Search for web hosting and the first page of results will offer you something close to a pound a month. That price is genuine. It is also temporary, and the permanent one is deliberately hard to find.
How The Mechanic Works
The headline rate applies to your first term. To get it you usually have to pay for three years up front, which means the discount is not really a monthly price at all, it is a lump sum framed as one.
When that term ends, the account renews at standard rate. Standard rate is frequently four to ten times the introductory one. You will find it in the small print, or on a separate page, or in a footnote marked with an asterisk that resolves somewhere below the fold.
Nothing here is illegal. It is simply designed so that the number you compare when choosing is not the number you pay for most of the time you are a customer.
Why It Works So Well
Because moving hosts is a chore. By renewal time your site is live, your email is configured, and the person who set it up may not work there any more. The provider is not betting that you will not notice the price. They are betting that noticing will not be enough to make you move.
That is the actual product being sold: not cheap hosting, but the friction that keeps you once the cheap bit expires.
How To Check In Thirty Seconds
Before you buy anything, find the renewal price. Not the introductory price. The one that applies in month thirteen or thirty-seven. If it takes more than a minute to find, that is your answer.
Then multiply properly. Three years at the real rate, not the first year at the advertised one. Compare that against anyone else you are considering.
Our own prices are the same in year one and year five. When we raise them, existing customers keep the rate they signed up on. We would rather compete on the honest number than win on the one in the advert.
