The verdict in three sentences
For a business website, shared hosting at £6 to £13 or 7 to 15 EUR per month is enough in most cases, provided you have off-site backups and someone handling updates. A VPS (£13 to £50 or 15 to 60 EUR per month) makes sense when the site carries a back office, sensitive forms or spiky traffic, and an edge platform such as Vercel ($20 per month per member on the Pro plan) when the site is built with Next.js and international performance matters. The real cost is not the subscription: it is the hour of downtime and the internal time spent firefighting.
The three hosting families compared
The finance director of a London or Dublin SME signing off a new website budget often receives three incompatible proposals: shared hosting with a mainstream host, a VPS for peace of mind, and a cloud platform recommended by the agency. Price gaps are small in absolute terms, but responsibilities differ widely.
| Criterion | Shared (Krystal, SiteGround, OVHcloud) | VPS (Hetzner, OVHcloud, DigitalOcean) | Edge platform (Vercel Pro) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price, 2026 order of magnitude | £6 to £13 / 7 to 15 EUR per month | £13 to £50 / 15 to 60 EUR per month | $20 per month per member, plus usage |
| Who manages the server | The host | You or your provider | The platform |
| Data location | UK or EU depending on host | UK or EU depending on plan | Global network, configurable region |
| Backups | Included, variable retention | Must be configured | Versioned deployments, database separate |
| Scaling | Limited | Manual | Automatic |
| Suited technologies | WordPress, PHP | Anything | Next.js, static and hybrid sites |
| Skills needed | Low | System administration | Front-end developer |
For an Irish or UK SME collecting contact forms, hosting in the UK or EU simplifies GDPR and UK GDPR answers: no international transfer to document for hosting. On a US platform, check the execution region, the signed DPA and certification under the Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension.
What downtime really costs
The subscription price is rarely the issue. An engineering SME receiving 25 quote requests a month through its site, with an average order of £5,000 and a 15% conversion rate, generates about £18,750 in monthly revenue from that channel. 48 hours of downtime in a month is about 6.6% of the time, so close to £1,250 of revenue at risk.
| Scenario | Annual availability | Cumulative downtime | Exposure on £225,000 annual web revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared, unmonitored | 99.0% | 87 hours | About £2,250 |
| Shared, monitored | 99.5% | 44 hours | About £1,125 |
| Well-run VPS | 99.9% | 9 hours | About £225 |
| Edge platform | 99.95% | 4 hours | About £110 |
| VPS without updates | Variable | Hacking risk | Several thousand pounds plus reputation |
These figures are estimates: contractual SLAs on entry-level plans are often limited, and the main risk remains an unpatched site rather than a hosting outage.
Backups, SLAs and maintenance
Three rules prevent most bad surprises. Keep a daily backup outside the main host, with 30 days of retention. Have a full restore tested at least twice a year. Register the domain name and DNS in an account owned by the company, never by the provider.
Maintenance covers what the host does not: updates, monitoring, security patches, certificate renewals. At Kolonell, it costs 35,000, 75,000 or 120,000 FCFA per month (53, 114 or 183 EUR) depending on the service level. Managed hosting offered by Kolonell is priced per quote according to the chosen architecture.
For a new business website, the Kolonell grid ranges from 1,220 to 5,340 EUR depending on the tier (Starter, Growth or Premium). The hosting choice is made at quote stage, based on the technology and your data constraints.
Mini case study
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Aoife, finance director of a 60-person SME in Dublin, is choosing between shared hosting at 12 EUR per month and an edge platform for the new Next.js site, with two developers needing account access.
Calculation over 12 months. Shared: 12 EUR times 12, or 144 EUR, but the Next.js site requires a static export and a manual build for each change, estimated at 2 hours a month billed at 60 EUR per hour, or 1,440 EUR. Total: 1,584 EUR. Edge platform: $20 times 2 members times 12 months, or $480 (about 445 EUR), automatic deployment, no manual hours. Difference: about 1,140 EUR per year in favour of the edge option, provided the hosting region is documented for GDPR.
FAQ
Is shared hosting enough for a business website?
Yes for a 10 to 30 page WordPress site with under 20,000 visits a month. Beyond that, or with campaign-driven spikes, a VPS or edge platform is safer.
Is hosting with a US provider GDPR compliant?
It can be, with a signed DPA, an EU region where the plan allows it and a provider certified under the Data Privacy Framework. For a site without sensitive data, these safeguards are enough in most cases.
How long does a hosting migration take?
Plan for 1 to 3 days of work for a business site, plus 24 to 48 hours of DNS propagation. A well-prepared migration happens with no visible interruption.
Should we pay for an SLA?
For a business website, rarely: plans often include 99.9% theoretical availability. A stronger SLA is justified if the site generates more than £15,000 in monthly revenue.
Who should own the domain name?
The company, always. A .co.uk, .ie or .com costs £10 to £20 a year, and recovering a domain registered in a provider's name can take weeks.
Let's scope your project. Hosting choice, backup plan and maintenance scoped alongside the build or redesign of your site, live within a few weeks. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.
Mohamed Bah
Fondateur, Kolonell
Passionate about digital and entrepreneurship in Africa, Mohamed has been helping Sénégalese businesses with their digital transformation since 2020. Founder of Kolonell, he believes every SME deserves a professional and accessible online présence.
