What Is Pay-as-You-Go Web Hosting, and Who Is It For?

By Graeme Preston, Founder & Owner · Published

Most hosting plans charge a fixed monthly price for a fixed allowance, whether you use it or not. Pay-as-you-go hosting turns that around: a small base charge with a modest allowance included, and a small extra charge only if your site grows past it. For many small websites, it's the cheapest sensible way to stay online.

How it works

You pay a low monthly charge that includes a set amount of disk space and a set number of domains. If your website uses more, the extra is added to your next invoice. If it doesn't, you pay the base charge and nothing more. There's no tier to outgrow and no upgrade to remember.

Who it suits

Pay-as-you-go is a good fit for websites that are small and likely to stay that way:

  • clubs, societies, churches and community groups
  • charities with a simple information site
  • sole traders with a few pages and a contact form
  • a holding page or simple site for a new business
  • personal websites and portfolios

Who it doesn't suit

  • Growing businesses adding lots of images, video or products. A fixed plan with a bigger allowance is usually cheaper once you pass a few gigabytes.
  • Online shops and busy sites, which are better on a plan sized for them.
  • Anyone who wants an exactly fixed bill every month. Pay-as-you-go bills only change if usage changes, but they can change.

Things to check before choosing a pay-as-you-go plan

  • What's included in the base price, and exactly what's charged as extra.
  • Whether bandwidth (traffic) is metered. Unmetered bandwidth means a busy month doesn't cost more.
  • Whether the essentials are included: SSL, backups and security shouldn't be extras.
  • Whether it runs on the same servers as the host's other plans, or a slower budget platform.
  • How easily you can move up to a fixed plan if your site grows.

A quick way to estimate your bill

Check how much disk space your current site uses: your current host's control panel normally shows it. Most small sites use well under 2 GB. If yours is around that, the base charge is likely to be your whole bill.

Flexi Hosting at MyWebsiteHost

Our Flexi Hosting is pay-as-you-go. It's £1.99 a month, including:

  • 2 GB of disk space, then £0.50 per extra GB
  • 1 additional domain, then £1.00 for each extra one
  • unmetered bandwidth
  • free SSL and daily backups
  • the same fast NVMe servers in London as our other plans

Any extra usage is simply added to your next invoice. If your site outgrows Flexi, you can move up to Web Hosting or WordPress Hosting. Flexi doesn't include the free mailbox or the money-back guarantee that come with our fixed plans; that's how we keep the price this low.