Every hosting deal, graded on what it costs after the promo

Score a hosting offer by one number and you will rarely regret it: the price it charges after the promotion expires. Everything an offer shouts about — the percentage off, the crossed-out figure, the word 'sale' — describes a temporary window, while the number underneath, the one that begins when your first term runs out, is what the deal really costs. What follows is a way to pull that number out of any offer, a map of the deal types you will run into, and a graded shortlist of the biggest live promotions.

This is deliberately not a ranking of budget providers — it is a way to grade offers. The same company can run a brilliant promotion one month and a mediocre one the next, and two providers with identical banners can leave you paying wildly different amounts a year later. So rather than asking who is cheap, we ask whether a particular offer is a good trade, and we settle it with arithmetic you can repeat on any deal you find anywhere.

How a hosting deal is built

A hosting deal is an acquisition subsidy with an expiry date. The provider spends money to win your sign-up by selling the first term below its long-run price, then earns it back once you are settled in and unlikely to move. Mechanically, every offer carries three parts: the introductory rate you pay up front, the standard rate you roll onto afterwards, and the length of the prepaid term that decides how long the cheap rate lasts. See only the first part and you have read the bait, not the price.

The term is the part buyers skip. A twelve-month offer and a forty-eight-month offer at the same sticker are not the same trade at all: the longer commitment holds the low rate for years but ties your money up and pushes the reckoning further out, while the shorter one keeps you free and drops you onto the standard rate sooner. Reading an offer is therefore reading a tiny contract — intro rate, standard rate, term — and the marketing is designed so you notice the first line and forget the other two. The step from one to the other has a name we use throughout the site: the renewal cliff.

The five kinds of hosting deal

Nearly every hosting offer belongs to one of five families, and spotting which one you are looking at tells you how to judge it. They differ in how the discount is delivered and, above all, in whether the saving survives past the first term.

• Evergreen intro promos — the everyday 60-to-75%-off offer that runs all year and quietly relabels itself for holidays. Treat its 'sale' pricing as simply the normal price.
• Seasonal events — the Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, which trim a little more off the introductory term and change nothing else.
• Coupon codes — usually the same public promo wearing a code, occasionally a small extra, rarely a secret. The reality of them is covered in our coupon-code guide.
• Membership and program deals — student packs, non-profit rates and startup credits, plus newsletter-only codes. The one family that can lower the price you keep paying, not just the first bill.
• Term-length deals — the deepest advertised rate, unlocked only by prepaying several years, trading flexibility for a lower monthly figure.

Only one of those families — the program bucket — routinely lowers the recurring cost rather than the first term, which is how a verified student or a registered charity can out-save a dedicated bargain-hunter with no code at all. The other four all discount the same thing: the introductory window. That is not a reason to avoid them, but it is why the price after the promo, not the family or the label, decides which offer is the better trade.

Scoring a deal: headline versus net

To score an offer, drop the percentage and work out the net: the introductory months at the promo rate, plus the months you will keep the site at the standard rate, divided back down to a real monthly figure. Do that for two competing offers and the winner is often the one with the quieter banner. The chart at the top of this page shows the effect at a glance — the same providers, lined up by how loud their discount is, fall into a completely different order the moment you set the standard rate beside it. A 77%-off headline perches on top of a renewal near thirteen dollars; a 56%-off headline sits above one near four and a half.

The mechanism is easy once you see it. A percentage is taken off the standard rate, so a provider with a high standard rate can advertise a spectacular discount and still do very well the moment you renew. The taller the number on the banner, the taller the price it is a slice of — and the taller the figure waiting for you in the second year. Which is why the discount that dazzles you at checkout is, more often than not, a preview of the bill that will irritate you later; we walk through the full arithmetic in why 90%-off hosting can cost more.

The current deals, scored

Below are seven of the largest live shared-hosting offers, graded on net cost rather than banner size, best trade first. The figures are advertised prices for each provider's entry plan, checked on 2026-09-10, US pricing; promotions move constantly, so confirm the live numbers before you commit. The grades are ours, from the same math described above.

Read the grades against the last two columns, not the second. Notice how the letter grade tracks the renewal, never the headline — the offers cluster into an A tier with a small step up at term's end, a B tier landing in the eight-to-eleven-dollar band, and a C tier where a huge banner sits on a renewal above twelve. A one-line note on each follows, with a link straight to that offer.

Namecheap Stellar

Grade A. The 56%-off promo lands near $1.98 and the standard rate sits around $4.48 — the smallest gap on the board, so this is the rare offer that is still a bargain in its second year. A twelve-month term keeps the commitment light, and a first-year domain is bundled in.

DreamHost Starter

Grade A-. The headline is a middling 68% off at about $2.59, but the detail that earns the grade is the exit: a genuine month-to-month option means the three-year term is a choice, not a trap. The standard rate is roughly $7.99, and the refund window is unusually long.

Hostinger Premium

Grade B+. Held at roughly $2.99 for a full 48 months, this is the lowest net on the list — but the grade is conditional on you genuinely wanting a four-year commitment. Its standard rate is about $8.99, and in the interest of trust: this program pays us nothing on that renewal, so the pick is on merit alone.

HostGator Hatchling

Grade B. A simple, upsell-light entry offer near $3.75 with a longer-than-average refund window, pulled to the middle of the pack by a standard rate around $9.99. A fine trade if you value a straightforward single-site plan over the lowest possible net.

GreenGeeks Lite

Grade B-. A loud 73%-off promo near $2.95 attached to a standard rate close to $10.95. The offer is worth its net mainly if the company's carbon-offset hosting is part of your decision; on price alone the second-year figure is hard to justify.

Bluehost Basic

Grade C+. One of the most recognised offers in hosting, about $2.95 to begin and a smooth one-click WordPress start, undone by a standard rate near $11.99. A famous banner with a forgettable net — good onboarding, expensive to keep.

A2 Hosting Startup

Grade C. The biggest headline here, roughly 77% off at $2.99, perched on the steepest standard rate at about $12.99 — and its entry plan bundles no domain, so the true first-year outlay runs above the sticker. The loudest offer and the weakest trade, in one row.

When the real deals appear

Genuinely better pricing clusters around a few dates, though the effect is smaller than the calendar implies. The deepest advertised cuts land at Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late November and return at New Year, with the odd anniversary sale in between. But because the everyday offer is already a heavy discount, the seasonal version usually beats it by a dollar or two and never touches the standard rate. The practical move: buy when your project is ready, take a sale as a bonus if one is running, and save the patience of waiting for the single case it pays — locking a long prepay slightly cheaper on a provider you have already chosen. The full calendar is in the best time of year to buy hosting.

Deal traps to walk past

Two patterns should make you close the tab. The first is manufactured urgency — a countdown clock, a stock counter, an 'ends tonight' slapped on an offer that has run for months; hosting is not a limited good, and the timer exists to hurry you past the renewal check. The second is the giant-percentage trap: a 90%-off badge is not a prize but a question — off what, and for how long — and the answer is nearly always a high standard rate briefly hidden behind a short promo. Pair either with a renewal you cannot find on the page and you have the full set of warning signs, catalogued in hosting deal red flags to avoid. A deal that hides its own second number is telling you the number is bad.

The verdict