Are You Paying Too Much For Web Hosting?
Last updated on Sep 11, 2024
It’s always a good idea to find ways to cut costs, whether it’s in business or your own personal finances. Web hosting, like many services, is usually billed on a reoccurring subscription based model, either monthly, annually, biennially, or triennially. Typically the more you pay for a service up front the better deal you will get, but keep in mind more often than not, the renewal price will be higher than the initial price you paid months or years prior. When your web hosting plan is up for another automatic charge don’t just let it happen without taking a moment to figure out if you can save some money on this expense.
Here are a few ways to save money on web hosting
1. Change your web hosting plan to save money.
First things first, pricing is important but don’t compromise on your needs or requirements in order to get a lower priced web hosting plan. IMHO, free web hosting or ultra cheap web hosting is out of the question, mainly because quality and reliability will be compromised. It’s certainly a good idea to re-assess your current hosting needs as far as storage, bandwidth, memory, I/O, add-on domains, etc, when exploring price reductions. You might find that your current web host offers a lower priced plan that meets your requirements. If not, research some other web hosts to find a plan that meets your needs and better fits your budget.
2. Find a low introductory rate price and switch web hosts before there’s a higher renewal.
A low introductory rate, followed by higher renewal, is common pricing in web hosting.
If you’re happy with your current web host and the renewal price is higher there’s no harm in asking for discount on your renewal when the time approaches. If you’re unhappy or just cannot afford the higher prices leave for another web host with a lower price. All you need to do is take your full cPanel backup and provide it to your new web host to get you up and running on your new hosting account. If you’re not technically savvy enough to do this or don’t have the time to learn, often times your new web host will offer free website migrations. They can do it all for you if you provide your old/current hosting account’s cPanel login credentials.
Let’s quickly run through some numbers to try and break down the cost different over a 6 year period.
Staying with a web host that has a low introductory rate followed by a renewal price rate increase.
Introductory rate of $3/month for three years = $108
Renewal rate of $9/month for an additional three years = $324
Six years of web hosting for $432
$72/year
$6/month
Taking advantage of a low introductory rate and then moving to another web host with a similar low introductory rate before the renewal price rate increase.
Introductory rate of $3/month for three years = $108
Moving to a new web host with a low intro rate of $4/month for three years = $144
Six years of web hosting for $252
$42/year
$3.5/month
As you can see from the examples above if you change web hosts every few years the savings can really add up by taking advantage of low introductory rates. This rinse and repeat process might be worth the extra time it takes to research a new host and move every few years to save a couple hundred dollars.
However, if you are happy with your current web host I always recommend figuring out a way to stay with them.
3. Find a web host that doesn’t have a much higher renewal price from the start.
To avoid having a higher renewal price you can look for a web host that offers the same price initially as they do for subsequent charges. Often times the prices might not be enticingly low but should be reasonable. For example, the price might be $5 or $6 per month but you don’t need to be concerned about an initial low price and a price increase down the road. However, keep in mind that nothing guarantees that prices will always remain the same. Increased costs and dynamics within a company are always factors for price changes. For example, in 2019 cPanel raised their pricing and licensing structure. In turn this caused web hosts to either switch to an alternative web hosting control panel like DirectAdmin or continue to use cPanel but raise their prices to offset the increased expense.
Here’s an email from WebHostingHub regarding the cPanel price increases on November 21st, 2019.
“We have been notified by cPanel that it will be converting to new pricing and licensing structure that will affect all Web Hosting Hub accounts.
Recently, cPanel announced a new pricing and licensing structure that shifted from an unlimited usage to a usage-based structure. This change will result in pricing increases for all website hosting providers and consumers that use cPanel.
The recent pricing change has forced us to increase the base cost of our hosting products.
Beginning December 1, 2019, the price of all new hosting orders will increase by $1/month. Additionally, any hosting renewal occurring after January 31, 2020 will renew at an increased rate of $1/month.
As always, our Customer Service team is here 24/7 to answer any questions you may have. You can reply to this email with any questions regarding your account.
Thank you for your understanding and continued business.”
Here’s an email from Turnkey Internet about their 2022 Rate Change and Annual Discount Option. If you’re a satisfied customer affected by the 9% price increase and you want to stick around they offer a deal to lock in the old price for another year.
“In 2001 TurnKey Internet was founded on a simple principle, to focus on the customer by delivering reliable, fast and cost-effective Cloud based solutions for businesses. Over the last 20 years we have evolved and expanded on that mission by investing and owning our own facilities to deliver competitive value with superior performance and reliability.
Today TurnKey Internet is proud to service thousands of clients in over 100 countries across the globe by delivering high performing and reliable bare-metal dedicated servers, cloud servers and colocation services. We continue to expand and offer affordable cloud-based solutions that you, our valued customer, have asked us to deliver.
To make sure we continue delivering on this mission we will be increasing our rates and changing our packages to reflect the services our clients ask for most. Effective July 1st, 2022 our Bare-Metal (Dedicated Server), cloud, web hosting, VPS, and Colocation services will see a price increase of 9% starting on the next generated invoice.
If you’re like me, you love deals – and I’ve got one for you before the prices go up next month: convert any bare-metal dedicated server, cloud server, VPS, or colocation service from a month to month plan to our annualized billing plan and save 10% off while locking in the OLD price for another year!. You can contact us at https://turnkeyinternet.net/contact/ or email sales@turnkeyinternet.net to take advantage of this offer through July 1st, 2022.
TurnKey Internet will continue to invest in its facilities, network infrastructure, and next generation hardware over the next year while offering new services to more locations across the globe. Thank you for your continued trust in letting TurnKey Internet be a part of your online success. If you have any questions or issues, don’t hesitate to contact our customer service and billing team at helpdesk@turnkeyinternet.net.”
For many years MDDHosting has periodically offered existing clients a promotional 10% bonus credit. This is a great example of rewarding existing loyal customers who don’t want to move away from a web host that they like with a deal on renewal.
“We, as most companies, are almost perpetually running new promotions to help bring new customers on-board and more often than not the existing customers get ignored or completely forgotten when it comes to promotions. At MDDHosting we try to, on occasion, offer some sort of special promotion or incentive to our existing customers and this is one such moment.
From now until April 24th, 2022 at 11:59 PM EST we will be adding an additional 10% to any credit balance added to your account greater than $50 and less than $1,000.
Please respond to this email or contact the billing department once you have added funds so that we can add the bonus credit. If you add $50 your total credit balance would be adjusted to $55.00 for a bonus of $5.00 or if you were to add $500 you would see an additional bonus of $50 added to your account for a total of $550 in credit. Directions for adding funds are located below, and after you do so please open a ticket with our billing department so that we can add your bonus funds. Bonus funds will be added within 48 hours.
There are a few catches, that we must make you aware of: should the original, non-bonus, funds deposit be withdrawn, refunded, disputed, or charged-back the bonus funds would be invalidated and removed from the account. In “plain English” this means you can’t simply make the deposit for the bonus and then withdrawal the deposit+bonus. The bonus credit is added manually by our billing staff and is not an automatic process. You are required to contact us after making a funds deposit as a part of this promotion and requesting that we apply your credit balance.”
Conclusion
The bottom line is you always have options if you aren’t happy with the cost of your web hosting or any other issue(s) you might have with your web host. If you’re happy with your current web host stay on top of deals they offer existing customers or reach out to them to try and lower your web hosting cost. If you aren’t overall happy with your current web host look for another web hosting company that meets your needs at a lower price and move on.
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