Your own Hostinger account
$0 hosting fee to us
- You own the account and the domain
- A compatible SSH plan
- We supply the public key for access
- Setup and deployment guidance
- Provider domain and hosting fees paid directly to them
Hosting & domain
Hosting and your domain are not in the build price
That is deliberate, and it is the main reason a website can cost $200. You buy hosting and a domain in your own name, pay the provider directly, and nothing about your website depends on staying our customer.
Our standard route is your own Hostinger account on a compatible SSH plan. We supply an SSH public key and walk you through adding it, then deploy through that access. The account and the domain stay in your name. Provider fees are separate from the $200 website package of up to 10 pages with Basic SEO. Already hosted somewhere else? Tell us the provider and plan in your notes so we can assess compatibility before anything is confirmed.
Already hosted elsewhere?
Tell us the provider and the plan. We assess compatibility and confirm the deployment arrangement in writing before work starts, rather than promising access we have not seen.
Optional managed hosting
$100/month
- Hosted, online, updated and backed up
- Monthly local and industry SEO harvest
- The resulting SEO update, at no credit cost
- Up to five individual changes a week
- Activation is arranged once your scope is confirmed
Why hosting and your domain stay in your name
Hosting and a domain are accounts, and every account has an owner. We default to you being that owner, in your own name, because that is what keeps the practical controls with you: you can log in, see exactly what you are paying, update the card, read the renewal dates yourself and give access to whoever works on the site next. It also means that if you ever move the work elsewhere, the move is a handover of access rather than a request you have to make of us.
So the default is that you hold both. A small Hostinger plan with SSH access is inexpensive, renews on your card, and belongs to you the day you buy it. We ask you to add our public key so we can deploy; we never ask for your account password and we never need your private key. If you later change web people, you give the next person access and nothing about the site has to move.
Domains work the same way. Register yours in your own name and keep the renewal under your control, because a lapsed domain somebody else controls is the single most expensive mistake a small business can make online. Our domain guide covers choosing one, and the hosting guide walks through the account setup step by step.
When managed hosting is worth it
Self-managed suits most people. You own a plan, we deploy to it, and your free routine updates keep the site current without anyone logging into anything.
Managed hosting is for the business that does not want to think about it at all. Picture a cafe in Hamilton with a menu that changes, a function room to promote and nobody on staff who enjoys admin. For $100 a month we host the site, keep it online, updated and backed up, and each month we harvest the search terms that are actually being used for that industry in that area and make the resulting SEO update — included, with nothing drawn from credit. On top of that you get up to five individual changes a week: a price, a photo, a paragraph, counted as changes rather than pages.
Two practical points before you consider it. Activation is arranged with you once your scope is confirmed, rather than bought from a button in the workspace today. And the remaining details — whether a domain or a particular provider plan is included, and how unused weekly changes are treated — are confirmed with you in writing before the plan is activated, so you have the full terms in front of you before the first payment and before anything is set up.
If you are already on our earlier $40 a month managed hosting, that agreement stands. You keep the terms you signed up to, including the transfer arrangement agreed at the time, until a migration is discussed and agreed with you. Nothing on this page changes an existing contract.
What a compatible plan looks like
Three things matter. SSH access, so a deploy is a file transfer rather than a drag-and-drop session. A real domain pointed at the account, so the site answers on your own name rather than a provider subdomain. And valid HTTPS on your own domain, so visitors reach the site over a secure connection. Providers differ in how a certificate is issued and what it costs, so we check that against the specific plan with you rather than assume it.
Shared hosting is fine. These are static sites: fast HTML, CSS and images with no database to tune and no plugin stack to patch, which is why they load quickly on a phone in a carpark at Kotara with two bars of signal. You do not need a VPS, a CDN subscription or a performance add-on, and we will tell you if a plan you are looking at is more than you need.
If your current provider is not Hostinger, that is not a refusal. It is a compatibility check: we look at the access the plan offers, confirm what deployment would look like and write it into the quote before work begins. Where a provider genuinely cannot support the build, we say so rather than discover it at handover.
Ongoing costs, in plain figures
With your own hosting there is no required monthly fee to us. You pay your provider for the plan and the domain renewal, at their price, with no markup from us. Your free routine updates — one smaller update per Sydney calendar day, up to three per Monday-starting week on each saved project — are included for supported websites built in our workspace.
With managed hosting it is $100 a month and that is the whole recurring figure from us. Larger pieces of work are still described and priced before they start, whichever route you take.
Need ongoing catalogue, payment or content work? Describe it in your project notes. We confirm those services and their scope separately from hosting.
Going self-managed? We will walk you through it
The guide covers choosing a compatible SSH plan, creating your own account and adding our supplied public key so we can deploy the agreed website.
Not at the hosting stage yet?
Start with the free workspace. We build the preview first, and sort hosting out once you have decided you want the website.