Hosting costs do vary across the industry; you can even find free hosting options. Hosting is normally charge on an annual basis but there are now more ISPs offering monthly contracts and this could be helpful if you are unsure about taking on upfront costs at this stage. Bear in mind that if something is free or very low cost it often has big limitations. You may find free hosting requires you to display adverts on your site, does not let you own the web address or charges surprising fees to move your web address in the future.

As a guide you should expect to pay a minimum of £40-50 for a basic shared server web hosting solution. If you find you need quite a few of the features listed in the Functionality section then paying up to £100 would not be unusual. A high quality hosting company with most of the features enabled, good phone support and good failover procedures could cost up to £150.

You get what you pay for and if your site starts making you more than £1,000 per month then £150 a year is a small cost for peace of mind. Shared hosting is a good starting point so plan for these costs to get your eCommerce site of the ground.