Every host advertises a $1.99 headline. Almost none of them charge it past month twelve. I've renewed enough of these contracts to know the sticker price is theatre — the number that hits your card in year two is the real one. So we ranked seven hosts by effective cost across the first two years, not by the loss-leader on the pricing page.
For a “cheapest” ranking, effective price after renewal carries the weight — 35%. A $1.99 host that renews at $11 is more expensive over two years than a $3 host that renews at $8. We then reward reliability and honest inclusions, because cheap hosting that's down is not cheap, it's worthless. See the full rubric →
Effective price after renewal35%
Reliability & uptime20%
What's included free15%
Ease — no devops15%
Support quality15%
01
RANK
★ Editor’s Choice
Hostinger
Cheapest that stays cheap
Hostinger wins because it's the only budget host where the renewal doesn't punish you. Premium runs about $2.99/mo on a long term and renews near $8 — single digits, not the $11–15 you get elsewhere. Free domain year one, email included, a dashboard your least-technical colleague can run. Lock in the longest term you'll actually keep and this is the cheapest real host, both years.
DreamHost is the pick if you hate lock-in. Its shared plan renews around $7.99 — the gentlest renewal of the established hosts — and it's one of the only budget hosts that'll bill you month-to-month if you don't want a three-year commitment. Support is chat/email rather than instant phone, so it's a step behind Hostinger when something breaks at 2am.
Cloudways isn't the lowest sticker — it starts around $14/mo — but it's flat forever: the month-one price is the month-forty price. If your idea of “cheap” is “no nasty surprise in year two,” this is the honest floor, and you get real cloud performance for it. It asks slightly more of you than one-click shared hosting, so skip it for a single five-page site.
SiteGround is the best-supported host here — but it does not belong on a “cheapest” page long-term. GrowBig lures you at $4.99 then renews near $30/mo, which is premium money. Buy it for the support and uptime, not the price. On a value-weighted rubric that renewal is what pulls it out of the top three.
This is the trap the whole page is built to warn you about. The $1.99 headline is real; so is the $8.99 renewal that quietly quadruples it. Bluehost is serviceable for a static WordPress site, but the intro rate is a hook and support lags exactly when you need it. If you buy it, budget the renewal from day one — don't let it surprise you.
On a cheapest list, WP Engine is here to be ruled out. It's excellent managed WordPress starting at $25/mo flat — agency-grade, and priced like it. If your only goal is low cost, this isn't your host. It earns its money on speed and staging, not on the invoice.
Kinsta is superb, Google-Cloud-backed managed WordPress from about $35/mo — and completely wrong for a cheapest ranking. It anchors the bottom here only because the brief is price. Buy it when performance justifies the spend; never buy it to save money.
What is the cheapest web hosting that isn't a trap?
Hostinger. Its intro price is low, but the number that matters — the renewal — stays in single digits (~$8/mo), where Bluehost and SiteGround detonate at renewal. Cheap in year one AND year three is the only definition of cheap that counts.
Is free web hosting ever worth it?
No — not for anything with your name on it. Free hosts inject ads, throttle you at the worst moment, put you on a subdomain, and vanish without backups. You will pay in downtime and lost leads what you saved in dollars. If budget is the constraint, a $2–3/mo shared plan is the floor, not free.
Why is the renewal price so much higher than the intro price?
The intro rate is a customer-acquisition loss leader; the renewal is the real price. Hosts bank on you not migrating once your site is live. Always divide the total contract cost — intro term plus one renewal — by the months to get the honest monthly figure. That single calculation reorders every “cheapest host” list.
Is the cheapest plan enough for a real business site?
For a brochure site, blog, or small store, yes — entry shared plans from Hostinger or DreamHost handle it comfortably. You outgrow cheap shared hosting when traffic climbs, checkout gets busy, or you need staging and real caching. At that point Cloudways' flat cloud pricing is the honest next step, not a pricier shared tier.