Web hosting
The best web hosting — judged on the renewal price, not the promo
Best web hosting: DreamHost. Pickr rates DreamHost 8.8 out of 10, ahead of the 4 others we ranked.
Shared hosting is advertised almost entirely on a number nobody pays for long. The figure on the page is a first-term promotional rate, it usually requires committing to three or four years up front to obtain, and it renews at three to six times the price. Comparing hosts on that number is comparing their marketing departments.
Two numbers and a term
There are only three figures that matter on a hosting page. The introductory rate. The renewal rate. And how long you must commit to get the introductory rate.
That third one does most of the damage and gets the least attention. A host advertising a very low monthly figure on a forty-eight-month term is asking for a four-year prepayment, and the monthly framing disguises a bill of well over a hundred pounds charged on day one. A twelve-month term at a slightly higher rate is a far smaller commitment to a company you have not used yet.
To the industry's credit, the renewal figures are now generally printed in the plan card rather than hidden in a footnote. They are still easy to skim past, because they sit next to a number three to six times smaller in much larger type.
Backups are where cheap hosting is actually cheap
If a plan is unusually inexpensive, look at the backup provision before concluding anything. The spread here is wide and consequential: daily backups with a month of retention at one end, weekly backups at the other, and backups sold by the gigabyte as an add-on at the third.
Weekly matters more than it sounds. It means that in the worst case you restore a site to a state six days old, losing every order, comment and content change in between. For a brochure site that is survivable; for anything transactional it is not.
Check retention too, not just frequency. A daily backup kept for two days protects you against yesterday's mistake but not against one you notice next week.
Uptime guarantees are mostly decorative
Nearly every host states a figure. Far fewer attach anything to it. A guarantee with no remedy is a sentence; a guarantee with service credits is a commitment, because it costs the host money when it is missed.
The range in this group runs from a published 100% guarantee at one end, through a 99.99% commitment with 5% service credits, to a stated 99.9% with no remedy we could locate, to two hosts publishing no guarantee at all.
None of this tells you what availability you will actually get. It tells you what the host is willing to be held to, which is the only part of it you can act on.
What we weighted
Value carries 15 and here it is calculated on the renewal price and the commitment term rather than the advertised rate. Reliability is 25, weighted toward backup provision and whether an uptime commitment carries a remedy. Quality of the work is 30, customer evidence 20, credentials 10. The full standard is here.
The ranking
| Company | PICKR | Intro | Renews at | Promo term | Backups | Uptime guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DreamHost | 8.8 | $2.89/mo | $10.99/mo | 12 months | Daily, included | 100% |
| Cloudways | 8 | $11/mo | $11/mo — no step-up | None, hourly | Paid add-on | Not published |
| Hostinger | 7.4 | $2.99/mo | $10.99/mo | 48 months | Weekly on entry plan | Not published |
| Bluehost | 7.2 | $3.99/mo | $9.99/mo | 36 months | Weekly only | 99.99% + credits |
| SiteGround | 6.7 | $2.99/mo | $17.99/mo | 12 months | Daily, 30-day retention | 99.9% stated |
DreamHost
Shared and managed WordPress
Our pick, and it wins on the two things that actually cost you money later. First, its promotional term is twelve months rather than the three or four years its rivals require — which means you find out what hosting really costs after one year instead of being locked into a four-year prepayment to get the advertised figure. Second, it publishes a 100% uptime guarantee, which is the strongest commitment in this group and unusual anywhere. Daily backups are included rather than sold as an add-on, storage is NVMe, and there is a 30-day refund window with no carve-out. The renewal is still a step up — $2.89 becomes $10.99, which is the honest shape of this entire industry — but you reach that decision point in a year with your data on fast storage and a real backup history behind you.
The evidence (5 sources)
- Intro and renewalLaunch plan $2.89/mo introductory, renewing at $10.99/mosourceread 2026-10-05
- Promotional term12 months — the shortest promotional term of the promotional hosts heresourceread 2026-10-05
- Uptime guarantee100% uptime guaranteesourceread 2026-10-05
- Backups and storageDaily backups included; NVMe storagesourceread 2026-10-05
- Refund30-day money-back guaranteesourceread 2026-10-05
Cloudways
Managed cloud hosting
The only host here that does not play the renewal game at all: the price you see is the price it stays, billed hourly with no contract and no promotional term. For anyone who finds the introductory-pricing model exhausting, that alone is worth a great deal, and it is the honest end of this market. It is also a different product — managed cloud aimed at developers and agencies rather than a first website — and the omissions reflect that: no free domain, backups are a paid extra charged by the gigabyte, no published uptime guarantee and no refund policy, only a three-day trial that at least does not ask for a card.
The evidence (3 sources)
- No promotional step-upSmallest DigitalOcean plan is $11/mo and does not step up; billing is hourly with no contractwww.cloudways.com/en/pricing.phpread 2026-10-05
- Backups are paidBackups charged as an add-on at $0.033/GBwww.cloudways.com/en/pricing.phpread 2026-10-05
- TrialThree-day trial with no credit card required; no refund policy publishedwww.cloudways.com/en/pricing.phpread 2026-10-05
What we could not verify
- Cloudways publishes no uptime guarantee and no refund policy.
- Its pricing slider returned identical values for different middle tiers, so only the endpoint plans are reported here.
Hostinger
Shared hosting
The cheapest headline figure, and the one that requires the largest commitment to obtain it — the advertised rate applies to a forty-eight-month term paid up front. To its credit the renewal is printed plainly in the plan card rather than buried, so nobody need be surprised. The entry plan takes weekly backups rather than daily, which is a meaningful difference if a site changes often, and its storage is SSD rather than NVMe at that tier. No uptime guarantee is published anywhere we could find.
The evidence (3 sources)
- Intro, renewal and termPremium at $2.99/mo on a 48-month term billed $143.52 up front, stated as renewing at $10.99/mowww.hostinger.com/web-hostingread 2026-10-05
- BackupsWeekly backups on the entry plan; daily on the tier abovewww.hostinger.com/web-hostingread 2026-10-05
- Refund30-day money-back guaranteewww.hostinger.com/web-hostingread 2026-10-05
What we could not verify
- No uptime guarantee is published; its terms refer to one existing in other documents, which we could not locate.
Bluehost
Shared hosting
The smallest renewal multiplier of the promotional hosts, and the only one attaching an actual remedy to its uptime commitment — 99.99% with 5% service credits, which is more than a number in a sentence. Against that: a thirty-six-month promotional term, weekly backups only at every tier we looked at, a free domain that must be redeemed within ninety days or lost, and a refund window that excludes the domain fee, so “30-day money-back” is not quite money back.
The evidence (4 sources)
- Intro and renewalStarter $3.99/mo introductory on a 36-month term, renewing at $9.99/mowww.bluehost.com/hosting/sharedread 2026-10-05
- Uptime remedy99.99% uptime commitment with 5% service creditswww.bluehost.com/terms/uptime-agreementread 2026-10-05
- BackupsWeekly backupswww.bluehost.com/hosting/sharedread 2026-10-05
- Refund carve-out30-day refund excludes the non-refundable domain registration feewww.bluehost.com/termsread 2026-10-05
What we could not verify
- Bluehost returned 403 to plain fetches; these figures were read in a rendering browser.
SiteGround
Shared and managed WordPress
Technically well regarded and the daily backups with thirty-day retention are the best backup provision in this group. But the renewal arithmetic is the harshest here by some distance: $2.99 becomes $17.99, and the tier above goes from $4.99 to $29.99 — a six-fold step on both. On a twelve-month promotional term that arrives quickly. A 99.9% uptime figure is stated, but we could not find any remedy attached to it, and the storage type is never specified.
The evidence (3 sources)
- Intro and renewalStartUp $2.99/mo introductory, renewing at $17.99/mo; GrowBig $4.99 renewing at $29.99 — a six-fold step on bothwww.siteground.com/web-hosting.htmread 2026-10-05
- BackupsDaily backups with 30-day retentionwww.siteground.com/web-hosting.htmread 2026-10-05
- Refund30-day money-back guaranteewww.siteground.com/web-hosting.htmread 2026-10-05
What we could not verify
- A 99.9% uptime figure is stated but we found no remedy or service-credit clause attached to it.
- Storage type is not specified anywhere on the hosting pages.
Questions people actually ask
What is the best web hosting?
DreamHost, on the terms that bite later: a 12-month promotional term rather than the 36 or 48 months its rivals require, a published 100% uptime guarantee, daily backups included and NVMe storage.
Why does web hosting get more expensive after the first year?
Because the advertised figure is an introductory rate for the first term only. Renewals in this group run from about 2x to 6x the intro price — SiteGround's StartUp goes from $2.99 to $17.99, and its GrowBig from $4.99 to $29.99.
Which host does not raise the price on renewal?
Cloudways. Its smallest plan is $11/mo and stays there, billed hourly with no contract or promotional term. The trade-off is that it is managed cloud rather than beginner shared hosting, with no free domain and backups charged as a paid add-on.
How long do I have to commit to get the advertised price?
It varies a lot and it is the figure people miss. Hostinger's advertised rate requires a 48-month term billed up front; Bluehost's requires 36 months. DreamHost and SiteGround run 12-month terms.
How often should my host back up my site?
Daily, with meaningful retention. Weekly backups mean a worst-case restore loses up to six days of changes. SiteGround takes daily backups with 30-day retention; Hostinger's entry plan and Bluehost take weekly; Cloudways charges for backups as an add-on.
Before you buy
Work out the real cost over three years rather than the monthly figure: intro term at the intro rate, plus the remaining months at the renewal rate. That single sum reorders this list almost every time, and it takes two minutes.
Then check two things that are easy to miss — whether the free domain is free only for the first year and whether it must be claimed within a window, and whether the refund covers the whole payment or excludes the domain registration fee. Both are common and both are disclosed, just not prominently.
Spotted something wrong here? Write to hello@pickrmedia.com and we will check it against the source.