Every hosting comparison leads with the same number: the price on the checkout page. That number is almost never what you’ll actually pay after year one.
Hosting is one of the few purchases where the advertised price and the real price can differ by 400% or more once a renewal kicks in. Some UK hosts are upfront about that. Others bury it in a knowledge base article three clicks from the pricing page.
We looked at six hosts UK small business owners ask us about when they’re choosing where to point a new site: IONOS, Krystal Hosting, Hostinger, HostArmada, NameHero and SiteGround. For each one, we’ve included the intro price, the renewal price, and whether a UK data centre is actually on offer.
What’s in this guide
Quick comparison of all six hosts. Prices billed in USD are converted to GBP at approximately £0.79 to $1 and will move with the exchange rate. All prices exclude UK VAT unless stated.
| Host | Best for | Intro price | Renewal price | UK data centre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS | Bundled hosting plus AI website tools | From £1/mo (Plus) | Up to £16/mo, a 1,500% jump on Plus | Yes, London |
| Krystal Hosting | Predictable pricing with no renewal shock | £7/mo (Amethyst) | Stays close to £7/mo | Yes, London |
| Hostinger | Long-term budget commitments | £2.99/mo (48-month term) | £10.99 to £16.99/mo | Yes, London |
| HostArmada | Cloud-based shared hosting with strong support | ~£1.59/mo (36-month term) | ~£8 to £19/mo | Yes, London |
| NameHero | LiteSpeed and NVMe performance on a budget | ~£1.80/mo (36-month term) | Not clearly published | Yes, London (added 2025) |
| SiteGround | Beginner-friendly support and tooling | ~£2.36/mo (12-month term) | ~£14 to £35/mo | Yes, London |
A slow, unreliable host costs a small business more than the monthly fee suggests. It’s one of several factors we cover in our guide to UK small business website statistics, alongside how much site speed and uptime actually affect whether a visitor sticks around.
1. IONOS
IONOS has been in web hosting since 1988, originally as 1&1, and that scale shows in its infrastructure. Shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting are all available from one account, alongside an AI website builder and email hosting.
The catch is pricing structure. IONOS’s headline offers, like the Plus plan at £1 a month, are short-term promotional rates. That specific plan renews at £16 a month excluding VAT, which becomes £19.20 including VAT, a jump of roughly 1,500%.
The Starter plan is the more honest entry point, at around £10 a month excluding VAT on standard billing, with 50GB storage and a 200-page limit that suits most small business sites without a renewal shock anywhere near that scale.
All UK IONOS prices exclude 20% VAT until checkout, and a London data centre is available for UK-targeted sites.
Pros
- Deep product range, shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated, under a single account
- 99.99% uptime guarantee backed by an SLA, with 24/7 support
- Free domain for the first year and free SSL on every plan
- London data centre available for UK-targeted traffic
Cons
- The advertised £1/month rate can renew over 1,000% higher, and IONOS bills you automatically unless you cancel before the anniversary
- Prices are shown excluding VAT, so add 20% to every figure before comparing to VAT-inclusive competitors
- Only one email account included on entry plans
- Uses its own control panel rather than cPanel, adding a small learning curve for anyone used to the standard interface
IONOS makes sense if you go in with the Starter plan and read the renewal price before you sign up, not the £1 headline. It’s a poor fit for anyone who signs up for Plus on the promotional rate without setting a reminder to review pricing before the term ends.
2. Krystal Hosting
Krystal takes the opposite approach to most of this list. Instead of a low headline price followed by a sharp renewal jump, its shared hosting starts at £7 a month and stays close to that figure at renewal.
The company is UK-based, B Corp certified, and runs on 100% renewable energy from its own London data centre. For a business that wants to make a genuine sustainability claim about its own site, that’s a real differentiator rather than a marketing badge.
Shared hosting (Amethyst) starts at £7 a month, Ruby around £9.99, and the business-focused Sapphire tier around £29.99 a month. There’s a 60-day money-back guarantee on shared hosting and a 30-day free trial on managed WordPress.
If managed WordPress hosting specifically is what you’re after rather than general shared hosting, we’ve compared the dedicated options in our guide to the best managed WordPress hosting in the UK.
Pros
- Transparent, stable pricing with no aggressive renewal jump to plan around
- B Corp certified and powered by 100% renewable energy, verified rather than self-reported
- UK-based support team and a London data centre as standard on shared hosting
- 60-day money-back guarantee, longer than the industry-standard 30 days
Cons
- Entry price of £7/month is 2 to 3 times higher than budget hosts like Hostinger or HostArmada on their intro rates
- No free trial on shared hosting, only on managed WordPress
- Smaller company than IONOS or Hostinger, so brand recognition is lower
- Not the cheapest option if all you’re comparing is the first invoice
Krystal is the right call if you’d rather pay a fair price consistently than chase promotional rates every year or two. It’s the wrong call if your only criterion is the lowest number on the pricing page, since several competitors will beat it on that measure alone.
Worth knowing: check whether the price includes VAT before you compare
Several hosts on this list, including IONOS and most USD-priced providers, show prices excluding UK VAT. Add 20% before comparing against a host that already shows VAT-inclusive pricing, or you’ll end up comparing two different numbers as if they were the same thing.
Hosting is only one line in the total cost of running a small business site. We break down the fuller picture in our guide to WordPress website cost in the UK.
3. Hostinger
Hostinger built its reputation on aggressive introductory pricing, and the numbers back that up. Shared hosting starts at £2.99 a month, but only if you commit to a 48-month term paid upfront.
Renewal pricing depends on the tier. Standard plans renew around £10.99 a month, while the Business tier, which adds daily backups and a free CDN, can renew closer to £16.99 a month, an increase of roughly 290% to 450% depending on which plan you started on.
Hostinger operates data centres across the UK, mainland Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including a London location for UK-targeted sites. A 30-day money-back guarantee applies across plans, and Hostinger holds a strong 4.7-star Trustpilot rating from over 60,000 reviews.
If you’d rather use Hostinger’s bundled site builder than a full WordPress build, it’s worth comparing it against dedicated options first in our guide to the best free website builder for small business UK.
Pros
- Lowest genuine intro price of any host in this guide, for buyers willing to commit long term
- London data centre included, alongside a wide global network
- Strong independent review scores at real scale, not just a handful of testimonials
- AI tools, website builder and email hosting bundled in at no extra cost
Cons
- The £2.99 headline price requires a 48-month upfront commitment, longer than most competitors’ terms
- Renewal increases of 290% to 450% are among the steepest on this list
- Paying 48 months upfront means a meaningful cash outlay before you’ve tested real-world performance
- Support quality is reported as inconsistent by some longer-term customers, despite the strong aggregate rating
Hostinger earns its reputation for value if you’re comfortable locking in a 48-month term and budgeting for the renewal jump from day one. It’s a weaker fit if you want flexibility to change hosts within the first year or two without losing your discount.
Choosing hosting is only half the job. If you’d rather have it set up correctly as part of a new WordPress build instead of a separate decision, see our WordPress web design packages.
4. HostArmada
HostArmada runs shared hosting on cloud infrastructure rather than a single physical server, which means a site sits across multiple connected machines with built-in redundancy.
Three shared tiers are on offer: Start Dock, Web Warp and Speed Reaper. Only Speed Reaper includes the faster LiteSpeed web server; the two lower tiers run on NGINX, so the fastest stack is gated behind the priciest plan.
Start Dock begins around £1.59 a month on a long-term commitment, renewing near £7.85 a month, close to a 400% increase. Speed Reaper starts higher and can renew as high as £19 a month. A London data centre is available, and the 45-day money-back guarantee is longer than the 30-day standard most competitors offer.
Pros
- Cloud-based shared hosting adds redundancy that traditional single-server shared hosting lacks
- 45-day money-back guarantee, longer than most competitors
- Consistently praised support response times across independent reviews
- London data centre available alongside eight other global locations
Cons
- LiteSpeed, the fastest available web server option, is limited to the most expensive Speed Reaper tier
- Renewal increases of around 400% are steep even by industry standards
- Younger company, founded in 2019, with a shorter track record than IONOS or SiteGround
- Entry-tier storage of 15GB is limiting for a growing business site
HostArmada is worth considering if support quality and cloud redundancy matter more to you than getting the fastest web server on the cheapest plan. Budget for the Speed Reaper tier if LiteSpeed performance is the reason you’re looking at HostArmada in the first place.
5. NameHero
NameHero built its reputation on LiteSpeed web servers and NVMe storage as standard, even on entry-tier shared plans, rather than gating them behind a premium tier the way HostArmada does.
Its data centre footprint has grown recently. Alongside its original Kansas facility and an Amsterdam location, NameHero opened a London data centre in early 2025, live for web hosting, WordPress hosting and reseller hosting.
One caveat worth flagging: at least one independent review from early 2026 noted that NameHero’s faster NVMe storage tier may not yet be uniformly available outside its US data centre. If storage speed is the reason you’re choosing NameHero, confirm which storage tier applies to the London location at signup.
Shared plans start around £1.80 a month on a 36-month term (Starter Cloud), rising to roughly £4.73 for Turbo Cloud and £7.10 for Business Cloud. NameHero doesn’t publish a clear renewal figure as prominently as some competitors, so you should ask support directly before committing.
Pros
- LiteSpeed and NVMe available from the entry tier, not locked behind a premium plan
- New London data centre expands its UK and European footprint
- CloudLinux isolates your resources from other users on the same server, even on shared plans
- Strong Trustpilot rating and a CEO known for hands-on customer engagement
Cons
- Renewal pricing isn’t published as clearly as most competitors on this list
- Some independent testing suggests the newer non-US data centres may not match US-tier storage performance
- Interface has been described as dated compared to more modern competitors
- Live chat support is reported as limited to specific sections of the site rather than always available
NameHero is a reasonable pick if LiteSpeed and NVMe performance matter to you and you’re prepared to confirm storage specifics for the London data centre before signing up. The lack of clear published renewal pricing is a real gap compared with the transparency shown by Krystal or Hostinger.
If your site is starting to outgrow shared hosting on any of these providers, whether that’s traffic, storage or the number of sites you manage, the next step is usually a VPS rather than a bigger shared plan. We cover when that switch makes sense in our guide to VPS WordPress hosting.
6. SiteGround
SiteGround has run a London data centre since 2015, longer than most competitors on this list, and it’s long been recommended for beginner-friendly support and a clean custom control panel called Site Tools.
The StartUp plan starts around £2.36 a month on a 12-month term, renewing around £14.21, roughly a 6x increase. GrowBig starts near £3.94, renewing around £23.69, and GoGeek starts near £6.31, renewing around £35.54.
Resource limits matter more here than the headline storage figures suggest. SiteGround enforces a Fair Use Policy, and customer reports suggest throttling can begin around 5,000 to 10,000 monthly visits on StartUp and 25,000 to 50,000 on GrowBig, well before you’d expect based on the advertised “unmetered traffic” language.
If you’re weighing SiteGround’s cloud plans against a dedicated WooCommerce build, our WooCommerce website development service is worth a look alongside this comparison.
Pros
- Long-established London data centre with a strong reputation for reliability
- Clean, beginner-friendly Site Tools control panel and guided setup
- Consistently praised support quality across independent reviews
- 30 on-demand backups kept as standard, even on the entry plan
Cons
- Renewal pricing is among the steepest on this list in cash terms, not just percentage
- “Unmetered traffic” is subject to a Fair Use Policy that can throttle busy sites well below the number implies
- Domain registrations are non-refundable even within the 30-day money-back window
- StartUp’s single-website limit means most growing businesses outgrow it quickly
SiteGround is worth the premium if support quality and a polished beginner experience matter more to you than squeezing the lowest renewal price out of the market. It’s a weaker fit for a growing site likely to bump against the Fair Use Policy on the entry plan.
Which hosting should you choose?
Once you strip away the promotional pricing, the real decision usually comes down to how much you value price predictability versus the lowest possible first-year cost.
Choose IONOS if:
- You want shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting available under one account as you grow
- You’re disciplined about checking renewal prices before signing up
- AI website-building tools bundled with hosting appeal to you
Skip IONOS if you’re likely to forget to review pricing before the promotional term ends.
Choose Krystal if:
- Predictable pricing matters more to you than the lowest possible intro rate
- Verified sustainability credentials are relevant to your business or clients
- You want UK-based support and a UK data centre as standard
Skip Krystal if your budget can’t stretch beyond £7 a month for hosting.
Choose Hostinger if:
- You’re comfortable committing to a 48-month term to lock in the lowest price
- You want AI tools, a website builder and email bundled with hosting
- You’ve budgeted for the renewal price, not just the headline rate
Skip Hostinger if you want flexibility to switch hosts within the first year without losing your rate.
Choose HostArmada if:
- Support responsiveness and cloud redundancy matter more to you than the absolute lowest price
- You’re prepared to pay for the Speed Reaper tier if LiteSpeed performance matters
- A longer 45-day money-back window gives you useful extra testing time
Skip HostArmada if 15GB of entry-tier storage won’t be enough for your site.
Choose NameHero if:
- LiteSpeed and NVMe performance from the entry tier is your priority
- You’re willing to confirm storage specifics for the London data centre directly with support
- You don’t need renewal pricing spelled out clearly upfront
Skip NameHero if published, predictable renewal pricing is important to your budgeting process.
Choose SiteGround if:
- Beginner-friendly support and tooling are worth paying a premium for
- Your traffic is unlikely to bump against Fair Use Policy limits on your chosen tier
- You value a long-established UK data centre over squeezing out the lowest renewal price
Skip SiteGround if you’re on a tight budget and traffic growth is likely in year one.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best small business hosting in the UK?
There isn’t a single best option for every business. Krystal Hosting suits businesses that want predictable pricing without a renewal shock. Hostinger and HostArmada suit budget-conscious buyers willing to commit long term. SiteGround and IONOS suit businesses that want strong support and a wider range of hosting types available under one account.
Does it matter if my hosting has a UK data centre?
For a site targeting UK visitors, yes, a UK or nearby European data centre generally reduces latency and improves load times compared with a server in the US or Asia. All six hosts in this guide offer a London data centre option, though it isn’t always selected by default, so check your account settings at signup.
Why do hosting renewal prices jump so much after the first year?
Most hosts subsidise the first term to win new customers, then renew at a rate closer to their actual cost of service. The jump ranges from modest, as with Krystal, to over 1,000% on some IONOS plans. Always check the renewal price before comparing headline offers.
Is cheap hosting good enough for a small business website?
For a low-traffic brochure site, budget shared hosting from any of these six providers is usually adequate. Once you’re relying on the site for bookings, sales or lead generation, the cost of downtime or slow load times tends to outweigh the savings from the cheapest plan.
Which hosting is easiest for a beginner?
SiteGround and Krystal are generally considered the most beginner-friendly, both offering clean control panels and support teams used to explaining things without assuming technical knowledge. IONOS’s builder tools are also approachable, though its own control panel differs from the cPanel most tutorials assume.
Do I need a UK-based hosting company, or just a UK data centre?
A UK data centre is what affects your site’s loading speed for UK visitors, regardless of where the company itself is based. A UK-based company like Krystal does add UK-hours support and UK consumer protections, which matter more for support experience than for raw site performance.
Hosting is one decision in a longer list when you’re building or rebuilding a small business site. If you’d rather have hosting, design and setup handled as one project, see our small business web design packages or our WordPress web design packages.
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