One of the first questions beginners ask when starting an affiliate marketing website is how much they should spend on hosting.
It’s a fair question. You haven’t made a dollar yet. You don’t want to sink money into tools and services before you even know if this is going to work. At the same time, you’ve probably read enough to know that cheap hosting comes with its own set of headaches – slow load times, unreliable support, and sites that crawl when you actually start getting traffic.
So you’re stuck between not wanting to overspend and not wanting to start on the wrong foot.
The WPX Starter Plan was built for exactly this situation. It’s the most affordable entry point into WPX Hosting – a host I’ve been using since 2021 and recommend to anyone serious about building an affiliate marketing website.
For $17.99 a month, you get one high-performance website with the same speed, security, and support that WPX is known for. No compromises on the things that actually matter.
This review breaks down exactly what the Starter Plan includes, what it doesn’t, and whether it’s the right fit for someone just starting out in affiliate marketing.
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What Is the WPX Starter Plan?
WPX Hosting has been around since 2013 and has built a reputation as one of the fastest managed WordPress hosts available. If you’ve done any research into hosting for affiliate marketing, you’ve probably come across their name.
Until recently, the entry point into WPX was their Business Plan at $29.99 a month, which covers up to 5 websites. That’s a solid plan, and it’s the one I’m currently using to host the website you’re reading right now.
But for someone who only needs one website to get started, paying for five slots you’re not using yet doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The Starter Plan changes that. It’s a single-site plan designed to give beginners access to WPX’s performance and support at a lower monthly cost. You’re not getting a stripped-down version of the experience. You’re getting the same fast servers, the same custom CDN, and the same support team. The only real difference is that it’s built around one website instead of five.
Think of it as the right-sized entry point. You start here, build your first affiliate site, and when you’re ready to expand, you can easily upgrade to the Business Plan.
It’s worth noting that WPX is WordPress-only hosting. If you’re building an affiliate marketing website, which almost always means WordPress, that’s not a limitation at all. It’s just what they specialize in, and it’s why they’re so good at it.
What You Get on the WPX Starter Plan
Here’s everything that’s included when you sign up for the WPX Starter Plan.
One website with real performance behind it
The Starter Plan gives you allowance for one website. That’s the main boundary of the plan, and for a beginner building their first affiliate site, it’s all you need.
That one site sits on WPX’s high-performance SSD servers with 10GB of storage and 100GB of monthly bandwidth – more than enough for a new site that’s growing.
What matters more than the numbers though is what’s powering it. WPX runs their own custom CDN, which serves your pages from a location closest to whoever is visiting your site. That means faster load times for your readers whether they’re in the US, the UK, or anywhere else. It’s included free on every plan including the Starter.
Free SSL certificate
Every website needs an SSL certificate. It’s what gives your site the secure padlock in the browser and the “https” in your URL. Some hosts charge extra for this or make you jump through hoops to set it up. WPX includes it free and handles it for you.
Daily backups
WPX backs up your site every day automatically and keeps those backups for 28 days. If something ever goes wrong – a bad plugin update, an accidental deletion, anything – you can restore your site without panic.
For a beginner who isn’t thinking about backups yet, this is exactly the kind of thing you want handled in the background without having to think about it.
Free malware cleanup
If your site ever gets hacked or infected, WPX cleans it up for free. This is something other hosts either charge for separately or don’t offer at all.
Knowing it’s covered means one less thing to worry about as you’re focused on building out your website.
24/7 live chat support
This is one of WPX’s biggest differentiators and it applies to every plan including the Starter. Every time I’ve reached out to their support team, I’ve had a real human responding in under 30 seconds. Not a bot, not a canned response – someone who actually fixes the problem.
For a beginner who runs into a technical issue and has no idea what to do, that kind of support is hard to put a price on.
How Much Does the WPX Starter Plan Cost?
The Starter Plan starts at $17.99 a month on a monthly billing cycle. That’s the straightforward, no-commitment option if you want to try it out before locking anything in.
If you’re ready to commit to a year, the price drops to $14.99 a month, billed as a single payment of $179.90. That works out to two free months compared to paying monthly.
WPX also offers longer prepaid terms if you want to bring the monthly cost down further:
- 2 years: $14.24/month
- 3 years: $12.49/month
- 4 years: $12.37/month
- 5 years: $11.99/month
For most beginners, the annual plan is the sweet spot. You save roughly $36 compared to paying month to month, and committing to a year is a reasonable signal to yourself that you’re serious about building your site.
The 5-year option brings the cost down to under $12 a month, which is remarkably low for managed WordPress hosting at this level. That said, prepaying for 5 years is a big upfront commitment and I wouldn’t recommend it until you’ve actually used WPX and know it’s the right fit for you.
Start with a year, see how it goes, and go longer from there if you want to lock in the savings.
And if you try it and it’s not for you, WPX offers a full 30-day money-back guarantee with no questions asked. So there’s very little risk in getting started.
What the WPX Starter Plan Does Not Include
There are two things the Starter Plan leaves out that the Business Plan includes, and it’s important that you should know about them before signing up.
It’s a one-site plan
The Starter Plan covers one website. That’s the biggest limitation, and whether it matters depends entirely on where you are in your journey.
If you’re building your first affiliate marketing website, one site is all you need right now.
Most beginners who struggle aren’t struggling because they don’t have enough websites – they’re struggling because they’re spreading themselves too thin. Starting with one site and focusing on it completely is actually the smarter approach.
Where this becomes a consideration is if you know from the start that you want to build multiple sites at the same time. In that case, jumping straight to the Business Plan at $29.99 a month makes more sense than starting on the Starter Plan and upgrading almost immediately.
No business email
The Starter Plan doesn’t include WPX’s business email feature. That means you won’t be able to set up a professional email address that matches your domain name – like jay@yourdomain.com – directly through WPX on this plan.
For a brand new affiliate site, this rarely matters in the early stages. Most beginners use a free Gmail address when they’re starting out and add professional email later once the site is established. It’s something to be aware of, but it’s not a reason to avoid the Starter Plan if one site is all you need right now.
Those are genuinely the only two things missing. Everything else like the speed, the security, the support, the CDN, is exactly the same as the higher plans.
Is the Starter Plan Good Enough for a Beginner Affiliate Marketer?
Short answer – yes. But let me explain why that actually means something coming from me.
For someone building their first affiliate marketing website, the Starter Plan is not just good enough, it’s the right place to start.
Here’s why I can say that with confidence even though I’m personally on the Business Plan.
I moved all my websites to WPX in May 2021, and I went straight to the Business Plan because I already had multiple sites that needed hosting. The Starter Plan didn’t exist at the time. But the experience I’ve had on the Business Plan – the speed, the support, the peace of mind – is the same experience you get on the Starter Plan.
WPX doesn’t give you a slower server or a less responsive support team because you’re on the entry-level plan. You get the same infrastructure and the same people.
The fact that I’m on a higher plan actually tells you something useful. I’m not recommending the Starter Plan because it’s what I use. I’m recommending it because it genuinely fits where most beginners are when they’re just getting started – one website, focused effort, no need to pay for resources you’re not using yet.
The other thing worth addressing is the broader hosting question that a lot of beginners wrestle with. Is managed WordPress hosting even necessary when you’re just starting out? Can’t you just go with something cheaper?
You can. But here’s what I’ve seen after being in affiliate marketing since 2007.
The beginners who treat their website like a real business from day one, including getting hosting that actually performs, tend to make faster progress than those who cut corners early and end up dealing with slow sites, unreliable support, and technical headaches that eat into the time they should be spending on creating content.
At $17.99 a month, the Starter Plan isn’t asking you to make a big financial bet. It’s asking you to start the right way.
If you want a fuller picture of my experience with WPX, including how it compares to Bluehost, WP Engine, and the hosting that comes with Wealthy Affiliate, you can read my full WPX Hosting review here.
When To Upgrade to a Higher Plan
The short answer is: when one site isn’t enough anymore.
The Starter Plan does everything it needs to do for a single affiliate website. There’s no performance reason to upgrade while you’re focused on building and growing one site.
When the time comes that you want to launch a second website, whether that’s a new niche, a side project, or expanding your affiliate business, that’s your signal to move to the Business Plan.
At that point, upgrading gets you up to 5 website slots, more storage and bandwidth, and the addition of business email. The jump from $17.99 to $29.99 a month is easy to justify once your first site is generating income and you’re ready to scale.
There’s no pressure to upgrade before then. WPX makes it easy when you’re ready, and your existing site and all its data moves with you seamlessly.
One thing I’d caution against is upgrading too early just because it feels like the right move. A lot of beginners in affiliate marketing make the mistake of spreading themselves across multiple sites before any single one has gained real traction. Build one site, get it ranking, get it earning, then expand. The Starter Plan gives you the runway to do exactly that.
How To Get Started on this Plan
Getting started with the WPX Starter Plan is simple. Here’s what the process looks like.
Head to the WPX Starter Plan page and select your billing term.
If you’re just getting started, the annual plan at $14.99 a month is the option I’d go with. You save two months compared to paying monthly, and it’s a reasonable commitment for someone who is serious about building their first affiliate site.
From there, create your account, complete the checkout, and you’re in. Once you’re inside the WPX dashboard, installing WordPress takes one click. No technical steps, no complicated setup.
If you’re moving an existing site from another host, WPX will migrate it for free. You fill in a short migration form inside your account and their team handles the rest. In my experience, the process is smooth and their support team is there in under 30 seconds if anything comes up along the way.
Once your site is live, WPX takes care of the rest in the background – daily backups, malware scanning, SSL, CDN. You don’t have to set any of it up manually. It’s all running from day one.
The biggest thing I’ve learned after years in affiliate marketing is that the tools you choose early on either support your growth or slow it down.
Hosting is one of those decisions that quietly affects everything from your speed, your rankings to your stress levels. The Starter Plan removes that variable from day one, at a price that makes sense before your site is earning.
Ready to get started? Sign up for the WPX Starter Plan here.
