So why month-to-month hosting plans? Is monthly web hosting all it’s cracked up to be?
Well, many of the leading blog hosting services (that bloggers tend to promote) offer only the option to pay your full plan duration up front… racking up a bill that’s often well over $100 and locking you into a web hosting plan for the next year, two or even three. Sometimes, it makes more financial sense to go for a shorter-term monthly hosting plan, where you can truly pay month-to-month without being locked into a longer contract. And the best part? Most monthly web hosting plans aren’t really that much more expensive (if at all).
In this guide, we’re going to break down all of the best monthly hosting plans (and providers) on the market today.
10 Best Monthly Web Hosting Plans (Cheap Month-to-Month Plans) in 2024
- Dreamhost (Monthly): $4.95/mo
- HostGator (Monthly): $6.02/mo
- A2 Hosting (Monthly): $9.99/mo
- Namecheap (Monthly): $2.88/mo
- Cloudways (Monthly): $10.00/mo
- GreenGeeks (Monthly): $10.95/mo
- SiteGround (Monthly): $19.99/mo
- Kinsta (Monthly): $30.00/mo
- Flywheel (Monthly): $25.00/mo
- WP Engine (Monthly): $31.50/mo
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. When you purchase month-to-month web hosting using one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps keep my content free of charge. Know that I also only recommend services I personally stand behind.
What is monthly web hosting?
Monthly web hosting is simply a web hosting plan that allows you to pay on a monthly basis (month-to-month) with no long-term commitment, meaning you’re able to cancel your plan at anytime without the risk of additional fees or penalties.
Do monthly hosting plans remove features or functionality?
No. At least not the best monthly hosting plans (like the ones we’re comparing in this list here today). When you choose a monthly hosting plan, you should only go with a provider that gives you the same functionality as their annual plans. The only potential downside of monthly hosting, is that it’s often slightly more expensive, than if you instead pre-pay for a longer-term plan with the same provider.
If you want to evaluate all of the best monthly billed web hosting services, then you’ve come to the right place. So, without further delay, let’s break down each of them in detail and compare which plan will work best for your needs.
Is a month-to-month hosting plan more expensive?
In most cases, yes, a month-to-month web hosting plan will be slightly more expensive than hosting that comes with a 1 year (or longer) contract period. The two major trade offs of choosing a monthly hosting plan, are that (1) it affords you the flexibility to cancel your web hosting at anytime without being on the hook for several months or even years of payments into the future and (2) you’ll be able to pay on a monthly basis (month-to-month hosting) which can help reduce your up-front blogging costs significantly.
Now let’s dive in and explore the best cheap monthly web hosting plans (that can actually allow your hosting costs to be billed on a month-to-month basis, rather than all at once up-front).
My pick for the best monthly hosting plan today is Dreamhost’s Shared Starter Plan, from one of the most established, longest-running web hosting providers around.
I’ve actually hosted dozens of websites on Dreamhost over the years (and I still use their monthly web hosting plans for a few projects today).
All of the classic web hosting features like WordPress pre-installed, fast loading speeds, free SSL certificate, and site security aside, one of the biggest reasons I often recommend Dreamhost to new bloggers, is the fact that they offer a true payment plan for month-to-month hosting that allows you to pay for your blog hosting each month with no long-term contracts or strings attached.
Features of Dreamhost’s Monthly Web Hosting Plans
Here’s everything you’ll get with Dreamhost’s monthly billed web hosting on their Shared Starter Plan:
- 1 Website hosted (with a one-click WordPress already pre-installed)
- The discounted .com domain name (one-time purchase at $8.99)
- Unlimited traffic to your website
- Free SSL certificate
- Unlimited live chat and unlimited email support
- Free SSD storage of your website files (for faster loading times)
- 97-day money-back guarantee
- 100% uptime guarantee
- Capability to create email accounts on your domain managed by Dreamhost
- Dreamhost also offers multiple caching options to serve your web pages faster around the world (with the ability to use WordPress plugins like WP Rocket or Cloudflare’s caching on your blog and helping with SEO rankings too)
- Ultra high-security options like their Web Application Firewall (WAF) that filters and blocks known malicious HTTP requests
If after a month, two, or even three while blogging from your Dreamhost-powered website, things aren’t working out, then you can cancel your hosting plan without being on the hook to fulfill a multi-month (or multi-year) agreement. Plus, their 97-day money-back guarantee is by far the longest in the industry.
Combined with their breadth of features and quality of service, this makes Dreamhost the best monthly billed web hosting provider for experimenting with starting a blog on the side of your day job—when you’re unsure of how much time you’ll have to put into your side project. This flexibility is why I first chose Dreamhost to power my blog when I was just getting started, long before I learned how to grow a blog.
Before starting the checkout process on this page, just be sure to toggle the slider at the top over to the “Monthly Hosting Plans” option and you’ll see the prices update accordingly.
If you do choose instead to opt for an annually-billed plan with Dreamhost, you can cut your overall cost in half—making them one of the most affordable web hosting services overall.
Even still though, Dreamhost’s monthly hosting plans offer by far the most value for your spend… and help you to achieve the (arguably) most important blog goal of switching your hosting costs from a large upfront expense that locks you in a multi-year commitment, into a true monthly hosting plan that only charges $4.95/mo.
You can check out all of Dreamhost’s options right here for monthly hosting plans and see for yourself.
With a major focus on high-quality technical support, HostGator’s positioning in the monthly billed web hosting market is designed around helping beginner bloggers (and small businesses) get their websites launched with as few technical headaches as possible.
Hence their impressive 24/7/365 phone, live chat, and unlimited email support are available to all customers running into tech hurdles (which is pretty generous for a company that offers monthly hosting plans).
Originally founded in a Florida dorm room back in 2002, HostGator has become a well-known brand in the affordable shared hosting plans space, having now helped several hundreds of thousands of bloggers, small businesses and enterprise companies get their sites off the ground and well-optimized. They’ve seen it all, and have a support team equipped to be extremely helpful as you drive traffic to your blog and continue to grow.
Features of HostGator’s Monthly Cheap Web Hosting Plans
Here’s what comes with HostGator’s monthly billed web hosting on their Hatchling (lowest-priced) Plan:
- Month-to-month web hosting (with a 1-click WordPress install)
- 24/7/365 phone, live chat, and unlimited email support for technical questions
- Free SSL certificate
- 10GB SSD storage
- Malware scanning
- 30 days money-back guarantee
Before progressing through checkout on this page, don’t forget to select the “1 month @” option for billing and you’ll then be on their true monthly billed hosting plan that charges your card with month-to-month payments until you cancel.
Further down the checkout page, be sure to evaluate each additional add-on for your order—as some will automatically be checked.
I personally recommend unchecking all of the add-ons, as you’ll soon be able to install free WordPress plugins that’ll help with each of the activities HostGator’s paid add-ons do.
As with Dreamhost, the price for monthly hosting on HostGator’s plans also goes down in overall cost as the duration of your plan lengthens, so keep that in mind if you can afford to opt for longer-term plans and know you’ll still be working on your blog in the near future. But since you’re here to secure a monthly hosting plan, know that you’ll be in good hands with the same high-quality technical support regardless of your plan duration.
You can check out HostGator’s options right here for monthly web hosting plans and compare for yourself. Note that HostGator is owned by the same company as Bluehost, so you’ll be getting a huge network of support services.
Of the lowest-cost monthly billed web hosting plans on the market today, A2 Hosting comes in at the highest price point for a similar set of features compared to what you’ll get on Dreamhost or HostGator (with their monthly web hosting options). But, in the world of month-to-month WordPress hosting plans, they’re nevertheless a great option to choose from and they have their own selling points still worth evaluating.
Launched originally as a side project back in 2001 by a former systems administrator, Bryan Muthig, A2 Hosting has been independently owned and operated for approaching twenty years now—making them an early player in the history of blogging—and less prone to major surprise adjustments in pricing or plan features over time, which means their monthly hosting plans are likely to stay priced at the same rate for years to come.
Features of A2 Hosting’s Monthly Hosting Plans
With their lowest-priced monthly billed web hosting plan (called Startup Plan), here’s what you’ll get:
- 1 Website hosted (with 100 GB SSD file storage)
- Free website migration service
- 24/7/365 unlimited email technical support
- Perpetual site security and monitoring
- 30-day money-back guarantee
During the A2 Hosting checkout process for their Startup Hosting monthly billed hosting plan, things can get a little bit confusing so be sure to double-check the details of your selections.
By default, their longest-term (3-year) plan will be the selected option for the billing cycle, so be sure you take the time to carefully click on that not-so-obvious dropdown menu and select the “Monthly – $11.99/mo” option before moving forward so that you move things over to their monthly hosting plan before completing checkout.
At this point, you’ll also be presented with additional paid options to add to your order like speeding up your site using what they call Turbo Boost, adding a paid SSL certificate, and getting regular website backups — even daily backups if you want (all of which you can get for free with WordPress plugins and elsewhere—or when going with a monthly hosting company like Dreamhost).
These add-ons can quickly hike your total cost today, so if you’re unsure whether you actually need them—I recommend unchecking them all for now. You can always come back and upgrade your monthly hosting plan later, if necessary.
You can head over here to check out all of A2 Hosting’s monthly hosting plans and see for yourself.
Founded back in 2000 by still current CEO Richard Kirkendall, Namecheap was recently recognized as one of America’s fastest-growing companies on the Inc 5,000 list—and with more than 10 Million domains under management, it’s easy to see that this veteran web hosting company knows what they’re doing—and some of their success can be attributed to the fact that they’ve been a low-cost provider with monthly hosting plans that are designed to be easy on the wallet.
Namecheap has staked out a position in the web hosting industry as one of the absolute most affordable destinations to build a website on—and this is reflected by the fact that they offer some of the cheapest monthly hosting plans around.
And just because their brand is affordability, doesn’t mean they skimp on the quality of their service. Namecheap offers a very high level of customer support—featuring 24/7 access to live chat with experienced web professionals, a ticketing system, value-packed knowledgebase, and an active blog featuring some of the best web hosting advice on the Internet on a variety of topics ranging from how to become a domain investor all the way to advanced WordPress tutorials.
Features of Namecheap’s Monthly Web Hosting Plans
Here’s what comes with Namecheap’s monthly billed web hosting on their Stellar (lowest-priced) Plan:
- Monthly hosting plan (with easy WordPress installation as the best free website builder of choice)
- 20GB of storage
- Hosting of up to 3 websites
- Unrestricted bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Optional free domain name (.website)
- Privacy protection
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Don’t forget to toggle the payment option over to “monthly” during the checkout process, as the default view will be on yearly pricing. You’ll now be on their monthly billed hosting plan that charges on a month-to-month basis moving forward (with no minimum contract duration).
Note that if you choose to go with registering a new .com domain name, your first month’s charge will include a (typically) $8.88 additional fee for your domain name’s first year of registration. After this elevated first bill, your pricing will drop back down to whichever rate you choose for your monthly plan.
A trend you’ll notice during the checkout process is that the prices of Namecheap’s options for monthly hosting plans will all decrease in overall cost if you switch to a yearly (or multi-year) billing plan instead, so if you know you want to learn how to make a website and are confident that it’ll be around for a while—it’s worth the extra upfront cost to lock in a lower overall price.
If you want the absolute cheapest monthly hosting plan on the market today—though it’ll come with some sacrifices in service compared to other monthly web hosting providers here—then Namecheap is your service.
Cloudways is a web hosting platform that provides completely managed WordPress hosting plans for bloggers who don’t want to get into the technicalities of doing something like managing a server. Their monthly hosting plans come backed by a platform that simplifies everything like launching servers and configuring web applications.
Most importantly to bloggers like you—Cloudways is true cloud hosting that integrates directly with content management systems like a WordPress site, Magento, WooCommerce, and more (which gives you a lot of options for starting your blog).
Cloudways providers have 50+ data centers across the globe, with all of them using cloud computing—so their servers are scalable. That mans you can quickly scale your server size to handle spikes in website traffic, database queries, or in web application usage.
Features of Cloudways Monthly Cheap Web Hosting Plans
Some of the most prominent features of their monthly hosting plans include:
- Simplicity (easy UI to manage the platform)
- SSL installation
- Staging environment (for testing)
- A choice between the top cloud hosting providers (starting at $14.00/mo)
- 24/7 expert support via live chat and ticketing
- Server and app cloning
- Monthly web hosting plan pricing structure
- Free migration
One very unique feature of Cloudways is that customers follow a pay-as-you-go model, meaning you’ll only pay for the actual hosting resources your blog uses—with no hidden charges. Here’s what their pricing page looks like, highlighting the fact that they only offer monthly hosting plans:
One last thing to mention about Cloudways is that they have a 24/7 support team that not only works to quickly solve problems but also cares about customer concerns. Their customers report a high level of satisfaction with support, which gives any blogger the peace of mind to focus on doing the important work—creating and promoting content.
GreenGeeks is a reliable and more than anything else, one of the most reputable eco-friendly web hosting providers. They offer a variety of hosting options built for small businesses and bloggers alike (including a month-to-month web hosting plan at $10.95/mo).
What sets GreenGeeks apart is that their servers are powered by renewable energy, making them one of the most sustainable hosting options on the market today, which is becoming increasingly important. Excellent customer support and a user-friendly control panel, make it easy for users to manage their websites.
Features of GreenGeeks Month-to-Month Web Hosting Plans
Here are all of the top GreenGeeks features you can expect to get on their monthly web hosting plan:
- One Website
- Standard Performance
- 50GB Web Space (that’s a lot)
- Unmetered Transfer
- 50 E-mail Accounts
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free Domain Name for 1st Year
- Free Nightly Backups
- Free CDN
- Managed WordPress
- Built-in Caching
- Unlimited Databases
- 300% Green Energy Match
- 1 Tree Planted
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
During the GreenGeeks checkout process, just be sure to click in and select the monthly billing option, as pictured here:
On top of all this, GreenGeeks also provides free website migration services, making it easy to switch from another hosting company to their platform. Overall, GreenGeeks is a very high-quality web hosting provider that’s both environmentally conscious and user-friendly.
SiteGround is a very popular web hosting company that’s been around for two decades, offering fast, reliable, and secure shared web hosting plans for bloggers, small businesses, and websites of all sizes.
The company provides various different hosting plan options, including shared web hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, and even dedicated hosting servers. SiteGround is built around a user-friendly interface, with excellent customer support, 24/7 live chat, phone, and unlimited email support.
SiteGround also offers to bundle your new domain registration with all of their different hosting offers (including the monthly web hosting plan), so you can get your website or online store set up the day you get started with their hosting plans and jump straight into the fun stuff—building your online presence.
Features of SiteGround Month-to-Month Web Hosting Plans
Here are the features you can expect from SiteGround’s monthly cheap web hosting plan:
- 1 Website
- 10 GB Web Server Space
- ~ 10,000 Visits Monthly
- Unmetered Traffic
- Free SSL
- Daily Backup
- Free CDN
- Free Email
- Free Email Migrator
- Enhanced Security
- E-commerce Enabled
- Managed WordPress
- Out-of-the-Box Caching
- Unlimited Databases
- 100% renewable energy match
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
During the SiteGround checkout process, be sure to select the 1 month billing period in the dropdown menu like so:
SiteGround also offers free website migration and a pretty solid website builder for those who want to build their website from scratch using everything from Linux to MySQL or php if you’re feeling adventurous (or you can opt for the one-click WordPress installation, which I highly recommend). All in all, SiteGround has been around for two decades and is a very reputable hosting provider with an emphasis on speed, security, and customer satisfaction.
Kinsta is the web hosting service that powers this blog here today (and the subdomain that hosts my Built to Blog course)—and thanks to them, my site is lightning fast ⚡️
While Kinsta is indeed more premium-priced than our first round of monthly billing web hosting plans above, I seriously couldn’t recommend their service more highly. Once you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve dialed in a writing approach, figured out driving traffic and you can afford to invest in the performance & quality of your web hosting, Kinsta should be your first stop. Plus, it helps immensely that they price themselves by default with an offering of monthly hosting plans.
All of Kinsta’s plans are what’s called managed WordPress hosting, which is a level of service where all technical aspects of things like site security, speed improvements, updates, daily backups, and scalability are managed by the hosting company. It’s generally best suited for small to medium-sized businesses, medium to high-traffic blogs, and companies looking for extremely fast WordPress hosting—all without hiring their own technical teams. Even still, they offer month-to-month web hosting plans for all sizes of blogs.
Features of Kinsta’s Monthly Billing Hosting Plans
Here’s what comes with Kinsta’s monthly billed web hosting plan (the Starter Plan @ $35.00/mo):
- 1 WordPress install
- Up to 20,000 website visits/mo
- 5 GB of disk space on their web servers (more than enough for almost any blog)
- Free SSL certificate
- Free managed CDN (content delivery network) for increased speed
- 1 premium website migration
- Staging and demo environments
- Capability to launch subdomains on all plans
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Automatic daily backups of your website
- 24/7 support (live chat and email)
- All standard monthly hosting plans have access to 12 CPUs and 8 GB of RAM
- Choose which of the 20 Google Cloud Data Centers where your website will be hosted
- One of the best, user-friendly control panels (also known as a cpanel) for managing your blog
If this sounds like a lot more features than most other hosting companies, that’s because it is! Kinsta has been intentionally bootstrapped and built solely for the benefit of their customers (not investor-funded) because of how dedicated they are to building a BS-free hosting company that works only for customers—another reason why I love them so much. That’s why Kinsta is great for serious business blogs, online publications, and eCommerce websites that get a lot of traffic. They’ve also got one of the best blogs around in the hosting space, to keep you topped up with everything from speed tips to performance advice and content ideas to run with.
Here’s a glimpse of their very straightforward, easy-to-navigate checkout page.
And if you decide to spring for the yearly payment plan upgrade, Kinsta offers one of the best deals on the market—giving you two full months of your web hosting for free.
Flywheel has done a phenomenal job of establishing their brand in the managed WordPress hosting space specifically for creatives, and their monthly hosting plans help their customer base be very loyal.
As recent blogging statistics highlight, more people are blogging than ever before. Flywheel has geared themselves primarily toward freelancers, and agencies and more recently moved into medium to high-traffic bloggers & marketing teams. You can think of them as more indie-focused monthly hosting plans that still come with a high level of service and customer support.
One unique feature about getting started with Flywheel, is that you can build your own demo site (free of charge) and take their web hosting platform for a 14-day spin without committing to any paid arrangement yet. This makes it a lot easier to test drive their monthly billed web hosting plans without the worry of getting locked into a hosting company you won’t be happy with.
As of June 24, 2019, however, Flywheel was acquired by the managed WordPress hosting giant, WP Engine (whose monthly billed web hosting plans we’ll examine next). Backed with over $290 Million in funding, WP Engine is now on track for an upcoming IPO, which will undoubtedly lead to more fundamental changes for both brands. Something to consider as you make your decision on a month-to-month hosting plan that’ll be right for you.
Features of Flywheel’s Monthly Billed Hosting Plans
Included in Flywheel’s Starter monthly hosting plan is:
- 1 WordPress website install
- 5,000 monthly visitor limit
- 5 GB of disk space and storage on their web servers
- 20 GB of bandwidth
- Fastly built-in CDN
- Free SSL certificate
- Staging environment
- 24/7 live chat support
- Free website migration
During the checkout process, just be sure to toggle the button over to the “Monthly” side first and you’ll see the monthly billed hosting plan prices update accordingly, otherwise, you’ll be on their annual pricing by default:
Expect to see a similar offer for upgrading your payment schedule to annual billing in exchange for 1 month of free service, so if you’re committed to Flywheel and can spring for the one-time payment, you’ll get a better overall deal than if you instead stick to one of their monthly hosting plans.
Before I switched to hosting this blog on Kinsta a couple of years ago, I was a happy WP Engine customer for several years (steadily climbing up their monthly hosting plans).
As my blog continued to grow (now reaching 500,000+ monthly readers), that pushed me into a WP Engine pricing tier and feature combination that didn’t fully make the most sense for me to stay on WP Engine—compared to the very similar level of website speed, technical support and attention I get from Kinsta at a lower price point. In short, WP Engine won’t be your pick for cheap web hosting, but they do have a lot of great features for more established blogs & websites.
That being said, WP Engine has an impressive 120,000 customers for their managed WordPress hosting services, including massive companies like Jobvite, Under Armour, Thomson Reuters, and many more.
Features of WP Engine’s Monthly Hosting Plans
Here’s what comes with WP Engine’s Startup monthly billed hosting plan:
- 1 managed WordPress website hosting install
- 25,000 visits/mo limit
- Up to 10 GB/mo of file storage
- 50 GB of bandwidth/mo
- 24/7 live chat and email support
- Access to a global CDN (for faster page loading)
- Free SSL certificate
- 35+ premium (including one of the best WordPress themes) available to install
- 60-day money-back guarantee on all monthly hosting plans
Note that with WP Engine, if your site gets a dramatic spike in traffic, they don’t offer unmetered bandwidth on their monthly web hosting plans. In terms of website hosting, “bandwidth” refers to the amount of data transferred between your blog and the visitors—so expect to see some bandwidth overage charges if you go over your plan’s limit.
During the checkout process on this page, the “monthly” payment option should be checked by default after clicking the “Get Started” on the homepage:
Like with all of our monthly billed hosting plans here today, WP Engine also offers a sizable discount if you consider switching to their annual pre-paid plan, giving you a whopping 3 months’ worth of hosting free during your first year. Plus, if you want to upgrade to VPS hosting one day, WP Engine offers some solid Virtual Private Server hosting options (and dedicated server options), so it could be worthwhile starting with this month-to-month web hosting platform you’ll be able to grow with.
Which of the Best Month-to-Month Web Hosting Plans Will You Choose?
Still unsure if a monthly hosting plan will be best for your blogging needs?
My #1 Recommendation is Dreamhost for Your Monthly Web Hosting
Not only is their monthly price the lowest true month-to-month payment plan option (for a fully featured service) to get your blog hosting today—they’re actually a great company too.
I’ve gotten the opportunity to personally meet several members of the Dreamhost team, and I can say with confidence they’re genuinely in the hosting business to help people like you get more out of your website.
Their signup process is transparent, straightforward, and free of confusing up-sells (unlike some of the other monthly billed web hosting companies out there). They have no setup fees or crappy long-term commitments that’ll lock you into a hosting bill for ages. They’re great people. Their hosting solutions & hosting packages are far superior to other competitors like GreenGeeks, InMotion Hosting, Siteground, and others in the industry. You can check out my other cheap web hosting recommendations here.
For that reason, they’re my top pick—and they’re still where I host multiple websites today. You should check out all of Dreamhost’s options right here for their monthly hosting and see what it’s like for yourself.
That being said though, they’re not the only monthly billed hosting company out there… so take the time to do your research and see which one best fits your own unique needs 🙂
Do Bluehost or InMotion Offer Cheap Month-to-Month Web Hosting Plans?
No, neither Bluehost nor InMotion technically offers monthly web hosting plans. While I do recommend Bluehost for most new bloggers, you’ll need to sign up for a minimum one-year commitment with their hosting plans. Their pricing is structured so you can often get a much better deal on web hosting by securing a one-, two, or even three-year plan with them—but that kind of commitment isn’t for everyone. Hence why monthly web hosting plans with companies like Dreamhost serve a great purpose too. You can check out my extensive hosting review of Bluehost vs Dreamhost right here to compare these two great hosting companies.
If you’re considering other hosting companies beyond just those with monthly web hosting plans, then check out my ultimate guide to the best web hosting plans for bloggers.
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Check out my ultimate guide How to Start a Blog (on the Side) that’s been featured on Forbes, Inc and Entrepreneur.
Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by budgetbuddy.
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