A real internet radio is two pieces, not one. There's the broadcast — the stream itself, which you can rent for the price of a coffee — and there's the website in front of it, which is what actually makes it a station people visit, install and remember. Most guides only cover the first. This one covers the second, and the pairing that makes the whole thing cheap to run and yours to keep: a Streamerr stream and a Fortesonic site.
Two pieces — and you own the important one
Keep the roles separate and the money makes sense immediately:
- The stream (rent it, cheaply). Streamerr runs the broadcast for you — SHOUTcast/Icecast, AutoDJ, listener stats, no server to administer — from £3.99/month. Streaming is a commodity; there's no reason to overpay for it, and no reason to self-host a server if you don't want to.
- The website (own it, forever). Fortesonic is the public face on your own domain: the player, live artwork, song history, the installable app. You buy it once and keep it — no database behind it, nothing rented, nothing that switches off when an invoice lapses.
Rent the part that's a commodity; own the part that is your brand. That's the entire strategy, and it's why the running cost of a serious-looking station can be a few pounds a month plus a one-time license — instead of a subscription that never ends.
What the stream costs on Streamerr
So you know exactly what, how and how much: these are Streamerr's current radio-streaming plans. Every plan includes AutoDJ and your choice of control panel; you point Fortesonic at whichever one you pick.
- Standard — £3.99/mo (£39.90/year): 200 listeners · 128 kbps · 2 GB AutoDJ storage · 10 GB/mo bandwidth.
- Premium — £5.99/mo (£59.90/year): 500 listeners · 320 kbps · 20 GB AutoDJ storage · 30 GB/mo bandwidth.
- Pro — £8.99/mo (£89.90/year): unlimited listeners · 320 kbps · 40 GB AutoDJ storage · unlimited bandwidth.
Prices from streamerr.co, checked July 2026 — confirm the current figures on their site before you buy. SHOUTcast v1/v2 and Icecast, AutoDJ and control panel (StreamerrPanel, Centova Cast, MediaCP or SonicPanel) are included; the website is a separate layer, which is exactly the point.
From a rented stream to a station you own, in three steps
Get the stream
Start a stream on Streamerr from £3.99/mo — SHOUTcast/Icecast plus AutoDJ, live in minutes, with no server for you to run.
Point Fortesonic at it
Open one Fortesonic config file and set your stream URL, station name, logo and colors. Toggle features on or off with booleans.
You own the front
Player, live artwork, history and the installable app — on your own domain, no database. The stream you rent; the site you keep.
Where this stands today, honestly. Fortesonic connects out of the box to AzuraCast's public now-playing API. Native SHOUTcast/Icecast support — the piece that makes a Streamerr stream fully plug-and-play, with server-side artwork lookup and history — is in active development. If you're on SHOUTcast or Icecast now and want in early, tell us your setup and we'll tell you honestly where it fits. We'd rather say “coming” than pretend.
What travels between the stream and the site
It helps to see what actually moves, because it's what makes this setup both cheap and safe:
- Now playing — title, artist and album art, refreshed live every few seconds.
- Song history — the recently-played list, so visitors can catch the track they just missed.
- The queue — what's coming up next, where your stream exposes it.
- The audio — played straight from your mount points, with a quality switcher when you publish more than one bitrate.
Notice what doesn't move: no accounts, no listener records, nothing written to a database — because there is no database. The website only ever reads a public feed your stream already publishes, which is why it runs on the cheapest shared hosting and has almost nothing to breach.
The website layer: rent it, or own it
The stream is a few pounds a month either way. The choice that compounds over the years is the website in front of it — and websites live for years, so compare them that way. Pick a horizon:
Total cost of the website layer
Over 5 years you keep 2,001 € in your pocket compared to renting the website from a SaaS builder.
Same reference points as our full cost breakdown (July 2026): hosted radio website builders run roughly 440–490 € per year for the site layer alone, separate from any streaming plan. WordPress estimate: one-time theme (59–119 €) plus typical hosting and plugin renewals. Fortesonic Forte is a one-time 199 € license; the optional updates renewal after year one (59 €/year) is not required for the site to keep working.
Streamerr + Fortesonic vs the usual alternatives
Same duel we run on the home page, framed for the cheap-stream + owned-site route — pick your opponent:
| Criteria | Fortesonic + Streamerr | All-in-one SaaS radio sites | DIY WordPress builds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost of the stream | From £3.99/mo (Streamerr) | Bundled — and hard to leave | Your own host, your own bill |
| The website | Bought once, yours forever | Rented — 440 €+/year, forever | Theme + plugins to assemble |
| Your own domain & server | Yes | Their platform, their rules | Yes |
| Database required | None | Hidden — their stack, their breach | MySQL + WordPress core |
| Installable app (PWA) | Yes, iOS & Android | Rarely | Rarely |
| If you stop paying for the site | Keeps working forever | Site goes offline | Keeps working (unpatched) |
Why almost nobody sells this pairing
Look at who's in the market and the gap is obvious:
- Streaming hosts sell you the broadcast brilliantly, then hand you a generic embed widget and call it your “website.”
- SaaS radio-site builders rent you a site on their domain — stop paying and it's gone, audience and all.
- WordPress can do it, if you enjoy assembling and forever patching a database-backed stack.
A cheap stream you rent plus a premium site you own is the one combination the big platforms don't put in a single box — because owning the site is precisely what their business model needs you not to do. Pairing Streamerr for the stream with Fortesonic for the site is how you get both: commodity pricing on the broadcast, real ownership of the thing with your name on it.
Not technical? You still don't run anything
- No server for the stream — that's the whole point of Streamerr; the broadcast is hosted for you.
- Don't want to touch the config — add the 49 € installation service and we install Fortesonic on your hosting and wire it to your stream for you.
- Don't want hosting at all — Fortissimo (299 €/year, all-in) puts the white-label site on our managed server with SSL, CDN and automatic updates. You run the radio; we run the website.
The stream makes the sound. The website makes it a station — on your domain, under your name, owned rather than rented.
The bottom line
Making an internet radio isn't one big project; it's a stream you can rent for a few pounds a month and a website you buy once and keep. Get the broadcast from a cheap host like Streamerr, put a site you own in front of it, and the same listener feature set is yours — nothing locked behind a bigger plan, nothing that switches off when you stop paying.