hosting.com vs Hostinger vs SiteGround: Real Renewal Prices Compared
Disclosure: we earn a commission if you buy through our hosting.com link. We are not affiliated with Hostinger or SiteGround and earn nothing from them, which is worth knowing when you read our conclusion. See our Affiliate Disclosure. All prices captured 26 July 2026.
The short answer
All three advertise entry hosting at $2.99 per month. They renew at $10.99, $11.99 and $17.99 respectively, on completely different commitment terms. Hostinger is cheapest if you will genuinely prepay four years. hosting.com is the best balance of price and flexibility on a one-year term. SiteGround is the most expensive by a wide margin and needs to justify that on service.
The advertised price tells you nothing here. Every one of these three shows you $2.99. What separates them is what happens next, and how long you have to commit to get it.
The comparison that matters
| hosting.com Starter | Hostinger Premium | SiteGround StartUp | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advertised | $2.99/mo | $2.99/mo | $2.99/mo |
| Term required for that price | 12 months | 48 months | 12 months |
| Paid up front | $35.88 | $143.52 | $35.88 |
| Renews at | $11.99/mo | $10.99/mo | $17.99/mo |
| Renewal multiple | 4.0x | 3.7x | 6.0x |
| Websites | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Storage | 15 GB NVMe | 20 GB SSD | 10 GB |
| Backups | Daily, 30-day restore | Weekly | Daily |
| Free domain year one | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email included | Yes | 2 mailboxes, free year one | Yes |
| Control panel | cPanel | hPanel (custom) | Site Tools (custom) |
| Money-back | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days |
SiteGround’s prices are quoted excluding VAT, so depending on where you live the real figure is higher again.
Three-year cost, which is the number to compare
Nobody moves host every year. Here is what each actually costs over three years on the entry plan:
- hosting.com Starter: $35.88 + $143.88 + $143.88 = $323.64
- Hostinger Premium: $143.52 covers the first four years, so three years costs $143.52 and you still have a year in hand
- SiteGround StartUp: $35.88 + $215.88 + $215.88 = $467.64 (plus VAT)
On raw three-year cost, Hostinger wins decisively and SiteGround costs roughly 45% more than hosting.com and more than three times Hostinger.
We earn commission from hosting.com and nothing from the other two. We are telling you Hostinger is cheaper anyway, because it is.
But cheapest is not automatically best
The Hostinger figure comes with a condition that deserves more attention than it usually gets: you must prepay 48 months. That is a four-year bet on a company, a product and your own project all still being right for each other in 2030. If you cancel after the 30-day window you do not get the balance back.
Consider what four years of prepayment actually means:
- If your project does not survive year one, you have paid for three years of nothing.
- If service quality drops after an acquisition, you are locked in or you walk away from the money.
- If you outgrow the plan, upgrading costs more on top.
At a 12-month term, the picture changes considerably. hosting.com asks $35.88 for a year and $143.88 to renew. That is a far smaller commitment for a similar first-year price, and you can leave after twelve months having lost nothing.
Where each one genuinely wins
Hostinger wins on price, if you commit
The lowest renewal rate of the three at $10.99, three websites instead of one on the entry plan, and by far the lowest total cost over four years. If you are confident about a long-term project and comfortable prepaying, it is hard to argue against on cost.
The trade-offs: weekly rather than daily backups on the entry plan, a custom control panel rather than cPanel, and the four-year commitment itself.
hosting.com wins on flexibility and portability
cPanel on every plan, which means no proprietary panel to learn and a standard backup format if you leave. Daily backups with a 30-day restore window, which is the most generous of the three at entry level. Free unlimited managed migrations. A one-year term rather than four.
The trade-off is a 4.0x renewal increase and only one website on the entry plan. Our full hosting.com review goes through this in detail, including the places where their own published figures contradict each other.
SiteGround wins on reputation and tooling, and charges for it
Staging environments, Git on the higher tier, managed WordPress autoupdates, and a long-standing reputation among WordPress developers. Google Cloud infrastructure. The GrowBig and GoGeek tiers include genuinely useful developer features.
The trade-off is the price. A 6.0x renewal multiple is the steepest of the three, $17.99 a month for a single 10 GB website is a lot in 2026, and quoting ex-VAT makes the real cost higher still. SiteGround is a defensible choice if you specifically want their WordPress tooling. It is a poor choice if you are buying on the $2.99 headline.
What none of them tell you clearly
The advertised price is a customer acquisition cost, not a price. All three are willing to lose money in year one to acquire you, because the renewal is where the margin lives. Once you understand that, the $2.99 stops being information and starts being noise.
Term length is doing the heavy lifting. Hostinger’s headline requires four years. The other two require one. Comparing monthly prices across different commitment lengths is comparing nothing at all.
Storage tells you less than backups do. Most small sites never approach 10 GB. What matters far more is whether you can restore yesterday’s version at 2am, and how far back that goes.
Our recommendation
- You want the lowest possible cost and will commit four years: Hostinger. We earn nothing from saying so.
- You want cPanel, portability and a one-year commitment: hosting.com. Best balance of the three, provided you diarise the $143.88 renewal.
- You are a WordPress developer who will use staging, Git and white-label: SiteGround GrowBig or GoGeek, not StartUp. Buy it for the tooling, never for the entry price.
- You are unsure how long the project will last: take the shortest term you can. A 12-month commitment at a slightly worse rate beats a 48-month commitment you regret in month seven.
Check hosting.com’s current pricing, or read our guide to what web hosting really costs first.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheapest: hosting.com, Hostinger or SiteGround?
Hostinger, provided you prepay 48 months. At $143.52 for four years it is far cheaper than hosting.com at $323.64 over three years or SiteGround at $467.64 over three years. On a 12-month term the gap narrows considerably.
Why do all three advertise $2.99 per month?
Because $2.99 is a competitive entry price point rather than a reflection of cost. The three renew at $10.99, $11.99 and $17.99 per month, so the advertised figure tells you almost nothing about what you will pay long term.
Does SiteGround’s higher price buy better hosting?
It buys more developer tooling: staging, Git on higher tiers, managed WordPress autoupdates and white-label access. Whether that is worth a 6.0x renewal multiple depends entirely on whether you will use those features. For a simple site, you are paying for capability you will not touch.
Which has the best backups?
Of these three entry plans, hosting.com offers daily backups with restore to any point in the previous 30 days. SiteGround offers daily backups. Hostinger’s entry Premium plan offers weekly backups, moving to daily on higher tiers.
Do any of them include cPanel?
Only hosting.com. Hostinger uses its own hPanel and SiteGround uses Site Tools. Custom panels are not inherently worse, but cPanel is familiar to most developers and makes moving away simpler later.
Can I switch hosts later without losing my site?
Yes. All three offer free migrations in some form, and moving a small WordPress site is routine. The bigger obstacle is prepaid money you cannot get back, which is why term length matters as much as price.
The bottom line
Three companies, one advertised price, three very different deals. Hostinger is the cheapest if you can commit four years. hosting.com is the most flexible and the most portable. SiteGround is the most expensive and needs to be bought deliberately for its tooling rather than its headline.
Whichever you pick, write the renewal date and the renewal price in your calendar the day you buy. That single habit is worth more than any discount code.
Prices captured 26 July 2026 from each provider’s public pricing pages. SiteGround pricing shown excluding VAT. Hostinger pricing based on the 48-month term shown at time of capture. Pricing changes frequently and varies by country. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
