Getting a Kenyan website online no longer needs a dollar card or a middleman. You can host a website in Kenya with M-Pesa from the first click to the last: register the domain, buy the hosting and switch on the HTTPS padlock, in roughly ten minutes. Hosting starts at a monthly price lower than a Nairobi lunch. This guide shows every step.
If you have tried before, you will remember the obstacles: providers that only accept USD credit cards, so-called agents who vanish once they have your money, and overseas support desks that reply to your ticket at 3am Nairobi time. None of that is needed today. In 2025 the whole chain, from a .co.ke domain to live hosting protected by SSL, can be paid for straight from M-Pesa. The sections below go through it in order.
Domain and hosting: what are you paying for?
Picture your website as a shop on a busy street. The domain name (say, yourbusiness.co.ke) is the sign above the door, the name customers type to reach you. The hosting is the floor space you rent behind that sign: the disk and bandwidth holding your photos, product pages and contact form. A site cannot run without both. They are separate purchases, yet most providers sell them together so you can sort everything out at once.
It also costs less than many people expect. Restaurants, churches, schools and freelancers mostly do fine on shared hosting, and a full year of it, .co.ke domain included, comes in below KSh 4,000.
Why M-Pesa makes sense
- It is instant. A card payment that goes wrong can take days to untangle. M-Pesa clears at once, so your hosting is ready in minutes rather than hours.
- No card required. Lots of Kenyans have no working credit card, but anyone with a Safaricom line can use M-Pesa.
- No exchange-rate loss. Pay a US host in dollars and your bank's exchange-rate spread takes 3 to 5 percent. Paying a shilling bill in shillings carries no FX cost at all.
SiteBoma takes payment on Paystack's secure checkout page, by M-Pesa or by card (Visa, Mastercard), and you are always charged in KES. Choose M-Pesa and a prompt appears on your phone; type your PIN and the order is paid within seconds.
Five steps to a live Kenyan website
Step 1: Find a domain name
Use SiteBoma's domain search to see whether the name you want is free. For a business in Kenya the usual choice is .co.ke, registered through KENIC. It shows customers at a glance that you trade locally, and Google favours it in Kenyan search results.
When choosing a name:
- Go for something short that you can spell out over the phone with no fuss.
- Skip hyphens where you can; people forget them.
- Is yourbusiness.co.ke already gone? Look at yourbusiness.ke or a variation like yourbusinessgroup.co.ke.
Registering a .co.ke at SiteBoma costs KSh 1,200, and each renewal after that is KSh 1,700 a year. Whenever a first-year promotion is running, the domains page shows it.
Step 2: Choose your hosting
A typical small business site, meaning a few dozen pages, some photos and fewer than 10,000 visitors a month, fits well on SiteBoma's shared hosting, which starts at KSh 80/month. Each plan gives you:
- SSD storage of 10GB or more
- A free SSL certificate for the HTTPS padlock
- Mailboxes on your own domain, such as [email protected]
- The DirectAdmin control panel, so you can manage it all through a visual screen
- Free migration of any site you already run elsewhere
Paying yearly instead of monthly saves you roughly 16 percent.
Step 3: Pay by M-Pesa
At checkout you land on Paystack's secure payment page. Pick M-Pesa, enter the phone number your M-Pesa account uses and confirm. A payment prompt reaches your phone moments later: key in your PIN and you are finished. If you would rather use Visa or Mastercard, the same page takes cards too.
The order is confirmed on screen immediately, and 2 to 5 minutes after that you will have:
- An email holding your DirectAdmin login
- A separate email with your domain registration details
- An invoice waiting in your client dashboard
Bringing a site over from another host? Our support team carries out the move for you within 24 hours.
Step 4: Turn on HTTPS with free SSL
Browsers now warn people away from any site without HTTPS. An SSL certificate removes that warning. SiteBoma sets up a free Let's Encrypt certificate for every domain on every plan, automatically, so there is nothing for you to do. The padlock appears within 15 minutes of your domain pointing at SiteBoma.
Step 5: Build your pages
Two easy routes are open to you:
- Do it yourself with WordPress. Install it in one click from DirectAdmin, choose a free template, add your words and pictures, and publish. WordPress runs 60 percent of Kenyan business websites.
- Hand it to our website design team. Tell us what you sell and send your logo plus a few photos; in 1 to 2 weeks we deliver a clean, professional site. It is a one-time fee, and you can pay it by M-Pesa.
What a year online really costs
Counting domain, hosting, SSL and email together, a first year usually looks like this:
- Freelancer, personal portfolio or small church: KSh 1,200 domain plus KSh 800 Starter hosting (yearly billing) ≈ KSh 2,000 in year one
- Restaurant, school or small business: KSh 1,200 domain plus KSh 1,200 Business hosting (yearly billing) ≈ KSh 2,400 in year one
- WooCommerce shop: KSh 1,200 domain plus KSh 2,500 Professional hosting (yearly billing) ≈ KSh 3,700 in year one
- In year two the domain renewal is KSh 1,700 rather than KSh 1,200, so add KSh 500 to each total.
The first two tiers suit most Kenyan businesses. Even the top one costs less than one month of office rent in Nairobi, and it gives you a shop window that is open around the clock to the whole world.
Questions before you start
I already run a website somewhere else. Can you move it?
Yes. Migration is free on every paid plan. Once you have signed up, open a support ticket containing the login details for your present host, and our team copies everything across with no downtime, normally within 24 hours.
What if it is not right for me?
All new hosting orders carry a 7-day money-back guarantee. Once that week has passed, you can still cancel or move to a smaller plan whenever you like from your client dashboard.
Will pages load quickly for visitors in Kenya?
Yes. SiteBoma's servers use LiteSpeed Web Server with NVMe SSDs, which is measurably faster than Apache at serving PHP and WordPress.
Is email on my own domain included?
It is, at no extra charge: every plan lets you create professional addresses such as [email protected]. Larger teams may be better served by Google Workspace, which we can set up through our Google Workspace service.
Can I pay without M-Pesa?
Yes. Paystack's checkout page accepts Visa and Mastercard as well, and you are charged in KES either way. M-Pesa is simply the fastest route for customers in Kenya.
Ready to launch?
From choosing a domain and a plan to paying by M-Pesa and getting your SSL, the whole job takes under 10 minutes. Deciding on the name usually takes longest.
Want advice first? Speak to our Nairobi team on WhatsApp at +254 754 550 099 and we will help you settle on a plan before you pay anything.