Vercel vs WordPress hosting: the real bill, month by month

We carry on with the clear accounting. We already looked at what your WordPress really costs per year adding everything up; today we focus on a single line of that bill, hosting, and compare it head to head: WordPress hosting versus Vercel. Because this is where the change shows the most, and where the most hot air gets blown in both directions.

What you pay in each place

The hosting bill, compared

• Base hosting · WordPress hosting: €15–40/month (managed) · Vercel (static website): €0 (Hobby plan) or from ~€20/month (Pro)
• CDN / global speed · WordPress hosting: Extra or plugin · Vercel (static website): Included (edge)
• SSL certificate · WordPress hosting: Included/plugin · Vercel (static website): Included
• Backups · WordPress hosting: Extra or plugin · Vercel (static website): Git itself (every deploy is a version)
• Security patches · WordPress hosting: Yours (or maintenance) · Vercel (static website): Not applicable: there is no server to patch
• Traffic spike · WordPress hosting: Can bring the website down · Vercel (static website): Scales on its own

The honest nuance about Vercel

Let's not make it sound like Vercel is simply free. It is — genuinely — for the vast majority of small-business websites: a corporate site, a services site or a blog fits comfortably in the free plan, and there the hosting bill is zero. The paid plan (around €20/month) comes into play when you have a lot of traffic or serious dynamic features. Even then, for that price you get a global CDN, automatic scaling and versioned deployments, which on WordPress would be three plugins and a prayer.

Beware of comparing the "from €3/month" of shared hosting with Vercel. That €3 hosting is precisely what makes your WordPress crawl: shared CPU, no CDN, no proper backups. The honest comparison is with decent managed hosting (€15–40/month), which is what a WordPress needs to not be slow. And there Vercel wins comfortably.

The surprises that don't show up in the "from €X/month"

• The backup plugin that fails the day you need it. On Vercel every deployment is a version: rolling back is one click.
• The bill for the hacked website. Cleaning up a compromised WordPress costs from €150 and a headache. On a static website there is no PHP or database to compromise.
• The outage on your best day. You get press coverage, a flood of visits arrives and the shared hosting gives up. Vercel's edge doesn't even notice.

So, how much do I save?

For a typical small-business website, going from managed hosting at ~€25/month to Vercel for free is €300 a year you stop paying on hosting alone — not counting plugins, maintenance or scares. That turns the one-off investment of rebuilding the website (our Express plan starts at €600) into something that pays for itself in a matter of months.

Want the number for your case? In the free audit we do the maths with your current hosting and your real traffic. And if you are torn between keeping WordPress behind the scenes or rebuilding it entirely, read headless or full replatform.