You can buy a month’s worth of quality web hosting from a well-established service provider for less than the price of a Grande cappuccino. What’s the catch? You’ll have to dig a bit to make accurate long-term comparisons of the various offerings. That’s where our Buyer’s Guide can help.
Can you really buy a month’s worth of quality web hosting for less than the price of a Starbucks Grande cappuccino? Indeed you can, as we discovered when researching the web hosting services in this buyer’s guide. The average advertised monthly price for the 10 hosting providers we looked at is a low, low $3.19 — just add content. We also discovered, when we looked a little closer at the details of those cheap web hosting plans, that three of the immutable laws of bargains still apply here. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Always check the fine print. And, most important of all: You get what you pay for. You’re an ideal candidate for the services we review here if you already have experience with web hosting and don’t need much hand-holding. If you lack those technical skills, consider hiring a designer/consultant who has the requisite background, and let them help with the comparison. The listings that follow offer a starting point for your research and do not represent hands-on reviews or formal recommendations. All information was accurate as of February 2021, but details can change on a moment’s notice. Because the details of promotional prices and hosting plans vary so greatly, we haven’t included prices in the capsule listings that follow and instead recommend that you compare prices and plans carefully based on your long-term needs. Our goal is to provide the information you need to build a shortlist and then evaluate and compare alternatives, ideally using the trial period each provider offers. All the above web hosting providers are well-established companies, and at a glance, they all promise pretty much the same entry-level offerings. The cheapest plans offer shared hosting for an introductory price of a few dollars a month. So, what’s the catch? For starters, these plans offer storage space and bandwidth on servers that are shared with other customers. The more sites that share a single server, the more likely your visitors are to encounter slow performance; shared servers also offer a greater risk of security breaches. Some of the low, low prices you see on the landing page for these web hosting services are introductory offers. When the promotional period ends, the regular prices can be significantly higher. Likewise, the low advertised price might require a lengthy commitment. At HostGator, for example, the advertised starting prices range from $2.75 to $5.95 a month, but when you click the Buy button, you’ll see that those rates are for a three-year contract. If you’d rather go for a month-to-month deal, the price ranges go up dramatically, to $10.95 to $16.95, which is also the price you agree to pay when the promo period ends. Another common gimmick is the “limited time” offer: Buy now before the price goes up! Some of the hosting providers we checked out included a countdown clock on the home page. When we went back a few days later for a second fact-checking pass, the countdown clock had been magically reset.
