The real cost of “cheap” hosting

You've seen the adverts: hosting from $2.99 a month. It sounds like a bargain, and for the first year it might be. The trouble starts when you read the small print, or when the renewal email arrives.

Where the price goes up

Budget hosting plans tend to make their money back in a few predictable ways:

• Introductory pricing. The headline price often requires paying for one to three years up front, and renews at a much higher rate.
• Add-ons at checkout. Backups, security scanning, privacy protection and email are frequently pre-ticked extras.
• Paid migrations. Moving your existing site over can carry a one-off fee.
• Premium support. Basic support might be a ticket queue; talking to a human can cost extra.

None of this is hidden, exactly. It's just easy to miss when you're busy running a business.

Do the three-year sum

Before you sign up anywhere, add up what you'd pay over three years, including:

1. The introductory period
2. The renewal price for the remaining time
3. Every add-on you'd actually need: backups, SSL, security
4. The cost of your time when something breaks

That last one is the easiest to forget. If a broken site costs you an afternoon of troubleshooting, or a weekend of lost bookings, the "cheap" plan has already cost more than it saved.

Our approach

We charge $35 a month, and that's the whole bill. Migration, SSL, daily backups, monitoring, updates and support are all included, and the price doesn't change at renewal because there's no introductory price to expire.

It's not the lowest number on the internet. But it's the number you'll actually pay, and it comes with someone who picks up the phone.