Want to jump straight to the answer? The best cheap web hosting provider for most people is Hostinger or DreamHost.
If you’re trying to get your site up and running for as little as possible, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve investigated dozens of the cheapest web hosts out there to find the most affordable web hosting plans that are actually worth using.
The Cheapest Hosting Plans
- Hostinger — Starting at $9.99 (month-to-month contract)
- DreamHost — Starting at $4.95 (month-to-month contract)
- GreenGeeks — Starting at $9.95 (month-to-month contract)
- InMotion — Starting at $4.99 (annual contract)
- A2 Hosting — Starting at $8.99 (month-to-month contract)
- HostGator — Starting at $6.95 (month-to-month contract)
- SiteGround — Starting at $2.99 (annual contract)
- iPage — Starting at $2.99 (annual contract)
- Bluehost — Starting at $4.95 (annual contract)
A lot of the options in this top list are priced on a month-to-month basis. That means minimal commitment.
But to get the absolute cheapest monthly rates available, you need to lock in a longer contract and pay in advance. This costs more money upfront but saves you a lot in the long run.
If you can afford to do it, I highly recommend signing on to a longer contract to get the best discount.
Here are my top picks ranked by the cheapest per-month cost along with the contract term. All require full payment upfront:
- Hostinger — $1.99 per month (48 months)
- iPage — $1.99 per month (36 months)
- GreenGeeks — $2.49 per month (36 months)
- InMotion — $2.49 per month (36 months)
- DreamHost — $2.59 per month (36 months)
- HostGator — $2.75 per month (36 months)
- Bluehost — $2.95 per month (36 months)
- A2 Hosting — $2.99 per month (36 months)
You may be wondering where SiteGround is on this second list. Don’t worry, it’s still here–it just offers its best rates with a one-year commitment. You’ll pay just $2.99 per month that way. Paying for two or three years upfront saves quite a bit, too.
In addition to locking in the lowest available rates with these pre-paid, long-term packages, you’re also delaying the inevitable renewal upcharges. Commit now and stretch that promotional rate as long as possible.
If you know that your site will be up and running for at least a few years, a long-term contract will offer the most value. Just make sure you sign up for a plan with a money-back guarantee, so you can opt-out at the beginning if you’re unhappy.
The Best Month-to-Month Hosting Prices
For those of you who don’t want long-term contract commitments, you’ll need to find a web hosting provider that offers month-to-month pricing.
These prices will be a bit higher than the cheapest advertised rates, but you can pay way less on day one.
Typically, you have to pay everything upfront for a long-term hosting plan–so even if it’s only a few dollars a month, that might cost hundreds of dollars to get started.
If you are looking for hosting without a big price tag or years-long commitment, you should definitely look at my top picks for month-to-month web hosting.
DreamHost
If you’re looking for an affordable web hosting option, look no further than DreamHost. More than 1.5 million websites worldwide are hosted by DreamHost. They also have an outstanding reputation due to their high-quality hosting at rock-bottom prices.
DreamHost offers month-to-month web hosting plans starting at $7.99 per month. This is a solid price for web hosting without a long-term commitment, but DreamHost is willing to lower that price to get your business.
Currently, it’s less than $2 for the first month to get your website off the ground.
There are no setup fees and no strings attached. Cancel whenever you want. You don’t have to commit to more than a month. These are two of the most straightforward low-cost plans in the industry.
The sale pricing above is subject to change, but I’ve included the current regular pricing below:
- Shared Starter— starting at $7.99 paying monthly, $2.95 per month for one year, $2.59 per month for three years
- Shared Unlimited— starting at $13.99 paying monthly, $2.95 per month for one year, $3.95 per month for three years
You can save a good bit by signing up for a longer plan with DreamHost, but they offer a lot more at a better price than most other hosts if you are looking to avoid a long-term contract.
Shared Starter is good for one website, but if you upgrade to Shared Unlimited, you’ll be able to create as many sites as you need.
Both plans come with a free website builder, WordPress pre-installed, and a free SSL certificate.
Email comes free with the Shared Unlimited plan and starts at $1.67 per month with the Shared Starter plan.
Their customer service team is 100% in-house. They don’t outsource agents like other web hosting companies and can provide more hands-on support to your issues. However, the trade-off is that live chat and email support is only available for 16 hours per day.
If you miss those hours, don’t worry. DreamHost has an extensive knowledge base of FAQs and guides making it easy for you to find help on your own.
Not only are you able to sign up month-to-month, but you’ll also be refunded if you’re unhappy. DreamHost has an industry-leading 97-day money-back guarantee. Check out my complete Dreamhost review for more details about them.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is built for speed. The fact that you can get cheap plans from such a reputable provider is a bonus.
Like most web hosts, A2 offers the lowest prices when you lock in a longer contract. The best rates are available when you sign up for 36 months.
Here’s a closer look at those plans and prices:
- Startup — $2.99 per month
- Drive — $5.99 per month
- Turbo Boost — $6.99 per month
- Turbo Max — $12.99 per month
The Turbo Max plan gives you the fastest speeds. But if you’re prioritizing price, Startup is the cheapest. The Turbo Boost plan is an excellent value when you consider the fact that it’s just $1 more than the Drive plan, with access to a turbo server.
A2 offers a free SSL certificate with every plan. All plans are backed by a 99.9% uptime commitment and money-back guarantee.
If you’re switching from another hosting provider, A2 will migrate your account for free.
Another reason why I recommend A2 Hosting is because they provide a cPanel control panel. This feature will make it much easier for you to manage your hosting experience.
HostGator
HostGator’s entry-level rates are a bit higher than some of the other month-to-month plans that we’ve reviewed—but they are still one of the best cheap web hosting providers in the industry.
One great benefit of HostGator: Their month-to-month rates are exactly the same as the 3-month contracts and 6-month contracts.
So for those of you who don’t want to commit, even for a few months, there’s no reason to.
- Hatchling Plan — $2.75 per month for the 1st year, then $6.95 per month
- Baby Plan — $3.95 per month for the 1st year, then $9.95 per month
- Business Plan — $5.95 per month for the 1st year, then $14.95 per month
Even at $6.95 per month, it’s still very affordable. Especially when you factor in the setup fees and renewal rates of other providers.
The fact that there is only a $1 difference between the Hatchling and Baby plans is another bonus. In my mind, this pricing structure makes it a no-brainer for you to sign up for the Baby plan.
Even if you only have one domain right now, being able to add more down the road without switching plans is worth the extra $1 per month, and even the extra $3 after the first year.
Additional features like SiteLock monitoring, professional email, SEO tools, and daily backups will cost you extra.
HostGator has 24/7/365 support via phone, email, and live chat. They offer instant account activation without any setup costs as well as a 45-day money-back guarantee.
SiteGround
SiteGround is a web host with a great reputation and websites all over the world.
They pack a lot of useful features in each plan and offer the same pricing packages for managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting as their shared hosting plans. That can help you secure an even better deal by getting more specialized hosting for a shared hosting price.
Their best deal, across the board, is their StartUp tier with a one-year upfront commitment. No matter which tier you go with, the one-year term gives you the best promotional price compared to month-to-month billing and longer commitments.
Here’s a deeper breakdown of their pricing plans for a one-year term:
- StartUp: $2.99 per month
- GrowBig: $4.99 per month
- GoGeek: $7.99 per month
As you can see, you get a good chunk of resources on the lowest-tier package. Those of you who are starting a new website should be fine with the StartUp plan. SiteGround recently dropped its prices for all three tiers, making the StartUp plan even more enticing.
StartUp does only offer one website and 10 GB of space, so you will need to aim for one of the pricier tiers if you want unlimited websites or more storage space. Only the GoGeek tier offers advanced priority technical support, although all three tiers offer phone and live chat support.
On all plans, you get managed WordPress and useful freebies like an SSL certificate, content delivery network, email, and daily backups.
Renewal pricing can get expensive, but there’s another hidden benefit of seizing on the one-year-term promotional pricing. SiteGround offers a 20% discount on their base renewal rate for two-year renewals and a 30% discount when renewing for three years. That means you’ll come out ahead over the long haul, as well as for that first year of hosting.
The Best Annual Hosting Prices
If you’re willing to commit to a web hosting plan for at least one year, you’ll get a cheaper monthly rate if you pay for 12 months upfront. These plans will take more out of your pocket initially but save you money in the long run.
InMotion
The web hosting plans offered by InMotion are great for small business owners. So if you’re looking for cheap small business web hosting, these are the plans that you should consider:
- Core — starting at $3.29 per month ($9.99 per month after first year)
- Launch — starting at $6.99 per month ($13.99 per month after first year)
- Power — starting at $6.99 per month ($17.99 per month after first year)
- Pro — starting at $14.99 per month ($24.99 per month after first year)
Again, you need to pay upfront to lock in these annual rates.
Most entry-level plans limit you to host just one website. But the Launch plan from InMotion allows you to host two sites.
All plans come with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email, a security suite, marketing tools, and a free SSL certificate.
InMotion has a free one-click installer for more than 400 apps as well as one-click data backups and restores.
Another reason why I recommend InMotion is because of their 90-day money-back guarantee. This assurance should make you feel more comfortable about paying for a year in full when you sign up.
While InMotion does have some add-ons like a dedicated IP and backup management, the plans seem to have more basic features included than some of the other providers out there.
iPage
iPage is known for its excellent website builders and affordable web hosting.
I recommend iPage because its annual pricing rates are cheap and straightforward.
As we’ve already seen, other hosting providers offer multiple plans at varying price points. The pricing depends on features and resources.
But iPage pricing is based solely on your term length. Then you can customize your plan with additional products.
The base price for an annual web hosting plan is $2.99 per month, which translates to an upfront total of $35.88 for the year.
Here are some of the additional features that you can add to customize your plan:
- Daily backups — $14.99 per year
- Website security — $19.95 per year
- Pro website builder — $131.88 per year
- SiteLock — $23.88 per year
- Domain privacy — $9.99 per year
- WordPress optimization — $36.00 per year
- G Suite business — $36.00 per year
Most of you won’t need all of these. But you’ll probably want to add on the domain privacy and added security at a minimum. That would bring your upfront annual total to $65.82.
iPage offers a free SSL certificate and a 30-day money-back guarantee for its annual plans as well.
Overall, iPage has some of the most affordable annual web hosting plans in the industry.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is affordable shared and VPS web hosting with a twist. GreenGeeks is so committed to the environment that for every amp of power the company uses, it matches three times that with renewable energy. That 300% renewable energy match means your website will actually be carbon-reducing!
But don’t choose GreenGeeks just because of its renewable energy commitment–GreenGeeks also guarantees 99.98% uptime and has five data centers. Four of the five centers are located in North America, and the fifth is in Amsterdam.
All GreenGeeks hosting plans include free CDN integration plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. The Lite shared hosting plan starts as low as $2.49 per month for one website with a three-year contract. This plan includes 50GB of web space, unmetered transfer, 50 email accounts, a free SSL certificate, a free domain for one year, nightly backups, free CDN, built-in caching, managed WordPress hosting, unlimited databases, and multi-user access.
The other two GreenGeeks plans are Pro starting at $4.95 per month, and Premium starting at $8.95 per month. Both of these plans cover unlimited websites, web space, and email accounts. The biggest additional features in the Premium plan are a free dedicated IP, free AlphaSSL, and object caching.
On top of the 300% renewable energy match and affordable rates, GreenGeek has 24/7 live chat support and a robust knowledge base. And the free drag-and-drop website builder is a great tool, with hundreds of templates to customize.
For cheap, planet-friendly hosting with great uptime and support, get started with GreenGeeks now.
SiteGround
We have already reviewed SiteGround’s month-to-month pricing. But their annual rates are appealing enough for me to mention them again here.
In most cases, web hosting providers give you better discounts for longer contract terms. But SiteGround offers the same monthly rate for 12-month, 24-month, and 36-month contracts.
You’ll still have to pay upfront, but you don’t need to commit for three years to get the best rate.
- Startup — $2.99 per month ($41.88 per year)
- GrowBig — $4.99 per month ($71.88 per year)
- GoGeek — $7.99 per month ($119.88 per year)
So if you know that you want to use SiteGround for at least one year, these annual rates are very affordable.
Bluehost
Bluehost is an incredibly reliable and popular hosting service — and for very god reason.
Bluehost plans are pretty unbeatable when you compare the price to the performance and quality of service that you’re getting in return.
Let’s take a closer look at the annual rates for Bluehost shared hosting plans.
- Basic — $2.75 per month ($33.00 per year)
- Plus — $5.45 per month ($65.40 per year)
- Choice Plus — $5.45 per month ($64.40 per year)
- Pro — $13.95 per month ($167.40 per year)
In terms of affordable web hosting, most of you probably won’t need or want the Pro plan.
But the Basic plan is a great option for a new or small website.
If you have the budget to spend a little bit more, the Plus and Choice Plus plans are offered at the same price for the first year. So I’d recommend Choice Plus, as it comes with extra benefits like site backups and domain privacy.
Just be aware that all of these plans renew at higher rates after the first year. The renewal rate for Choice Plus is $18.99 per month compared to $13.99 per month for the Plus plan.
For an extra $5 per month, I’d still lean toward Choice Plus as the best value.
All plans come with a free SSL certificate and unmetered bandwidth. The basic plan has 50 GB of storage, and the other three have unlimited SSD storage.
Bluehost also offers $100 in advertising credits for Microsoft Advertising as well as $100 in credits for Google Ads. The free advertising can balance out some of your hosting costs. Read my full Bluehost review for more info about them.
Hostinger
Hostinger offers affordable web hosting with a long-term contract. So, if you are always going to need hosting, why not sign a contract and lock in the lowest price possible for as long as you can.
Here is an overview of Hostinger’s current per-month rates if you lock in a 48-month contract:
- Single Shared Hosting — starting at $1.99 per month
- Premium Shared Hosting — starting at $2.99 per month
- Business Shared Hosting — starting at $4.99 per month
The biggest difference between the three options is the server resources and the number of websites that can be hosted. The available disk space is 30 GB, 100 GB, or 200 GB, depending on the plan you choose.
The Single Shared Hosting plan allows you to create one website that can host approximately 10,000 visitors each month. The Premium and Business plans let you host up to 100 sites with a lot more visitors each month.
All three plans have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7/365 customer support, and an easy-to-use website builder.
What they lack in name recognition, they make up for in affordability and service.
I like Hostinger because their service is reliable and they don’t force you to commit long-term. However, the month-to-month plans do not come with lots of freebies and extras. These are some of the add-ons that you’ll want to consider:
- Daily backups (free with the Business Shared plan)
- Cloudflare CDN
- SEO toolkit
- Priority support
At a minimum, I’d recommend the daily backups. The Cloudflare CDN is a good value as well.
How to Choose the Best Cheap Web Hosting For You
With so many great options to consider, finding the best cheap web hosting provider can be challenging. But this process is much easier when you know what to look for as you’re evaluating different contenders.
We encourage you to use the criteria below to guide your decision.
Intro pricing and renewal rates
Whether you commit to one month, one year, or four years, your first contract will always be your best offer. That’s why it’s important to understand what you’re going to be paying when your contract expires.
Let’s look at an example using the web hosting platform iPage, which has the lowest annual rates on our list.
The intro offer for a 12-month contract paid-in-full is $2.99 per month. So your base hosting cost is $35.88 for the first year. But iPage annual plans renew at $9.99 per month, so you’ll be paying a $119.88 base cost for each subsequent year.
Hosting providers are always changing their introductory offers. It’s common to see prices slashed around the holidays, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. No matter what introductory offer you see from a hosting provider, find out what you’ll be paying once the promotional period ends.
Contract length
Month-to-month pricing can seem lucrative. Without a long-term commitment, it’s no big deal if you’re unsatisfied, right?
But short contract terms often translate to higher monthly rates.
For example, HostGator’s entry-level pricing starts at $10.95 per month with no long-term commitments. This will cost you $131.40 over the course of the year, which is very affordable.
But locking in that same exact plan for 36 months and paying upfront costs just $2.75 per month. So you’ll get three years of web hosting for $99 in total. That’s less than the cost of one year at the month-to-month rate!
Hostinger is another prime example of the difference between monthly and yearly rates. You can pay Hostinger upfront for four years of hosting at $1.39 per month, and you’ll still be paying less than you would for a single year with other providers.
The downside of locking in a long-term contract is that you lose the flexibility to change your plan if you’re unhappy or outgrow your resources.
That said, most of the providers I’ve chosen offer money-back guarantees if you aren’t happy. And if you’re always going to need a website, you’re always going to need a host.
I recommend looking for the best long-term deal you can find. You can always continue using your same hosting plan even if you change domain names.
Add-ons and freebies
Most web hosting providers will offer extra features built into the base cost of your web hosting plan. But some providers offer more than others.
In addition to web hosting, common add-ons, freebies, and extras include:
- SSL certificate
- Domain registration
- Setup costs
- Security
- Daily backups
- cPanel
- WordPress integration
- Advertising credits
- Marketing tools
- SEO tools
- MySQL databases
- Domain privacy
- Website builders
It’s important to take all of this into consideration—and balance it with the cost.
One plan may look more appealing at face value, but you’ll have to pay extra for basic features. In comparison, another provider may have higher base prices but deliver more in terms of extras and freebies.
Upgrades
As your site grows, you’ll need to look beyond the cheapest option. After all, you want your website’s traffic to exceed the limits of an entry-level shared plan.
The next logical step is to upgrade to VPS hosting or a cloud hosting plan.
This might not happen for a few years. But you should take a look to see what types of upgrades are offered by various web hosts. Ideally, you’ll want to choose a provider that will make it easy for you to upgrade to another type of web hosting.
Review those upgraded plans so you can budget and calculate hosting costs accordingly for the long term.
The Best Cheap Web Hosting in Summary
You don’t need to spend a ton of money on web hosting, especially if you have a new or small website. I don’t recommend choosing a web host based solely on price. You also need to factor in the quality of the service you get.
Many hosts require a long-term contract to lock in the lowest possible rate. But some providers offer cheap annual and month-to-month pricing.