Managed WordPress hosting for agencies: comparing costs for 5, 20 or 50 client sites

Anyone managing a portfolio of WordPress sites for clients always asks the same question: is it better to install a control panel on your own VPS or pay for a managed service that handles server and updates? We've compared three concrete solutions using official price lists verified on 19 October 2026: Plesk on self-hosted VPS, SpinupWP and GridPane.

Plesk: pricing based on number of domains

Plesk's official price list (plesk.com/pricing) charges by the number of domains managed on a VPS, billed monthly excluding VAT. Web Admin Edition VPS costs €12.04/month and manages up to 10 domains. Web Pro Edition VPS costs €18.29/month for up to 30 domains. Web Host Edition VPS, aimed at hosting resellers, costs €31.38/month with unlimited domains. You also need to add the cost of the VPS on which to install the panel, which varies by provider and is not included in the licence price. Plesk itself clarifies that it does not offer hosting services: you need a separate server or VPS.

SpinupWP: pricing based on servers, not sites

SpinupWP (spinupwp.com/pricing) reverses the logic: the price doesn't depend on the number of sites but on the number of servers connected. The Essentials plan costs $12/month and includes one server with unlimited sites, daily backups per site and standard email support. The Advanced plan costs $19/month, with daily/weekly/monthly backups, multiple users and priority support. Additional servers cost, depending on volume, from $10/month (2-3 servers) down to $1/month per server beyond the 61st server, with intermediate tiers at $5, $4, $3 and $2/month. Assisted migration, if needed, starts at $300 per site. In practice, an agency with 5, 20 or even 50 sites can stay on the same server and always pay $12 or $19/month, provided the VPS resources can handle the load: SpinupWP itself recommends not exceeding 80 sites per server with standard support.

GridPane: plans have changed, watch out for old reviews

Many online reviews still cite the "Panel" plan at $50/month or "Developer" plan at $200/month. On the official pricing page (gridpane.com/plans) today the structure is different: GridPane offers a free Core plan forever with which you can host up to 25 sites, a PeakFreq plan for managed high-frequency servers starting at $19/month, and a fully managed Bespoke Hosting service starting at $2,000/year, designed for agency partnerships too. The detailed PeakFreq price list (gridpane.com/peakfreq/pricing) shows that the price includes server and panel together: it starts at $18.08/month for 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM with 64 GB NVMe, up to $384.05/month for 12 vCPU and 48 GB RAM. Beyond the 25 sites of the Core plan, to stay with GridPane you need to upgrade to Bespoke, with custom pricing starting from the indicated threshold.

Comparison summary

Site tier	Plesk (licence, VPS separate)	SpinupWP (panel, VPS separate)	GridPane
5 sites	Web Admin, 10 domains: €12.04/month	Essentials, 1 server: $12/month	Free Core (up to 25 sites) + VPS separate, or PeakFreq from $18.08/month all-inclusive
20 sites	Web Pro, 30 domains: €18.29/month	Essentials, 1 server if resources permit: $12/month	Still within Core limit (25 sites), free + VPS separate or bespoke PeakFreq
50 sites	Web Host, unlimited domains: €31.38/month	Essentials, more servers if needed: $12/month + $8–10/month per additional server	Exceeds Core limit: requires Bespoke from $2,000/year ($166.67/month)

For those starting from scratch, always add the cost of the underlying VPS when it's not explicitly included: only GridPane's PeakFreq accounts for it in a single price, while Plesk and SpinupWP need to be paired with a VPS chosen separately.