Most agencies treat hosting as a pass-through cost. That is, it’s treated like something to absorb, mark up slightly, or hand off entirely. However, hosting could be more than a line item on your balance sheet: it could boost your bottom line.
For WordPress agencies offering services like web design, site management, and performance optimization, hosting is often viewed as a necessary evil — something you handle behind the scenes because clients expect it. Unfortunately, this mindset leaves money on the table.
Turning hosting into a value-added product through reselling, bundling, or offering tiered care plans means agencies can create predictable, recurring revenue that compounds over time. Done right, hosting becomes an asset, not overhead.
Partnering with a premium managed provider like Kinsta makes that shift possible and practical. With built-in tools designed specifically for WordPress agencies, high-performance infrastructure, and white-label capabilities, Kinsta helps agencies turn hosting into a scalable revenue stream without extra strain on internal resources.
Let’s break down why continuing to absorb hosting costs is quietly undermining your margins. And let’s see how you can flip the script.
Why agencies should stop absorbing hosting costs
For most agencies, hosting starts out as a convenience. It’s something to offer clients as a bundled service or a cost you quietly absorb to close the deal. Over time, however, that small expense becomes a recurring drain on profits.
Hosting may not feel like a big-ticket item, but when you’re managing dozens of sites, those monthly fees stack up fast. It’s not just the dollars spent. It’s the invisible labor: setting up accounts, managing renewals, handling downtime, and troubleshooting when something breaks. Every support ticket and infrastructure issue pulls your team away from higher-value work.
Worse, by treating hosting as a sunk cost or passing it through without markup, you’re giving up a recurring revenue opportunity that’s sitting right in front of you. That’s the real opportunity cost. You’re already offering strategic services like design, development, SEO, and performance optimization, but without monetizing the infrastructure that powers all of it, you’re operating at a disadvantage.
The funny thing is, many clients already expect you to handle hosting. Whether they say it outright or assume it, they trust you to make sure their site is fast, stable, and secure. So why give that responsibility away without also earning from it?
Shifting your approach and treating hosting as a value-added service opens the door to recurring income, improved client retention, and a stronger overall service offering.
How to monetize WordPress hosting: four proven models
Once you stop treating hosting as a sunk cost, the next question becomes: how do you make it pay off? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Agencies of all sizes — whether they’re focused on design, development, or ongoing maintenance — can monetize hosting in a way that suits their existing processes and pricing.
Here are four tried-and-true ways that agencies are already doing this successfully:
1. Resell premium hosting directly
This is the most straightforward way to turn hosting into a recurring revenue stream. You purchase managed hosting, ideally from a provider like Kinsta that already supports agencies, and resell it to your clients at a marked-up rate.
You retain control over the hosting account, manage the setup and environment, and build recurring income with minimal issues. Most clients don’t want to deal with hosting at all. They’d rather pay you to make it a hands-off experience, and that’s an opportunity for you.
This model works particularly well for agencies that already serve as the technical point of contact for clients. If you’re the one clients call when their site goes down or loads slowly, you might as well be compensated for that hosting-related responsibility. Likewise, because high-performance platforms like Kinsta reduce downtime and optimize speed, you’ll spend less time firefighting and more time focused on growing your business.
Just be sure to be transparent about what clients are paying for. Position the cost as “hosting,” plus proactive management, performance, and hands-off peace of mind.
2. Bundle hosting into web design or site management packages
If you’re already offering project-based web design or monthly maintenance services, bundling hosting can make your packages stronger and your pricing more appealing. Instead of selling hosting by itself, include it as part of a larger offering, like:
- A complete website package that includes design, development, premium hosting, and training.
- A monthly website management plan that includes hosting, updates, performance checks, and reporting.
Bundling simplifies your value proposition. Clients love all-in-one packages because they don’t have to think about what’s included. Instead, they know their site is taken care of. You benefit from a more transparent pricing structure and longer-term contracts, especially when hosting is billed monthly or annually as part of a care plan.
It also helps with positioning. Rather than being seen as a vendor for a one-time project, you become an ongoing partner — someone who supports their site and business long after launch.
3. Offer website-as-a-service (WaaS)
The website-as-a-service model flips the traditional project billing structure on its head. Instead of charging thousands upfront for a website, you offer clients a subscription model that covers everything: design, hosting, updates, maintenance, and support.
This is ideal for clients who need a professional web presence but don’t have the budget or time to manage it themselves. If you’re thinking of local businesses, consultants, startups, and nonprofits, you’d be correct. They get what they need, fast, for a predictable monthly rate. You get steady recurring revenue and better cash flow.
The beauty of WaaS is scalability. With the right tools and processes in place, you can serve dozens, or even hundreds, of small businesses using the same hosting infrastructure, theme framework, and update routine.
Extend this idea even further by combining WaaS with niche-specific templates or vertical offerings, such as sites for realtors, coaches, or salons, to further simplify production and drive growth.
4. Build tiered care plans with hosting included
Care plans make up the bulk of recurring revenue for many WordPress agencies, and hosting fits naturally within them. When you create service tiers that bundle hosting with other ongoing support activities, you create a menu of options clients can choose from based on their needs and budgets.
This approach works because it matches up the hosting offering with long-term site health, performance, and business continuity. It also encourages clients to upgrade as their needs grow, creating a built-in path for increasing revenue per account.
Hosting isn’t just infrastructure here. It becomes part of the overall service promise. So when you price for the outcome rather than the individual components, you increase perceived value without having to justify every line item.
Why Kinsta is the best solution for WordPress agencies monetizing hosting
Not all hosting platforms are built with agencies in mind. If you’re turning hosting into a revenue stream, you need more than fast servers. You also need infrastructure that supports performance, cuts down on admin work, and enhances the value you deliver to clients.
Thankfully, Kinsta does all of that and more.
Kinsta’s platform is built for performance and scale
Kinsta’s managed hosting for WordPress runs on Google Cloud’s premium-tier network, meaning your clients get the same high-availability, low-latency infrastructure that powers some of the world’s biggest platforms. Every site benefits from server-level caching, edge delivery, and a global CDN that’s already built in with no extra configuration or third-party tools required.
This translates directly to better outcomes for your clients: faster load times, fewer issues during traffic spikes, and consistent performance across devices and regions. Uptime monitoring every three minutes helps ensure you’re alerted to issues before your clients even notice.
For agencies, this means fewer headaches and support tickets. You’re not babysitting slow sites or explaining downtime. Instead, you’re delivering results that clients can see in their analytics and feel in their user experience.
Kinsta offers operational savings that add up
Every minute your team spends troubleshooting hosting issues is a minute not spent on higher-value work. That adds up over time, and it eats into your margins if you’re not careful.
Kinsta helps eliminate that invisible overhead by automating key tasks and removing the need for patchwork solutions. Built-in DDoS protection reduces the need for additional security tools. Daily automated backups and one-click site staging simplify site updates and testing. Site cloning speeds up new builds, especially if you offer templates or WaaS packages.
On top of that, Kinsta’s 24/7 premium support is staffed by WordPress experts — not generalist reps — so when something does go wrong, help is fast and accurate. This reduces the number of support issues that ever make it to your inbox and frees your team to focus on strategy and client acquisition.
Kinsta delivers features built specifically for agencies
What separates Kinsta from generic managed hosting providers is its focus on WordPress agencies and their specific needs. Managing multiple client sites becomes far easier with the MyKinsta dashboard, which puts all your sites, settings, and analytics in one place.
You can assign access to team members or clients, giving just the right amount of control without exposing critical settings. White-label options within the WordPress admin dashboard let you present hosting as part of your brand, too. This gives you full ownership of the client experience from front to back.
What about when you’re onboarding new clients, you might ask? Kinsta handles migrations for free. That goes for even bulk migrations, which means you can transition an entire portfolio without pulling your team off billable projects.
If you want to scale without adding internal complexity, Kinsta offers the infrastructure, tools, and support to make hosting manageable and profitable.
How to price and package hosting as part of your agency services
Clients don’t buy hosting the way developers do. They’re not comparing specs, data center locations, or server response times. They’re looking for a reliable solution that takes hosting completely off their hands. That’s why pricing and packaging hosting within your agency’s services isn’t about offering the cheapest option. Rather, it’s about clearly communicating value.
When you treat hosting as part of a broader promise like faster performance, higher uptime, or proactive support, you stop selling infrastructure and start selling peace of mind. That’s where real pricing power lives.
Tips for calculating markup without scaring clients
There’s a balance to strike here. Price your hosting too low, and you leave money on the table. Price it too high without showing the value behind it, and clients start to question why they’re not just buying hosting themselves. The sweet spot lies in markup plus management.
Let’s say your hosting plan costs $35 a month. Charging $75 to $100 per month might seem steep at first glance, but when you factor in the ongoing work required to manage that hosting, it makes perfect sense. You’re not just reselling server space. You’re overseeing initial setup, optimizing performance, responding to downtime, handling plugin or theme conflicts, and providing support when your client emails you on a Sunday night because their contact form broke.
That hands-on oversight is what the client is really paying for. When your team is on call to prevent or fix hosting-related issues, your fee becomes about continuity and reliability — not just infrastructure.
If you’re including hosting as part of a bundled plan, it becomes even easier to justify the price. Wrapping hosting into broader service packages, such as site maintenance, updates, SEO, or content support, makes the line item part of a bigger value story. You’re not charging just for “hosting” — you’re offering a comprehensive solution that keeps their site running consistently without adding stress to their lives.
Clients aren’t paying for hosting, they’re paying for confidence
Most clients don’t care where their sites are hosted, at least not in technical terms. What they care about is how it performs and who they can call when something goes wrong. They want reliability, responsiveness, and results.
So instead of selling hosting as a commodity, frame your offer around what they’ll experience: no surprise outages, no slowdowns during sudden bursts of traffic, and no chasing down support when things break. The uptime is a good selling point, but uninterrupted business is even better.
One way to position this in client conversations is to shift the focus from technology to outcomes. Say something like:
“We host all client sites on premium infrastructure designed to handle heavy traffic and stay online even during surges. If anything goes wrong, we don’t pass you off to a third-party support line: we fix it ourselves. That way, you never have to think about your website hosting.”
That kind of framing pulls the conversation away from technical comparisons and toward peace of mind, which is ultimately what your clients value most.
Suggested monthly pricing ranges
While there’s no universal pricing structure, most hosting-inclusive plans fall into a few rough categories. The actual numbers will vary depending on your agency’s services, clients’ technical needs, and the level of support included, but here’s a general framework to guide your pricing.
- Basic ($75–$150/month): This tier typically covers premium hosting, uptime monitoring, automated backups, and essential security updates. Ideal for static or low-maintenance sites.
- Growth ($150–$300/month): Adds deeper involvement, like plugin and theme updates, monthly performance optimization, and possibly a monthly call or report. Clients in this tier usually have more traffic or depend on their site for lead generation.
- Pro ($300–$600/month+): Reserved for clients with more complex needs. This tier often includes content changes, ongoing SEO, security scans, analytics reporting, staging site management, and rapid-response support. For clients running sites that cannot have any downtime, this price reflects constant attention and strategic input.
If you’re running a WaaS model, where design and hosting are bundled together under a single subscription, your pricing may be significantly different, potentially starting at $99 per month and scaling up based on feature access, bandwidth, or content support.
The key across all tiers? Attach your pricing to the value and outcomes your agency delivers, not just the underlying cost of the hosting plan.
Summary
Hosting doesn’t need to drain your margins. Agencies can turn this expense into recurring revenue by reselling, bundling, or packaging it into service tiers. The key is offering value, not just server space, and focusing on performance, reliability, and peace of mind.
Kinsta makes that easy. With premium infrastructure, agency-specific tools, and full support, you get a hosting partner that helps you earn more without working more.
Explore agency hosting plans with Kinsta and start turning hosting into a scalable revenue stream!
