I Chose the Cheapest Hosting Plan in The Philippines, Here’s What Happened

₱75 per month. That’s all it cost.

I’d been putting off creating my online bakery website for months. Every time I looked at hosting prices, I’d talk myself out of it.

Then I found a hosting provider advertising ₱75/month hosting. Unlimited everything: one-click, WordPress install, and free domain. 

It sounded perfect for someone bootstrapping a business from their home kitchen in Quezon City.

I clicked “Buy Now” before I could overthink it.

Three months later, I understood why it was so cheap.

The First Week: Everything Seemed Fine

The setup was easy. I got my login details within an hour. The control panel looked professional. And I installed WordPress with one click, just like they promised.

I spent the weekend building my website, uploaded photos of my ube cheesecake and leche flan, wrote descriptions of my products, and added a contact form for custom orders.

By Sunday night, I had a website I was proud of. I shared the link with friends and family and orders started trickling in.

For the first week, everything worked perfectly.

Week Two: The First Warning Sign

My website started loading slowly. Not terribly slow, maybe 4-5 seconds instead of 2 seconds. But I noticed.

I didn’t think much of it because I figured maybe I’d uploaded images that were too large. Then I spent an afternoon compressing my photos.

The site got a little faster. Problem solved, I thought.

Then my cousin tried to place an order on Saturday afternoon. “Kimmy, your website won’t load,” she messaged me. “It just keeps spinning.”

I checked and indeed she was right. My website was timing out.

I waited 20 minutes and it came back online because I assumed it was a temporary internet issue.

Month Two: The Real Problems Started

Orders were coming in regularly now. My bakery was doing well then the complaints started.

The checkout page froze while I was paying.

I checked my website multiple times a day. Sometimes it loaded in 2 seconds, other times it took 8 seconds, or it didn’t load at all.

When I contacted support, they said everything was fine on their end and suggested I optimize my website better.

I hired someone on Upwork to optimize my site. They compressed everything, cleaned up the code, installed caching plugins. It helped for about a week.

Then the slowness came back.

The Pattern I Finally Noticed

I started keeping notes. My website was fast in the morning, slow in the evening, and sometimes completely inaccessible during weekends.

Then it clicked: my website slowed down when other websites on the same server got traffic.

I was also on shared hosting. My website shared a server with potentially hundreds of other websites. When those websites got busy, mine suffered.

The worst part? I had no control over it because I’d optimized everything I could on my end. The problem was the server itself.

What I Lost Because of Slow Hosting

I didn’t keep exact numbers, but I can estimate:

Lost orders: 

At least 2-3 per week from people who gave up waiting for my site to load. At ₱500 profit per order, that’s ₱1,000-₱1,500 lost weekly. Over two months, I lost roughly ₱10,000 in sales.

Damaged reputation:

People started telling me my website was unreliable. Some stopped trying to order online and just messaged me directly on Facebook instead.

Wasted time:

I spent hours troubleshooting, optimizing, and worrying about my website when I should have been baking.

Lost Google rankings:

My website has started appearing on page 2 for the keyword custom cakes Quezon City. After the speed issues, it dropped to page 4.

The Breaking Point

I was preparing for a big order, 50 cupcakes for a corporate event. The client wanted to pay through my website for the invoice record.

But my website was down for three hours straight at prime business hours on a Wednesday afternoon.

The client ended up paying through GCash instead.

I was trying to run a professional business with hosting that cost less than a kilo of good butter.

That night, I researched proper hosting, not the cheapest,or not the most expensive. Just reliable hosting that could handle a small business website.

What I Learned About Cheap Hosting

₱75/month sounded like a great deal at first but here’s what I learned:

“Unlimited” doesn’t mean unlimited

The hosting advertised unlimited bandwidth and storage. But buried in the terms of service was a clause about excessive resource usage. 

When my website got modest traffic, they considered it excessive because the server was so overloaded.

You get what you pay for with support. When I needed help, I submitted support tickets. Response time? 24-48 hours.

By the time they responded, the problem had either fixed itself or gotten worse.

Cheap hosting oversells servers

To offer ₱75/month hosting, they pack hundreds of websites onto each server. When everyone gets traffic, the server can’t handle it. And as a result, your website becomes collateral damage.

The renewal price jumps dramatically

That ₱75/month rate was only for the first year. Renewal was ₱200/month. Still cheap, but I was already planning to leave.

What I Did Next

I switched to hosting that cost ₱210/month. Yes, almost double the price.

And I saw a difference immediately.

My website loaded in under 2 seconds consistently. There was no more random downtime and customer complaints about speed.

The new hosting provider had actual 24/7 support. When I had a question, I got answers within minutes via live chat.

Most importantly, my website stayed fast even during busy periods. The server could handle my traffic without struggling.

The Real Cost of Cheap Hosting

Here’s the math I should have done from the beginning:

Cheap hosting: ₱75/month = ₱900/year

Revenue lost to slow loading: ₱10,000 over two months = ₱60,000/year

Time wasted troubleshooting: ~10 hours/month = 120 hours/year

Better hosting: ₱141/month = ₱1,692/year

Revenue lost: ₱0

Time wasted: Maybe 1 hour total for the entire year

I saved ₱792/year on hosting. I lost ₱60,000/year in sales.

That’s not including the damage to my reputation and the stress of constantly worrying if my website was working.

When Cheap Hosting Makes Sense

I’m not saying everyone needs expensive hosting. Cheap hosting makes sense if:

• You’re building a personal blog with 50 visitors per day
• You’re testing a business idea and not taking orders yet
• Your website is just a portfolio that doesn’t need to be fast
• You don’t care if your site goes down occasionally

But if you’re running a real business or  taking orders online?

Don’t do what I did. I chose the cheapest option because it seemed like a smart financial decision.

What I Use Now

I switched to Truehost Philippines. Their hosting costs ₱141/month. Not the absolute cheapest, but not expensive either.

What I get for that ₱210:

• Fast loading speeds (under 2 seconds consistently)
• Actual 24/7 support that responds in minutes
• Servers that don’t get overloaded
• Daily automatic backups
• Free SSL certificate
• The ability to actually run my business without worrying about my website

The ₱66/month difference between cheap hosting and reliable hosting equals two cupcakes. I was losing orders worth 20-30 cupcakes per week because I tried to save the price of two cupcakes.

The Bottom Line

That ₱75/month hosting seemed like a smart way to save money. It ended up being the most expensive mistake I made starting my online bakery.

If your website matters to your business, it’s how customers find you, how they order from you, how they perceive your professionalism then  in hosting that actually works.

I learned this lesson the hard way. You don’t have to.

Still using cheap hosting?

Calculate what it’s actually costing you in lost sales, wasted time, and damaged reputation. 

Sometimes saving money is the most expensive choice you can make.