Almost every shared hosting price you have ever seen advertised was an introductory rate. You pay it once, for one term. Then the account renews at the standard price, which across the hosts we track averages a little over three times what you first paid.
This is not a scam and it is not hidden — the renewal price is usually in the provider's terms or their knowledge base. But it is rarely on the pricing page next to the number in the large font, and that asymmetry is the entire business model of budget hosting.
What the increase actually looks like
Here are real examples from the hosts on this site. Each figure is the advertised monthly rate against the published renewal rate for the same entry plan:
- SiteGround StartUp — $2.99 renewing at $17.99. A 6.0× increase.
- IONOS Essential — $1.00 renewing at $8.00. An 8.0× increase.
- GreenGeeks Lite — $2.95 renewing at $13.95. A 4.7× increase.
- Hostinger Premium — $2.99 renewing at $8.99. A 3.0× increase.
- Namecheap Stellar — $2.28 renewing at $3.88. A 1.7× increase.
The spread matters more than the average. A 1.7× renewal is an annoyance; an 8× renewal changes whether the host was ever the cheap option at all.
The number nobody quotes: how long the intro rate lasts
This is the part that catches people who thought they had done their homework. Two hosts can advertise nearly the same rate and be completely different deals, because the lock period differs.
DreamHost advertises $2.89 a month. SiteGround advertises $2.99 a month. Ten cents apart. But DreamHost holds that rate for 36 months and SiteGround holds it for 12. Over three years:
- DreamHost: 36 months at $2.89 = about $104. You never reach the renewal price at all.
- SiteGround: 12 months at $2.99, then 24 months at $17.99 = about $468.
Four and a half times the cost, from an advertised price that looked identical. If you take one thing from this article, it is that the term length is part of the price. Our true cost calculator exists specifically to do this arithmetic for every host at once.
Why providers are allowed to do this
Because they disclose it, somewhere. Advertising rules in most markets require that a promotional price is identifiable as promotional and that the standard price is available to the customer before purchase. A footnote, a tooltip, or a line in the terms of service generally satisfies that.
What regulators do act on is a promotional price presented as though it were the ongoing price with no way to discover otherwise. The UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act and India's Central Consumer Protection Authority guidelines both tightened this recently, and several hosts quietly added renewal pricing to their comparison tables as a result.
So the practical position is: it is legal, it is disclosed, and it is your job to go and find the disclosure. That is a bad deal for you, which is why every price on this site is published next to its renewal figure, with the date it was checked and a link to the source — how we source prices.
Three ways to not pay the renewal price
1. Buy the longest term you are confident about
The intro rate applies for the whole first term. A 36 or 48-month term at the promotional rate is genuinely good value — Hostinger's $2.99 holds for 48 months, which is four years before you see $8.99. The catch is that long terms are billed in full up front, so $2.99 a month is really a $143 payment today, and refunds after the money-back window are usually pro-rata at best.
Only do this if you are confident the site will still exist. For a client project on a three-month brief, don't.
2. Pick a host that does not do intro pricing
If you are still deciding which tier you need at all, that question comes first — see shared vs VPS vs managed WordPress. Within a tier, though, some providers simply charge one price. Cloudways bills hourly at $11 a month with no promotional rate and no renewal jump. Kinsta is $35 a month, flat. These look expensive next to $2.99 and are frequently cheaper by month 18.
They are also much easier to budget for, which matters more than people expect when you are running several sites.
3. Move before the renewal date
Legitimate, common, and more work than it sounds. Most hosts offer free migration to win your business, so the cost is your time rather than money. Put a calendar reminder six weeks before your renewal date — not one week, because you want room to test. We have a guide on moving hosts without downtime.
One warning: hosts know renewal churn is their biggest loss. Expect a retention offer if you try to cancel, and expect it to be a one-year discount rather than a permanent one.
What to actually do
Before you buy anything, find three numbers: the intro rate, the renewal rate, and how many months the intro rate is locked for. If a provider's pricing page gives you only the first, that is information about the provider.
Then price it over the period you actually intend to stay. Our calculator does this across every host we track, and the ranking it produces is usually not the one the advertised prices suggest.
What you can do about it
Knowing the multiple is only useful if it changes a decision. There are five approaches that actually reduce what you pay at renewal — buying the right term, moving before the date rather than after it, and the handful of hosts that never raise the price at all: how to avoid a hosting renewal price increase. If you have already decided to leave, cancelling properly and claiming the refund you are owed is the other half of it.