What web hosting really costs, and where the money goes

The two prices every hosting offer is made of

Almost every shared host in this market prices the same way: a low monthly figure that requires paying for one to four years up front, and a much higher figure every term after that. The first is what gets advertised. The second is what you pay for as long as you stay.

Neither of them is a monthly bill. The advertised rate is a monthly equivalent of an invoice you pay in one go, and the renewal rate is a monthly equivalent of the next invoice. How many months that next invoice covers is a separate published fact, and several hosts do not state it.

A worked example

Take Hostinger's Premium plan at $2.99 a month on a 48-month prepaid term, renewing at $10.99 (checked 2026-09-06). Two different numbers come out of that, and they are routinely reported as one:

Neither figure is 'what it costs'. $144 is what leaves your account on day one; $108 is the part of that which three years of hosting accounts for. Comparing a 48-month offer against a 12-month one over three years compares the second number, and the first is the one you have to find.

This is an example, not a quote. It uses one host's published list prices on one date and excludes everything in the next section.

Where the rest of the money goes

The two published numbers are a floor. What lifts a real invoice above them, in rough order of how often it bites:

• The domain in year two. A free first-year domain is standard. Its renewal is a separate price list, often well above what a registrar charges, and it lands at the same time as the hosting renewal.
• Going over the plan's limits. Managed WordPress hosts bill for extra visits, storage and bandwidth rather than taking the site down. Where a host publishes those rates, they are on its page here.
• Backups, email, SSL and migration are often sold separately. Which of these are bundled differs by host and by tier, and the cheapest tier is cheapest because something is missing.
• The tier you actually need. Entry plans commonly cap sites, storage or visits at a level that forces an upgrade within the first year.
• VAT applies in the United Kingdom, where most hosts publish ex-VAT. Add 20% if you are budgeting.

We do not put numbers on these, because they vary by host and by your situation, and an invented figure would be worse than none. They are the reason the calculator gives you a floor rather than a quote.

What you can change and what you cannot

Five questions to ask before you sign

1. What is the price when this term ends, in writing?
2. How long is the term I am prepaying for?
3. What does the free domain cost to renew?
4. What happens if I go past the plan's limits — billed, throttled, or suspended?
5. What is refundable, and for how long?

The first one is the only one that matters if you ask nothing else. A host that will not put its renewal price in writing has answered a different question — and 7 of the 36 hosts here do not publish it at all.

Do this next

Put your own period into the calculator to get the floor for every host that publishes a renewal price, then open the two closest on the host list and read their own pages. If you want to see how the arithmetic works before trusting it, the method page has all of it.

For the same question answered host by host, with the three-year service cost next to the advertised price for every US shared host in the dataset, read how much web hosting costs after the first year. For the renewal rates on their own, ranked lowest first, read the hosts that stay cheap in year two.