Annual pricing

Listed below is data on annual pricing and annual renewal pricing for 18 of the world’s biggest web hosts. Except for Namecheap and Hostgator, all annual pricing is for the cheapest available hosting package offered by a web host.

• Annual pricing: the “annual pricing” metric details the cost of paying 12 months in advance for a particular hosting package.
• Annual renewal pricing: the “annual renewal pricing” metric details what web hosts charge in year two and subsequent years (this price is often significantly higher than the introductory rate).

Many web hosts advertise monthly rates (compare monthly prices here) but don’t actually allow you to pay monthly e.g. GoDaddy advertises a monthly rate of $2.99; however, this rate is only available to customers who pay 36 months in advance.

Annual renewal pricing

This is where they really get you. Most web hosts default to “autorenew,” which means you are automatically billed for another year upon the culmination of your first heard of paid hosting.

While this can be a good thing, most web hosts charge significantly higher fees for the second year of hosting than they do the first “introductory” year of hosting.

One of the more egregious examples is FatCow, which charges customers $49 for the first year and $179.40 for the second year – that’s an increase of 266%. The most egregious example is 1&1, which charges customers more than 700% more in year two than year one.

Even some hosts we would otherwise highly recommend engage in the practice e.g.  at the time of writing Siteground charges $47.40 for the first year and $119.40 for the second year.

On this basis, Hostinger shines – it charges $39 for the first year and $39 for the second year.

It can be a bit of a pain to move web hosts, and it’s easy to get caught out by autorenewals, so it’s always worth considering the total cost of hosting across two years of annual pricing.