Hostinger
Cheapest reliable host with a polished beginner experience.
- Lowest reliable intro pricing in the industry
- hPanel is genuinely beginner-friendly
- 24/7 live chat with sub-2-minute response
- Up to 78% off web hosting — code HOSTINGADVICE
Advertiser disclosure: we may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page — it never affects how we rank providers.
Cheap hosting is easy to find and easy to get wrong. These picks are the budget hosts that stay genuinely affordable at renewal — not just on the first invoice.
Cheapest reliable host with a polished beginner experience.
Generous money-back window and month-to-month flexibility few rivals match.
A household name in shared hosting with a 45-day money-back window.
The lowest renewal price in mainstream shared hosting, by a wide margin.
Our cheap picks side-by-side. Scroll horizontally on smaller screens.
| Rank | Provider | Starting | Renewal | Money-back | Free SSL | Free domain | Free migration | Support | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Hostinger | $2.99/mo | $10.99/mo | 30-day | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 24/7 | Visit → |
| #4 | DreamHost | $2.89/mo | $10.99/mo | 97-day | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 24/7 | Visit → |
| #5 | HostGator | $3.75/mo | $10.99/mo | 45-day | ✓ | ✓ | — | 24/7 | Visit → |
| #7 | IONOS | $1.00/mo | $14.00/mo | 30-day | ✓ | ✓ | — | 24/7 | Visit → |
Renewal pricing is where most hosts ambush customers. We weight transparency heavily.
Measured against the published SLA over the trailing 12 months where data is available.
Response time, knowledge of the agent, and channels offered.
Time-to-first-site for someone who has never used cPanel.
Free SSL, free domain, free migration, backup frequency, staging environments.
Whether the same provider can take you from shared to VPS without a painful migration.
The score after intro pricing expires — the price you actually live with.
Budget shared hosting commonly starts around $2–$5 a month on an introductory term, which is genuinely cheap — but the headline rate is almost always a first-term promo. Renewals typically rise to roughly $10–$40 a month depending on the tier, and that second-term price is the single thing budget buyers most often overlook.
The trade-off behind the low price is shared resources: your CPU and RAM are split across many sites on one machine, which is fine for small and low-traffic sites and limiting for anything heavier. The picks below are ranked on the real multi-year cost, what's actually included versus billed as add-ons, and whether "cheap" still comes with a reliability floor you can trust.
Do the multi-year math. The advertised rate is a first-term promo; renewals commonly land at $10–$40 a month, so judge a budget host on what term two actually costs.
Free SSL, a free domain for the first year, email, and backups — versus the same things charged as add-ons that quietly erode the "cheap" price you signed up for.
Storage, the real meaning of "unmetered" bandwidth, and how many sites and databases a plan allows. The caps are where budget plans draw the line.
An uptime guarantee and decent support even at the entry tier, so cheap does not quietly turn into frequently-down.
The full hands-on review behind every ranking on this page.
The low headline rate is an introductory promo for the first term. Renewals commonly rise to about $10–$40 a month, so judge a host by its renewal cost.
For small, low-traffic personal or brochure sites, yes — shared hosting is designed for exactly that. The trade-off is shared resources, so it is not ideal for high-traffic sites or large stores.
No — they are governed by fair-use policies and resource caps in the fine print. Heavy usage can trigger throttling or a required upgrade.
Every shortlist is its own page — jump to the scenario that fits your project.