Pricing & Billing
Introductory Pricing
A discounted rate for your first billing term that jumps to a much higher renewal price later, common in shared and managed WordPress hosting.
Introductory pricing is the low headline rate you pay for your first term, usually one to three years, before the price snaps to its real level. Shared and WordPress hosts built their marketing on it. SiteGround advertises around $2.99/mo that renews near $17.99, a six-fold jump. Hostinger, Bluehost, and DreamHost all run the same playbook with intro rates that roughly double or worse at renewal.
The number that actually defines your cost is the renewal price, not the sticker. A host that's cheapest in year one can be among the priciest in year three, and the discount is engineered to make that comparison hard at signup. Locking in a longer initial term lowers the effective rate but also delays the reckoning.
The defense is simple and rarely followed: compare renewal prices, not intro prices. On this site the pricing data tracks both, because the intro rate tells you almost nothing about what you'll pay once you're settled in and switching costs have set in.
Go deeper
- How Cloud Hosting Pricing Actually WorksHourly billing, bundled plans, egress fees, and the line items that turn an advertised price into your real bill.