Pricing: How Does Staq Charge?

At Staq, we believe in providing a powerful and flexible platform for your WordPress hosting needs. This guide explains our pricing plans, included features, and resource allocation to help you decide what works best for you.

Simplified Pricing

We offer two main pricing models:

1. Pay As You Go/Grow (Digital Agency Plan, Digital Agency + Plan, and Single Site).
2. Custom Cloud Environment (Enterprise Plan).

Plan Details:

• Digital Agency Plan: $12 USD per site for 1–50 sites.
• Digital Agency + Plan: Custom pricing for 51+ sites.
• Single Site Plan: $23 USD per site for 1 site.
• Enterprise Plan: Starts at $160 USD per month, customized based on your requirements.

All plans include free migrations and up to 90 days of dev mode per site (you only pay once the site goes live or after the 90-day development period) and 1 free staging site.

Staging Sites

With our Pay As You Go/Grow plans (the default when you start a site on Staq), staging sites are free for up to 90 days. You’ll only start paying once the site goes live or at the end of those 90 days, whichever comes first.

This offer is great for genuine staging sites, but there’s a catch: our fair usage policy. If you’re only using Staq for development and hosting live sites elsewhere, this deal isn’t for you. In that case, charges begin from day one.

We’re all about mutual benefits. If you’re hosting live sites with us and investing in our platform, we’re more than happy to support your staging sites for free for up to 90 days. Just a heads-up: if you turn a live site back to “dev mode”, it’ll remain a paid site.

Included Resources (Digital Agency, Digital Agency +, Single Site plans)

Our Digital Agency, Digital Agency+ and Single Site plans operate with base resources. Each site includes:

Explanation of each item under Pay As You Go/Grow

Here’s a simple breakdown of what each resource in the “Pay As You Go/Grow” model means for your managed hosting for WordPress:

Unique Visitors per Month

The number of different users visiting your site each month. This allocation ensures your site performs well for up to 25,000 visitors.

Data Storage

The amount of space available for your website’s files, such as images, videos, themes, and plugins. This excludes Database storage. With 10GB, there’s plenty of room for most WordPress sites.

Database

The size of your WordPress database, which stores your content, settings, and other data. 1GB is enough for most sites.

Bandwidth per Month

The total data transferred between your site and its visitors. The 25GB allocation ensures smooth delivery of your content, even with moderate traffic.

Compute CPU Power

This is the processing power allocated to handle server tasks like running WordPress code such as executing PHP requests from WordPress core, plugins and themes. It also includes from wp-cron jobs. 30 hours of compute power is sufficient for average usage.

Redis Object Cache

Redis stores frequently used data in memory, making your site faster by reducing database load. The 25MB allocation improves speed and handles spikes in traffic from dynamic requests.

Memory

Memory (RAM) is used to handle multiple processes at once. Staq’s 256MB allocation is highly efficient and comparable to 512MB on standard servers given its decoupled environment on AWS.

PHP Workers

PHP workers process user requests like uncached page loads, the backend of WordPress and form submissions. With 10 workers, your site can handle many users at the same time without slowing down.

Backup Retention

Your site’s backups are stored for 14 days, providing a safety net in case something goes wrong.

All “automated backup” are free.

All “temporary backup” are free.

However, “Permanent backup” will be added to your storage quota. If your website data, together with “Permanent backup” exceed 10GB storage, then overage storage costs will apply at $0.50 USD per GB after 10GB.

Please note that if you download a backup, additional bandwidth charges may apply. The bandwidth usage is part of the original quota so if you’re under your bandwidth quota, there will be no charge. It only applies if your bandwidth quota has exceeded the allocated resources that you’ll incur additional bandwidth charges.

AWS CloudFront Invalidations

These clear old or cached versions of files from AWS CloudFront CDN, ensuring visitors always see the latest updates on your site. You get up to 50 invalidations per day. If you have many invalidations, it’s best to use our Staq-integrated Cloudflare feature as Cloudflare do not have invalidation charges.

Resource Scalability and Overages

If your site’s base plan under Digital Agency, Digital Agency+ and Single Site plans exceeds the resource allocation, our system automatically scales to meet demand. Here’s how overages are charged:

PHP Workers and Memory Upgrades

If you need additional PHP Workers or memory, the costs are as follows:

For custom configurations beyond these, please contact our sales team to discuss Enterprise Plans.

Custom Cloud Environment

For websites with unique needs, our Custom Cloud Environment offers high availability and tailored resource allocation. Pricing starts at $160 USD per month and is based on your specific requirements.

To learn more, schedule a Demo Call with our team.

How Resources Work in Staq Hosting

Server Architecture

Each site benefits from AWS infrastructure:

• Server: Baseline 4 vCPUs, 16GB RAM, and burstable resources.
• Database: Baseline 4 vCPUs, 16GB RAM via MariaDB RDS.
• Storage: GP3 SSDs with 3,000 IOPS for optimal performance.

Caching, Security & Backup

• Staq Cache
• Redis Object Cache
• Backups: Automated backups are free for 14 days. Permanent backups add to storage usage.
• Staq Firewall: Protecting the network, server, WordPress, including contact forms.

Elastic Scaling

While traditional hosting limits resources to fixed CPU and RAM allocations, Staq’s cloud infrastructure pools resources across AWS services like EBS, RDS, S3, and CloudFront. This ensures seamless scaling based on demand.

Billing for Overages

• Users receive notifications before exceeding resource limits.
• Overages are billed monthly, reflecting actual usage.

If your site consistently exceeds its allocations, contact our Support Team to configure a fixed-price plan based on average usage.

Staq Billing for Digital Agencies

Agencies can configure Staq Billing to pass hosting costs (including overages) directly to clients via white-label invoices. This system allows you to:

• Set custom pricing for your clients.
• Automatically calculate base costs and overages.
• Generate invoices with your branding.
• Use our custom SMTP setup so it’s sent via your domain

To set up Staq Billing, follow this Step-by-Step Guide.

FAQ’s

1. What happens if bandwidth or storage exceeds the allocation?

When your site exceeds its resource allocation (e.g., bandwidth, storage, CPU time, or visitors), our system automatically scales to maintain performance. You’ll be charged overage fees based on the specific resource exceeded. For example, if you exceed the 25GB bandwidth limit, you’ll be billed $0.50 per additional GB. Notifications will be sent in advance to help you manage your usage.

If you find that your site consistently exceeds allocations, it might be worth contacting our Support Team to explore custom fixed-price plans.

2. Can I upgrade my plan to avoid overages?

Unlike traditional hosting, Staq doesn’t offer fixed upgrades for predefined tiers (except Enterprise Plans). Instead, our Pay As You Go/Grow model automatically scales resources, and overages are billed accordingly. However, if overages are frequent, you can contact our Support Team to set up a fixed-price plan tailored to your average monthly usage. This ensures predictable costs and allocates sufficient resources for your needs.

To request a fixed-price plan:

1. Open a support ticket via the Support Page.
2. Include the website URL and specify the request for a fixed-price plan.

Our team will analyze your historical resource usage and provide a customized plan.

3. Does Staq use shared hosting?

No, Staq does not use shared hosting. Staq operates under AWS cloud hosting. Each website is isolated. The architecture is entirely decoupled, meaning that server resources, databases, storage, and caching are all optimized for their specific purposes without interference from other sites.