You choose a hosting provider once, but you’ll be using it for years: switching providers always carries the risk of downtime and losing your search rankings. Let’s take a look at the different types of hosting, how they differ in practice, and what to look for besides price.
The amounts listed below are estimates for the Ukrainian market as of 2026, not our price list. Providers change their rates several times a year, so please check their websites for the most up-to-date information.
Types of Web Hosting: A Brief Comparison
| Type | For whom | Estimated price | The main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual (shared) | Business cards, landing pages, blogs, small online stores | from $3.5 per month | Resources are shared with neighbors: a sudden spike in traffic from another site slows down your site |
| VPS | Stores, service providers, and websites with high traffic and their own requirements | from $5–12 per month | Administration required: updates, security, monitoring |
| Cloud-based | Projects with uneven traffic: seasonal stores, media | payment for consumption | The bill is unpredictable; it's easy to overpay |
| Dedicated Server | Large stores, service providers with extensive databases | from $60–100 per month | It's expensive and requires a system administrator |
| Managed WordPress | Those who don't want to think about updates and backups | from $10–25 per month | Restrictions on Plugins and Server Access |
For 90% small business websites, the right choice is standard shared hosting. Overpaying for a VPS “just in case” without any actual workload is the most common mistake people make when choosing a hosting plan.
What to Look for Besides Price
| Parameter | The standard in 2026 | Why Is This Important? |
|---|---|---|
| Wheels | NVMe: More Than Just an SSD | The main factor affecting database speed is the speed of the filtered store |
| PHP Version | 8.2 and later, with the option to switch | A modern CMS won't run on older versions, and security updates for them are no longer being released |
| Backups | Daily, stored separately, with two-click restoration | "Backups exist" and "backups are being restored" are two different things—make sure to check the second one |
| Free SSL | Let’s Encrypt with Auto-Renewal | Without a certificate, the browser flags the site as unsafe |
| Data Center | Europe for a Ukrainian Audience | Physical distance adds a delay to every request |
| Support | 24/7, in Ukrainian, with real engineers | The website is down unexpectedly; the chatbot can't help right now |
| Limits | Limits on processor time, database lookups, and emails | The most common reason why a website "works sometimes and doesn't other times" on budget plans |
| Panel | cPanel, hPanel, ISPmanager, or a custom solution | It depends on her whether you'll be able to add a domain and email on your own |
Questions to Ask Before Paying
- Is there a trial period and a refund policy? The standard practice is 30 days.
- How much does the renewal cost? Often, the first year costs 70 UAH per month, and the second year costs 200 UAH. Check the renewal price, not the promotional price.
- Is the domain included, and what happens to it when I move? "Free domain" sometimes means that it is registered under the provider's name.
- Can the support team migrate the website? Most providers offer this for free.
- What is the limit on incoming connections to the database? This is critical for a store that sells filters.
- Is there any staging? Having a copy of the site for testing updates saves you a lot of stress.
Common Mistakes
- Choose the cheapest plan for the store. The catalog with filters reaches the processor's limits after just a few hundred items.
- Register the hosting under a contractor. The account must belong to you—otherwise, if you break up, the site will be held hostage. We wrote about this in an article How to Choose a Contractor.
- Ignore the message limit. A store that can't send an order confirmation quietly loses customers.
- Pay for "unlimited resources." There is no such thing as unlimited resources—the limitations are simply hidden in the contract.
- Do not check your speed after crossing the intersection. Changing your hosting provider affects Core Web Vitals—check them at our checklist.
When It's Time to Switch Hosting Providers
- The website regularly takes longer than 2 seconds to load, and it's not because of the images.
- Customer support either takes a day to respond or suggests "upgrading your plan" instead of troubleshooting the issue.
- The provider does not offer the required version of PHP.
- The website crashes during peak hours—just when your ad is running.
- You're hitting the limits and paying extra for every little thing: you can't get anything more than a VPS.
When virtual hosting is no longer enough, the next step is a dedicated virtual server. We’ve covered what this is and who really needs it in a separate article: What Is a VPS and When Should You Switch to One?.
Conclusion
You shouldn't choose a hosting provider based on the price for the first year, but rather on four things: fast storage, the latest PHP version, reliable backups, and support that's available at night. Everything else is just details that are easy to change as long as the account is in your name.
We We develop turnkey websites and we'll immediately set up hosting, SSL, backups, and access credentials in your name, and then, if you'd like, We're taking on the website to provide support. Calculate the cost You can do it in three steps.
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