Church web hosting covers three different setups that all share the same name: a bundled church platform with hosting built into the subscription, a do-it-yourself builder that hosts your site as part of the package, or a self-managed WordPress site where you pay for hosting separately from everything else. Most churches shopping for “church web hosting” are really trying to answer a narrower question: what does this actually cost, what’s included, and what am I not being told.
I’m the founder of REACHRIGHT, and I’m also the executive pastor of a church of about 300 in Hawaii Kai. We’ve built and managed hundreds of church websites since 2016, and hosting is the part almost nobody explains well. If you already know which builder or platform you want, our church website builders guide ranks 11 of them head to head. This page is about the layer underneath that decision: what hosting costs at each level, what’s usually bundled in versus billed separately, and the specific questions that catch churches off guard six months after they signed up.
What “Church Web Hosting” Actually Means
Every church website needs a place to live on the internet, and you have three real paths to get there.
A bundled church platform. Tithe.ly Sites, Nucleus, Clover Sites, and similar tools sell you a website builder, and hosting rides along inside the monthly price. You never think about a hosting bill separately, because there isn’t one.
A general-purpose DIY builder. Squarespace and Wix work the same way (hosting is baked into the subscription) but they weren’t built for churches specifically, so you’ll patch in sermon players, giving buttons, and event calendars yourself.
Self-managed WordPress. You own the software (it’s free), but you rent the server it runs on from a hosting company. This is the only path where “hosting” is genuinely its own line item you shop for separately, which is also why it’s the path with the most confusing pricing.
None of these is universally right. A 40-person church plant and a 600-person congregation need different answers, and we’ll get specific about that further down.
Church Web Hosting Options Compared
Here’s what’s actually on the market right now, grouped by type. Prices below are what each vendor publishes on its own site as of this research.
| Category | Vendor | Price | What's Included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bundled church platform | Christian Web Host | Web Builder from $4.99/mo; cPanel from $11.99/mo | cPanel tier: WordPress installer, 300+ apps, email, and SSD storage; SSL is sold separately from $50/year. Web Builder tier: templates and drag-and-drop editing |
| Church Plant Media | $59/mo + $499 setup solo, or $53/mo + $449 setup bundled | Up to 30 sermons and 15 pages at setup; SSL, backups, and email are not mentioned on the pricing page | |
| Clover Sites | Quote only. No published pricing; the site only offers a demo booking | Not stated publicly | |
| Nucleus | Essential $65/mo, Standard $99/mo, Complete $199/mo | Website hosting, SSL certificate, custom domain, and unlimited users and pages on every tier | |
| OurChurch.Com | Bronze $20/mo, Silver $27/mo, Gold $36/mo month to month ($200, $270, and $360 a year on annual billing) | WP-EZ builder, free SSL, daily backups, 5-45GB storage by tier, email via your domain, PayPal cart on Silver and up | |
| Subsplash | Quote only, based on church size and usage | Website and media hosting bundled inside Subsplash One; Subsplash Giving alone is free | |
| The Church Co | Basic $29/mo, Premium $49/mo, Ultimate $199/mo, billed annually ($34, $57, and $232 month to month); 14-day free trial. No free plan | Hosting included free, with unlimited pages, blogs, and storage, a sermon and media library, and an events manager on Basic. Yearly plans include a free basic site build (up to 9 pages, one-year contract); larger setup packages run $299 to $999 | |
| Tithe.ly Sites | $19/mo standalone; $119/mo All Access (site + giving + ChMS + app) | Hosting included at no extra cost; security updates and backups mentioned generically; SSL and email hosting not named on the product page | |
| Faithlife Sites | Discontinued. Faithlife announced in October 2022 that it would exit the church management space and sunset Sites, Live Stream, and core ChMS functionality effective June 30, 2023. Not a live option. See the red flags section below. | ||
| General builder | Squarespace | Basic $19-25/mo, Core $29-39/mo, Plus $49-65/mo, Advanced $99-139/mo | Free SSL and fully managed hosting on every tier; Core and up gets one free year of Google Workspace email; free domain the first year on annual plans |
| Wix | Free $0; paid plans from about $17/mo billed annually. Wix's published prices vary by location, so see wix.com/plans for current US pricing | Custom domain and hosting on paid tiers; free domain for one year; the free tier keeps Wix branding and a subdomain | |
| Managed WordPress | WP Engine | Essential from $35/mo month to month, or $28/mo billed annually ($336 the first year; WP Engine marks that as new-customer promotional pricing and says renewal pricing is subject to change). The entry plan covers 1 site, 25,000 visits/month, and 10GB storage | Essential tier covers 1-30 sites, 25,000-400,000 visits/month, and 10-50GB storage; auto-renewing SSL/SSH, a global CDN, automated backups, and WordPress updates on every tier. Enterprise is custom |
| Kinsta | Business Single starts at $35/mo monthly, or $30/mo billed annually, for the smallest Single 20GB plan (1 site, 10GB storage); Agency from $340/mo; Enterprise from $500/mo | SSL, CDN, advanced caching, 14-day backup retention on the Business plans, unlimited migrations, and 24/7 support | |
| SiteGround | StartUp $2.99/mo intro, renews at $17.99/mo; GrowBig $4.99 to $29.99/mo; GoGeek $7.99 to $44.99/mo | Free SSL, CDN, backups, and email on every tier; GrowBig and up adds on-demand backups and staging | |
| Shared hosting | Bluehost | Starter $3.99/mo intro, renews at $9.99/mo; Business $6.99 to $13.99/mo; eCommerce Essentials $14.99 to $21.99/mo | Free SSL, weekly backups, a free domain the first year, free CDN and malware scanning. "Professional email" is a free trial that renews at $2.50/mo per mailbox |
Hostinger and HostGator aren’t in this table. Check their sites directly for current pricing before you factor either into a budget.
Kinsta is the one vendor in this table we found publishing a nonprofit rate: 15% off any monthly or annual plan for approved 501(c)(3) organizations, churches included, set up through Kinsta’s sales team. None of the church-specific platforms publishes a church or nonprofit rate, even the ones that sell almost only to churches. DreamHost’s free nonprofit hosting, covered below, needs its own caveat.
What You’re Really Paying For
The sticker price on a hosting plan or platform subscription tells you almost nothing about what’s actually bundled in. Three line items decide whether a “cheap” plan stays cheap: SSL, backups, and email. Here’s who includes what, based on what each vendor states on its own pricing page.
| Line item | Who bundles it in, free | Where it's murky or extra |
|---|---|---|
| SSL certificate | Nucleus, Squarespace, OurChurch.Com, Bluehost, and SiteGround all name SSL as included | Tithe.ly Sites doesn't name SSL on its own product page. Church Plant Media's pricing page lists no SSL line item at all. Christian Web Host sells SSL as a separate product starting at $50/year. Wix's plans page doesn't mention SSL either way |
| Backups | OurChurch.Com (daily), Bluehost (weekly), SiteGround (included on every tier, with on-demand backups added at GrowBig and up), and Kinsta (14-day backup retention on the Business plans) | Tithe.ly Sites references backups only in general terms. Church Plant Media's pricing page doesn't mention them at all |
| Email hosting | Squarespace gives one free year of Google Workspace email on Core-and-up plans; Christian Web Host's cPanel tier and OurChurch.Com both include email tied to your domain | Tithe.ly Sites' own product page never mentions email hosting. Church Plant Media lists no email line item. Bluehost's "free" professional email is a trial that renews at $2.50/mo per mailbox |
A domain name is a separate cost on top of all of this, whichever path you pick, and we’ve already broken that piece down in our church website cost guide alongside every other line item that goes into a church site’s total budget. This page stays focused on hosting itself.
Free Web Hosting for Churches (and What It Costs You Instead)
“Free church web hosting” is a real search, and a real option, with real trade-offs. Here’s what’s actually free, and what you give up for it.
Wix’s free plan costs $0, but your address becomes something like yourchurch.wixsite.com, and Wix’s own branding stays on the page. Fine for a church plant’s first month. Not something you want printed on a bulletin six months in.
The Church Co advertises a “free church website.” Here’s what that means in practice: their team designs your site at no charge when you sign up for one of their paid annual plans, which carry a one-year contract. The platform itself starts at $29/mo billed annually, and they offer a 14-day free trial. There’s no ongoing free plan underneath the build.
WordPress.org itself is free software, but WordPress is not a host. You still need to pay for hosting separately, whether that’s a shared plan at a few dollars a month or a managed WordPress provider. “Free WordPress” and “free hosting” are two different claims, and vendors sometimes blur them together.
Free domains are where churches get burned. Freenom gave away .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, and .gq domains for years, but the registrar kept ownership, and some users reported losing their domains without warning. Freenom stopped new registrations in March 2023 after Meta sued it, and it now charges for the domains it still runs. Register your church’s domain in the church’s name, with a registrar you pay.
DreamHost’s nonprofit hosting program has long been the best-known free option for churches, and it needs a caveat. DreamHost’s own help article described one free shared-hosting plan, email included, for US 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(19) organizations that submit an IRS determination letter, free for the lifetime of the account. VPS and dedicated plans weren’t covered. DreamHost has since removed that article from its help center, and its pricing page doesn’t mention the program. Ask DreamHost to confirm in writing that it’s still open before you plan around it.
Red Flags to Check Before You Sign
Each of these comes from a vendor’s published page or a documented case. Ask each of these before you commit.
Six questions to ask before you sign a hosting contract
1. Who owns the domain if I cancel? The domain should be registered to your church, with a login your church controls. Freenom's free domains belonged to the registrar, and some users lost them without warning before Freenom halted registrations in 2023.
2. What does this cost after the intro period ends? SiteGround's StartUp plan jumps from a $2.99/mo intro price to $17.99/mo at renewal, a 6x increase. Bluehost's Starter plan goes from $3.99 to $9.99/mo, a 2.5x increase. Budget off the renewal number, not the first-year number.
3. Is email hosting actually included, or is it a separate ask? Tithe.ly Sites' product page never mentions email hosting. Church Plant Media's pricing page lists no SSL, backup, or email line items at all. Don't assume; ask directly.
4. Is that "free" email actually free long-term? Bluehost's professional email is a trial that converts to $2.50/mo per mailbox at renewal.
5. What happens to my site if this vendor exits the market? Faithlife announced in October 2022 that it would exit the church management space, sunset Faithlife Sites effective June 30, 2023, and gave churches about nine months to move their content elsewhere. A platform can disappear regardless of how established its parent company is.
6. Can I get an actual number before I talk to a salesperson? Clover Sites and Subsplash both publish zero pricing. A "book a demo" form is the only path to a figure, which makes it hard to budget before that call happens.
What Size Church Needs What Level of Hosting
Hosting scales with your church’s size the same way your website budget does, and we’ve laid out the full budget picture by church size in our church website cost guide. Here’s the hosting-specific version of that same logic.
200 or more members: this is where hosting stops being an afterthought, and it’s the size we write this whole page for. A smaller church or church plant can get by for a season on a free tier or the least expensive shared-hosting plan, as long as someone reads the renewal price before signing, not only the intro price. But a church of 200 or more shouldn’t pick hosting off a $3/mo intro rate. Those plans renew at two and a half to six times the starting price, and the cheapest tiers leave out staging and on-demand backups (SiteGround adds both at GrowBig). Managed WordPress hosting, or a bundled platform’s mid-tier plan, is the realistic starting point at this size. Your site is carrying online giving, sermon archives, and event registration for hundreds of families, so the hosting underneath it needs to match that weight.
1,000 or more members, or multiple campuses: you’re a candidate for higher single-site managed WordPress tiers built for traffic and scale (Kinsta’s Enterprise plan, for example), or an all-in-one platform quoted specifically for your size, like Subsplash. At this size, get a number in writing before you sign anything, since several vendors at this scale don’t publish pricing at all.
Where REACHRIGHT Fits
REACHRIGHT builds custom church websites, and we host the sites we build on WP Engine. We’re saying that plainly because this page is both writing about managed WordPress hosting and recommending a vendor we personally use for our own clients. If you’d rather have a team handle your hosting, security, updates, and backups instead of managing a vendor relationship yourself, that’s part of what our web design service includes.
Stop Managing a Hosting Vendor Yourself
REACHRIGHT builds your church's website and handles hosting, SSL, backups, and updates on WP Engine, so you never have to be the one troubleshooting a server at 10pm on a Saturday.
See Our Web Design Services →For SSL and security beyond just the certificate itself, our guide to keeping your church website secure covers the rest of that picture. SSL is required for online giving, so if online giving runs through your site, it isn’t a line item to skip.
