How Website Hosting is Changing for 2026
During 2025, we saw a noticeable increase in malware along with AI-generated hacking attempts, leading us to add more server hardening software to help protect client websites.
Of course, with an increase in software comes an increase in cost. While we don’t want to be charging more, especially at a time when costs everywhere are increasing, we do want to make sure we’re keeping your site secure.
The biggest change will be the addition of offsite backups and vulnerability patching. In addition to our daily backups, these weekly offsite backups provide us with another layer of redundancy. Additionally, we use specialized software that provides automatic fixes to WordPress plugins that don’t yet have an update available to proactively prevent security breaches.
Breakdown of WordPress Hosting Tiers
We made our best attempt at keeping costs as low as possible, as we understand money is tight for many small businesses. Here’s a breakdown of how the new tiered pricing will be set:
- Tier 1: Our basic hosting solution for small websites that don’t require a lot of resources. (For example: A site with less than 10 pages, no image or video galleries, less than 100 users per day.)
- Tier 2: Our mid-tier hosting solution for eCommerce or API-connected websites, or websites with over 100 users/day, or who have media-heavy websites.
- Tier 3: Our mid-tier hosting solution for ecommerce and API-connected websites, who also have more than 100 users/day, and who have media-heavy websites.
- Tier 4: This is our enterprise tier for organizations who require standalone cloud services for larger scale websites, websites that require significantly more resources, or who want to share hosting for all of their sites.
All of our hosting tiers include the following:
- Monthly WordPress updates (and updates as needed for urgent secuirty issues)
- Uptime monitoring to detect and notify if your website goes offline
- 24/7 security monitoring for if/when malware is detected
- Vulnerability patching in-between plugin updates
- SSL security certificate
- Daily, automated backups
- On-demand backups as needed before large updates
- Staging site to work on updates "offline" before pushing them live
- SMTP verification through SendGrid to help email deliverability
When we send you a contract renewal, we’ll indicate which tier of hosting your website requires based on user traffic, bandwidth and storage needs.
Why does Pixel Jam's hosting service cost more than other providers?
In some cases we offer nearly identical service packages, but the difference is that we maintain it all for you. This means:
- We stay on top of core WordPress updates to ensure they're stable before updating your site.
- WordPress updates aren’t always compatible with other plugins, in which case we get notified and prevent the update from occurring so your site doesn’t break.
- If something does go awry then we jump in and restore a backup for you as soon as we can.
- If malware does infiltrate the website then we spend time resolving the issue as quickly as possible.
Because we believe in transparency, we've created a tabular view of how our hosting services compare to others. While we don't offer a promo price, we do provide one year of free hosting for every new website build, whether its a Starter Site or a Custom Website.
(There are a lot more options out there, but we thought we'd start with the basic providers and plans we know to be less expensive.)
We understand if you'd prefer a less expensive option, but please 🙏 enable security and backups! We've had too many experiences where clients move their website but do not add either to save on costs, only to have to their site hacked without any backup or recovery method. (We don't want that for you!)
Additional Website Care Plans
We will also continue to offer Website Care Plans for clients who want us to handle all aspects of keeping their website up and running.
Here’s a breakdown of our Care Plan pricing:
- Lite: For small businesses who may have one or two requests per month, usually along the lines of switching our images and updating copy. We’ll also keep track of Google Search Console recommendations and perform regular optimization.
- Standard: For clients who want us to help keep their site fully optimized as well as updated. In addition to managing Google Search Console recommendations, we’ll also double-check forms, review changes to SEO performance and continue to test for accessibility.
- On-Demand: This plan includes everything in our Standard plan, but for clients who prefer we prioritize requests by providing a shorter turnaround time.
To note: We chose not to bundle hosting and care plans together, as we recognize some clients prefer hosting independently, but still want a professional to help maintain their website.
Website Projects Outside the Scope of Care Plans
Examples of requests that do fit within the scope of a Care Plan:
- Replacing photos.
- Adding/removing team members.
- Adding new pages that have the same layout as another page on the site (e.g. service pages), where copy is already written.
- Updating service page information.
- Adding blog posts where the content is provided.
Examples of requests that do not fit within the scope of a Care Plan:
- Writing/creating new blog posts from scratch.
- Developing new functionality.
- Adding new, complex pages with a different design (e.g. landing pages for marketing campaigns).
- Changing DNS records for your domain.
- Troubleshooting email deliverability in Google Workspace.
- Creating custom graphics.
What We Expect for 2027
Shakes Magic 8 ball and sees the response, “Ask again later.” 😐
Inflation and AI are both driving factors behind our shift in pricing and service offerings, which make it difficult to judge the landscape of what the rest of the year (and future) will look like in terms of hosting and security.
Our commitment is to provide high-quality hosting that ensures security and redundancy, while continuing to provide transparency in what that will cost you as our client. As we have more information about how these things will impact our services, we will happily share it with you.