The plan is simple: every couple gets their own small site on its own domain, packed 10–20 to a cPanel account. At that shape, the two hosting models don't compete — one stays flat while the other scales with every couple you sign. Here's the money, sourced.
Recommendation · cPanel reseller
~$20–40/mo, flat to hundreds of weddings — versus ~$130/mo at just 10 sites on Render, climbing from there.
The divergence
Same sites. The bills go opposite directions.
Render bills per running service, so cost tracks your couple count. A cPanel reseller bills for a shared pool — extra couples are just more addon domains at near‑zero marginal cost until you hit the server ceiling.
Render — web service + DB per couplecPanel reseller — one flat plan
Monthly hosting cost vs. number of couple sites. Render figures = 1 Starter web service ($7) + 1 Postgres ($6) per site. cPanel = one reseller plan holding all accounts.
The ledger
What each actually charges, at scale
Modelled on the real plan: a live WordPress/PHP site per couple. On Render that means a Docker web service plus a database, each metered, per couple. On cPanel it's addon domains inside a handful of accounts.
Render
per-service
Couples
Per month
Per year
10
$130
$1,560
50
$650
$7,800
200
$2,600
$31,200
cPanel reseller
flat pool
Couples
Per month
Per year
10
$19.88
$239
50
$19.88
$239
200
~$20–40
~$240–480
Why the models split
It's not a discount — it's the wrong tool vs. the right one
Render — built for one big app
Every web service and every database is a separately metered instance. That's ideal for a single app you scale up. Point it at "one isolated site per customer" and the meter multiplies by your customer count. Render also has no managed MySQL — only Postgres — so native WordPress fights the platform.
cPanel — built for many small sites
Addon domains inside a cPanel account are just extra vhosts on one shared PHP/MySQL stack. The marginal cost of couple #11 is a bit of disk and inodes — not another line item. One reseller plan absorbs dozens of accounts, each holding 10–20 couples, at the same flat price.
The receipts
Hard facts behind the numbers
$7 + $6A Render Starter web service ($7/mo, 512MB) plus a Basic Postgres ($6/mo) is the realistic floor for one always-on dynamic site.Compute plans · Postgres plans
15 minRender's free web services spin down after 15 minutes idle and take ~1 min to cold-start — unacceptable for a couple sharing their site with guests. So "free tier" isn't a real option here.Render free tier
30 daysRender's free Postgres databases are deleted 30 days after creation (14-day grace to upgrade). A trap for anyone hoping to run couples free-forever. Changelog
$19.88Namecheap's entry reseller plan is $19.88/mo with 25 cPanel accounts and unlimited addon domains — itself enough for hundreds of couples. Namecheap Reseller
$0cPanel AutoSSL auto-issues free Let's Encrypt-class certificates per addon domain and auto-renews them — HTTPS on every couple's site at no extra cost. AutoSSL + Let's Encrypt
~$20/moComparable reseller floors confirm the flat baseline: A2 from ~$18.99, InMotion from $19.99 (25 sites), both bundling cPanel/WHM + free SSL. InMotion Reseller
Playing fair
The honest caveats, both sides
Where Render would still hurt
Per-service creep: even a web + worker pair is $14/mo before a single database.
Cold starts on free tier and auto-deleted free DBs rule out the cheap path for live client sites.
No managed MySQL — Postgres only — adds friction to standard WordPress.
Where cPanel needs discipline
"Unlimited" is shared: the server's CPU/RAM/IO is finite — don't over-pack.
Keep to ~60–70% of the plan's real allocation and set per-account CPU/inode caps.
A single bloated or high-traffic couple site can nudge neighbours — monitor, don't oversell blind.
The call
Buy the reseller. Skip Render.
For a portfolio of small, one-per-couple brochure sites that isn't chasing hyperscale, the cPanel reseller is the right tool and the cheaper one — by a widening margin the more couples you sign. Render only wins when it's one multi-tenant app, which this isn't. One thing to check before buying: the plan's account and disk caps, and keep real usage comfortably under them.