Best Cheap Web Hosting

For most of us, choosing between hosting providers doesn’t come down to the number of CPU cores or SSD versus NVMe storage. It’s about getting the best deal. When you want cheap web hosting that still delivers high-quality performance, consider Hostinger first. It’s a beginner-friendly and reliable platform that will cost you less than $3 per month.

The Best Cheap Web Hosting for Most

When it comes to low rates on shared hosting, Hostinger regularly delivers the best bang for your buck. While introductory and promotional pricing is always changing among the biggest names in web hosting, you can count on Hostinger’s shared hosting plans to always be right around $3 per month. On top of that, you’ll get an even better deal than that if you just need their entry-level plan for one website.

You don’t have to fret about sacrificing convenience or performance to get that price either. Our Hostinger site always loaded quickly during our testing period, we got helpful support from their reps when we needed it, and even their renewal rates are some of the most competitive in the world of web hosting.

Top Cheap Web Hosting Providers: Golden Eggs 

Below you’ll find our Golden Eggs, our top overall picks for affordable web hosts among the dozens we’ve researched. These three picks are likely to be a good fit for the widest range of users and needs.

Hostinger delivers some of the best performance you’ll see on shared servers at rock-bottom prices. Sign up today for as little as $1.99 per month.

DreamHost won’t make you pay more just to avoid committing to years of service at the outset. Get the cheapest month-to-month web hosting from DreamHost today.

SiteGround has a dedicated team of experts available 24/7 to provide hands-on customer support that goes above and beyond. Experience their outstanding service and reliability starting at just $2.99 per month. 

But if any of these don’t suit your needs, HostGator, UltaHost, and GreenGeeks are great choices. Bluehost and A2 Hosting also stand out. Read more in our reviews below.

When It Makes Sense to Choose Cheap Web Hosting

When it comes to choosing a web host, there are tons of options. There are shared plans, VPS (virtual private server) packages, cloud services, dedicated servers, and even reseller plans that let you sell hosting to others.

Of those, shared hosting plans are the most affordable. When you want cheap web hosting, that’s the category you want to focus on.

It makes sense to choose cheap web hosting if you’re starting a brand new website from scratch or you’re not planning to get a ton of traffic. You won’t get the best possible performance, but you really won’t need it if your site isn’t getting a lots of visitors.

If you’re building an ecommerce website, you probably shouldn’t choose the absolute cheapest plan available. You can still start with a shared package, but make sure it supports ecommerce functions. Otherwise, you’ll lose customers due to slow page loading times.

One quick word of caution—avoid free hosting plans. Free web hosting might sound good in theory. But if you’re serious about building a professional site that will attract visitors and potentially make you money, it’s best to avoid free web hosting altogether.

Free hosting comes with significant drawbacks—including limited storage, limited bandwidth, advertisements, and frequent crashes. You typically won’t have control over your domain name, and you often have no say in your website’s security. Free hosting providers also have no incentive to prioritize your site’s performance.

The good news is that you don’t have to pay a lot for web hosting if you’re building a brand-new website or upgrading from free hosting.

If you’re not sure where to start or which host to choose and you’re on a tight budget, you’re in the right place—we’ve tested out all the biggest names in web hosting. Read on to learn everything we’ve learned about who delivers real value among the many affordable hosting options.

#1 – Hostinger — Best Cheap Web Hosting for Most

If you’re looking for cheap hosting that’s reliable, fast, and easy to use, Hostinger is the way to go.

You can get hosting for a single site starting at just $1.99 per month on a four-year contract term. Or choose from other affordable options without settling for the entry-level plan or sticking yourself with a long-term commitment.

Whichever path you take, Hostinger will get your website up and running at a price you’ll like.

If you’re ready to build or host a simple website, the entry-level Single shared hosting plan will get you started on the right foot. That $1.99 monthly rate for four years will cost you just under $100 at checkout. That’s a reasonable expenditure to lock in just under half a decade’s worth of hosting.

However, be aware of other things that you might need to spend money on to make the most of your hosting. For one, Hostinger’s Single plan doesn’t include a free year of a premium domain name. Fortunately, you can purchase a domain during the checkout process. That will cost you somewhere in the ballpark of $10 per year for the domain, plus another $5 annually for domain protection.

We highly recommend protection if you’re registering a domain name using personal information (phone number, full name, and address) because it masks your contact info in the WHOIS domain registration database. If you’re registering as a business, it’s less important since your business info is already public knowledge.

But that’s just Hostinger’s most basic flavor of shared hosting. Taking one step up to the Premium shared plan gives you the first year of that domain name for free, plus unlocks some helpful features if you’re planning to build your site on WordPress.

Hostinger Premium shared hosting costs $2.99 per month on a four-year commitment—and you’ll get three months for free.

Don’t want to commit for that long? You can still get that excellent monthly rate on one-year and two-year contract terms, as well.

The key thing to be aware of here, though, is the renewal rate that you’ll pay once the term ends. For the Premium shared hosting plan, a four-year term lets you only pay $6.99 per month after the term expires. For 12-month and 24-month contracts, the renewal rates are $9.99 per month and $7.99 per month, respectively.

On the four-year contract, that’s some of the best renewal pricing you’ll find in the world of shared hosting. You’re still getting a year’s worth of hosting for well under $100, even after the promotional pricing goes away.

And this isn’t even touching other aspects of Hostinger’s overall affordability, like the rock-bottom pricing of their VPS plans (starting at just $4.99 per month) or the managed WordPress plans priced similarly to their shared plans.

And, for the low expense, you’re getting a quality web host that is all about making site creation and management easy for first-timers.

Once you’ve checked out and registered your Hostinger account, you’ll be taken to a screen that allows you to quickly build a new website.

Click Start Now, and you can choose a site theme before kicking off Hostinger’s guided website setup process. There are several high-quality options to choose from—but don’t worry about making the wrong choice here. You can always change your theme later.

After that, you’re taken to your personal hosting dashboard, where you can manage your new site, view any plugins that have been installed, manage your email accounts (which can be tied to the custom domain you secured), and add additional domain names. 

In just a few short minutes, you’ll have WordPress installed, a theme for your WordPress site set up, and basic configurations complete.

Hostinger makes sure you get a site that is complete and functional when you’re done. They hold your hand through the process and make it easy for anyone to go from nothing to a ready-to-go website.

And, if you’re ever stuck or confused, Hostinger’s live chat support is helpful and available 24/7. Just be advised that we often had to wait around a while to get connected to someone, and reviews from real Hostinger users echo that sentiment.

All in all, Hostinger represents the most stress-free path to securing quality hosting for your website on the cheap. And they make it wonderfully easy if you want a little help building that site.

If you want to dive into the nitty-gritty of plan features, Hostinger’s offerings beyond shared hosting, and a deeper dive overall into this provider, read all about it in our full post reviewing Hostinger.

Or, if you’ve seen enough to know Hostinger provides the best value for your budget, get started today by signing up for one of Hostinger’s eminently affordable shared hosting plans.

#2 – DreamHost — The Cheapest Month-to-Month Web Hosting

When you survey the landscape of hosting providers, you’ll find one theme common to everyone—that sweet promotional pricing you see on their homepages only comes on long-term contracts.

DreamHost knows that not everyone is looking for web hosting for the long haul. While others charge full boat for month-to-month billing, DreamHost still lets you get an introductory deal without committing to years at the outset.

Simple, easy-to-grasp pricing is one of DreamHost’s hallmarks. You have just two fully featured shared hosting plans to choose from: Shared Starter and Shared Unlimited.

Shared Starter can get a single website up and running for as little as $2.59 per month. That, unlike many other providers’ entry-level plans, comes with a free year of a domain name, free WordPress site migrations, automated daily backups, and automatic WordPress updates.

No wonder DreamHost is one of three hosting providers officially recommended by WordPress itself.

Upfront costs stay low no matter how you slice it. That $2.59 per month rate is available on a three-year commitment (meaning $93.24 due at checkout), but the one-year commitment doesn’t raise the rate too much—it’s just $2.95 per month for a total of $35.40 for year one of hosting costs.

That’s some low pricing, but we led this review off by highlighting how affordable DreamHost is when you go month-to-month. Well, it’s still quite cheap, even without a contract.

Monthly billing for Shared Starter begins at a rate of $4.95 per month for your first three months. After that, you’re on the hook for the renewal rate.

That sounds like it’s going to jump up a lot, right?

It’s only $7.99 per month after your third month of promotion pricing. Compare that with the $9.99 per month (or more) that other providers will charge you after the introductory rate goes away, even after one-year or multi-year initial terms.

Not only does this make DreamHost exceptional for trying their hosting services out without commitment; it also positions this provider as the best (and cheapest) choice for specific site cases.

We’re thinking of event websites, landing pages attached to marketing or sales campaigns, registration pages for classes or webinars, and just about anything else where a website isn’t meant to stick around until the end of time.

Whenever you have a website that’s intended to have a short shelf life and you need cheap and reliable hosting, think about DreamHost before all others.

It’s not just the affordable rates for no-contract hosting plans—it’s also the reliability you get. During our testing period, DreamHost’s servers delivered uptime for all but 49 seconds of the entire month.

So, not only can you rest easy that your short-term website isn’t costing you an arm and a leg to host—you can also be confident that it’s always available to visitors, doing what it’s supposed to be doing, whether that’s converting visitors into subscribers, registering attendees, or anything else.

Now, this is all on the Shared Starter plan, which only allows for hosting a single website and doesn’t include email accounts. If you need those, plus unlimited site storage and subdomains, you can go for the Shared Unlimited plan. That starts at $3.95 per month for a three-year contract or $8.95 for monthly billing.

Another thing to be mindful of is that neither plan gives you a free year of a domain when you opt for monthly billing. That extra benefit is only available on year-long commitments or longer terms.

Get short-term hosting without being punished at checkout for it. Use DreamHost’s inexpensive shared hosting without ever having to commit to service for longer than you need to.

#3 – HostGator — The Best for Promoting Your New Site

HostGator might not deliver rock-bottom shared hosting rates to the same degree as some others on this list, but they sweeten the pot in a way no other provider does.

On two of their three shared hosting plans, they give you a total of $600 in advertising credits—$100 in free credits for Microsoft Advertising and a whopping $500 spend match credit for Google Ads.

That’s a huge benefit for those of you who have ambitious plans for your website from the get-go. The slight amount more you’ll pay per month on HostGator is outweighed by the free marketing you can accomplish with this hosting provider.

Every shared hosting plan comes with one-click WordPress installation, unmetered bandwidth, and a free year of domain registration.

Starting at $3.75 per month, HostGator’s entry-level Hatching plan is a solid deal. But you won’t be able to tap into those marketing credits unless you opt for the mid-tier Baby Plan or higher.

For just $0.75 more per month, HostGator’s Baby Plan is a much better value. The Baby Plan starts at $4.50 per month for a three-year commitment, for a total of $162 due at checkout. That’s still not too bad.

This tier lets you host up to five sites with a total of 40 GB of storage space. On top of the advertising credits, this plan also unlocks phone-based customer support and unlimited parked domains.

Now, HostGator runs a bit more expensive than some of its more budget-minded peers.

But it’s on shorter contract terms and renewal that HostGator might leave the realm of truly “cheap” web hosting. That 36-month term renews at a hefty $12.99 per month, which is four cents more than the rate you’d pay for month-to-month billing or a six-month contract.

Opting for a one-year term will cost you $72 at checkout ($6 per month). Again, not too bad, but you get seriously punished on renewal. Your monthly rate becomes $14.99 after that first year of promotional pricing, which is the most expensive rate that HostGator charges for the Baby Plan.

This is the main theme with HostGator—do the math before you sign up to make sure your expenditure (both now and in the future) is worth it. For some of you, those elevated rates will be balanced or negated by the $600 in free marketing you can use on your new site.

That also applies to the checkout process. Be careful of some of the upsells that are pre-checked, making you feel like you definitely need to have them.

SiteLock Essentials is a nice-to-have addition and you’re getting a solid deal by getting it through HostGator, just be aware of the difference between the initial pricing ($35.88 for year one) and its renewal pricing ($83.88 for every year thereafter).

Similarly, you can get CodeGuard for site backups at a decent rate. But you don’t need any of these, especially if you’re running a WordPress site and can find better (sometimes cheaper or free) options for backups, site security, and more.

Though HostGator’s shared hosting prices are a bit higher, they provide an excellent path for affordably scaling up your web hosting. When your marketing efforts really start to bear fruit, you can step up to their cloud hosting options for as little as $4.95 per month. We have an entire post reviewing HostGator’s cloud offerings, which you can read to learn more.

In the end, if you’re serious about promoting your website and are willing to pay a bit more for hosting to get some help with your marketing efforts, HostGator is a smart choice.

#4 – UltaHost — The Best for Keeping Renewal Rates Low

UltaHost is a bit of a lesser-known name on this list, but it’s a reputable and reliable platform for anyone who wants long-lasting predictability from their hosting bills.

Plans start at around $3.08 per month for a one-year contract. If you opt for monthly billing, it’s a very palatable $3.29 per month.

That gives you some assurance that UltaHost isn’t pushing low promotional rates just to gouge you if you don’t pony up for multiple years. While the above rates are for their entry-level Shared Starter plan—which supports one domain and delivers 30 GB of storage—most site owners will prefer UltaHost’s Shared Basic plan.

That runs $5 per month for no commitment, or $4.67 per month when you lock in for a full year. With it, you get support for up to four domains, twice the storage as Shared Starter, and monthly bandwidth for up to 15,000 visitors.

All plans come with a free SSL certificate, free site backups, and free domain transfers. Plus, your hosting purchase is covered by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

One unique standout of UltaHost compared to other providers is its billing flexibility. While it’s not uncommon to see web hosts offer several different billing options, we typically see three main flavors here—month-to-month, annual, and three-year contracts. 

UltaHost gives you six options for billing, including quarterly, six-month, and two-year terms. Each longer commitment reduces the rate you pay by a bit.

But, UltaHost really shines in terms of renewal rates. While they do go up after your initial term, the renewal pricing barely moves the needle. Especially when you compare it to everyone else on this list.

For example, on month-to-month billing, the Shared Starter plan goes from $3.29 per month to $4.39 per month and Shared Basic jumps from $5 to just $6.67. 

This is considerably less than other hosting providers that nearly triple the rates when the promo period ends. UltaHost stays cheap for the long run. 

UltaHost plans also entitle you to a free drag-and-drop website builder powered by Weebly. However, this doesn’t automatically come with your plan. If you simply proceed with the default options, then you’re not going to get the free site builder. You need to manually select it, which can easily be overlooked in the sea of upsells during the checkout process. 

But it’s really a minor blemish on an otherwise refreshing hosting provider. You don’t even have to build on Weebly to get a website going on UltaHost. It’s just a nice option that’s easy for people who want to swiftly whip up a site from scratch.

On top of the stellar renewal pricing, UltaHost delivers quality 24/7 support through live chat. They’re helpful and knowledgeable from our experience.

If you’re moving to UltaHost from another web host, the support team also provides free migration services. 

But the benefits don’t stop there. With UltaHost, you’re getting enterprise-grade security for your site—even at the cheapest shared hosting level.

UltaHost provides 24/7 proactive server monitoring —taking care of all the technical requirements behind the scenes on your behalf. This helps protect your site from malware, viruses, spyware, redirects, DDoS attacks, and other threats in real time. 

UltaHost even updates your security instances and plugins automatically. You’ll always be running on the latest versions that have been patched against new threats and common exploits. 

Get started with UltaHost today and lock in great pricing for the long haul.

#5 – SiteGround — The Best for Getting Truly Helpful Support

Lots of hosting companies promise you the moon. But, when things go wrong, they don’t have your back. 

Not SiteGround. They offer genuinely helpful one-on-one support for all their customers. You can get a hold of SiteGround representatives 24/7 via live chat or phone call and get help in over 10 languages.

This is a huge edge on other hosting providers who rely on bots or knowledge base articles to answer customer questions and avoid the hard work of hiring people to actually deliver useful assistance to their customers. 

Every time we tested their support out via live chat or phone call, we were always connected to a SiteGround rep almost immediately. And, reps got right to the point, giving us relevant articles, step-by-step instructions, and a clear expectation of what we could and couldn’t accomplish.

Our longest interaction took just eight minutes, from connecting with a rep through resolution. With some other providers on this list, we had to wait three times that long just to connect to a real human being.

And SiteGround agents didn’t try to upsell us anything, in addition to the very friendly and helpful nature of every agent we spoke with. 

We were particularly impressed with our support chat regarding site speed (which you can see a snippet of in the screenshot above). They offered several different resources we could use to keep our site speedy, and they didn’t make us feel like any questions we had were silly or a waste of their time. 

Speaking of speedy sites, we were impressed by SiteGround’s overall performance during our testing. We only experienced two total seconds of downtime over a month of monitoring our test site and site load times stayed (mostly) consistently under one second.

For this level of performance and service, you’re going to pay a little bit more. Upfront costs are pretty typical, with SiteGround’s entry-level shared hosting plan (StartUp) starting at $2.99 per month for a 12-month commitment.

If you need a plan that supports more than one website or gives you more storage and monthly bandwidth for visitors, GrowBig runs $4.99 per month for a one-year term.

The only real issue here is how the rates spike upon renewal. StartUp only costs you $35.88 for the first year on that promotional pricing, but it will cost you $14.99 per month after that. GrowBig jumps all the way up to $24.99 per month after your first-year rate ends.

That’s a massive hike in rates, so just make sure you budget for this if you stick with SiteGround for the long haul.

But, in our eyes, that price can be worth it if you value consistent performance supported by superlative customer service.

If you’re willing to pay a bit more for that kind of peace of mind, get started with SiteGround today.

#6 – GreenGeeks — The Fastest Cheap Web Hosting

If you want raw speed at a low price, go with GreenGeeks. When we conducted our 30-day test, we were floored by how GreenGeeks blew away the competition in this regard. 

And the truth is, they don’t boast about site speed like other providers. So, we’ll do the boasting for them.

Granted, we ran our tests on a pretty bare-bones website. But we did that for all of the providers we tested out. And GreenGeeks ran away with this category of testing, delivering an average load time of under half a second.

Outside of a few spikes that still barely exceeded one second, GreenGeeks loaded our site in the blink of an eye for just about the entire month.

This is twice as fast as some of the other hosts that we tested and top-tier performance for a shared hosting plan. You don’t even need to add any plugins or fiddle with any settings to unlock this speed.    

Even on their worst day, GreenGeeks is faster than some other shared hosting providers’ best days.  

They also give you a setup process that helps you get started on the right foot. You can choose which plugins you want pre-installed during onboarding, rather than having to manually delete the ones you don’t want.

GreenGeeks’ setup wizard streamlined the entire process of getting set up. The only thing we didn’t like was the lack of information on what to do after we installed WordPress. 

You’ll have to pay a bit more than some other providers to unlock this level of speed on shared hosting. That’s to be expected.

Promotional pricing is right in the same ballpark as the other big names. GreenGeeks’ single-site shared hosting plan runs you $2.95 per month for a one-year term, meaning you’ll pay $35.40 at checkout. For unlimited websites, storage space, and email, their mid-tier plan starts at $4.95 per month on a 12-month contract, for a checkout total of $59.40.

All plans, including the entry-level one, include a free year of a custom domain name, a free SSL certificate, nightly site data backups, and a unique 300% green energy match. That last one is a great thing to promote if your company or organization is also eco-conscious.

Renewal pricing is a bit steep. That single-site plan’s rate rises to $11.95 per month after your first year while the mid-tier option runs $16.95 per month after your one-year promotional term ends.

All in all, GreenGeeks is the fastest host on this list. If you’re willing to pay a bit more after year one to keep your site loading in the blink of an eye (without leaving shared hosting), GreenGeeks will keep you satisfied.

#7 – Bluehost — Best Cheap Web Hosting for WordPress

We highly recommend Bluehost for WordPress sites because it’s one of only three hosts officially recommended by the developers of WordPress.

While every other provider on this list can also support WordPress, Bluehost delivers a wide array of WordPress-centric shared hosting plans, including options for online stores using WooCommerce.

It’s also one of the least expensive options on our list, making it appealing to budget-minded site owners no matter their preferred site platform.

Bluehost’s shared and WordPress hosting plans are identical. Basically, you don’t have to use WordPress on Bluehost’s plans, but they make it easy for you to install and build your site on it if you’d like to.

Plans start at $2.95 per month for your first 12 months, renewing at $10.99 per month after that. This supports for one website and just 10 GB of SSD storage, so you may want to start by looking at the a higher tier to get the most out of your hosting experience.

Starting at $5.45 per month, the Choice Plus plan gives you 40 GB of storage, plus a free CDN, a free year of a domain, daily site backups for one year, and malware scanning. Just be aware that this plan renews at $19.99 per month after the promotional period ends.

That renewal spike is a bit much, so you can save money on Choice Plus over the long haul by opting for a three-year commitment up front. You’ll pay a bit more in terms of monthly rate for year one, but you more than halve the renewal rate for years two and three.

Whichever approach you choose, you’re getting a beginner-friendly platform that helps guide you through a lot of the initial setup. You get a step-by-step walkthrough of what to do to get your site set up from start to finish, with the option to skip the wizard if you’re more experienced.

Plus, you get automatic WordPress installation and automatic core updates, so your site is always running the most optimized version of WordPress without you having to do a thing.

That’s great for novices who may not be familiar with the regular maintenance that site management entails. These automatic updates are a crucial piece of keeping your site secure—even if you’re not around to update it manually.

The only things to be cautious of are the upsells in the checkout process. A couple are pre-selected that you don’t really need: CodeGuard Basic and SiteLock Security, each priced at $2.99 per month.

From that point forward, though, the process is straightforward and easy to follow. 

One last benefit of choosing Bluehost is their support for new online store owners. You can secure WooCommerce hosting—which is a WordPress-based platform for adding ecommerce functionality and a whole lot more to your site—for as little as $9.95 per month.

That’s a steal for getting quality web hosting plus ecommerce features from one provider.

Whether you’re building a standard WordPress site or trying to build up a new ecommerce operation, Bluehost should be near the top of your list.  

#8 – A2 Hosting — The Best for Sites Focused on Europe and Asia

A2 Hosting is the right choice for affordable shared hosting that can still perform well when your site gets visitors from all around the globe.

That’s because of their well-placed data centers, which give you access to servers in Amsterdam and Singapore. By using one of those servers for your website, you can ensure great visitor experiences for your fans, customers, or prospects in Europe or Asia.

They also have two separate data centers for the United States, one in Arizona and one in Michigan, which helps you also reduce the time to first byte if you have a larger visitor base on one coast of the U.S. over the other.

But it’s the global data centers that really appeal to us, because A2 Hosting is a bit pricey and disappointing for hosting a website with a primarily domestic audience.

Introductory rates for A2’s shared hosting start as low as $2.99 per month for a single-site plan with an ample 100 GB of storage (which is more than you’ll see from most other providers’ entry-level plans). A shared plan for unlimited sites and storage starts at $5.99 per month.

Both of those low rates come on a one-year commitment, but you can also secure the unlimited shared plan for the same rate for three years.

On renewal, the single-site plan rises to $11.99 per month while the unlimited one goes up to $14.99 per month. Both of those rates aren’t too bad—you’ll notice that many others on this list have steeper renewal rate spikes.

If you’re willing to spend a bit more, you can secure one of A2 Hosting’s more unique offerings: their Turbo servers. Those can deliver up to 20 times faster performance than traditional shared servers and they come with enhanced NVMe storage. Those plans start at $6.99 per month for a one-year or three-year term on promotional pricing.

There are some other flaws we didn’t care for. The onboarding and checkout experience was a bit painful. The checkout pages are overwhelming, with tons of information packed into a small space. There are lots of upsells to navigate, as well.

Plus, A2 charges extra if you want to use their page builder, which is something almost everyone else offers for free. You could alternatively use a standalone site builder for free, as well.

After you create your account, there’s little guidance. We received an email with a ton of different login credentials and that’s about it. You’re largely left to figure it out on your own. 

Outside of these issues, we still rate A2 Hosting quite highly. They make it easier to cater to international site visitors and unlock enhanced site speed without having to leave the more affordable world of shared hosting.

If you have a global audience or want to launch a site specifically for your visitors in Europe or Asia, get started today on A2 Hosting.

Methodology for Choosing the Best Cheap Web Hosting

We determined which hosting providers made the cut for this list through a time-consuming research process. We took an entire month to collect all the data for our recommendations.  

For every host that we evaluated, we went through this testing process:

1. We opened a brand-new account with the web host
2. Starting from scratch, we went through their entire onboarding process
3. We set up a new website by installing WordPress, using the same theme and settings
4. We monitored site speed and uptime for the month
5. We went through three separate support interactions to see how helpful they were

After running all our tests, we determined which hosting providers offered the best value for certain use cases. Every provider above offers a cheap shared hosting plan or two—but what gives you the most bang for your buck for each one?

That’s why you’ll see every review above explain what you’ll end up paying for at least one shared hosting plan, then elaborate on what kind of site owner would get the most out of using that plan. For some folks, just getting the lowest rate is all that matters. For others, it’s about getting a good deal on a host that delivers specific benefits, like speed or ecommerce support.  

Let’s go through the main factors we used to determine which web hosts to include on our list and where to rank them.

The Upfront Cost of Promotional Pricing

Getting a cheap web host is all about keeping your costs down.

Every provider that we reviewed has a plan with monthly promotional pricing under $7. At first glance, everyone’s pricing can look very similar.

In practice, though, the total you’ll spend for your first year of hosting can vary from $35 to $85 due at checkout. That’s a huge range.

The first thing to watch for is the cost of add-ons, like a domain name, domain registrar privacy, and other features you may need that aren’t included in your hosting plan. 

Our research discovered that many “cheap” plans don’t include some of these things, which means you’ll pay more than you’re expecting. Domain names are a big one here—just about every provider offers a free year of a domain, but usually only on select plans. The really valuable cheap hosts extend this offer on all shared hosting plans.

So, while something may seem to be the cheapest option out there, don’t forget to factor in these extra expenses when comparing prices for different providers. 

The other thing to be on the lookout for is term length. That rock-bottom rate you see on every hosting provider’s pricing page isn’t for a true monthly bill. You’re going to need to commit to a year or longer at the outset to secure that rate.

And rates can change significantly based on the length of that commitment. Sometimes, a provider’s plan on a one-year term is priced at a lower monthly rate than a three-year term. In other cases, the inverse is true and you get the best deal overall by locking in three years at checkout.

The bottom line here is that you’re not going to get that $2.99 per month rate by only paying $2.99 at checkout today. You’ll need to factor in how much cash you need to put down after signing up and what it’s going to cost you for the long haul.

That’s why renewal pricing is an entirely separate consideration.

Renewal Pricing and Long-Term Value

Let’s say you get a great promotional price. You’ve paid as little as possible for your first year. Time goes by, you forget about your hosting entirely, and one day you look at your credit card bill to see months of charges that are almost as much as you paid for the first year of hosting itself.

That happens all the time. And it is one of the most frustrating parts of running a website. Hosting providers will hike up your rates after your promotional period ends, there’s no way around that. All you can do is educate yourself on these renewal rates before you commit to a host in the first place.

Among the providers on our list, we saw second-year increases of anywhere between 50% and 137%.

The key here is to consider this alongside the way that your introductory term affects pricing. Longer initial commitments tend to give you slightly reduced renewal rates once they expire. So, you may end up paying $2 more per month to choose a three-year term over a one-year term at checkout, but you get to reap the benefits of a monthly rate that’s $1 lower after the term ends.

In this case, you want to think about how long you’re planning to keep this site (or hosting plan) up and running. If it’s a short-term project for marketing or an event, you probably won’t gain any value by going for the longer term.

But, for any site that plans on sticking around for a while, you’ll want to prioritize long-term value by calculating what a hosting provider will cost you in year four and beyond.

Help for Web Hosting Beginners

A lot of people looking for cheap shared hosting don’t have a lot of demands in terms of resources and extra features. Really, they just want affordable hosting for their website from a provider that makes it easy for them to manage it and get help when it’s needed.

That’s where two big factors come into play: the ease of setting up your hosting and website and the convenience and helpfulness of a host’s channels for customer support.

Ideally, the onboarding and setup process should feel effortless.

When we set up our sites on a few of the providers we reviewed above, our experience was excellent. We were walked step-by-step through the process and felt confident along the way. And, most importantly, we felt any beginner could easily do the same.

We favored hosts that provide a guided process in a clean interface that’s easy to grasp, especially if they clearly marked your options for building a new site or migrating an existing one to your new host.

Others that we tested weren’t as neat and clean as this. Some densely pack information into your screen. Even if what’s shown on the page isn’t super technical, it could easily be overwhelming for someone who has never set up their own hosting before.

The whole process can be very confusing if you have no idea what’s going on.

In the reviews above, we make sure to call out both sides of this coin, highlighting the hosts kindest on beginners and flagging those that make this process more complicated than inexperienced users might like.

Then, there’s support. Even if the setup process is the easiest thing in the world, you’re likely to eventually run into something that requires you to seek direct assistance from your hosting provider. That might be unexpected downtime or errors or just questions you have about how to maximize performance or accomplish something.

Whether you’ve never set up a website before or have set up hundreds, quality 24/7/365 support is crucial.

At this point, most providers offer at least live chat support. Quality can vary here, both in terms of how long you’ll have to wait to connect to a rep and how helpful that rep will actually be.

When providers really shone in their level of service, we spotlighted that in their review above. Unfortunately, truly helpful customer support can be rare these days. So, when we encountered representatives that understood our questions and answered them in a timely, thoughtful manner, we were floored.

The same goes for any provider that offers phone-based support. This, too, is exceedingly rare these days. But it can make a world of difference for a user when they have a phone number to call instead of a live chat widget.

We based our assessment of customer support based on reps’ answers to these three questions:

• What security features do you offer so I can make my site more secure? 
• Can you walk me through setting up my email address at my domain? 
• How can I make my site load as fast as possible? 

These are common issues for a novice user to have. When we call out a provider for good support, it means they answered these questions in a way that surpassed our expectations. You can be confident you’ll also get quality answers to these and any other questions should you opt for that web host.

Ability to Scale

Getting a cheap web hosting plan shouldn’t restrict your room for growth. While the cheapest plans on the market are always going to be entry-level shared hosting, you should still take a look at what your web hosting provider can offer at different tiers.

There are two common paths to take as you eventually outgrow your cheap shared plan.

You can either upgrade to another shared plan that has more resources or upgrade to another type of hosting—most commonly cloud hosting or VPS hosting.

Migrating your site to another web host is a pain, and it’s something you definitely want to avoid unless it’s absolutely necessary. So take the extra few minutes now to ensure the host at the top of your list offers a variety of other hosting options to choose from as your site grows in the coming years.

This will ultimately save you more money in the long run and reduce the chances of downtime and data loss during a migration.

Expanding Your Knowledge: Best Cheap Web Hosting

Summary

Finding a cheap web host that performs well enough for your needs can be hard. We hope our post takes some of the mystery and misery out of finding the best choice.

Our advice is always to sit down and take the time to list out your requirements. Then, make an educated decision based on your priorities and specific needs, particularly your budget. 

Hostinger is our top recommendation for cheap web hosting. It’s a safe bet that let you get started for next to nothing and delivers solid performance. But, if they don’t check all your boxes, you can use this post as a guide while you go through the process of making your final purchasing decision.