Cheap web hosting in the UK: what the headline price hides

How introductory pricing works

Most shared-hosting adverts lead with a very low monthly figure. That figure is usually an introductory rate: it applies to your first billing term only, and it is often available only if you pay for a long term up front. When the term ends, the plan renews at the provider's regular rate, which can be several times the introductory price.

None of this is hidden, exactly. The renewal price is normally in the small print or on the checkout page. But the adverts, the comparison tables and the big green button are all built around the first-term number, so many people sign up without noticing what year two will cost.

A few patterns to look for on any hosting price page, ours included:

• "From" prices with an asterisk. Check what the asterisk says about the renewal price and the minimum term.
• Per-month prices billed per year. "£1 a month" often means paying £12, £24 or £36 immediately for a one-, two- or three-year term.
• The lowest price needs the longest term. The headline figure is typically the multi-year price. Paying monthly, or for one year, usually costs more.
• Add-ons at checkout. SSL certificates, backups, email and site restores are sometimes sold separately, which changes the real cost.
• Automatic renewal at the regular rate. Renewal happens on the card on file, at the higher price, unless you cancel or negotiate first.

A worked example

The numbers below are illustrative, not quoted from any particular company, but they reflect the shape of many offers. Suppose a plan is advertised at £1.50 a month for the first year and renews at £9 a month.

The introductory plan is cheaper for exactly one year. Over three years it costs more than two and a half times as much. The point is not that any specific host is a bad deal; it is that you cannot judge the deal from the first-year price alone. Divide the total you will pay over the time you expect to keep the site by the number of months, and compare that.

Why THOST charges a flat price

We are a very small UK team, and we would rather not run a pricing model that depends on people forgetting to check their renewal invoice. So there is one price per plan, and it is the same at signup and at every renewal:

• Starter: £2.99 a month, or £29.90 a year.
• Business: £5.99 a month, or £59.90 a year.
• Pro: £9.99 a month, or £99.90 a year.

Annual billing is simply ten times the monthly price, so you get two months free without committing to several years. There is no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no minimum term beyond the period you have paid for. You can pay monthly and leave next month if it is not for you.

What "cheap" includes here

A low price is only cheap if the essentials are included rather than sold as add-ons. Every THOST plan, including Starter at £2.99, comes with:

• A free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate for every site, renewed automatically, with an HTTPS redirect.
• Daily backups of every website and its databases, with the last 3 copies kept and restorable from the control panel.
• Email at your own domain with webmail, IMAP and SMTP over TLS, spam filtering, virus scanning and DKIM.
• A one-click WordPress installer and your choice of PHP 8.2, 8.3 or 8.4 per site.
• FTP over TLS, cron jobs, subdomains, alias domains and AWStats statistics.
• DNS hosting on our nameservers, or bring your own DNS.
• Servers in the UK: three web servers, a two-node MariaDB cluster with automatic failover, and separate mail and DNS servers.

What we do not offer

Being straightforward about price also means being straightforward about scope. THOST is shared PHP and MariaDB hosting with email. We do not register or sell domain names, so you will need a domain from a registrar; you keep it there and point it at us. There is no phone line and no live chat: support is by email and the ticket form in the client area, and we reply as soon as we possibly can. We currently accept UK customers only. If your project needs something beyond a PHP application on Apache, a MariaDB database and mailboxes, we are probably not the right fit, and we would rather say so than sell you a plan that does not suit you.

How to compare cheap hosting offers

1. Find the renewal price and the term it applies to, then work out the cost over the number of years you expect to keep the site.
2. Check what is included. SSL, backups, email and a way to restore a backup yourself should be part of the price, not extras.
3. Check where the servers are if that matters to you. Ours are in the UK.
4. Check how you leave. Monthly billing and no cancellation fee mean you are never locked in.
5. Read the support terms. Any provider, including us, should tell you plainly how support works rather than promising the world.

Ready to compare? See our full plan comparison, or start with WordPress hosting or email hosting.