Buying Guide
Hosting With PostgreSQL — the comparison, straight
A direct answer for PostgreSQL genuinely available on shared plans, which is rarer across the market than it ought to be: how to weigh the field, what to rule out early, and the setup we would take ourselves.
The short answer
The verdict up front, the reasoning after: Business hosting carrying PostgreSQL beside MySQL, so a Django, Rails or Laravel application gets the engine it was designed against without anybody renting and administering a VPS.
The rest of the page shows the working behind that call: which checks to run, the mistake to avoid, and how to verify every claim yourself before money moves.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
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Support that answers
1-click
WordPress install
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Daily
Backups, all plans
Most writing on this subject is a league table funded by referral fees. We do it differently: name the buyer (PostgreSQL genuinely available on shared plans, which is rarer across the market than it ought to be), name the checks, name the trap, and make a recommendation we will defend in the open.
Begin from one fact about this market and the rest falls in behind it: whether a provider offers Postgres at all quietly splits the shared-hosting market in two. Carrying it usually marks a company that expects developers as customers rather than one that merely puts up with them.
How to weigh the candidates
Set the feature-grid filler aside and only a few checks genuinely move this decision:
PostgreSQL genuinely available on shared plans, which is rarer across the market than it ought to be.
Both engines running together, since any WordPress install alongside will still expect MySQL.
Current Postgres releases, reachable from psql and whichever standard client tooling you use.
Resource allowances sized for real database work rather than a demonstration schema.
The trap most first buyers walk into
Assuming Postgres is standard equipment, when most shared providers are MySQL-only and customers find out halfway through a migration.
Once it has been named you see it everywhere in this market — and steering around it does more for you than optimising any other figure on the page.
What we would buy in your position
Business hosting carrying PostgreSQL beside MySQL, so a Django, Rails or Laravel application gets the engine it was designed against without anybody renting and administering a VPS.
In concrete terms that is our Overdrive option: one flat rate carrying the essentials (SSL, migration, copies, mail) this market prefers to bill separately, with in-place upgrades ready when the work picks up.
Order an annual plan and the first year of the name's registration is on us.
Take no claim on trust, ours included
Put us through the same checks: write to support before paying and see who answers, compare the renewal rate with the order rate, read the refund terms in full, and look the company up — ours is UK Health Care Support Ltd, registered in England and Wales, on the public record.
Then let real use decide. Two working weeks inside the money-back window beats every review roundup ever written, and trying us costs the minute it takes to file a migration request.
No paid placements, no referral fees
This is a host writing about hosting, and we would rather say so plainly. No manufactured neutrality, no leaderboard paid for by referral cheques. Honesty traded for trust — and it reads better anyway.
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching sit under every tier, the smallest plan included — that is the floor here, not an upgrade.
- Checks you can run again yourself
- Renewal rates published, not footnoted
- A free migration makes the trial easy
- Refund terms with no small print
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
One rate, published in the open
What you order at is what you renew at — the only comparison that counts is one we win by default.
Support you can test before paying
Put a hard question to us before you pay — how a host behaves pre-sale is the best it will ever treat you.
An upgrade path that is real
Shared, VPS and dedicated on one platform — today's choice never boxes tomorrow in.
The verdict, turned into an order
The Overdrive plan is this page's conclusion in product form — one rate, essentials inside, upgradeable in place.
The essentials inside, not added on
SSL, the migration, backups and mail come with every plan rather than appearing as checkout extras.
A company you can look up
UK Health Care Support Ltd, registered in England and Wales — a host whose filing you can read before committing to anything.
Prices Side by Side
Our figures beside the big names
What the market typically charges to join and to renew, set beside ours, including the renewal figure most comparison charts leave out.
| Feature | Hosting & DomainsMost popular | Typical household-name host | Typical bargain host | Typical loss-leader deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Renewal price / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Cheapest plan renews at its sign-up price | ||||
| SSL as standard | ||||
| Migration done for you | ||||
| NVMe drives on the cheapest tier | ||||
| Daily backups from the first tier | ||||
| Real humans on support, 24/7 |
*The figure in our column is the cheapest annual plan we sell, read live from the catalogue behind our pricing page, so it cannot drift out of date. The three columns beside it give the ranges hosts in each bracket tend to advertise: opening offers that usually want one to four years up front, then rise when the term ends. We stopped naming competitors and printing their prices, because a number we cannot check on the day you read it does not belong here. Set us against whichever host you are genuinely considering, and read the renewal row hardest of all.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Write the job down in one sentence
One honest sentence about the workload beats an afternoon lost in feature grids — write it before you look at a single host.
- 2
Compare on what year two costs
Introductory rates are the oldest device in this market; rank hosts by the second year instead and the order rearranges itself at once.
- 3
Run a real trial inside the refund window
Sign up, have a real site moved in free, and work it hard for two weeks — the day-to-day feel is the actual product, and the window makes the test free.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- People on the support desk every hour of every day
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- The name's first year included when you order annually
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not only the dear ones
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- WordPress and 400+ further applications installed in one click
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Why do developers ask for PostgreSQL specifically?
Stricter standards compliance, much richer data types with JSONB at the front, and framework convention, since the Django and Rails communities default that way. Where an application was written for Postgres, pushing it through a MySQL compatibility layer is a cost you pay daily.
Can WordPress run on PostgreSQL?
Not usefully. Built as tightly around MySQL as it is, WordPress leaves only fragile workarounds. The sensible arrangement runs both engines side by side, MySQL under WordPress and Postgres under your own application, which is precisely what the Business plans give you.
Does hosting include mail?
Yes — every hosting plan includes mailboxes at your own name, with webmail, IMAP, POP and SMTP plus spam filtering on from the start. There is standalone email hosting too, for a name whose website lives somewhere else.
Can I choose the PHP version myself?
Yes — PHP is set per site from the control panel, so a legacy application and a current one can run side by side in one account. Extensions and per-site tuning are on the same screen, and none of it goes near a support ticket.
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Shared hosting carrying the whole developer kit, from SSH through Node.js and Python to PostgreSQL.
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