Web Hosting Renewal Prices: What You Pay in Year Two

Hosting renewal increases get written about as if some brands are honest and others aren’t. The data doesn’t support that framing.

The median increase across the major hosts is 268%. It’s not a scandal at any one company — it’s how the entire category is priced. Which means “avoid the bad host” is the wrong job. The right one is comparing a number almost nobody publishes.

The table

† Figures from secondary sources rather than read at the vendor’s site — see methodology.

Three-year effective cost = the promo rate for as long as the term runs, then the renewal rate, averaged across 36 months. It’s what you’d actually pay to keep a site up for three years.

The finding that reorders everything

Look at Hostinger and Namecheap.

Namecheap has the best percentage increase on the table — 135%. Hostinger has the second worst — 268%. Hostinger is cheaper over three years.

Now look at SiteGround and Bluehost. SiteGround’s promo rate is lower than Bluehost’s ($2.99 against $3.99). Over three years, SiteGround costs more than three times as much ($12.99 against $3.99).

Neither promo price nor percentage increase predicts the answer. The variable that does is how long the promotional term runs.

• Hostinger’s promo covers 48 months — longer than the comparison window, so you never reach the renewal inside three years.
• Bluehost’s covers 36 months — exactly the window.
• SiteGround’s covers 12 months, so two of your three years are at $17.99.

A 502% increase that arrives in month 13 costs you far more than a 268% increase that arrives in month 49. The percentage is the headline; the term is the bill.

What each host actually does

Hostinger is the cheapest over three years, and it gets there by an unusual route: its promotional term is long enough that most buyers never see a renewal during the period they’re comparing. The catch is that $2.99/mo means $143.52 charged upfront today — its own pricing page states that all plans are paid upfront and the monthly rate is the total divided by the term. That’s the trade: the lowest three-year cost, paid in advance. We broke the term structure down in Hostinger renewal pricing.

SiteGround has the steepest increase here, and it’s transparent about it — the plan card reads “Renews at $17.99/mo. Prepaid for 12 months,” right next to the $2.99. Nothing is buried. You’re paying a premium for its platform and support after year one, and whether that’s worth $15/month more than Bluehost is a judgement about quality rather than a pricing trick. We’ve since verified its full shared range from primary source: the increase is 460–500% on every tier, not just the entry plan, so upgrading doesn’t escape it.

DreamHost deserves specific credit on disclosure. Its own FAQ says: “every DreamHost plan card shows the exact renewal rate right next to the promo price. You will never have to dig through fine print to find out what year two costs.” That is exactly the practice this article exists because most hosts don’t follow, and its mid-table three-year cost of $7.62 comes with monthly billing available on every plan — no term required at all.

Bluehost has the gentlest renewal multiple in this table at 2.5×, and offers a 36-month promotional term at $3.99, which is the second-longest here and why it places well despite not having the lowest headline rate.

Namecheap has the gentlest renewal on the table by a distance — roughly $4.66 against a $1.98 promo. If you want a host where year two isn’t a step change, that’s the shape of it, though we could not verify those figures at source.

HostGator publishes its renewal rates in a help article rather than only on the pricing page, which is unusually forthcoming. Its Hatchling plan renews at $158.27 for a year — $13.19/month — or $10.99/month if you commit to three years.

GreenGeeks, Hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting) and InMotion Hosting we could not price at source for this article; both Hosting.com and InMotion publish strong money-back terms, and InMotion’s 90-day guarantee is the longest in the category.

The two tactics that work

1. Buy the longest term you’re confident in. This is the whole lesson of the table. The three-year effective cost is dominated by how much of the window sits at the promotional rate, so extending the term is worth far more than shaving the headline price. Buy 48 months at $2.99 and your effective rate for the comparison period is $2.99.

The obvious caveat: that’s $143.52 today, and a prepaid term is money you don’t get back if you leave — most hosts refund only within a 30-day window with no proration. Only buy a term you’re confident you’ll use.

2. Negotiate at cancellation. Retention offers are real and routine in this industry. When your renewal notice arrives, start a cancellation and see what’s offered. The worst case is you pay the advertised renewal, which is what happens anyway if you do nothing.

And time it against the sales calendar if you can. The same term-length arithmetic decides whether a Black Friday offer is worth taking — we recorded the pre-sale baseline so a November discount can be measured against a real price rather than a struck-through one, and found that the providers discounting deepest are the ones whose deals expire soonest.

Neither tactic requires switching host, which is worth stating because switching is the tactic most articles recommend and it’s the one that costs you a weekend.

There’s a third lever that isn’t a negotiation at all, and it’s the most reliable of the three: the dated window written into your host’s refund policy. Bluehost allows a renewal refund only in the 15 days before the charge lands; Hostinger allows 30 days after it. We set out both, per host — knowing which shape yours is beats any script.

What the table doesn’t capture

Renewal price isn’t the only thing that changes, and comparing hosts on this number alone repeats the mistake the article is arguing against.

Bundled items matter as much as the rate. A $10.99 plan that includes SSL, a CDN, domain privacy, backups and migrations is not competing with a $10.99 plan that charges for them — and at one major host’s published prices, those add-ons cost 96% of the hosting itself.

So do exit terms. A steep renewal at a host with a 90-day money-back guarantee is a smaller risk than a gentle one at a host with 30 days and no proration.

The hosts

Hostinger — lowest three-year cost, longest promotional term, paid upfront.

SiteGround — steepest increase on this table, and clear about it on the plan card.

Hosting.com, formerly A2 Hosting — 30-day guarantee covering shared, WordPress, email and reseller plans.

InMotion Hosting — a 90-day money-back guarantee on shared and WordPress plans, three times the category norm.

GreenGeeks — renewals in the $13.95–30.95 range on secondary figures; verify before buying.

DreamHost — the best disclosure practice here, and monthly billing on every plan.

Namecheap — the gentlest renewal step we found.

Bluehost — 36-month promotional term, which is why it places second on three-year cost.

HostGator — publishes its renewal price chart openly, which more hosts should.

For value rather than price, best cheap web hosting applies this same arithmetic across the field.

How we checked this

Read at source in August 2026: Hostinger’s Premium plan at $2.99/mo on a 48-month term renewing at $10.99, with the “all plans are paid upfront” condition; SiteGround’s StartUp at $2.99 with the plan card reading “Renews at $17.99 /mo. Prepaid for 12 months.”; Bluehost’s Starter at $3.99 on 36 months renewing at $9.99; DreamHost’s Launch at $2.89 for the first year with its renewal rate and its FAQ wording about showing renewal rates on the plan card; and HostGator’s published Hatchling renewal rates of $158.27 for one year and $10.99/month on three years.

From secondary sources, and marked as such in the table: GreenGeeks’ and Namecheap’s promotional and renewal figures. We could not read either at source — both sites refused our requests — and we’ve left them in because excluding them would bias the table toward hosts that let us read their pricing. Treat those two rows as indicative.

A geography caveat worth stating. Our first attempt returned euro pricing for DreamHost and redirected SiteGround to its German site, because the machine we browse from is in Europe. All figures above were re-read from a US endpoint to get dollar pricing. If you’re outside the US, your own prices may differ from this table — these are not currency conversions, they’re the vendors’ US rates.

The three-year effective column is our arithmetic, not a published figure: promotional rate for the length of the promotional term, renewal rate thereafter, averaged over 36 months. It assumes the renewal rate holds for three years, which is a simplification — hosting prices move, and a renewal rate quoted today is a statement of current pricing rather than a guarantee.

What we did not do: we haven’t tested retention offers, held accounts through a renewal cycle, or verified that the renewal rates quoted are what customers are actually charged in year two. Every figure is the published offer.

This table needs re-checking quarterly. Promotional terms and renewal rates in this market change several times a year, and a stale price comparison is worse than none. The date at the top of this article is when we last verified it.

The hosting links above are affiliate links. The table is sorted by three-year cost rather than by what we earn.

FAQ

How much do web hosting prices increase on renewal?

The median across the hosts we checked is 268%. The range runs from about 135% at the gentlest to 502% at the steepest, so a two-to-three-times increase is the industry norm rather than an outlier.

Which host has the cheapest renewal price?

Namecheap, at roughly $4.66 against a $1.98 promo, on secondary figures. But the cheapest renewal isn’t the cheapest host — over three years Hostinger costs less, because its promotional term runs for 48 months.

Why is my hosting renewal so much higher than what I paid?

Because the introductory rate applied only to your initial term. The increase is usually 150–500%, and it’s disclosed — typically next to the promo price or in a linked price chart.

Should I compare promo prices or renewal prices?

Neither on its own. Compare the three-year effective cost: the promo rate for as long as the term lasts, then the renewal rate. A 502% increase in month 13 costs more than a 268% increase in month 49.

Can I negotiate my hosting renewal price?

Often, yes. Retention offers are routine — start a cancellation when the renewal notice arrives and see what’s offered. If nothing is, you pay the advertised rate, which is what would have happened anyway.

Is it cheaper to switch hosts than renew?

Sometimes, but count the cost of switching: an overlap month, the unused remainder of any prepaid term, and moving email. Buying a longer term at your current host is usually the cheaper tactic.

Which hosts are most transparent about renewal pricing?

DreamHost states that every plan card shows the renewal rate next to the promo price. SiteGround prints “Renews at $17.99/mo” directly on the card. HostGator prints both the term and the renewal on the card — “For 36 month term / Renews at $10.99/mo” — as well as publishing a full renewal chart in its help centre.

The least transparent we’ve found is IONOS, whose advertised $1/month turns out to be a 12-month promotion on its $16 tier: we unpicked that one alongside eight other hosts, and it works out more expensive over three years than headline rates three times higher.