WooCommerce hosting for small e-commerce: true cost with VAT, domain and SSL

Saturday 17 October 2026: six weeks remain until Black Friday, which falls on Friday 27 November this year. Small online shop owners deciding which hosting to run WooCommerce on during peak trading months usually read the "from" price on the homepage and stop there. The real bill tells a different story: hosting, domain, SSL certificate (almost always included nowadays) and payment gateway fees, which chip away at every sale and no hosting price list displays them.

Three complete packages compared

We compared three price tiers for a hosting plan designed for WooCommerce, examining what each provider includes in the first year and what changes at renewal.

Package	Hosting Year 1	Domain	SSL	Renewal
Hostinger Business	€3.99 per month (48-month plan plus 3 months free)	free registration of one domain for one year, valued at €9.99	free SSL certificates for life on all domains and subdomains	€12.99 per month
IONOS Hosting WooCommerce	€10 per month (for six months)	Domain, SSL certificate and 100 GB SSD space included	included	thereafter €20 per month
SiteGround StartUp WooCommerce	$17.99 Save 83% $2.99/mo.	to be verified at checkout	included	Renews at $17.99/mo. Prepaid for 12 months.

The mechanism worth noting is not just the price: Hostinger's advertised rate of €3.99 per month is tied to a 48-month plan plus 3 months extra, not a simple annual subscription. On SiteGround, the jump from promotional price to renewal is roughly sixfold, as shown on the official plan page rather than third-party summaries.

For those preferring an Italian provider, Serverplan offers the Startup WooCommerce plan at €30.40 for the first year (€76 at renewal), including 1 free domain for life, 20 GB NVMe SSD space, automatic daily backups, Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, whilst VHosting has a dedicated plan starting at €229/year plus VAT, with more advanced features at €344 and €444/year plus VAT.

Payment gateway fees: the line item hosting comparisons omit

None of the price lists above includes the cost of processing payments. Stripe applies a standard fee with no fixed charges: their official pricing page states access to "a complete payments platform with simple, pay-as-you-go pricing—no activation costs, monthly fees or hidden charges", at 1.5% + €0.25 for cards from the European Economic Area. PayPal, on its official merchant pricing page updated 7 September 2026, charges 3.40% plus a fixed fee of €0.35 for standard business transactions in euros. Neither requires a fixed monthly subscription: costs only grow with sales, a detail that matters precisely during Black Friday weeks when volumes spike suddenly.

What to check before end of November

Before signing an annual plan, it's worth verifying the included SSD space and traffic allowance, not just the first-year price: a spike in visits during discount days could trigger limits that appear only in small print on price lists. It's also worth checking whether the plan includes automatic daily backups, particularly useful as you approach the year's busiest traffic weekend.