choose Web 50 when the renewal is the decision, and a plain Linux account is enough. The hosting table lists Web 50 at £5 a month for 15 GB of disk, 250 GB of monthly transfer and 5 databases. A line under the table says prices exclude VAT. Do not copy the homepage, which says prices on that page include 20% VAT. The pricing policy says web and email hosting renews at the new customer price, and that annual billing costs ten times one month. Ten times £5 is £50 a year, two months free against paying monthly. They also say the policy is what they have done and intend to do, not a binding promise. A later change applies to new and existing customers together.

The account includes unlimited domains, unlimited mailboxes, a WordPress installer, a choice of PHP versions and free Let's Encrypt certificates. Shell access is optional. Hosting servers are described as being in UK data centres, on a fibre ring that also reaches Amsterdam. Support is described as human staff in the UK, Ireland and Spain. The page invites email and does not list a phone number.

They take daily backups and, after a server failure, promise a restore no more than 36 hours old. Older dates are best efforts, and they tell you to keep another copy elsewhere. The 15 GB figure is the account disk. Mail is not given a separate quota, so photos plus inboxes can fill it. Web 25, at £2.50, is only 5 GB and one database. That is tight for WordPress images. Web 70, at £7, is 25 GB on the same renewal rule.

20i Startup: pay monthly, and accept a higher rate

Choose Startup when you will not prepay four years and you want the price after the offer written on the same card. On 30 October 2026 the 20i web hosting page showed Startup at £1 for the first month, then £10 a month, with no contract. The card lists one site, 10 GB of storage, 50 GB of transfer, ten mailboxes of 10 GB, and 1 GB of MySQL. It also lists a CDN, free SSL, daily backups and 24/7 support described as UK based. The FAQ offers an origin in London, Dallas or Singapore, and restores from any point in the last 7 days.

The card does not print a VAT line. Clause 8.1 of the terms says quoted prices exclude VAT. Clause 8.3 allows a price change with 14 days' notice. A limited 30 day refund, once per customer, excludes domains. Clause 19.6 refuses a refund for the unused part of a billing period. You can leave at the end of a month. You should not expect the remaining days of the current month back.

After month one, Startup is the expensive plan here. £10 a month excluding VAT is £120 a year, against £50 for Web 50 and £110 for Ruby. The extra buys a short exit, a CDN and a London option. For a small steady site, the price list does not justify it. It fits if you may outgrow the account, or if you will not lock four years of cash into a host you have not used. The 50 GB transfer cap still covers a brochure: a 2 MB page at 40 visits a day is about 2.4 GB a month. Video, large downloads or a bot flood spend it much faster.

Hostinger Premium: the low rate is a 48 month prepay

Choose Premium only after the renewal and the year two extras are written down, and you can pay 48 months on day one. On 30 October 2026 the Hostinger UK pricing page showed Premium at £2.39 a month: you pay £114.72 for 48 months, then £10.99 a month for another 48 months. £2.39 times 48 is £114.72, so the monthly figure is the upfront total divided by the term. The page says plans are paid upfront, and the footer says prices are listed without VAT. The page was headed as a Black Friday offer, ahead of 27 November 2026, so treat £2.39 as a promotion that can end. The renewal is whatever that card says when you pay.

£114.72 plus 20% is £137.66 to the nearest penny. The renewal term, £10.99 times 48, is £527.52 excluding VAT, or £633.02 with 20% added. That second term is more than four times the first. The renewal guide shows the same pattern with made up plans. Here the later rate is printed on the same card as the offer.

Premium lists 3 websites, one domain free for a year, 20 GB SSD, weekly backups, a CDN, WordPress and priority 24/7 support. Two mailboxes per site are free for one year. The card does not print the later mailbox price, the mailbox size, or the domain renewal. Those gaps matter more than the gap between £2.39 and a rival monthly headline. The card says you can cancel at any time. It does not say whether unused months of the 48 month prepay come back. This guide does not invent a refund. The page refers to global data centres and does not name a UK building for this shared plan.

The same three years, then eight

By month 36 a Hostinger buyer has already paid for 48 months. The other totals use each plan's published monthly or yearly rate, with no promo code, no domain, and no Hostinger mailbox fee after year one. The eight year column assumes those rates still hold.

Premium is the low cash sum while the 48 month offer lasts. From the renewal onward, Web 50 is the lower hosting line in this set, and mail is still inside its price. Add the domain, plugins and a real mailbox quote in the website running cost planner.

What the hosting line still leaves out

A domain is a separate product, even when the first year is bundled. Ruby includes one for the life of the plan. Premium includes one year and does not print the renewal. Web 50 and Startup do not list a free domain in the rows above. Moving the name and moving the site are different jobs, set out in domain versus hosting.

Email is the other quiet extra. Ruby and Web 50 advertise mailboxes inside the hosting price, with the limits already given. Startup lists ten 10 GB mailboxes. Premium's two mailboxes per site expire as a free item after a year, at a price the card does not show. If the business inbox must survive year two, get that price before you compare £2.39 with £5.

Backups differ behind a similar tick. Ruby takes daily snapshots. Startup keeps 7 days. Premium is weekly. Web 50 promises a restore no more than 36 hours old after a server failure, and does not promise an older archive. Keep your own copy, then follow the migration checklist. Confirm the host's PHP against the requirements linked from the hosting type guide before you move WordPress. This page does not record a PHP version per plan.

FAQ

Are these the figures on the invoice?

Only if your VAT treatment matches. All four sources used here point to prices without VAT. A UK consumer is commonly charged 20% on top. The checkout is the quote. Rates also move: 20i with 14 days' notice, Hostinger's £2.39 on a promotional page, and Mythic Beasts at a renewal for everyone at once.

Which plan is cheapest if we stay for years?

On the hosting line alone, Web 50: £400 excluding VAT over eight years, with mailboxes still inside the account. Ruby is the plan that lists a phone number, at £110 a year excluding VAT.

Does a UK company mean the files sit in the UK?

No. Mythic Beasts say their hosting servers are in UK data centres. 20i offer London beside Dallas and Singapore. Krystal describe a hall in East London and also name Amsterdam and the United States. Hostinger's UK pricing page talks about global data centres and does not name a UK building for Premium.

Is 10 GB enough for a small WordPress site?

For a short brochure with compressed images, often yes. Full size photos, a year of mail and plugin caches fill 10 GB on Startup, and 5 GB on Web 25, much faster. Ruby at 25 GB and Premium at 20 GB are the more comfortable starts. Check the size of your uploads folder first.

Can we leave if the opening price was the only reason we joined?

Startup is the plan built for that, one month at a time after the first £1, subject to the refund limits above. Premium is cheap because 48 months are paid on day one, and a refund of the unused years was not on the card. Ruby's 60 days cover early regret, not year three. Mythic Beasts say they do not charge a transfer out fee, and that annual hosting can be cancelled with 30 days' notice with unused time credited pro rata, unless a product says otherwise.

Verdict

If the renewal has to match the advert, buy Mythic Beasts Web 50 and keep your own backup. The published price stays at £5 a month excluding VAT, or £50 for a year, and the hosting servers are described as being in the UK.

If you want a phone number, cPanel and daily snapshots, buy Krystal Ruby at £110 a year excluding VAT, and confirm where that account will run.

If you might shut or move the site within a few months, 20i Startup is the short commitment. It is a weak pick when price is the point, because £10 a month is the real rate.

If the lowest cash sum over the first four years is the goal, Hostinger Premium is the published answer, at £114.72 excluding VAT while that offer lasts. Write £10.99 beside it, and get the year two mailbox and domain prices before you call it cheaper than Web 50.