Choosing web hosting in 2026 comes down to a simple rule: for a brochure site or a landing page, Vercel (free) is the best option if your site uses Next.js or React. For a WordPress site, OVH or o2switch (5 to 10€/month). For e-commerce or an app with a database, a VPS or a combination of Vercel and Supabase. Shared hosting at 3€/month is best avoided for any professional project.
At ConvertiLab, every site we build is hosted on Vercel with a global CDN, and hosting is included for the first year in every package.
What is web hosting and how does it actually work?
Web hosting is the service that makes your site reachable on the internet, by storing its files (code, images, database) on a server that is permanently connected to the network. Without hosting, your site does not exist for visitors. When somebody types your address, their browser queries the DNS servers, finds the right server and receives your page files within milliseconds.
In practice:
The type of hosting directly determines the speed, the reliability and the cost of your site.
A concrete example: two identical sites, one on shared hosting at 3€/month (TTFB: 1.8s, PageSpeed score: 42/100), the other on Vercel (TTFB: 60ms, PageSpeed score: 94/100). Same code, same content, same design, yet the difference in conversion can reach 30% on the strength of the hosting alone. That is why we have not offered sites on shared hosting at ConvertiLab since 2023.
What are the differences between shared hosting, a VPS and Vercel?
The differences between shared hosting, a VPS and Vercel come down to 3 variables: performance, price and the technical skill required. Shared hosting is accessible and cheap but limited; a VPS is powerful but demands expertise; Vercel and the modern cloud platforms deliver the best performance automatically, and often for free on standard projects.
| Type | Price/month | Performance | Technical skill | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | 3-15€ | Limited | None | Personal blogs |
| VPS | 20-100€ | Good | Advanced | Complex apps |
| Cloud (Vercel/Netlify) | 0-20€ | Excellent | Low | Next.js/React sites |
| Dedicated | 100-490€ | Highest | Expert | E-commerce with 50k+ visits |
| Supabase + Vercel | 0-25€ | Excellent | Moderate | SaaS and apps with a database |
Shared hosting: your site shares a server with hundreds of others. Low price (3-15€/month), minimal admin, but limited and unpredictable performance. Best avoided for any professional project that needs to load in under 2 seconds.
VPS (Virtual Private Server): guaranteed dedicated resources (CPU, RAM, storage). Priced at 20-100€/month, solid performance, but it requires server administration skills.
Dedicated hosting: a whole server for your site (100-490€+/month). Maximum performance, but a high cost and more than the vast majority of small business sites will ever need.
Cloud (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure): resources that scale automatically with traffic. Powerful, but with an unpredictable bill and a lot of DevOps complexity.
Vercel and the modern platforms:
Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare Pages are the new generation of web hosting. Built specifically for modern frameworks such as Next.js, they offer automatic deployment from GitHub, a built in global CDN and scalability out of the box.
At ConvertiLab, Vercel is our default host: automatic deployment from GitHub, a global CDN and a generous free plan. The drawback: it is mainly suited to JavaScript frameworks (Next.js, React) and is less flexible for PHP and MySQL.
How do you choose a domain name and what effect does it have on SEO?
Your domain name is your site's address on the internet (for example convertilab.com). Its effect on SEO is indirect: a clear, memorable domain name improves your click through rate in the Google results and makes link building easier. The rules for a good domain name are: short, easy to remember, easy to spell, true to your brand, with the .fr extension for France or .com for an international audience.
Rules for a good domain name:
Where to buy a domain name: Cloudflare Registrar (at cost, the cheapest), OVH (a French institution with French language support), Namecheap, Gandi. Price: 8-15€/year for a .com, 6-12€/year for a .fr.
Which hosting should you choose for your type of website?
To choose the right hosting for your type of website, the rule goes like this: brochure site or landing page → Vercel (free) or quality shared hosting (OVH, o2switch, 5-10€/month); e-commerce → a VPS (20-50€/month) or Vercel plus Supabase; an app with a database → Vercel plus Supabase, or a VPS with PostgreSQL. Never pick shared hosting at 3€/month for a professional site: the poor performance costs you more in lost leads than you save.
A quick guide to choosing:
Have a look at our website design services, with Vercel included for the first year.
Frequently asked questions about web hosting
Is free web hosting good enough for a business?
No. Free hosting (Wix, the free WordPress.com) forces third party adverts on you, a subdomain that looks unprofessional (mysite.wix.com instead of mysite.fr), poor performance and no ownership of your code. For a business, professional hosting starts at 5€/month, which is a negligible expense next to the cost of looking unprofessional. Vercel is the exception: free and fast, but only for Next.js and React sites.
Can you change host without losing your search rankings?
Yes, provided you take a few precautions: do not change the domain name, keep exactly the same URLs, update the DNS correctly and check in Google Search Console that the new site is being indexed. Moving a Next.js site to Vercel is particularly simple, a few clicks from GitHub. A WordPress migration is more involved but well documented. DNS propagation takes 24 to 72 hours, and during that time some visitors still see the old site. Plan the migration for an evening or a weekend to keep the impact on your traffic small.
What is the difference between web hosting and a domain name?
Hosting is the storage space where your site's files live, the house. The domain name is the postal address that lets visitors find the house. You need both, and they can be bought separately from different providers. At ConvertiLab we handle both for our clients: the domain name is registered in your name and the hosting is set up on Vercel at handover.
Is Vercel really free, and what does the free plan cover?
Vercel's free plan (Hobby) covers the majority of small business sites: unlimited hosting, a global CDN, automatic SSL, 100 GB of bandwidth a month, automatic deployment from GitHub and support for serverless functions up to 100,000 executions a month. For a brochure site or a landing page, that is more than enough. The Pro plan (20$/month) becomes relevant once you pass a million visits a month, or if you need to collaborate as a team.
How does hosting directly affect SEO?
Hosting affects SEO mainly through TTFB (Time To First Byte), the time the server takes to answer a request. Slow shared hosting can have a TTFB of 1 to 3 seconds, where Vercel with a CDN shows a TTFB of 30 to 80ms. Google factors TTFB into its assessment of the Core Web Vitals. Good hosting alone can lift your PageSpeed score by 10 to 20 points with no other change to the site. !Vercel global CDN, TTFB, Core Web Vitals performance and automatic deployment
