Personal blog hosting: true comparison is over 3 years, not year one

Anyone searching for "1GB hosting price" typically looks at the first figure they find. The problem is that figure applies only to year one. From year two onwards, the bill changes—sometimes by five times as much. For a personal blog, where the budget is almost always fixed and not unlimited, the figure that really matters is the average cost over the first three years, because that's the minimum period in which a site starts to make sense without needing to migrate it elsewhere and start over.

We compared five entry-level plans, both Italian and international, taking prices excluding VAT as declared by providers or reported in their public price lists.

The table: year one, renewal, average over three years

Plan	Year 1 price	Annual renewal price	Included storage	Included domain	Average cost/year over 3 years
SiteGround StartUp	€35.88	€191.88	10 GB SSD	No (promo hosting only)	€139.88
Namecheap Stellar	€23.09	€48.01	n.d. ("unlimited" storage claimed)	Yes, year 1 on selected TLDs	€39.70
Aruba Hosting Linux Easy	€9.90	€59.99	n.d. (with database)	Yes, included at renewal too	€43.29
Aruba Hosting Linux Basic	€9.90	€32.99	n.d. (without database)	Yes, included at renewal too	€25.29
SupportHost Shared 1	€38	€38	15 GB SSD NVMe	Yes	€38

SiteGround's 12-month StartUp plan jumps from €35.88 to €191.88 per year, as shown in the comparison using SiteGround's StartUp plan example. Register's WordPress Start managed annual plan is sold at €26.65 for the first year and then has a renewal price of €88.75, showing that this mechanism isn't exclusive to major international brands.

For Aruba, the Linux Basic hosting plan (without database) costs €9.90 in year one and €32.99 at renewal, while Linux Easy costs €9.90 in year one and €59.99 at renewal. The difference between the two plans isn't just about price: Namecheap's Stellar plan costs €23.09 for year one and has a regular renewal price of €48.01, with the absence of Autobackup functionality for automatic backups and SSL certificate among the entry-level plan's limitations.

The detail that changes your choice

The cheapest Aruba plan in the table, Basic, won't work for a WordPress blog: it doesn't include a MySQL database, so it's only suitable for static sites. If you want WordPress, you'll need to move up to Linux Easy, which costs nearly twice as much at renewal.

SupportHost is the only plan on the list with a fixed price: it has no promotional offer, but also no jump at renewal. Over three years, the average annual cost equals the list price, €38, whereas SiteGround StartUp reaches an average of €139.88 per year over the same period—nearly four times as much.

How to read this table

For a personal blog with a fixed budget, the right question isn't "how much does the first month cost" but "how much will I spend over three years if I don't switch provider". If you're planning to change provider after a year, you can take advantage of more aggressive promos (Aruba Basic, Namecheap Stellar). If you want to start a blog and forget about it, it's worth checking the renewal price before the promotional one, because that's what you'll pay in subsequent years.

Sources: SiteGround public price list, Namecheap and Aruba pricing pages as reported by SupportHost (supporthost.com/it/rinnovo-aruba, supporthost.com/it/rinnovo-namecheap), SupportHost price list.