The plan they point at costs the most extra at renewal
Fifteen of 27 hosts badge one plan most popular or best value, and it is never the cheapest one. Both rise a median of 136% at renewal, so the percentage says nothing. In dollars the cheapest plan rises $6.00 a month and the badged one rises $9.00. IONOS's badged plan goes $1.00 to $14.00, the largest cliff on the site, and it was not on my front page until this week.
Every hosting pricing page has three or four plans and a badge on one of them. "Most popular." "Bestselling plan." "Best value." Fifteen of the twenty-seven hosts I track put a badge like that on a plan, and the badge is not on the cheapest one. I had been measuring the cheapest plan of each host and almost nothing else, so I went and measured the badged one instead.
The headline number says there is nothing to see. The cheapest plans rise a median of 136% at renewal. The badged plans rise a median of 136% at renewal. Identical, and useless, because a percentage of a bigger number is a bigger number. In dollars a month, the cheapest plan rises $6.00 and the plan the host points at rises $9.00. It is dearer on sixteen of the twenty-four hosts where both plans publish all four prices.
The one that made me look
IONOS. Its cheapest plan, Essential, is $4.00 a month on a one-year term and renews at $8.00, which is a doubling and unremarkable by the standards of this table. Its badged plan, the one carrying "Bestselling Plan", is $1.00 a month, renewing at $14.00. That is a rise of 1300%, and it is the largest cliff on this entire site.
Until this week it was not on my front page, because my front page ranked hosts by their cheapest plan's jump and IONOS's cheapest plan only doubles. A site whose headline is that the price you sign up at is not the price you pay was quietly leaving out its own best example. The chart now takes the steepest plan each host publishes, and IONOS sits at the top of it.
The pattern, where both plans are published
| Host | Cheapest plan | The plan they point at | Extra rise |
|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS | Essential $4.00 to $8.00 | Plus $1.00 to $14.00 | $9.00 |
| HostPapa | Essentials $2.95 to $8.99 | Premium $6.95 to $19.99 | $7.00 |
| HostArmada | Start Dock $1.99 to $9.95 | Web Warp $3.29 to $16.45 | $5.20 |
| ChemiCloud | Starter $1.49 to $11.95 | Pro $2.49 to $17.95 | $5.00 |
| Hostinger | Premium $2.99 to $10.99 | Unlimited $3.99 to $16.99 | $5.00 |
"Extra rise" is how much more the badged plan's monthly price climbs at renewal than the cheapest plan's does. Every figure read from the host's own pricing page and re-checked each morning.
What I am not saying
Not that the badge is a trick. A middle plan usually does carry more of what people actually need, and a host recommending it is ordinary commerce. What I am saying is narrower: the plan most people are steered towards is the plan whose renewal costs the most extra, and the percentage everyone quotes hides that, because it is the same percentage.
Nor am I claiming to know which plan each host wants you to buy. Fifteen of them say so themselves with a badge. For the other twelve there is no badge and I take the middle tier, which is my choice and not theirs, and the pages say which is which. SiteGround has the widest gap of any host at ten dollars a month, and it is not the example at the top of this post for exactly that reason: SiteGround badges nothing, so calling GrowBig "the plan they point at" would be me pointing, not them.
Where to see it
The true-cost calculator has a selector for this: switch it from the cheapest plan to the plan each host puts forward and the ranking moves. Fifteen host pages now name their second plan in the summary, and only where it is genuinely worse: at least a dollar a month steeper, or twenty percentage points. The twelve where it is not stay quiet, because a warning that fires on everything is not a warning. AccuWeb, which renews at the price it advertises on both of its plans, says nothing at all.
The figures in this post are what the pages said on the dates given. The tables linked from it are re-read every morning and may have moved since; the changes log has every move with a date and a receipt.