How much does it cost to host a website

[dbarasuk]

Dear,
I have made a website for a very small company but this is the first time i'll upload a professional website. So my question is to ask how it will costs me(The site is PHP driven).

If possible please give me an idea about the total price.

I live in Africa and i would like to host my pages on an American server. Will this affect the website performance or support ?

Kind regards.

[StoutFiles]

If the company is small, then around $100 / year.

If you choose to host in America, the site will be a little faster in America and a little slower for you. Normally you'd like to host your website in the country you're targeting.

[tangor]

If intending to set up a commercial business website, you might have additional costs to the amount suggested above. Do your research!

[dbarasuk]

does this 100 dollars include everything?(domain name, the per month hosting fee, etc?)

in case of commercial website, how much approximately to add to the suggsted amount(100 dollars)?

i do not have a credit card to pay all that fee, is there any other means possible to pay?

thanks again

[choster]

For a small "business card" site, you could probably get away with

$8-10/year domain name registration
$5-$15/month shared hosting

after promotions. These super-cheap hosting plans tend to be very limited, but would do fine if you just want to post a few pages listing products and services and your contact information.

Some hosts will accept funds through payment services in lieu of a credit card, e.g. Paypal, Worldpay, eGold; I do not know which, if any, of these may be available in your country.

I wouldn't say the distance between the U.S. and any part of Africa will be a problem in and of itself, but the possibility of network congestion or other problems will be magnified.

[tangor]

You will need some kind of electronic payment method acceptable to the registrar and host systems. If you do the research you'll find x-mb size hosts as low as US$25/yr and DNS registrations about $10. If looking to do an ecommerce site you'll most likely invest $100/yr for sites that provide SSL certificates and enough processing/perks (mySQL, PHP, Perl, etc.) to make it happen. These monetary costs are generally very reasonable, about $110/year, as long as you have a valid method to pay for them (ie. credit card, verified bank account which allows electronic payments, etc.). Your other payment method is check, cashier's check, and wire transfer for those providers who accept same, but those methods require you are on hold until the provider receives the funds and then activates the accounts.

[Marcia]

A commercial website can be anything from an accounting company to a manufacturing company.

Is there anything being sold on the site that money is being paid for online? Is there a need for a shopping cart to purchase things and pay online?

There are some hosting companies that accept payment by check or money order as payment. Not many, and they tend to be small ones.

[anallawalla]

Depending on that website's audience, there might be an advantage to get a domain with your own country code (compared to getting a .com/etc and pointing it to your country via Webmaster Tools in Google). Find out the cost of your country domains.