Cost of Domain and Server
The cost of a domain and server is something you need to consider when planning the launch of your website or online store. Not everyone knows that for a website to work, several basic conditions must be met, including a domain and server (also known as hosting). The term “server” in the case of typical websites is somewhat misleading, as it’s not the entire server, but rather a small part of it rented from a hosting company.
A hosting company is an entity that provides space on its servers for various online services, including websites. The hosting company has its own data centers (data centers) where it places servers in special racks, connected to emergency power systems, internet, etc.
So, when it comes to most applications, “server” actually means “hosting”, or a small physical server slice rented from the hosting company for an annual fee, so that we can store files and our website’s database on it.
A domain is the rental of a name under which our website will function in the internet – www.ourdomain.pl
Only after combining these two elements can a website be built.
What are the costs of a domain and server?
I’ll put it simply: it depends.
Let’s ask ourselves, “How much does a car cost?” – do you understand how strange this question sounds?
Immediately, more questions will arise, but what kind of car? What model? Year? Engine? Power? Equipment, etc., etc. It’s an endless list of parameters, and that’s just for a simple “car”.
It’s no different when it comes to servers or hosting (or rather, their smaller parts). Just like every physical server has its own specific parameters (RAM memory, processors with a certain frequency, power supply, etc.), hosting is characterized by a series of similar parameters.
When asking about hosting costs, we must ask ourselves what exactly the hosting will be for, what traffic volume it will need to handle, and what features, etc., etc.
Without this information, we cannot provide an unambiguous answer. For example, take a website of a hydraulic company from Częstochowa with a simple one-page website with minimal traffic (around 15 visits per day). What server would be suitable for such a case?
None, it doesn’t need the entire server; just basic hosting. This type of hosting costs around PLN 200-300 per year, depending on capacity, and there are no processor power or RAM memory declarations – this is not necessary for such applications.
Let’s take an example of a hydraulic installation company operating throughout Poland with branches nationwide, investing significant amounts in advertising its website every month. Let’s assume the company aggregates traffic to the level of thousands of visits per day. Would the cheapest hosting be sufficient?
No, it wouldn’t, as in cases like this, where server load is high, the hosting would return an error message on the screen of the website visitor, which is equivalent to burning the advertising budget.
For such applications, we need to choose a hosting with suitable parameters; sometimes shared hosting won’t suffice because its common feature is that there are no guaranteed resources for us – if one user severely overloads their website (e.g., buys excessive traffic or experiences a massive surge in organic traffic), all other users on the physical server will suffer from negative consequences, including error messages to visitors of those websites.
There’s a solution to this problem: VPS (Virtual Private Server) – it’s a private virtual server with guaranteed resources. We have a part of the processor and RAM memory at our disposal, offering real opportunities for scalability; as the physical server gets more powerful, so do our possibilities in terms of performance scaling. If needed, we can simply add processing power or RAM memory.
For extremely demanding websites, there are dedicated servers or high-performance hosting with clustering capabilities – full clusters of servers on which our website and traffic can be distributed and managed. Unfortunately, this comes at a significant cost.
The cost of VPS starts from several dozen zlotys per month (as of the time of writing this article), while dedicated servers start at hundreds of zlotys per month; high-performance hosting with clustering capabilities costs tens to even hundreds of zlotys per month, depending on how many resources your website requires.
How do I check server costs?
The best way is to go directly to the website of a top-rated Polish hosting company (e.g., cyberfolks.pl) and check their pricing for shared hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, managed, and unmanaged hosting.
