Web Hosting Renewal Prices Compared: Intro vs Renewal 2026

Web hosting renewal prices are the number most hosts put in the smallest type on the page. The big figure is the promo: $1.99, $2.79, $2.89 a month. The figure that decides what you spend from year two onward sits in a grey line underneath, usually starting with “renews at.”

This page collects that grey line for 13 plans from six hosts, plus two flat-rate platforms, with a link to the official page behind every number and the date we read it. Nothing here comes from a third-party blog or from memory. If a host doesn’t publish a figure, the table says so.

Web hosting renewal prices: the short answer

Web hosting renewal prices run 1.7 to 9 times the intro price. As of November 5, 2026, SiteGround StartUp has the biggest jump ($1.99 to $17.99 a month, +804%), and Bluehost Business has the smallest among shared plans ($6.99 to $13.99 a month, +100%). Cloudways and Kinsta don’t use a promo-then-renewal model at all.

One warning before the numbers. Most intro prices on this page are November promotions. Hostinger labels its offer Black Friday, SiteGround calls its WordPress offer an “Early Black Friday Deal,” and Cloudways runs a Black Friday banner. Renewal prices on the same pages didn’t change. Intro prices will, probably right after Cyber Monday.

Web hosting renewal prices compared, plan by plan

The table is sorted by jump percentage, highest first, because the percentage tells you more about a host’s pricing model than the dollar figure. All prices are in USD, before tax, read from each vendor’s own pricing page.

Three notes on reading it. Namecheap advertises Stellar at “$1.98/mo,” but the checkout amount it states is $22.88 a year, which works out to $1.91, so we use the annual figures. Namecheap’s sales page also still shows Stellar renewing at $44.88 a year, but its own knowledge base announced higher renewal prices from May 19, 2026 ($55.88 for Stellar), so the table uses the knowledge-base figures. SiteGround’s general web hosting page showed $2.99 for StartUp on the morning of November 5 and $1.99 later that day, matching the early Black Friday offer on its WordPress page; the renewal stayed at $17.99. And every “renews at” figure applies to the same term you bought: Hostinger renews a 48-month plan at the 48-month rate, Bluehost’s $9.99 is its 36-month renewal rate.

The Hostinger badge is green for one reason: this site runs on Hostinger. For everyone else, the numbers are what the vendor publishes, nothing more.

How to read a hosting price before you pay it

Three terms carry almost all the information on a pricing page, and hosts rarely define them.

An intro price is the discounted monthly rate a host charges for your first billing term only. A renewal price is the rate the same plan charges when that first term ends and the subscription renews. A billing term is the length of time you prepay up front: 12, 24, 36 or 48 months on the plans above.

The jump percentage is simply (renewal − intro) ÷ intro. Hostinger Premium goes from $1.99 to $10.99, so the jump is $9.00 ÷ $1.99, or 452%. We sort by it because a $9 difference means very little on its own. Compared with what you paid the first time, it means the bill grows about five and a half times.

Here’s the part people miss. The intro price is tied to the term. Hostinger shows $1.99 only on the 48-month prepay, and its pricing page today shows no 1, 12 or 24-month option at all for Premium. Bluehost’s $3.99 needs 36 months. So the cheap-looking number is often a 3 or 4-year commitment, charged on day one.

Hostinger’s own support article says the renewal price, before tax, appears in a “Renewal price” column under Billing → Subscriptions in hPanel. Hostinger’s renewal help page also confirms auto-renewal is optional and you can switch it off at any time. If you already host there, that column is worth a look before your card gets charged. We go plan by plan in our Hostinger renewal price breakdown.

The biggest jumps: why SiteGround tops the list

SiteGround’s three plans hold the top three spots. StartUp goes from $1.99 to $17.99 a month, a 9× multiplier, and GrowBig and GoGeek both land at about 7.5×.

Two things drive that. The intro term is only 12 months, so the promo ends sooner than anyone else’s. And the renewal rates are the highest in the shared category we checked: $17.99 for a single-site plan is more than Hostinger charges to renew Unlimited ($16.99), which allows multiple websites under its fair usage policy.

That doesn’t make SiteGround a bad buy. Its GrowBig and GoGeek plans include staging, and some buyers want that. It means the first-year price tells you almost nothing about year two, and you should budget the renewal from the start.

Hostinger sits in the middle. Premium (+452%) and Unlimited (+509%) are big jumps, softened by a 48-month first term. You don’t see the renewal for four years. Then a second 48-month cycle of Premium costs $527.52, against $95.52 for the first one. If you’re weighing the two shared plans, our Hostinger Premium vs Unlimited comparison covers what the extra $6 a month at renewal buys.

The smallest jumps, and what you give up

Namecheap’s Stellar plans renew at roughly 2.2 to 2.5 times the first-year price: $22.88 to $55.88 a year for Stellar, $34.88 to $85.44 for Stellar Plus, under the renewal prices Namecheap announced for May 19, 2026. Its sales page still shows the older $44.88 renewal, so check the renewal line in your account before you count on either figure. Even at $55.88 a year, Stellar’s renewal is the cheapest renewal on the page in absolute dollars.

Bluehost has the smallest percentage jumps among the shared plans, with Business at +100% and Starter at +150%. Its intro prices are higher to begin with ($3.99 and $6.99), which is the whole reason the jump looks small. A low jump can mean a fair renewal, or a less aggressive promo. Check which one you’re looking at.

Bluehost is also one of the few hosts that publishes a full renewal list by term. Its renewal price FAQ, dated February 11, 2026, shows Starter renewing at $15.99 monthly, $11.99 on a 12-month term and $9.99 on 36 months. The same list repeats an “eCommerce Essentials” row twice with two different prices, so treat it as a guide and confirm in your account’s Renewal Center.

Hostinger Agency Startup has the lowest jump of all (+69%, $29 to $49 a month), but it’s a 100-site agency plan. It’s in the table for completeness, not as a first-website suggestion.

What web hosting renewal prices do to a 4-year budget

Monthly figures hide the real comparison, so we added up four years for the plans a first website would actually consider. Assumptions, so you can redo the math yourself:

• You buy at the advertised intro deal, on the term that deal requires.
• Months after the first term are charged at the listed renewal rate for the same term. Where a renewal term runs past month 48, only the months inside the 4 years are counted.
• Prices exclude tax, domains, email and add-ons. No coupon is applied at renewal.
• Cloudways is its $11/mo DigitalOcean server at list price for 48 months, without the current promo. Kinsta is Launch billed yearly at $350, with no overages.

Hostinger wins the 4-year column, and it’s slightly unfair to everyone else: a 48-month prepay means you never reach the renewal inside the window. Look at the last column and the order changes. Once every promo has expired, Namecheap Stellar costs $55.88 a year and Hostinger Premium costs $131.88.

So the question is how long you’ll keep the site. Four years or less, the long Hostinger prepay is the cheapest path on this list. Eight years, add a second Premium cycle at $527.52 and Hostinger’s total reaches $623.04, while Namecheap Stellar over eight years comes to $414.04 (one intro year plus seven renewals).

Flat-rate hosting: Cloudways and Kinsta skip the renewal jump

Some platforms price hosting the way a utility does. You pay the same rate in month one and month 40. Cloudways and Kinsta are the two big examples, and they’re the honest alternative if the renewal model bothers you.

Cloudways bills by the hour. According to Cloudways’ pricing FAQ, the hourly rate on DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode is the monthly price divided by 672 hours, and a full month is capped at the advertised monthly figure. There’s a 5-day free trial with no card on those three clouds. Right now the page also shows Black Friday banners (80% off for 3 months in one place, 80% off for 2 months in a pop-up, 30% off for 3 months in another), which don’t agree with each other. After any promo, you pay the list price.

The catch is different. Cloudways doesn’t punish you at renewal. It charges for what you use, so bandwidth past the server’s allowance costs $0.02 per GB on DigitalOcean, and email is not part of the server price. Our Cloudways pricing guide breaks the bill down.

Kinsta lists Launch at $35 a month, or $350 a year, with the first month free on selected plans (“Pay $0 today, $35 after the first month”). Its pricing page doesn’t mention any price change at renewal, and it doesn’t promise there won’t be one, so our table says “not published.” Visits above the plan limit are billed as overages.

Both cost more than shared hosting in year one. Whether that’s money well spent depends on traffic and on how much server work you want to do yourself, which is the question in our managed WordPress vs shared hosting guide.

Who should not lock in a long term

A 48-month prepay is a good deal only if you’d have stayed four years anyway. Some people shouldn’t sign one.

You’re testing an idea. If the site might not exist in a year, paying $95.52 or $133.92 on day one buys hosting you may never use. Hostinger lists its plans as cancellable, but read the refund window before counting on it. A one-year plan from Namecheap ($22.88) caps the downside.

You’re building a store you expect to grow. If traffic goes well, you’ll likely outgrow a shared plan before year four, and a prepaid term you abandon early is money spent twice.

Cash flow is tight. Low monthly figures are paid in one lump. The “$7.99/mo” Hostinger Cloud Startup deal is a $383.52 charge at checkout.

You’ll forget the renewal date. Auto-renewal on a 48-month plan will charge the full renewal term at the higher rate. Set a calendar reminder for a month before it hits.

Domains and email renew too

The hosting bill isn’t the only one that changes after year one. Hostinger sells a .com for $0.01 the first year, but only on a 3-year domain term, and it renews at $19.99 a year (its standard first-year price). Namecheap listed a .com at $27.96 for the first year with a “36% off” label; we couldn’t read its .com renewal on the official page, so we’re not quoting one.

Bundled email has the same shape. Hostinger includes two mailboxes per website free for the first year on Premium. After that, it’s a separate line on your bill. When you add up a first site’s budget, count hosting, domain and email as three bills with three renewal dates.

How we check web hosting renewal prices

Every figure on this page was read on the vendor’s own pricing or help page on November 5, 2026, and each row links to that page. We don’t use review sites, coupon pages or old screenshots as sources, because the SERP for this topic is full of tables that disagree with each other and with the vendors.

When a figure isn’t on an official page, we write “not published” instead of estimating it. That’s why Kinsta’s renewal column is empty, and why Hostinger’s 12 and 24-month terms aren’t in the table: the pricing page didn’t show them that day. Percentages and totals are calculated from the listed prices and checked twice.

We re-check these web hosting renewal prices every quarter and after big promo seasons. The full process is on our how we verify prices page.

FAQ

Why does web hosting cost more when it renews?

Hosts discount the first term to win new customers and earn the margin back at renewal, when moving a website feels like more work than paying. The intro price is a promotion tied to a prepaid term. The renewal price is the plan’s regular rate, and on the plans we checked it runs 1.7 to 9 times the intro price.

Which web host has the smallest renewal increase?

Among shared plans verified on November 5, 2026, Bluehost Business had the smallest percentage increase (+100%, $6.99 to $13.99 a month on a 36-month term). Namecheap Stellar has the lowest renewal in dollars, $55.88 a year. Hostinger’s Agency Startup rose only 69%, but it’s a 100-site agency plan. Cloudways has no renewal increase because it charges a flat list price.

Is a 48-month prepay a good idea for a first website?

Only if you’re confident the site will run four years. Hostinger Premium costs $95.52 for 48 months, the lowest 4-year total we found. The risk is paying for years you don’t use if the project stops, and facing a $10.99 monthly renewal on a new 48-month term afterward.

Do domains also renew at a higher price?

Usually, yes. Hostinger’s $0.01 .com needs a 3-year term and renews at $19.99 a year. Many registrars discount the first year and charge the standard rate after that. Check the domain’s renewal price separately from the hosting plan, since the two renew on different dates.

Can I switch hosts to get a new intro price?

You can, because intro prices are for new customers. Moving a WordPress site means a migration, DNS changes and some risk of downtime, and the next host will renew at its own regular rate too. Switching every few years saves money only if the migration is quick for you.

Should I avoid the host with the cheapest renewal?

Not automatically, but don’t pick on price alone. Namecheap Stellar renews at $55.88 a year, the lowest renewal here, yet if you need staging, more storage or room for traffic, a cheap renewal on a plan you’ll outgrow isn’t a saving. Pick the plan that fits the site first, then compare renewals within that tier.

Prices last verified November 5, 2026 · Next scheduled check: February 2027 · How we verify