aws wordpress hosting cost breakdown and budgeting tips

Key cost drivers

On AWS, the total you pay for WordPress hinges on compute, storage, data transfer, and managed services. Your stack design matters as much as raw prices, so model traffic and growth before choosing.

• Compute: EC2 for flexibility, Lightsail for bundles, or containers on Fargate.
• Storage: EBS volumes and snapshots; offload uploads to S3 to cut costs.
• Network: data transfer out, CloudFront caching, and load balancers.
• Database: RDS/Aurora gives convenience; self-managed saves cash but adds toil.
• Operations: backups, monitoring, WAF, and support plans influence the bill.

Sample monthly ranges

A small blog on Lightsail (1–2 GB RAM) with CDN can land near $7–$15. A busier site on EC2 t3.small + RDS + ALB + CloudFront often runs $60–$150, while heavy media or spikes push higher via transfer and autoscaling.

To optimize, right-size instances, enable caching, serve media via S3+CloudFront, pick a region near users, and shut down idle dev. Use Budgets and Cost Explorer to track drift, and revisit choices quarterly. Pricing changes, so verify with the AWS calculator.