Hosting at $2.99 a month: what does year two actually cost?

All figures below come from each vendor's own pricing pages, retrieved September 1, 2026. Links go to those pages. Prices change; treat this as a snapshot with the method attached.

The conclusion first

The advertised monthly price of shared hosting is a price you can never pay month by month. At Hostinger it requires 48 months paid upfront; at Bluehost, 36. And when that first term ends, the same plan renews at roughly two to nearly four times the advertised rate — $2.99 becomes $10.99 at Hostinger, $3.19 becomes $10.99 at InMotion. The numbers that predict what hosting costs you are not the advertised introductory rates. They are the renewal rate, the length of the term you must prepay to get the discount, and the year-two price of the free domain. Two vendors on this list use a different model entirely: Cloudways bills by the hour at a flat rate, and WordPress.com publishes one price that stays the same at renewal.

Six vendors, two prices each

Two readings of this table matter more than any single row. First, the cheapest advertised price (Hostinger, $2.99) produces the largest first bill on the list, because the discount is quoted per month while the commitment is measured in years. Second, the two vendors with no renewal jump — WordPress.com and Cloudways — are also the two whose advertised price is highest. That is not a coincidence; it is the same money shown at a different point in time.

Hostinger: the 48-month prepay

Hostinger's $2.99 Premium plan is real, but the pricing page notes all plans are paid upfront — so the checkout total is $143.52, not $2.99. The plan renews at $10.99/mo ($131.88/yr): year five costs almost as much as the first four combined. The Unlimited ($3.99 → $16.99) and Cloud Startup ($7.99 → $25.99) tiers widen the gap further, at 4.3× and 3.3×. The math only favors you if the site is still something you want in 2030 — which is exactly the customer a 48-month prepay suits best.

Bluehost: the fine print is about the domain

Bluehost Starter runs $3.99/mo on a 36-month term ($143.64 upfront) and renews at $9.99/mo. The more consequential line is in the refund policy: the 30-day money-back guarantee "does not apply to most add-on products, such as domains," and if you cancel, you are charged a non-refundable fee for the free domain at the standard domain price. What that standard renewal price is, the hosting page doesn't say — we could not find a published .com renewal figure on the pages we retrieved. If a vendor gives you a domain for free and does not publish what it costs in year two, budget for it as if it were the most expensive line on this page.

Namecheap: the smallest numbers and the shortest commitment

Namecheap Stellar is $22.88 for the first year and $44.88 after — a 2.0× step, but from the lowest base here, and with only a 12-month commitment. It is also the only vendor on this list that publishes its domain economics in full: .com registration is $11.08 and renewal is $18.48. The 50 free PositiveSSL certificates last one year; after that SSL becomes a line item unless you move to a free alternative. If you want the introductory-discount model with a bounded downside, this is the bounded version.

WordPress.com: one price, but the domain clock still ticks

WordPress.com Personal is $4/mo billed annually with no separate renewal rate published — what you pay in year one is what you pay in year three. The catch is arithmetic, not fine print: monthly billing is $9/mo, 2.25× the annual rate, and the free domain lasts one year, after which "your domain renews at the price listed above, independent of the plan" — $13/yr for a .com. A $48/yr plan becomes $61/yr from year two. Still the most predictable multi-year total on this list.

Cloudways: the control group

Cloudways doesn't have a renewal price because it doesn't have a term: the DigitalOcean entry plan is $11/mo, metered hourly at $0.0357 and billed in arrears for what you used. There is no free domain — you bring your own — and the trial is 3 days without a card. (A 40% off promotion runs through September 15, 2026, and lasts four months, which is the closest this model comes to an introductory rate.) If you would rather avoid the renewal-price pattern above, this is what hosting looks like without it — at roughly the price the others charge after the first term.

InMotion: the 90-day exception

InMotion Core is $3.19/mo on a 12-month term, renewing at $10.99/mo — the same 3.4× shape as Hostinger, but with a one-year rather than four-year commitment, and the only 90-day money-back guarantee in the group (everyone else offers 30 days). Its true monthly option is instructive: pay month to month and Core costs $14.49/mo, 4.5× the advertised rate and more than the renewal price. The advertised number and the commitment-free number differ by a factor of four and a half on the same plan.

The free domain, in year two

What to actually do

Price the second year before you buy the first. Take the renewal rate times twelve, add the published .com renewal (assume ~$15–20 where the vendor doesn't print one), and compare that number across vendors — the advertised prices are sorted in almost the reverse order of the renewal prices. If you can't predict whether you'll want the site in four years, don't buy four years of it; a 12-month term at a slightly worse rate is cheaper than a 48-month term you abandon. And set a calendar reminder for day 25: every money-back window here is 30 days except InMotion's 90, and the domain fee is usually not refunded.

Sources: the pricing pages of Hostinger, Bluehost, Namecheap, WordPress.com, Cloudways, and InMotion Hosting, plus each vendor's published domain pricing where available. Retrieved September 1, 2026. All links are plain links.

← Back to the comparison