The median cheap host is $3.51 a month until it is $10.49
Take the cheapest plan of every host I track, line them up, and the shape is the same: a small number that needs two years paid upfront, then a renewal at roughly triple. Fifty-eight percent at least double.
Every host I track has a cheapest plan. Line up 26 of them (the 27th, Verpex, prints its intro prices with JavaScript and the check has not captured them yet, so it has a renewal price on record but no intro price, and no cliff to measure; I left it out) and the numbers, as of this morning's check, come out like this.
| Across the cheapest plan of 26 hosts | Figure |
|---|---|
| Median intro price | $3.51 a month |
| Median renewal price | $10.49 a month |
| Median jump from intro to renewal | +125% |
| Plans that at least double at renewal | 58% |
| Plans with the same price before and after | 7 of 26 |
| Median three-year cost on the cheapest path | $164.28 |
The shape is the same almost everywhere. The intro price is real, but it is the price for a term you pay upfront, most often 24 or 36 months. When the term ends, the plan renews at a number that is typically two to three times higher, and that number is the one that describes the plan for as long as you keep it.
Cheapest at intro is sometimes cheapest over three years, which surprised me
ChemiCloud's Starter plan has the lowest intro price on the table, $1.49 a month, and the biggest jump, to $11.95, which is +702%. I assumed that combination would make it expensive over three years. It does not, because the three-year term is prepaid at the intro rate: $53.64 covers the whole period, and that is also the lowest three-year total on the table. The lesson is not that ChemiCloud is cheap or dear. It is that the intro price, the renewal price and the multi-year total are three different questions, and comparison sites answer only the first.
Seven hosts on the list charge the same price before and after: no discount, no cliff. They look expensive in the first year next to a $1.99 intro and reasonable by year four. Cloudways and Kinsta are the familiar names among them.
How to use this
The true-cost calculator does the arithmetic for one to five years, using the longest intro term and then the stated renewal price. Cheapest at renewal ranks the same plans by the price after the intro, and by the three-year total. Both are rebuilt every morning; the numbers in this post are today's and will drift. The medians are also on their own page, what a cheap web host really costs, where they update daily.
Corrected the same day it was published: an earlier version of this post named InterServer as the excluded host. It is Verpex.
Update, later the same day: Verpex's intro prices are now read from the price data its own plan cards load, so from the next morning's check the medians cover all 27 hosts. The figures above are the 26-host figures of the morning this was written.
The figures in this post are what the pages said on the dates given. The tables linked from it are re-read every morning and may have moved since; the changes log has every move with a date and a receipt.