Hostinger, Bluehost, SiteGround and Cloudways all advertise a low monthly price. What they don't advertise in the same size type is the prepaid term behind that price — and the renewal price waiting at the end of it. This guide compares all four on both numbers, and on what four years of hosting actually costs.
Premium plan. The $2.99 rate requires prepaying 48 months ($143.52 due today).
Starter plan. The $3.99 rate requires prepaying 36 months ($143.64 due today).
StartUp plan. The $2.99 rate covers 12 months prepaid ($35.88 due today) — then the renewal arrives.
Managed cloud on DigitalOcean (1GB server). Billed hourly, invoiced monthly. No long-term contract.
| Hostinger | Bluehost | SiteGround | Cloudways | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Lowest long-term cost if you can commit to 4 years upfront | First-time WordPress users who want the official recommendation | Users who value daily backups, email and support tools — and will reassess at renewal | Growing sites, WooCommerce and anyone who refuses renewal pricing games |
| Pricing model | Prepaid terms with intro discount | Prepaid terms with intro discount | Prepaid terms with intro discount | Pay-as-you-go, billed monthly — no intro discount, no renewal price |
| Entry plan | Premium | Starter | StartUp | Flexible on DigitalOcean, 1GB |
| Intro price | $2.99/mo | $3.99/mo | $2.99/mo | — (flat $14/mo) |
| Term behind the headline price | 48 months prepaid | 36 months prepaid | 12 months prepaid | None — hourly billing |
| Due at signup | $143.52 | $143.64 | $35.88 | $0 today (3-day trial; then monthly in arrears) |
| Renewal price | $10.99/mo (about 3.7× intro) | $9.99/mo (about 2.5× intro) | $17.99/mo (about 6× intro) | $14/mo — unchanged |
| 4-year hosting total | $143.52 | $263.52 | $683.52 | $672.00 |
| Websites / storage (entry) | 3 websites / 20 GB SSD | 10 websites / 10 GB NVMe | 1 website / 10 GB | Unlimited websites / 25 GB NVMe per server |
| Backups (entry) | Weekly (daily on higher plans) | Weekly | Daily, 30 days of restore points | Automated backups; off-site storage charged per GB |
| Free domain | Yes, first year (renews at the standard rate, about $19.99/yr for .com) | Yes, first year (renews at roughly $15–20/yr) | Yes, first year on current plans | No domains sold — register separately |
| 2 mailboxes per site, free for year one, then paid | Professional Email is a free trial, then paid | Unlimited email accounts included | Not included; Rackspace email add-on $1.50/mailbox/mo | |
| Platform & caching (published specs) | LiteSpeed servers, built-in CDN, custom hPanel | NVMe storage, global CDN, static + object caching, staging included | Google Cloud, SuperCacher (NGINX + Memcached), CDN on 170+ locations | Your choice of 5 clouds and region; Varnish / Redis / Memcached stack; Object Cache Pro free on 4GB+ servers |
| Migration | Free migration offered | Free migration tool; assisted migration for qualifying plans | First migration free; free WordPress migrator plugin | First migration handled free by their engineers |
| Trade-off to know | The cheap price is a 48-month prepayment; the renewal term after it costs $527.52 | Phone support starts on the Business plan, not Starter; email is a trial | The renewal lands at month 13 and is the highest here — the 4-year total ends up the most expensive | No domain, no included email, and add-ons (Cloudflare Enterprise $4.99/domain/mo) raise the real monthly bill |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. "Intro price" is a monthly equivalent: the full term is charged upfront, so the amount due at signup is the figure that matters. Hostinger rotates promotions frequently — during a Black Friday promotion in November 2026 we saw Premium listed at $1.99/mo, while the renewal price stayed at $10.99/mo. Renewal prices shown are for renewing on the same term length; renewing on a shorter term can cost more per month. Plans change — always confirm the current intro price, the term, and the renewal price on the vendor's site before you buy.
The headline monthly price is the least honest number in hosting, because each host's clock runs differently: Hostinger's intro term lasts four years, Bluehost's lasts three, SiteGround's lasts one. So we ran each entry plan forward for 48 months using the vendors' published intro and renewal prices (hosting only, before tax, assuming November 2026 renewal rates stay in place):
| Entry plan | The math | 4-year total | Effective per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger Premium | $2.99 × 48 months — the intro term covers all four years | $143.52 | $2.99 |
| Bluehost Starter | $3.99 × 36 months ($143.64), then year four at the $9.99 renewal rate ($119.88) | $263.52 | $5.49 |
| SiteGround StartUp | $2.99 × 12 months ($35.88), then three renewal years at $17.99/mo ($647.64) | $683.52 | $14.24 |
| Cloudways (DigitalOcean 1GB) | $14 × 48 months — no intro, no renewal change | $672.00 | $14.00 |
Three things fall out of this arithmetic. First, the plan with the cheapest first year (SiteGround, $35.88) has the most expensive four-year total, because its renewal arrives at month 13. Second, SiteGround's four-year total lands within a few dollars of Cloudways' — by year four you are paying managed-cloud money either way; the difference is that Cloudways told you so on day one and gives you a dedicated-resource server for it. Third, Hostinger's lead is real but conditional: it is the price of committing $143.52 for four years today, and the bill that follows — $527.52 for the next 48-month term at the current renewal rate — is the largest single charge on this page. None of these totals include domain renewals after the free first year, paid email after free periods end, or checkout add-ons, all of which are covered per host below.
Hostinger's shared and WordPress plans run on LiteSpeed servers with a built-in CDN and its own hPanel control panel. The entry Premium plan is $2.99/mo as a monthly equivalent — which means $143.52 charged upfront for 48 months — and includes 3 websites, 20 GB SSD storage, weekly backups, a free domain for the first year, SSL, and two email mailboxes per site free for the first year. It renews at $10.99/mo for the same term, so the second term costs $527.52. Higher plans raise the same structure: Unlimited renews at $16.99/mo and adds daily backups and NVMe storage; Cloud Startup renews at $25.99/mo. As Hostinger itself puts it on its pricing page, all plans are paid upfront and the monthly rate is the total divided by the number of months — the $2.99 is an average, not a billing option.
Bluehost has been a WordPress.org recommended host since 2005, and its WordPress plans are built around a guided setup with an AI site builder, automatic WordPress updates and staging on every plan. The Starter plan is $3.99/mo on a 36-month prepaid term ($143.64 due at signup), renewing at $9.99/mo — the smallest intro-to-renewal jump of the three prepaid hosts. Starter covers 10 websites, 10 GB NVMe storage, a free domain for year one, CDN, SSL and weekly backups, with a vendor guideline of roughly 40,000 visits a month. The Business plan ($6.99/mo intro, $13.99/mo renewal) adds storage, domain privacy and phone support — note that Starter itself is chat-only. Professional Email is offered as a free trial rather than an inclusion, and converts to a paid add-on.
SiteGround runs its shared and WordPress hosting on Google Cloud, with its SuperCacher stack (NGINX delivery plus Memcached), a built-in CDN across 170+ locations, daily backups with 30 days of restore points, and unlimited email accounts — a genuinely fuller included-feature list than the other prepaid hosts. The StartUp plan is $2.99/mo for a 12-month prepaid term ($35.88 due at signup), covering 1 website and 10 GB storage. The problem is the second invoice: StartUp renews at $17.99/mo — about six times the intro rate — and GrowBig renews at $29.99/mo, GoGeek at $44.99/mo. Because the intro term is only 12 months, this is the host where the renewal price, not the intro price, decides what you pay: $683.52 over four years on StartUp, the highest total here. Treat the first year as a reasonably priced trial year, and put a calendar reminder at month 11 to renew consciously, renegotiate your plan size, or migrate — all four hosts here offer free migration options.
Cloudways is a management layer over five cloud providers — DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode (Akamai), AWS and Google Cloud — so you pick the infrastructure and the data-center region, and Cloudways handles server setup, updates, firewall, staging and backups. There are no hosting "plans" in the shared-hosting sense: you rent a server size. On DigitalOcean, the ladder runs $14/mo for 1GB RAM / 25 GB NVMe, $28 for 2GB, $54 for 4GB (which adds free Object Cache Pro), billed hourly and invoiced monthly, with a 3-day free trial. That price does not change at renewal because there is no introductory price to expire; your bill grows only if you scale the server or add extras. The trade-offs are the extras themselves: Cloudways sells no domains, email is a Rackspace add-on at $1.50/mailbox/mo, the Cloudflare Enterprise CDN add-on is $4.99 per domain per month, and off-site backup storage is metered per GB. A realistic small-site setup is the $14 server plus the CDN add-on — still flat, still published, but not $14 all-in.
Every prepaid headline price here is a total divided by months: $2.99/mo means $143.52 today at Hostinger, $35.88 today at SiteGround. Ask "how much leaves my account today, and for how many months?" before comparing monthly figures.
Write down the renewal price and when it hits: month 13 at SiteGround, month 37 at Bluehost, month 49 at Hostinger, never at Cloudways. If the renewal price would make you leave, you are renting a migration problem — factor that in now.
Free domains renew (about $19.99/yr for a .com at Hostinger, roughly $15–20 at Bluehost), free email periods end, and trials convert. SiteGround's included unlimited email and Cloudways' $1.50/mailbox add-on can matter more than a $1 difference in hosting price.
All four hosts offer free migration in some form, so switching at renewal is a realistic plan, not a threat. If you choose a steep-renewal host for its first-year value, set the reminder for a month before renewal on day one — that is when your leverage exists.
Introductory pricing is a customer-acquisition discount that applies to your first term only. The vendors publish both numbers — the renewal rate appears on their pricing pages and at checkout — but the intro rate gets the headline. The gap varies by host and plan: on the entry plans compared here it ranges from about 2.5× (Bluehost Starter) to about 6× (SiteGround StartUp). Cloudways is the exception in this comparison because it has no introductory discount to expire.
Not over any horizon longer than the first term. SiteGround StartUp has the joint-cheapest intro rate ($2.99/mo) and the cheapest first year ($35.88), yet the highest four-year total ($683.52), because its renewal arrives at month 13. Hostinger Premium has the same intro rate but the lowest four-year total ($143.52), because its intro term lasts 48 months. The term length matters as much as the monthly figure.
Often, yes — moving to a new host usually qualifies you for their introductory pricing, and all four hosts here offer free migration in some form (migration tools, a free first migration, or an engineer-handled move at Cloudways). The real cost of switching is your time: DNS changes, email migration if your mail lives with the old host, and checking the site after the move. Keep your domain registered separately from hosting if you switch often — it makes moving simpler. Note that Cloudways sells no domains, so its users hold domains at a registrar by default.
It can. The renewal figures in this guide are for renewing on the same term as the published comparison (for example, Bluehost Starter at $9.99/mo on a 36-month renewal). Vendors also publish higher per-month renewal rates for shorter renewal terms, so renewing month-to-month or for 12 months can cost more per month than the figure shown. Check the renewal term options in your account before the renewal date, not after the charge.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing, not from hands-on testing — and we will not present vendor marketing claims or invented measurements as test results. What we can compare honestly from published specs is the machinery: server stack (LiteSpeed at Hostinger, Google Cloud with SuperCacher at SiteGround, NVMe with object caching at Bluehost, your choice of cloud at Cloudways), CDN inclusion and reach, backup frequency, and where the data centers are. If independent benchmarks matter to you, treat them as a second source alongside these prices, and be skeptical of any review — including ones that rank hosts — that does not say how its numbers were produced.
When the flat price buys you something specific: a site that is outgrowing shared-hosting resource limits, a WooCommerce store where you want a server sized to the shop, several websites that can share one server for a single flat fee, or simply a hard requirement that the price cannot jump at renewal. For a single small blog in its first year, the prepaid hosts are cheaper — the four-year table shows by how much, in both directions.