Hosting prices are easy to set badly. Too low and the first support ticket wipes out a year of margin; too high and clients compare you with a £3 plan from a big host and leave. The right price comes from three numbers: what an account costs you, what your clients would pay elsewhere, and what your time is worth.
Your cost per account
Take the reseller plan price and divide by the accounts you will realistically fill, not the maximum. On a $26.99/month (about £21) plan with 25 accounts, that is £0.85 per account at full occupancy and £2.10 with ten clients. Add:
- Billing software: WHMCS at ~£15/month, spread across clients.
- Domain, SSL, your own site: negligible per client.
- Your time: the number people forget. Estimate 20 minutes per client per month on average — onboarding, the occasional question, an update that broke something. At £40/hour that is £13 per client per month. Some months it is zero; some clients take an hour.
Realistic all-in cost per client: £10–15/month at a small scale, dropping to £5 as you grow and the time per client falls.
What clients pay elsewhere
Shared hosting from the large brands is advertised at £2–5/month and renews at £8–15. Managed WordPress hosts charge £20–30. Agencies commonly charge £15–50/month for "hosting and maintenance". Your client is not comparing you with the £2 introductory price; they are comparing you with the renewal price plus the support they did not get.
The price
For a reseller offering personal support, £12–25/month per site is the range that works. Below £10 you are not paid for support; above £30 the client expects a managed service with updates and monitoring included — which you can offer, at £35–60, as a tier.
Worked example with the Partner Grow plan:
| Clients | Revenue at £15 | Plan cost | Time (20 min @ £40) | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | £75 | £21 | £67 | −£13 |
| 10 | £150 | £21 | £133 | −£4 |
| 15 | £225 | £21 | £200 | £4 |
| 25 | £375 | £21 | £333 | £21 |
Read that honestly: at £15 with 20 minutes of support per client, the hosting itself barely pays for your time. The business works because the time estimate drops with routine (most months, most clients need nothing) and because hosting keeps the client relationship alive for the work that does pay — the redesign, the campaign, the extra pages. Price at £20 and the same table shows £175 margin at 25 clients before any of that.
Three tiers
One price is a take-it-or-leave-it; three prices let the client choose, and most choose the middle.
- Basic — £12/month. Hosting, SSL, daily backups, email. Support by email, response within a working day.
- Standard — £20/month. Everything above plus monthly WordPress updates, uptime monitoring, and a faster response. This is the one you want most clients on.
- Care — £45/month. Plus a monthly content change or two, security scanning, a quarterly review. For clients whose site is their business.
The tiers differ in your time, not in the hosting, which costs you the same.
Annual billing
Offer 12 months for the price of 10. It reduces churn, removes eleven invoices a year of admin, and gives you cash up front. Most clients take it when it is presented as the default.
Things that break the model
- Unlimited anything. One client's 40 GB of photos or 2 million-hit month is now your problem. Set limits and a price for exceeding them.
- Free hosting for friends. The support cost is real regardless of the invoice.
- Absorbing every extra. A migration in is free (it wins the client); a migration out, a restore from three weeks ago, an emergency on Sunday — price these, or at least have the price written down.
- Never raising prices. Build in a review each year; £15 in 2026 is not £15 in 2030.
Putting it on the site
State the price, what is included, what happens when limits are reached, and the support hours. Vague pricing makes people email to ask, and most do not. Add "free migration" prominently — it is the single strongest reason a client switches, and on a VPSPioneer reseller plan it costs you nothing because we do the moving.
The plans behind these numbers are on the reseller hosting page; how a reseller business gets its first clients is in how to start a web hosting business.