Benchmark Notes
Hosting with fixed renewal pricing — Rank on three-year cost per unit of capacity
The headline rate is a marketing input, not a price — the number you will actually pay is thirty-six months of renewals against the cores, memory and storage you get for them.
The short answer
Compare hosts on the 36-month total, then divide it by the capacity you are buying. Here the sums are trivial because nothing changes at renewal: Sprint is $2.42 a month, so $87.12 over three years; Turbo is $4.66, so $167.76; Nitro is $7.08, so $254.88.
Then put capacity underneath those figures. Sprint: 10 GB NVMe, 1 site, 500 GB bandwidth, 1 core and 2 GB of RAM, 25 MySQL. Turbo: 20 GB, 25 sites, 1 TB, 1 core and 2 GB, 50 MySQL. Nitro: 200 GB, 100 sites, 2 TB, 2 cores and 4 GB, 100 MySQL, with backups every 6 hours and Imunify360 in front. Now the comparison is arithmetic rather than persuasion.
Below: how to run the same sum on a host that hides its renewal figure, which line items the footnotes usually live in, and why a flat rate changes how you should think about migrating at all.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
99.9%
Uptime target
24/7
Humans on the desk
Free
SSL, every plan
NVMe
Storage as standard
Introductory pricing is not deception exactly — the number is real for twelve months. It is just not the number you will pay for most of the time you own the site, which makes it the wrong number to rank on.
The fix is unglamorous and effective: build one table with a three-year total and a capacity column, and let it re-sort the market for you. This page shows the sums with real figures so you can drop other providers into the same shape.
The sum, written out
Take the monthly rate, multiply by twelve for the first year, then by twenty-four at the renewal rate for years two and three. Where the two rates are identical the shortcut is monthly times thirty-six.
Sprint: $2.42 × 36 = $87.12. Turbo: $4.66 × 36 = $167.76. Nitro: $7.08 × 36 = $254.88. Business hosting: Overdrive $19.99 × 36 = $719.64, Redline $39.99 × 36 = $1,439.64. Every one of those renews at the rate it started at.
Now run the same calculation on a host with a discounted first year and an undisclosed renewal. You cannot — and that is the finding. A provider that will not print the renewal figure has declined to be compared, which is information in itself.
Cost per unit of capacity, which almost nobody calculates
Divide the three-year total by what you are actually renting. Turbo at $167.76 buys 20 GB of NVMe and 25 sites; Nitro at $254.88 buys 200 GB and 2 cores. That is ten times the storage and twice the CPU for roughly half as much again.
This is where the interesting decisions surface. If you are running one small site, the extra capacity on Nitro is waste and Sprint is the efficient buy. If you are running eight, Turbo is cheaper per site than eight separate accounts anywhere.
Also price the things that are included rather than billed: SSL, migration, daily backups, mailboxes and the first year of a domain on an annual order. On hosts that charge for those separately, add them into the total before you compare — otherwise you are comparing a plan with an incomplete plan.
Where the footnotes actually live
Three places, in order of frequency. A renewal rate expressed only as 'standard rate applies'. A setup or activation charge that appears at checkout or, worse, as a deduction at refund time — there is none here. And add-ons that were quietly included in year one: backups, SSL, a control panel licence, a security product.
Domains deserve separate treatment. The first year is included on an annual hosting order, and after that the name renews at the published rate for its TLD, which varies by extension. Check the renewal rate for the specific extension you want before you register — that is a registry-driven figure, not a hosting one, and it differs enormously between TLDs.
The general rule: any price that needs a footnote is a business model written small. Read the footnote, put its consequence in your three-year total, and re-sort.
What a flat rate changes about staying
Introductory pricing works because migrating is annoying, so providers charge for your reluctance. Once the renewal matches the order rate, that lever disappears and the host has to keep you on the service instead.
Practically, it also means you can stop diarising renewal dates as a defensive exercise. Sprint at $2.42, Turbo at $4.66, Nitro at $7.08 — the renewal invoice is the same figure as the first one, so the interesting question becomes whether the plan still fits, not whether the price moved.
And if it stops fitting, the upgrade is an account change rather than a migration: shared tiers move in place, and VPS from $13.52 and dedicated from $149.99 sit on the same platform. You are never paying a switching tax to grow.
The comparison we would lose is the one we publish
A three-year table is the least flattering way to present hosting to a market built on first-year rates, which is precisely why it is worth printing. If our renewal figure moved, this page would be an argument against us.
We are a host recommending our own plans and say so. The method works unchanged on any provider you are weighing us against.
- 36-month totals printed, not implied
- Capacity beside the cost, so the ratio is visible
- No setup charge in any of the sums
- Included items counted, not assumed
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
Order rate equals renewal rate
$2.42, $4.66 and $7.08 on the shared tiers, at signup and at every renewal after it. The sum stays a multiplication.
Capacity printed next to price
Cores, RAM, NVMe, bandwidth and database count for every tier, so cost per unit is something you can calculate.
No joining fee anywhere
Nothing to add at checkout and nothing to deduct at refund, which removes the commonest hidden line in this market.
Essentials counted in
SSL, migration, daily backups and mailboxes are in the plan, so the three-year total is the whole three-year total.
Growth without a switching tax
Shared tiers upgrade in place, and VPS from $13.52 and dedicated from $149.99 are on the same platform.
A remedy behind the uptime figure
99.9% as the target, with a pro-rated credit under the terms if a month falls short through a fault on our side.
Prices Side by Side
Our numbers next to the big names
Typical intro and renewal pricing across the market, lined up against ours — including the renewal figure most comparison charts skip.
| Feature | HostingFastMost popular | Typical household-name host | Typical bargain host | Typical loss-leader deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Renewal price / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Cheapest plan renews at its sign-up price | ||||
| SSL as standard | ||||
| Migration done for you | ||||
| NVMe drives on the cheapest tier | ||||
| Daily backups from the first tier | ||||
| Real humans on support, 24/7 |
*Our number is the lowest-priced plan we sell on an annual term, pulled live from the same catalogue that powers our pricing page — it physically cannot fall out of date. The other three columns show the ranges shared hosts in each bracket typically advertise: introductory offers that mostly demand a one-to-four-year commitment, then jump once it expires. We no longer name rivals or print their prices, because a figure we cannot verify on the day you read it has no business on this page. Line us up against whichever host you are really weighing — and give the renewal row the hardest look.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Build one table, three columns
Three-year total, capacity, and what is included. Everything else on a hosting comparison page is decoration.
- 2
Refuse to estimate a missing renewal rate
If a provider will not print it, record that as the finding rather than guessing a number in its favour.
- 3
Add the unbundled extras back in
SSL, backups, a panel licence, migration. Compare complete plans against complete plans or the exercise is meaningless.
- 4
Check the domain renewal separately
The first year may be included, but the name renews at its TLD's published rate. That figure varies hugely by extension.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- A renewal figure you can put in a budget and leave there
- Staging copies for testing changes before they ship
- Your existing site moved across by our engineers, free of charge
- Attack traffic absorbed upstream rather than at your document root
- cPanel, the panel most of the industry already documents
- Humans answering around the clock, weekends included
- Zero setup charges — there is no joining fee
- Mailboxes on your own domain, included in the plan
- In-place upgrades between tiers, with no migration to arrange
- NVMe storage on the smallest plan, not reserved for the largest
- Year one of the domain free when you order annually
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
What do three years actually cost on each shared tier?
Sprint is $2.42 a month, so $87.12 over 36 months. Turbo is $4.66, so $167.76. Nitro is $7.08, so $254.88. Business hosting runs $719.64 for Overdrive and $1,439.64 for Redline across the same period. Because the renewal rate equals the order rate, the calculation stays a single multiplication.
How do I compare a host that hides its renewal figure?
You do not, and that is the result. Record it as unpriced rather than substituting a charitable guess. If you want to proceed anyway, ask pre-sales in writing for the renewal rate on the specific plan and keep the reply — a provider unwilling to put that in writing has told you what year two looks like.
Does the free first-year domain renew free as well?
No. The first year of the registration is included on an annual hosting order; after that the name renews at the published rate for its TLD, and those rates vary widely between extensions. Check the renewal figure for the extension you want before you register, because it is set by the registry rather than by hosting.
Which tier is the efficient buy for what I run?
Divide the three-year total by the capacity. One small site: Sprint at $87.12 for 10 GB and 1 core is efficient and Nitro's 200 GB would be waste. Eight or more sites: Turbo at $167.76 for 25 sites beats separate accounts anywhere. Heavy or busy: Nitro at $254.88 buys 2 cores, 4 GB and backups every 6 hours.
Keep reading
WordPress.com vs Self-Hosted WordPress
The same three-year sum applied to a platform fee versus a hosting plan, where the gap widens fastest.
Reseller Hosting vs Affiliate Programs
Two revenue models compared on unit economics rather than on the commission rate in the headline.
Uptime (Glossary)
What 99.9% means in minutes per month, and how the pro-rated credit works when a month falls short.
Web Hosting
Sprint, Turbo and Nitro with cores, memory, storage and bandwidth printed beside each monthly figure.
Business Hosting
Overdrive at $19.99 and Redline at $39.99, where the capacity per pound changes shape again.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A straightforward sequence for a switch your visitors never feel: which files move first, how to shift email across without losing a single message, the right moment to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind almost all the downtime we get asked to rescue.
One rate. Multiply it by thirty-six.
Sprint $2.42, Turbo $4.66, Nitro $7.08 — at order and at renewal, with SSL, migration and backups counted in.
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