How to Save Money On Web Hosting Renewals – 2024
Usually a cheap and reliable shared hosting for WordPress starts from $4/month and depending upon your requirement it can go up to $20/month for shared hosting, and it goes really up when you move to VPS or managed WordPress hosting. When a newbie blogger takes baby step to self hosted blog, he is not aware of the cost involved in web-hosting, and they usually end up buying web hosting at higher price (without any discount), or even if they get discounted hosting, they end up paying a fortune when renewal time comes. Here I’m sharing pro tips, which will help you to save money on your web-hosting renewal. Some of the ideas could be use from day 1 (From your first hosting purchase), and some of the ideas could be used when your hosting time is about to expire, and you have to pay for the renewal.
How to save on Hosting Renewal bills:
There are many scenarios, which you need to consider, as many of you might be about to buy a hosting, and many of you might be about to renew your hosting account. So, I will point out various methods that will fit and will help you to save your money. This guide is for shared hosting only, but will work for any other hosting plans too (VPS and dedicated too)
For new Hosting purchases:
If you are about to buy a hosting package for your blog, this is the right time to save money for long-term. One mistake which many bloggers make is, they buy hosting for 1 year only, and next year they have to pay in full for hosting renewal. Usually, there is no discount coupon for renewals, and you will end up saving zero. Trick here is: When you make the first purchase, you have an option to buy hosting for more than 1 year, and a good idea is to stick to a reliable hosting company, and buy a package for 2 or better 3 years.
I have purchased hosting from Bluehost for 3 years, which costed me $3.95/month, and helped me to save a With Let me do a quick calculation for Bluehost hosting here: If I purchase for 1 year with the discounted link, and pay in full for next 2 year renewal: $4.95 * 12 + $166.8 = $226.2 Now, lets consider that I buy hosting for 3 years from Bluehost with discounted link: $3.95 * 36 = $142.2 That’s straight away saving of $84, which is a lot, when you buy 2-3 hosting packages for multiple websites. Now, lets look at Hostgator Hosting, and I will be considering Baby plan in this case.
Hostgator offers maximum possible 30% off (Coupon code= Shuotmeloud30) on your first bill, and again no discount on renewal.
Hosting purchased for 1 year with discount + 2 year renewal payment without any discount: $89.55 + $191.04 = $280.59 Hosting purchased for 3 year with discount: $214.65 So, this is one way to save money by purchasing webhosting for longer term, and get better hosting discount. Though problem with this approach is, you are stuck with same hosting for long. I usually use this technique for my small websites.
Move hosting to save money on webhosting:
This is 2nd technique which you can use every time on renewal to save money on your hosting renewal bill. From my experience, Hostgator, Bluehost offers almost same quality, so it doesn’t make much difference, where your blog is hosted.
When your hosting term is about to expire, you can sign up for hosting package from alternative hosting company, and move your sites there. Good part is, few of them offer free migration, so you don’t need to worry about tech hassles.
Usually moving a WordPress site is not very tough, and you can refer to this guide to learnhow to move WordPress site between any hosting company. This way you will end up saving a good $20-$45 every year. People prefer this trick who are technically smart, and don’t mind changing the hosting company, but for non-technical people, first trick is suggested.
Ask your hosting company for discount:
This trick will work with almost every hosting company. Retaining a customer is upmost priority for any hosting company, and when your hosting term is about to expire, you can ask your hosting sales team for a discount on your renewal.
You could straight away say: Hey, I’m getting a decent discount on (competitive hosting company name), and I want to save some money. Since renewal with you will cost me $120 and if I move my website to X hosting, I will save at least $50. I was hoping if I could get some discount on renewal, as I would love to stay with you, and at the same time I want to value my hard-earned money. This may or may not work, depending upon the policy of a hosting company because all company have their own policy.
But, if you put your words in the right way, you will surely end up getting a decent discount. Else, you always have trick number 2 to save money. Since it’s our hard-earned money, with bit of smartness and social engineering, you could save a decent amount. Most of the people ignore such small saving for the sake of their comfort level, but do remember “Money saved is money earned”.
This comes down to the end of Webhosting guide for beginners and here I’m sharing other useful blogging resources which I use for my blogs.
Email software:
ConvertKit (Email marketing platform)
Aweber (Free account for the first month)
Web-hosting:
Bluehost (Shared hosting)
InterServer
Kinsta (Managed WordPress Hosting)
Domain Names:
Namesilo
Namecheap (Use this link to get domain name for one dollar $1)
WordPress Themes:
Genesis
MyThemeshop: Beautiful WordPress themes in budget. This is what most of the bloggers use for their blog these days.
Accesspress themes
Social Media Management Tool:
Socialpilot: Perfect for keeping your social-media profile updated.
AgoraPulse: For replying to all the social media comments, tweets from your phone.
Image Capturing Tool:
SnagIt! (Best tool for screen-capture and image editing.)
Screencast Software:
Camtasia
SEO Tools:
SEMRUSH (This is the only SEO tool that you will ever need. You can do keyword research, track backlinks, Site Audio & many useful stuff that would help you to grow your traffic. You can check out a free tutorial here and here). This is a special link that will get you free account worth $149.