Right under Bluehost‘s $3.99 WordPress price is a short line in small type: “For 36 month term.” It means you pay for three years on the first day, so that $3.99 plan comes to $143.64 at checkout before tax.

The most affordable WordPress host for a beginner is the one whose checkout bill and renewal price both fit your budget. Those two numbers don’t always point to the same host. IONOS asks for the least cash at checkout, while Namecheap‘s EasyWP has the lowest renewal price of the hosts that show one.

How Much a Cheap WordPress Plan Costs at Checkout

To get the checkout bill, multiply the monthly price by the months you have to prepay. DreamHost‘s $1.99 needs four years, so it’s $95.52 on day one, while IONOS’s $1 needs one year and comes to $12. The monthly prices are less than a dollar apart, but DreamHost’s first bill is about eight times bigger. If you want to pay nothing at all, WordPress.com has a Free plan, but your site stays on a WordPress.com address and your visitors see its ads.

1. DreamHost

DreamHost Launch costs $95.52 at checkout, because the $1.99 rate covers four years and the whole term is charged up front. After those four years it renews at $7.99 a month, the lowest renewal of the multi-year plans here, so the fifth year won’t come as a shock.

Launch also comes with free SSL and a free domain for the first year. Email is where it falls short. Its mailboxes are free for three months, and after that you pay for them separately. It’s a good pick if you’re sure you’ll keep the site for years and can spare the four-year payment now.

2. Bluehost

Bluehost Starter comes to $143.64 at checkout for 36 months at $3.99. It renews at $9.99 a month, about two and a half times the intro rate. That’s a smaller jump than you’ll see at DreamHost or Hostinger. Starter also handles your WordPress updates for you, keeps the site on 10 GB of NVMe storage and is meant for about 40,000 visits a month.

A few things are left out, though. Starter backs up weekly rather than daily. The free domain has to be claimed within 90 days of signing up, and business email is a one-month free trial that then becomes a paid monthly add-on.

3. Hosting.com

Hosting.com is the one host here without a number, because its plan prices couldn’t be confirmed when this list was checked. For a nervous beginner, the draw is that you don’t have to commit for long. There’s no contract or early-termination fee, you can pay monthly, and Hosting.com says the renewal price is shown before you buy.

Starter covers five websites and five mailboxes. Staging isn’t included, and the plan is built for about 50,000 page views a month, which is plenty for a first site.

4. Hostinger

Hostinger Premium asks for $143.52 at checkout, which buys 48 months at $2.99. For that commitment you get three websites, a free domain for the first year and Hostinger’s built-in AI tools for putting a site together.

It renews at $10.99 a month. Premium uses standard SSD storage, while NVMe storage starts on the Unlimited plan. Hostinger fits someone who wants a few small sites and is happy to commit for four years.

5. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks Lite costs $35.40 at checkout, because the $2.95 rate only needs a 12-month prepay. GreenGeeks WordPress hosting includes one-click WordPress installs, automatic WordPress updates and a free move by its migration staff for a site hosted elsewhere.

Lite also takes daily backups, though restoring one yourself starts on Pro, and on Lite a restore is a request to support. Budget for the renewal, too. Lite renews at $13.95 a month after the first year, the highest entry-plan renewal of any host on this list with a confirmed price.

6. WordPress.com

WordPress.com Personal costs $9 month to month, $48 for a year, $78 for two years, or $99 if you pay for three years at once. Its pricing page shows no low first-term price with a higher renewal waiting underneath. The savings it shows are measured against the $9 monthly rate, which makes the page easy to read even if you’ve never bought hosting before.

This is WordPress.com’s own hosted service rather than a regular host. There’s nothing to install or patch, Personal removes the ads that show on the Free plan, and a free domain comes with annual or longer billing. Storage is small at 6 GB, so it suits someone who mostly wants to write.

7. Namecheap

Namecheap’s EasyWP Starter comes to $38.88 for a year at $3.24 a month and renews at $5.74, the smallest dollar jump between intro and renewal among the hosts here that show a renewal price. Starter only gets a temporary domain, though. Its free SSL works only with a domain registered at Namecheap, and its CDN needs a Namecheap domain or its FreeDNS service, so it makes the most sense if your domain is already there.

On the plus side, Starter includes automatic WordPress updates, a firewall and free automated migration. If a full year feels like too much, the monthly Starter gives you the first month free and then costs $9.88 a month.

8. IONOS

IONOS Grow costs just $12 for the whole first year at $1 a month, the smallest amount of cash needed to get started anywhere here. It includes five email addresses, 50 GB of storage and a free domain for the first year. Grow also comes with 12 months of Jetpack VaultPress backups, along with vulnerability scans and malware detection.

In year two, Grow goes from $1 to $12 a month. The Start plan costs $5 a month for the first year and then $8, and over two years Start and Grow both add up to $156.

How to Work Out Your Two-Year Cost

Before you pay, write down three lines for the plan you’re looking at.

1. The checkout bill, which is the monthly price times the months you have to prepay.
2. The renewal price times however many months it takes to reach 24.
3. Anything else you’ll need that isn’t included, such as email after a free period ends.

On DreamHost, Bluehost and Hostinger the second line is zero, but the first line is paid years in advance, so weigh it against what you’re comfortable spending today.

For Namecheap’s EasyWP Starter, that’s $38.88 plus $68.88 for the second year, or $107.76 over two years, with nothing extra to add if your domain is with Namecheap. Run the same three lines on the host at the top of your list, then on the next one down. The cheaper total over two years is usually the better deal, even when its first bill is bigger.

Photo: KamranAydinov via Magnific

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