Hosting guides, without the upselling
Long answers to the questions that actually decide a hosting purchase. No affiliate link is placed to change what these say — and every one of them tells you when the cheaper option is good enough.
- 22guides, kept current
- 78minutes end to end
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Written to be read in this order, but each one stands alone.
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Why your hosting bill triples in year two
The $2.99 you signed up for is an introductory rate. Here is what the renewal actually costs across the market, why the increase is legal, and the three ways to avoid paying it.
- Across the 16 hosts here the renewal price averages 3.5x the advertised rate — and reaches 8x at IONOS.
- The lock period matters more than the rate. DreamHost and SiteGround both advertise about $2.90, and cost $104 and $468 over three years.
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Shared vs VPS vs managed WordPress hosting
Three hosting tiers, sold as a ladder you are supposed to climb. Most sites belong on the bottom rung for longer than the marketing suggests. Here is how to tell which one you are.
- Shared hosting runs out of CPU and concurrency long before it runs out of bandwidth. That is the real limit, and nobody advertises it.
- Managed WordPress buys you time, not speed. A well-cached site on shared hosting is already fast.
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Which hosting specs actually matter
Unlimited bandwidth, 99.9% uptime, NVMe, LiteSpeed, free SSL. Some of these change how your site behaves and some are table stakes dressed up as features. A field guide to the spec sheet.
- Unlimited bandwidth, 99.9% uptime and free SSL are table stakes dressed as features. Read the CPU limits instead.
- The specs that genuinely change your site: NVMe storage, datacenter location, staging, and whether you can restore a backup yourself.
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How to move hosts without downtime
A migration goes wrong in the same three places every time: DNS, email, and cancelling the old account too early. A sequence that avoids all three, with the waiting built in.
- Lower your DNS TTL to 300 seconds several days ahead. This is what turns a day of mixed traffic into a few minutes.
- Build and test the new host completely before touching DNS — a hosts-file edit lets you see the new site while everyone else sees the old one.
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How to avoid a hosting renewal price increase
Your renewal is three to eight times the intro rate. Five approaches that actually reduce it — buying the right term, moving before the date, and the hosts that never raise the price at all.
- The renewal price is set by the plan you are on, not negotiated — but the term you buy, and when you buy it, are both yours to choose.
- Five of the 27 hosts here never raise the price at all: Cloudways, Kinsta, Krystal, Rocket.net and WPX.
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What web hosting actually costs in India
Rupee pricing, GST, forex markup and renewal rates — what web hosting in India costs once all four are counted, and when an Indian host beats an international one.
- An Indian provider billing in rupees avoids both the forex markup and the surprise of a dollar price moving with the exchange rate.
- MilesWeb starts at ₹69/mo and renews at ₹219 — a 3.2x increase, which is about average for the market.
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How to cancel web hosting and get a refund
What the money-back guarantee actually covers, why your domain fee is not coming back, and the order of operations that gets you out with both your money and your website.
- Refund windows range from 97 days at DreamHost to none at all — Cloudways offers a 3-day trial and no refund.
- Domain registration fees are almost never refundable, even inside the window, because the registry has already been paid.
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Is free web hosting worth it?
Free hosting is real, and it is paid for somewhere else — ads, downtime, no backups, no way out. When it is genuinely fine, and when it costs more than the hosting would have.
- Free hosting is paid for in ads on your site, no backups, no support and no portability. For anything you care about, that is the wrong trade.
- The genuine free tier worth using is a static host — Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages — for sites that need no server-side code.
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Migrating from SiteGround to DreamHost
SiteGround renews at 6x its intro rate — $468 over three years against DreamHost's $104. What the move saves, what you give up, and how to migrate from SiteGround to DreamHost without downtime.
- SiteGround renews at $17.99/mo against a $2.99 intro rate — 6.0x — and at $468 over three years it is the most expensive shared host we have reviewed.
- DreamHost costs $104 over the same 36 months, locks its rate for 36 months rather than 12, and moves the site for you free.
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Migrating from IONOS to Hostinger
IONOS has the steepest renewal we have recorded — $1 becomes $8, an 8x rise after 12 months. What it costs to stay, what Hostinger costs instead, and how to migrate from IONOS to Hostinger safely.
- IONOS has the steepest renewal of any host we have reviewed: $1/mo becomes $8/mo, an 8.0x rise, and the intro rate lasts only 12 months.
- Hostinger costs $108 over three years against IONOS at $204, mostly because it locks its rate for 48 months rather than 12.
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Migrating from GreenGeeks to Bluehost
GreenGeeks renews at 4.7x its intro rate, costing $370 over three years against Bluehost at $106. The saving, the green-hosting trade-off you should think about, and the full migration steps.
- GreenGeeks renews at $13.95/mo against a $2.95 intro rate — 4.7x — and costs $370 over three years.
- Bluehost costs $106 over the same period, largely because its intro rate is locked for 36 months rather than 12.
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Migrating from ChemiCloud to Namecheap
ChemiCloud renews at 4.8x its intro rate; Namecheap renews at 1.7x — the flattest of any budget host we track. $317 against $120 over three years, plus the full migration steps.
- ChemiCloud renews at $11.95/mo against $2.49 — 4.8x — costing $317 over three years.
- Namecheap costs $120 over the same period and renews at only 1.7x, the flattest renewal of any budget host we have reviewed.
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Hosting renewal price comparison
Every host we have reviewed, with the intro price beside the renewal price and the multiple between them. The average is 3.5x. Two hosts never raise the price at all.
- Across the 16 hosts we have reviewed the renewal price averages 3.5x the intro price.
- IONOS has the steepest rise at 8.0x ($1 to $8); SiteGround is next at 6.0x ($2.99 to $17.99).
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The cheapest web hosting, measured properly
The cheapest web hosting by advertised price and the cheapest by what you actually pay are different lists. Over 36 months the gap between the two cheapest-looking hosts is $360.
- Cheapest over 36 months is MilesWeb at $25.92; the dearest is Kinsta at $1,260.
- IONOS advertises the lowest intro price of all ($1/mo) and ranks eighth on real cost at $204.
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How much does web hosting cost?
What web hosting costs at each tier, using figures read from the providers own pages — plus the second-year number that most guides leave out.
- Shared hosting: $0.72 to $3.75/mo on intro rates, renewing at $2.28 to $17.99.
- Managed WordPress starts around $25-35/mo and mostly does not use intro pricing at all.
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Best web hosting in India
Hosting for Indian sites compared on the renewal price and the 36-month total, including which providers actually bill in rupees rather than converting at checkout.
- MilesWeb bills in rupees and is the cheapest host we track over 36 months at the equivalent of $25.92.
- BigRock advertises Rs-equivalent $1.73/mo and renews at $9.29 — a 5.4x rise, among the steepest here.
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Black Friday hosting deals
Black Friday hosting deals are mostly the usual intro price with a bigger number on the banner. The four things that decide whether one is worth taking, and the one figure the banner never shows.
- A bigger discount usually means a steeper renewal, not a cheaper host: the two hosts discounting hardest here are 8th and 14th on real 36-month cost.
- The lock length decides the saving. A 90% discount held for 12 months is worth less than 50% held for 48.
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Best hosting for a small business
For a business site the renewal price, the refund window and the support channel matter more than the intro rate. What the figures say across 16 reviewed hosts.
- For a site that has to stay up, predictable pricing beats a low intro rate: Cloudways and Kinsta never raise the price.
- A long refund window is the only risk-free way to test a host — DreamHost gives 97 days.
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Best WordPress hosting in India
Managed WordPress hosting costs ten times shared hosting. When that is worth it for an Indian site, when it is not, and what each option actually totals over three years.
- Managed WordPress starts around $25-35/mo against $2.99 for shared — roughly ten times, for a platform rather than a server.
- Managed hosts mostly do not use intro pricing: Kinsta never raises its price, WP Engine goes $25 to $30.
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Web hosting for beginners
What web hosting actually is, what the jargon on the pricing page means, and the one number every beginner is shown last and should read first.
- Hosting is rented space on a server; the domain is a separate purchase that is often free for the first year.
- The advertised price is a first-term rate. Across the hosts we have reviewed, renewal averages 3.5x it.
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The hidden costs of web hosting
Seven charges that are not in the advertised price, what each typically costs, and which of them are genuinely unavoidable rather than upsells.
- The renewal jump is by far the largest hidden cost: it averages 3.5x the intro rate and dwarfs every add-on.
- SSL should never be a paid extra now; free certificates are standard and any host charging for basic SSL is overcharging.
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When to upgrade from shared hosting
Four signs you have genuinely outgrown shared hosting, three that look like it and are not, and what the next tier actually costs.
- A slow site is usually a heavy site, not an underpowered server: fix the images and the plugins first.
- The real signals are sustained CPU limiting, a database your plan cannot hold, and needing root.