That WordPress hosting plan you signed up for at £1.99 a month? Check the renewal price. It's probably £13.99. Or £10.99. Maybe £14.99 if you went with GoDaddy.
The introductory pricing model in UK web hosting works like gym memberships: get people in the door cheap, then charge them three to six times more once they're too invested to leave. Migrating a WordPress site feels hard (it isn't, but it feels that way), so most people just pay the higher price and grumble. Some even give up on WordPress entirely and move to a walled-garden builder, which is its own expensive problem: we broke down the actual numbers in our WordPress vs Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix honest comparison.
We've been running WordPress hosting since 2002. We don't use introductory pricing. The price you see on day one is the price you pay on renewal. This article shows you exactly what the major UK providers actually charge after year one, so you can decide whether your current deal is still a deal.
The Renewal Price Table
These prices were checked in March 2026 from each provider's UK website. All figures are per month, excluding VAT (which adds 20% at checkout). The "Price Hike" column shows how much more you'll pay after the introductory period ends.
| Provider | Plan | Intro Price | Renewal Price | Price Hike |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fasthosts | Business | £0.40/mo | £11.99/mo | 2,898% |
| IONOS | Grow | £1.00/mo | £10.00/mo | 900% |
| SiteGround | StartUp | £1.99/mo | £13.99/mo | 603% |
| Hostinger | Premium | £1.99/mo | £10.99/mo | 452% |
| GoDaddy | Basic | £3.99/mo | £14.99/mo | 276% |
| Bluehost | Basic | £2.30/mo | £6.23/mo | 171% |
| 365i | Personal | £5.99/mo | £5.99/mo | 0% |
Fasthosts is the most aggressive: 40p a month for six months, then £11.99 when you've forgotten about it. IONOS runs close behind at 900%. SiteGround's StartUp plan goes from £1.99 to £13.99 after 12 months.
365i's Personal plan starts at £5.99 and stays at £5.99. No introductory deal. No renewal shock. The price on the website is the price on your invoice, month one through month fifty.
The Costs That Don't Make the Advert
Renewal pricing is the biggest shock, but it's not the only one. Budget hosts make money from add-ons that other providers include as standard.
SSL certificates: Let's Encrypt is free, and most managed hosts include it automatically. But GoDaddy's cheapest plans push you toward their paid SSL, which can run to £119.99 a year. If your hosting doesn't auto-renew your SSL, you end up with a browser warning that says "Not Secure" in the address bar. That scares off customers.
Domain renewals: The "free domain" in year one often renews at inflated rates. A .co.uk that costs £6-8 at wholesale can be billed at £15-20 by the same host that gave it to you "free." We wrote about this exact pattern in our article on the real cost of cheap UK domains.
Backups: Daily backups should be standard. At 365i, they are. Some budget hosts charge £2-3 a month for the privilege of being able to restore your site when something goes wrong. Others offer backups but store them on the same server as your site, which defeats the purpose if the server fails.
Migration fees: Want to leave? Some providers make that expensive. Bluehost has historically charged around £149 for assisted migration. If you're stuck on slow hosting and want to move, that's a hefty exit fee. At 365i, migration is free.
The Three-Year Maths
Here's what gets overlooked. A SiteGround StartUp plan looks like a bargain at £1.99 a month. After 12 months, it's £13.99. Over three years, that's roughly £24 for year one and £168 each for years two and three. Total: about £360.
365i's Personal plan at £5.99 a month costs £72 a year. Over three years: £216.
The "expensive" host is £144 cheaper over three years than the "cheap" one. And that's before you count the extras (SSL, backups, migration) that 365i includes and SiteGround charges for separately.
We covered a similar pattern at the agency tier in our agency hosting cost comparison, where the per-site economics get even more skewed at scale. The same maths applies to individual plans: introductory pricing costs you more in the end.
What Should Be Included (And Often Isn't)
When you compare hosting plans, the monthly price is only useful if you know what's in it. Here's what 365i includes on every WordPress hosting plan, from the £5.99 Personal tier upward:
- Free SSL certificates (auto-renewed, no manual setup)
- Daily backups (stored separately from your site)
- Global CDN (static asset delivery from UK, US, and Asia)
- Unlimited email accounts with automatic SPF records and one-click DKIM/DMARC
- Daily malware scanning and automatic threat isolation
- Staging environments for testing changes before they go live
- Free migration from your current host
- Unlimited LVE resources (no CPU or memory throttling)
On budget hosting, most of these are either paid add-ons or simply unavailable. The hidden costs of cheap hosting add up fast when you start counting what you need to buy separately.
Our article on WordPress hosting that actually helps goes deeper into what the control panel experience looks like day to day, including 37 built-in tools, personalised screencast support videos, and one-click DNS management.
When the Renewal Hits: Your Options
If you're reading this because your hosting renewal just arrived and the price has tripled, you have three choices:
Pay the higher price and accept it. Some people do. It's the easiest option, and hosts count on that inertia. But you're now paying premium prices for what's still shared hosting with limited features.
Create a new account with the same host. Reddit is full of people who sign up for a new SiteGround or Hostinger account every year to get the intro rate again. It works, but you're migrating your own site every 12 months. That's time you're not spending on your business.
Switch to a host that charges the same price at renewal. This is what we'd suggest (obviously). 365i includes a free Migration Centre with every plan: pick your old host, enter your details, and the system transfers your site automatically. You can run it any time without waiting for support. Your emails keep working, and your price stays the same next year.
If your current hosting is also slow, our guide on when to upgrade from shared hosting can help you decide whether a standard WordPress plan or a managed cloud server is the better fit for your site's traffic.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do hosting prices increase so much at renewal?
Hosting companies use introductory pricing as a customer acquisition strategy. The low initial price is subsidised by the higher renewal rate. They rely on the fact that migrating a website feels difficult, so most customers stay and pay the increase rather than switch providers.
How much should WordPress hosting cost in the UK?
For a single WordPress site with SSL, backups, CDN, and email included, expect to pay £5-15 a month from a quality managed host. Anything under £3 a month is almost certainly an introductory rate that will increase sharply at renewal. Check the renewal price before signing up.
Does 365i increase prices at renewal?
No. 365i does not use introductory pricing. The price you see on the website is the price you pay from month one through every renewal. WordPress hosting starts at £5.99 a month and stays at £5.99 a month. No contracts, no lock-in periods.
Is cheap WordPress hosting worth it?
Only for the introductory period. A plan at £1.99 a month sounds appealing, but if it renews at £13.99, you're paying more over three years than a host that charges £5.99 consistently. Factor in extras that budget hosts charge for (SSL, backups, migration) and the gap gets wider.
How can I avoid hosting renewal price shock?
Set a calendar reminder 30 days before your hosting renews. Check the renewal price in your account settings (it's usually hidden in the billing section, not on the main pricing page). Compare it against current market rates. If the renewal is more than double the intro price, it's time to shop around.
Will I lose data if I switch hosting providers?
No, if done properly. The migration process copies your entire site (files, database, emails, DNS settings) to the new host and only switches the DNS once everything is verified. At 365i, the Migration Centre is a free self-service tool that automates the whole transfer with zero downtime.
What should be included in WordPress hosting?
At minimum: free SSL certificates (auto-renewed), daily backups, a CDN for static file delivery, email accounts with proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), staging environments, and malware scanning. If your host charges extra for any of these, factor those costs into the real monthly price.
WordPress Hosting With No Renewal Surprises
365i charges the same price on month one as on month fifty. Free SSL, daily backups, CDN, email, malware scanning, and staging included on every plan. Free migration from your current host.
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Published: · Last reviewed: · Written by: Mark McNeece, Founder & Managing Director, 365i
Editorially reviewed by: Mark McNeece on · Our editorial standards
