Web hosting · Updated July 2026
Best web hosting, ranked by what it actually costs you.
Everyone else ranks hosts by a score they will not explain. Ours is a formula: four-year cost, how long you are locked in, how far the price jumps at renewal, and how much of the work is done for you.You can recompute every number on this page.
The ranking
10 hosts, scored on four published criteria. Cost is four years of real billing — promotional term and renewal included — not the sticker price.
★ Our pick — highest value score
1CLCloudways
Cloudways (DigitalOcean Standard)
Cheaper than buying the same droplet direct from DigitalOcean.
Best for: Anyone who wants a real cloud server without becoming a sysadmin.
- No lock-in: hourly billing, cancel whenever.
- Free migration and staging environments on every plan.
- No root access. If you need arbitrary system packages, this is the wrong abstraction.
- 2WP
WP Engine
WP Engine Startup
Kinsta's rival, five dollars cheaper, with a visit cap to watch.
Best for: A single business-critical WordPress site with predictable traffic.
- No promotional pricing and no renewal cliff — the price is the price.
- Staging, daily backups, CDN and automatic updates all included.
- 25,000 visits/mo on the entry plan. Traffic spikes are a real risk.
- 3NA
Namecheap
Namecheap Stellar Plus
The gentlest renewal on this page, and it is still a 164% jump.
Best for: Cheap hosting without signing away four years to get it.
- The mildest renewal increase of any budget host on this page.
- Unlimited websites and unmetered SSD storage on a $2.98 plan.
- Renewal is $7.88/mo, still more than double the advertised rate.
- 4KI
Kinsta
Kinsta Managed WordPress
The premium tier — priced like it, and you feel it in support.
Best for: Businesses whose WordPress site IS the revenue, not a hobby.
- Unlimited free migrations performed by their own team.
- Support is genuinely WordPress-expert, not a script-reading tier-1 desk.
- 10GB disk on the entry plan is tight for a media-heavy site.
- 5DI
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Basic Droplet
Total control, and you own every consequence of it.
Best for: Developers who want the raw machine and know what to do with it.
- Root access and a clean, fast control panel.
- Genuinely best-in-class documentation.
- Security hardening, updates and recovery are 100% yours.
- 6HO
Hostinger
Hostinger Business Shared Hosting
Genuinely the cheapest — and the four-year prepay is the price of that.
Best for: A first site, a portfolio, or a client site that must be cheap now.
- The cheapest credible hosting on this page, by a wide margin.
- hPanel is the friendliest control panel in the budget tier.
- The headline price requires paying four years in advance.
- 7GO
GoDaddy
GoDaddy Economy
One website, 25GB, and the least included of any host here.
Best for: One small site, from the brand you already have a domain with.
- A modest renewal increase by the standards of budget hosting.
- Free domain with the annual plan and free SSL.
- One website only, and 25GB — the thinnest allowance on this page.
- 8BL
Bluehost
Bluehost Business
The renewal only doubles, which on this page counts as restraint.
Best for: A WordPress site on a budget, from a host that will not gouge you at renewal.
- One of the mildest renewal jumps among the budget hosts: 2x, not 5x.
- 50GB NVMe, 50 websites, free domain for the first year.
- Still a 36-month prepayment to reach $6.99.
- 9HO
HostGator
HostGator Baby
A three-year term to reach $4.50, then it more than triples.
Best for: A cheap multi-site box for someone who will actually stay three years.
- Unmetered storage and unlimited websites on a mid-tier shared plan.
- Free domain, free SSL and a free site transfer in the box.
- Renewal is $16.49/mo — 266% of what you signed up at.
- 10SI
SiteGround
SiteGround GrowBig
The steepest renewal cliff in mainstream hosting.
Best for: People who will genuinely leave after twelve months, and know it.
- Genuinely excellent support — consistently the best in the budget tier.
- Daily backups with 30-day history, included rather than sold back to you.
- The renewal is $29.99/mo. That is 501% of what you signed up at.
Scores are computed, not assigned. The formula and its weights are published here — feed the vendors' own prices into it and you will get these numbers back.
Every host, side by side
The four-year cost is the column the hosting industry would rather you didn't total.
| Host | Score | Advertised | Renews at | Locked in for | 4-year cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLCloudways | 7.5Very good | $11/mo | Never changes | Cancel anytime | $528 |
| WPWP Engine | 6.4Good | $30/mo | Never changes | Cancel anytime | $1,440 |
| NANamecheap | 6.3Good | $2.98/mo | $7.88/mo | 12 months | $319.44 |
| KIKinsta | 6.2Good | $35/mo | Never changes | Cancel anytime | $1,680 |
| DIDigitalOcean | 6.1Good | $12/mo | Never changes | Cancel anytime | $576 |
| HOHostinger | 5.7Fair | $3.79/mo | $16.99/mo | 48 months | $181.92 |
| GOGoDaddy | 5.7Fair | $6.99/mo | $11.99/mo | 12 months | $515.52 |
| BLBluehost | 5.6Fair | $6.99/mo | $13.99/mo | 36 months | $419.52 |
| HOHostGator | 5.2Fair | $4.50/mo | $16.49/mo | 36 months | $359.88 |
| SISiteGround | 4.4Weak | $4.99/mo | $29.99/mo | 12 months | $1,139.52 |
Head to head
Where a ranking is too blunt, we put two hosts against each other and name one — including the case where our own pick is wrong.
How to actually choose
The renewal is the price. The promo is the advert.
Every host on this page is cheapest in month one — that is the business model, and a comparison table that stops at the promotional price is doing the host's marketing for it. SiteGround advertises $4.99 and renews at $29.99, a 501% increase after twelve months. Hostinger advertises $3.79 and renews at $16.99. Neither is hiding this; both publish it. It is simply never the number anyone quotes back to you.
So the first question is not "what does it cost" but "what does it costin year three". Total it before you buy. If a host will not make that easy, that is itself information.
A four-year prepayment is a bet, not a discount.
Hostinger's headline rate requires paying for 48 months in one transaction — roughly $182 handed over before you know whether the product suits you, and before you know whether the site will still exist. If you are certain, it is the cheapest hosting on this page by a margin nothing else approaches, and we say so in the head-to-head. If you are not certain, you are wagering $182 on a guess about your own future.
Managed vs unmanaged is not a price question.
It is usually framed as one, and in this case the framing collapses: Cloudways sells the same 2GB DigitalOcean server for $11 that DigitalOcean sells for $12, with patching, staging and 24/7 support on top. The managed option costs less than the raw one. The real question is root access — if you need to install arbitrary system packages or tune the kernel, take the droplet and accept that 3am recovery is now your job. If you do not know whether you need root, you do not need root.
Managed WordPress is insurance, and insurance has a break-even.
Kinsta at $35 and WP Engine at $30 are both excellent, and both are priced for a site that earns money. What you are buying is a support desk that knows WordPress and someone else's problem at 3am. That is worth real money the moment an hour of downtime costs more than a month of hosting — and it is worth very little before that point. Buy it when the site is the business, not in the hope that it becomes one.
Questions people actually ask
What is the cheapest web hosting over four years?
Hostinger Business Shared Hosting, at $181.92 for four years — but only if you prepay the entire 48-month term up front, roughly $182 in a single transaction. It then renews at $16.99/mo, a 348% increase. It is genuinely the cheapest, and the cheapness is the whole of its case.
Why is the cheapest host not ranked first?
Because price is 40% of our score, not 100% of it. Hostinger is the cheapest host here and ranks sixth, because it demands a four-year prepayment to get its rate and then quadruples the price, and our score prices both of those in. If you are certain you want that site online for four years, Hostinger is the rational buy and our head-to-head says so plainly. If you are not certain, you are being asked to bet $182 on a guess about your own future.
Is managed hosting worth it over a raw VPS?
In one specific case the question answers itself: Cloudways charges $11/mo for the same 2GB server DigitalOcean sells for $12 — so the managed option is literally cheaper than the unmanaged one, and includes patching, staging, backups tooling and 24/7 support. The only reason to take the raw droplet is root access, which you need if you are running anything unconventional.
What is a renewal cliff?
The gap between the promotional price that got you in and the price you pay forever after. SiteGround advertises $4.99/mo and renews at $29.99 — a 501% increase after just twelve months. Hostinger advertises $3.79 and renews at $16.99. The renewal, not the promo, is the price of the product. Almost no comparison site prints it.
How do you make money, and does it change the rankings?
Affiliate commissions, disclosed at the top of every page. It cannot change the ranking, because the ranking is a published formula over published prices — to rig it we would have to visibly change the formula, in public. The proof is on this page: DigitalOcean pays us nothing, ranks fifth, and sits above 5 hosts that pay us well. A list built to serve commissions would not look like that.