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Three of the plans below advertise at under three dollars a month. Over three years one of them costs $107.64 and another costs $467.64.
That is the whole problem with shopping for cheap hosting. The storefront price ranks these plans one way and the bill ranks them another, and the order you pay is the second one. Photographers have their own storage arithmetic, in hosting for photographers.
The Short Answer
Hostinger Premium, at $107.64 over three years — narrowly beaten by DreamHost at $104.04, which we reviewed later. It holds its introductory rate for 48 months, so a three-year window never reaches the renewal at all. Email hosting and WHOIS privacy are included rather than sold.
Bluehost Starter is second at $143.64, and Bluehost, a Newfold Digital brand, is the pick if you want a telephone number or your visitors are European.
What Cheap Actually Costs
| Host and plan | How it builds | 36-month total |
|---|---|---|
| ChemiCloud Starter, 36-month term | 36 prepaid months at $2.49 | $89.64 |
| InterServer Standard | 36 months at $2.50, price locked | $90.00 |
| DreamHost Launch, 48-month term | 36 of 48 prepaid months at $2.89 | $104.04 |
| Namecheap Stellar, 24-month term | 24 at $1.98, then 12 at $4.88 | $106.08 |
| Hostinger Premium, 48-month term | 36 of 48 prepaid months at $2.99 | $107.64 |
| HostGator Hatchling, 36-month term | 36 months at $3.75, renewal not reached | $135.00 |
| HostGator Hatchling, with daily backups | 36 at $3.75, plus CodeGuard at $35.88 a year | $242.64 |
| Bluehost Starter, 36-month term | 36 months at $3.99, renewal not reached | $143.64 |
| GoDaddy Economy, 36-month term | 36 months at $5.99, renewal not reached | $215.64 |
| GoDaddy Economy, with SSL from year two | 36 at $5.99, plus $119.99 in years two and three | $455.62 |
| Hostwinds Basic, annual | 12 at $4.54, then 24 at $6.99 | $222.24 |
| SiteGround StartUp, 24-month term | 24 at $2.99, then 12 at $14.99 | $251.64 |
| DreamHost Launch, annual | 12 at $2.89, then 24 at $10.99 | $298.44 |
| Scala Hosting Mini, annual | 12 at $2.95, then 24 at $11.95 | $322.20 |
| Bluehost Starter, 12-month term | 12 at $3.99, then 24 at $11.99 | $335.64 |
| IONOS Plus, annual | 12 at $1.00, then 24 at $14.00 | $348.00 |
| GreenGeeks Lite, 36-month prepay | 36 months at $2.95 | $106.20 |
| GreenGeeks Lite, annual | 12 at $2.95, then 24 at $13.95 | $370.20 |
| SiteGround StartUp, 12-month term | 12 at $2.99, then 24 at $17.99 | $467.64 |
| Cloudways, from | 36 months at $14.00, flat | $504.00 |
| A2 Hosting Turbo Boost, annual | 12 at $6.99, then 24 at $20.99 | $587.64 |
| Rocket.net Starter, annual | 12 at $25.00, then 24 at $30.00 | $1,020.00 |
| WP Engine Startup, annual | 12 at $27.00, then 24 at $35.00 | $1,164.00 |
| Liquid Web managed VPS | 36 months at $33.00 | $1,188.00 |
| Kinsta Starter | 36 months at $35.00, flat | $1,260.00 |
| InMotion Core, 36-month term | 36 months at $3.19, renewal not reached | $114.84 |
| InMotion Launch, 36-month term | 36 months at $4.99, renewal not reached | $179.64 |
Sorted by advertised price, however, three plans tie at the top and the ranking tells you nothing useful. Rank them by what you pay across three years and the order changes completely.
The spread between the cheapest and dearest way of buying is 11.7 times. Within shared hosting alone it is 4.3 times, between two plans that both advertise at $2.99 — the full arithmetic is here.
1. Hostinger Premium — $107.64
The lowest realistic three-year total in our five reviews. Its introductory rate of $2.99 runs for 48 months, which means a three-year window sits entirely inside the promotional term and the $10.99 renewal never arrives.
The plan includes email hosting, throws in WHOIS privacy rather than selling it, and adds a free domain on annual terms. Independent monitoring ranks it 5th of 34 hosts with a 351 ms global average — the full review is here.
What it costs you is commitment: $143.52 paid on day one for four years, with a 30-day refund window regardless of how long you prepay.
Choose it if you want the lowest three-year figure and prepaying does not worry you. Skip it if you need a telephone line, or you want resource limits published before you buy.
2. Bluehost Starter — $143.64
Second, and $36 behind first place. Its 36-month introductory rate of $3.99 also outlasts a three-year window, and it renews at $9.99 rather than climbing steeply.
It answers a published telephone number around the clock, includes email hosting, and scores 9.6 of 10 on hardware — the highest figure among the five hosts we reviewed. One benchmark measured European delivery at 52 ms in Frankfurt — the full review is here.
⚠️ The catch is the catalog. SiteLock at $95.88 a year, premium SSL at $89.88, Yoast SEO Premium at $99.99. Accept any one of them and the $36 advantage over Hostinger disappears several times over — we priced the whole list.
Worth it if you want a phone line and your visitors are European. Skip it if you say yes to things at checkout.
3. SiteGround StartUp — $251.64
Third, and only on its 24-month term. Bought annually the same plan costs $467.64, which is more than four times the Hostinger figure — for a plan advertised at the identical $2.99.
What the money buys is service. A published phone line with a reported 90% first-contact resolution rate, email and daily backups included, and every resource ceiling published per plan on one page — the full review is here.
The weaknesses are speed and the renewal. Global response was the slowest figure recorded across our five reviews, and the annual renewal of $17.99 is a sixfold increase on the advertised rate.
Choose it if support quality decides hosting for you. Look elsewhere if you will renew annually rather than committing to two years at a time.
4. Cloudways — $504.00
Fourth, and it is not shared hosting. You get a virtual server with stated cores and memory rather than a slice of a shared machine, so there is no resource ceiling to hit — the limits we wrote about simply do not exist in this model.
There is also no promotional rate and no renewal. Billing is hourly with no contract, and uptime measured across five cloud configurations ran between 99.996% and 99.999% — the full review is here.
Email is not included, costing about a dollar per mailbox monthly, and there is no telephone support at any tier.
Take it if a resource limit has already bitten you. Skip it if this is your first website.
5. Kinsta Starter — $1,260.00
Fifth, and included for completeness rather than as a cheap option.
Its edge network delivers in 25 to 42 milliseconds in Europe and North America, and Cloudflare Enterprise, performance monitoring and container isolation ship on every plan rather than as purchases. For an agency those replace separate subscriptions — the full review is here.
It sells no email at any price and has no telephone line.
Choose it if you host client sites and performance is revenue. Skip it if you are reading an article about cheap hosting.
The Cheapest Plan for Each Situation
A first blog or portfolio. Hostinger, and the decision is not close. Prepay the long term, decline everything at checkout, and the three-year figure is under $110.
A small business with staff email. Bluehost or SiteGround. Both include mailboxes; the two cloud hosts do not, and adding five addresses at Cloudways costs $180 across three years.
Someone who will telephone support. Bluehost or SiteGround, and nothing else on this page qualifies.
A site that has already been throttled. Cloudways. The ceiling is the problem, and only a dedicated server removes it.
European visitors. Bluehost measures 52 ms in Frankfurt, which no shared plan in our reviews matches.
How to Judge a Cheap Plan
Find the renewal rate for your exact term, not the plan’s headline renewal. The same plan often renews at three different prices depending on what you commit to.
Multiply the introductory rate by its months, cap at 36, then fill the remainder at the renewal rate. If the introductory term runs 36 months or longer, you are finished at that step.
Add the domain from year two and any add-on you genuinely intend to keep. If you are moving an existing site, the migration itself is usually free.
Then compare those totals rather than the storefront figures. One host moves from second cheapest to eighth on that step alone. On this page that single step moves SiteGround from joint first to fifth — the renewal detail is here.
How We Research
Every price comes from the host’s own pages, read on the dates stated in each review, and we attribute every performance figure to a named testing project and state its window. We run no tests of our own. The totals are arithmetic on published rates, and we show the working so you can check it.
Our five criteria and how each score is reached are on our About page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hostinger Premium at $107.64 over three years, among the five hosts we have reviewed. Its introductory rate holds for 48 months, so a three-year window never reaches the renewal. Bluehost Starter is second at $143.64.
Introductory rates apply to the first term only. A plan advertised at $2.99 can renew at $17.99, and the renewal figure depends on the term you committed to. The same plan often has two or three different renewal prices.
For a brochure site, blog or small shop, generally yes. Shared hosting becomes a problem when you hit a resource ceiling, which is when a dedicated server starts making sense at roughly four times the price.
Hostinger, Bluehost and SiteGround all include email hosting in the plan price. Cloudways sells mailboxes separately at about a dollar each monthly, and Kinsta does not offer email at any price.
Financially it usually helps: it lowers the rate and can push the renewal outside your planning window. The cost is flexibility, since refund windows stay at 30 days no matter how long you prepay.
The Verdict
Cheap is a three-year number, not a monthly one — and at six years the ranking changes again.
Hostinger wins it at $107.64, and Bluehost sits $36 behind — close enough that a telephone line may decide it for you. SiteGround costs between two and four times either, depending entirely on a term selector most buyers never open.
The plans that never change price cost more and are easier to plan. Whether that trade is worth making depends on whether a hosting limit has ever cost you a night’s sleep.