# Web Hosting for Blogs: What You Need and What to Skip

> A new blog runs fine on shared hosting, as long as the plan offers PHP 8.3 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11, free SSL, daily backups you can restore yourself and support that answers. Compare hosts on the renewal price, not the introductory one, and if you have EU or UK readers, sign the host's data processing agreement.

- URL: https://kreativblogger.de/en/starting-a-blog/web-hosting-for-blogs/
- Language: en
- Updated: 2026-10-19
- Publisher: Kreativblogger (OnlineBuilders LLC, https://onlinebuilders.biz)

Hosting is where new bloggers either overspend or get caught out. One camp buys a $40-a-month plan stuffed with features they will never touch. The other grabs the cheapest banner deal and discovers twelve months later that the price has jumped sixfold. Both mistakes come from not knowing what a blog actually needs.

Spoiler: not much. But the few things it does need should be right.

## The technical minimum for a WordPress blog

WordPress publishes its own [requirements page](https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/). It recommends PHP 8.3 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or newer or MariaDB 10.11 or newer, and HTTPS support. Older PHP and MySQL versions still run WordPress, but they are past end of life and may expose your site to security issues.

Any reputable host meets this. Still, check which PHP version your account defaults to. Some hosts start new accounts on an older release for compatibility, and you have to switch it yourself in the control panel.

Storage is where advertising runs wild. Some quick arithmetic:

**Roughly how much space 300 posts take**

- Photos: 300 posts × 5 × 300 KB: about 450 MB
- Resized image copies (rough estimate): about 450 MB
- WordPress core, theme, plugins: about 100 MB
- Database: about 50 MB
- **Total: around 1 GB**

Illustrative figures. Assumes five photos per post compressed to about 300 KB each; WordPress also stores resized copies.

Even small entry plans, such as SiteGround's StartUp with 10 GB, leave plenty of room, so space is rarely the bottleneck. CPU limits, backups and the quality of support matter far more.

## Shared, managed WordPress or VPS?

**Hosting types for blogs**

| | Shared hosting | Managed WordPress | VPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical fit | new and mid-sized blogs | bloggers who want zero maintenance | large blogs with in-house skills |
| WordPress updates | you | provider | you |
| Server security and patches | provider | provider | you |
| Handling traffic spikes | limited | usually good | scales freely |
| Admin skills required | no | no | yes |

Shared hosting means many customers on one machine. For a blog with a few hundred visitors a day that is perfectly fine. Managed WordPress costs more, and the provider handles updates and caching, often malware scanning too. With a VPS you get a virtual server and configure it yourself. Fast, flexible, and a bad idea if you have never touched a Linux command line.

Start on shared hosting. Moving up later takes an afternoon if you do it carefully.

## The renewal trap, in numbers

Introductory pricing is standard in this industry. The advertised rate applies to your first prepaid term, then the regular price kicks in. SiteGround publishes both figures clearly, which makes it a good illustration rather than an outlier.

**SiteGround shared plans: intro vs. renewal price per month**

| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| StartUp, intro | 2.99 $ |
| StartUp, renewal | 17.99 $ |
| GrowBig, intro | 4.99 $ |
| GrowBig, renewal | 29.99 $ |
| GoGeek, intro | 7.99 $ |
| GoGeek, renewal | 44.99 $ |

Source: SiteGround pricing page, October 2026, 12 months prepaid, excluding VAT

Nothing is hidden. But a comparison based on banner prices is meaningless. Always write down what you will pay from year two. Check the minimum term as well: some hosts bill monthly with no lock-in, others want 12 or 36 months up front before the headline rate applies.

SiteGround also suggests rough traffic levels for each plan, from about 10,000 monthly visits on StartUp to 100,000 on GrowBig. Treat those as orientation, not guarantees. Badly built themes can choke a plan long before that.

## Privacy: data processing agreements and server location

Your host processes personal data about your readers, at the very least IP addresses in server logs, plus comments and contact form submissions. Under the GDPR, and the UK GDPR which mirrors it, the host is your processor. [Article 28 GDPR](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679) requires a written contract with processors, usually called a data processing agreement or DPA.

Reputable hosts offer a standard DPA you can accept in your account. If you cannot find one, ask before you buy. Servers in the EU or UK make life simpler for European audiences, because transfers outside require extra safeguards that you then have to describe in your privacy policy. US-based bloggers with mainly US readers have fewer formal hoops here, but state privacy laws are spreading, so a host with a clear privacy posture is never wasted.

## Speed: what good hosting looks like

Google measures user experience with three field metrics. According to web.dev, a page is "good" when Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint is 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads.

Hosting mostly affects the first of those, because the server has to answer quickly. Theme weight and images decide the rest, along with every plugin that loads extra scripts. Fast hosting cannot rescue a bloated theme. The search side of this is covered in [SEO for bloggers](https://kreativblogger.de/en/writing-and-seo/seo-for-bloggers/).

Quick test: install a fresh WordPress on the plan and run the empty homepage through PageSpeed Insights. If the server is slow with no content, it will not get faster once you add some.

## Backups: only the restore counts

Every host advertises daily backups. What matters is whether you can restore them yourself without opening a ticket, and how many days back they go. Test it while the blog is small. Delete a test post, restore yesterday's backup, check the result.

Keep a second copy off the host too, for example a plugin that sends backups to cloud storage. If the host suspends your account or goes down, you still have your work.

**Check before you buy a hosting plan**

- [ ] PHP 8.3 or newer available
- [ ] MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.11+
- [ ] Free SSL certificate
- [ ] Daily backups you can restore yourself
- [ ] Renewal price written down
- [ ] Minimum term and cancellation terms clear
- [ ] DPA available if you have EU or UK readers

## Moving hosts without losing readers

At some point the first plan stops fitting, or support lets you down. Moving WordPress is manageable if you keep the order straight. Copy files and database to the new host, either with a migration plugin or by export and import. Then check the copy through a temporary URL or a hosts-file entry on your own computer before you change anything in DNS.

Only once everything works do you switch the DNS records. Propagation takes a while. During that window, nobody should publish posts or approve comments on the old site, or they will be missing afterwards.

The domain itself can stay where it is, as long as you can edit its DNS. Cancel the old plan only after the new site has run stable for a few days and its first backup has completed.

One common mistake: changing the URL structure during the move. Don't. Moving is moving. Restructure permalinks separately, with redirects.

## Signs it is time to upgrade

Three signals are clear. Your host warns that you are exceeding CPU or process limits. The site throws "503 Service Unavailable" errors during traffic spikes. Or the dashboard gets so sluggish that saving a draft takes several seconds even with caching on.

That is when the next tier or managed hosting makes sense. If the blog turns into something bigger, with a shop, a members' area or thousands of simultaneous readers, monitored hosting with real people on call is worth it. That is the kind of setup [OnlineBuilders runs as managed hosting](https://onlinebuilders.biz/solutions/hosting). Most blogs take years to get there.

Your next step: shortlist two or three hosts, put their year-two prices side by side, and run through the checklist above. Then follow the setup in [how to start a blog](https://kreativblogger.de/en/starting-a-blog/how-to-start-a-blog/). Still not sure WordPress is the right base? Read [the best blogging platform for your goal](https://kreativblogger.de/en/starting-a-blog/best-blogging-platform/) first.

## FAQ

### How much storage does a blog need?

Far less than hosting ads suggest. WordPress itself takes up only a few dozen megabytes, and images make up most of the rest. With compressed photos, a few gigabytes cover hundreds of posts.

### Is free hosting good enough to start?

Only for experiments. Free hosts tend to come with ads, subdomains, tight limits and little support. A small paid plan is a better base for anything you want to grow.

### Does server location matter?

For speed it matters less once you use a CDN. For privacy law it can matter a lot: if your readers are in the EU or UK, hosting there simplifies compliance.

### When should I move to a VPS?

When you regularly hit shared hosting limits and someone involved can administer a Linux server. A VPS is faster and more flexible, but updates, firewall and backups become your responsibility.

Photo: Carl Lender from Sunrise, USA, CC BY 2.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Datacenter_Server_Racks_(22370909788).jpg)