Hosting a small business website costs between $5 and $50 CAD per month for most scenarios. Shared hosting sits at the low end ($5–$15/month) and works fine for basic sites under 10,000 monthly visitors with minimal dynamic content. Managed WordPress hosting runs $15–$35/month and includes automatic updates, caching, and backups, which matters if you lack technical staff. VPS or entry-level cloud hosting starts around $20–$50/month and handles higher traffic, custom configurations, or multiple sites under one account. The price depends on three factors: traffic volume, resource needs, and support level. A five-page service site with contact forms needs far less than an e-commerce store processing transactions or a blog publishing daily. Bandwidth, storage, and CPU limits escalate quickly once you exceed shared hosting thresholds, and overselling is common on budget plans, so actual performance varies. Hidden costs add up. Domain registration runs $15–$20 CAD annually. SSL certificates are often included now, but premium options cost $50–$200/year. Email hosting may be separate unless you use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, which run $6–$12 per user monthly. Backup services, CDN for faster global delivery, and staging environments can add another $10–$30/month combined. At Ottawa SEO, we typically put small business clients on managed WordPress hosting in the $20–$30/month range because it removes maintenance friction and performs reliably for the 2,000–50,000 visitor range most local businesses operate in. We avoid the cheapest shared plans because support queues are long and server response times hurt SEO. For portfolio sites with 500+ domains, we use cloud infrastructure with volume discounts, but that only makes sense at scale. Watch renewal pricing. Introductory rates often double after year one. Also confirm the host has Canadian data centers if local data residency matters for compliance or latency. Uptime guarantees below 99.9% are red flags. The cheapest option is rarely the best value when downtime costs you leads.