What Will It Cost Next Year? Check the Price History First
A host's pricing page shows today's price. The Wayback Machine shows how that price has behaved. This is the free, ten-minute method behind our five-year tracker, plus the traps that nearly gave us wrong numbers.
Written by Tom George · How we research hosts
Why Today's Price Tells You Only Half the Story
A pricing page shows what a host charges today, usually next to a bold introductory rate. It does not show whether that host has raised its prices every year, or never moved them at all.
That history is public. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine keeps dated copies of most pricing pages, and reading them takes about ten minutes. We did this for 11 hosts back to 2022 to build our Hosting Price History tracker.
Below is the method, written so you can repeat it for any host you are considering, along with the places it goes wrong. We hit most of them ourselves.
Check one snapshot per year, on the same page, for the same plan and billing term. That is enough to tell a host that steps its prices up from one that holds them.
Never trust a blank price box. Prices that load with JavaScript often vanish from archived copies, so an empty cell means "no evidence", not "free" or "unchanged".
Don't want to dig through archives? We already did it for 11 hosts: see the historical price tracker, or estimate your own bill with the cost forecaster.
For a single score per host, see the Hosting Price Lock Index. During a sale, our Black Friday web hosting deals tracker shows which offers we have confirmed.
Step 1: Find the Right Pricing Page
Go to the host's own plan page for the product you would actually buy, such as shared hosting or managed WordPress, not the homepage. Copy the full address.
Write down the plan name, the billing term shown (monthly, annual or multi-year), and the region or currency. You need all three to compare one year with another.
Step 2: Open the Archive and Pick One Snapshot Per Year
Paste that address into web.archive.org. The calendar shows every date the page was saved. Choose a snapshot from roughly the same time each year, for example January or February, so seasonal sales do not skew the comparison.
Read the price for the same plan each time and put the figures in a small table. Four or five rows will do.
If you are comfortable with a URL, the Internet Archive also offers a public index of captures. A request such as http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=example.com/pricing&from=2022&to=2026 lists every saved copy in a date range, which saves clicking through the calendar. This is how we pulled one snapshot per host per year for the tracker.
Step 3: Read the Right Number
Three different prices can sit on one page: the introductory rate, the regular rate, and what you pay when you renew. Compare like with like, and pay attention to the term.
Billing term changes the answer
Bluehost, for instance, publishes a dated help page listing the regular price for every billing term. The renewal you pay depends on the term you renew on, so a monthly figure without its term is not a complete number.
Check the billing toggle, never the default
Many pricing pages default to annual billing. In our own check of Kinsta's page, the default state nearly produced a false report of a price drop from $35 to $30 a month. The lower figure was simply the annual-billing view. Flip the toggle, confirm the number moves, then record which state you are reading.
Watch for renamed plans
Hosts rename plans, and a rename often arrives with a price change. DreamHost's entry plan changed from "Shared Starter" to "Web Hosting Launch" in 2026 and its renewal rose by 84% in one year, the largest one-year move we tracked. If the plan name changed between snapshots, compare what is included as well as the price.
Step 4: When the Archive Shows Nothing
Sometimes the archived page has no prices. This is common, and it is a limit of the archive, not evidence about the host.
- JavaScript price grids. Where a pricing grid loads through client-side JavaScript, the archive often stored the empty shell. We hit this on Bluehost since about 2023, HostGator since about 2024, and InterServer's renewal widget throughout.
- The workaround. Look for the host's plain-HTML price chart in its help centre. Those pages are usually archived with dates. We used this for HostGator and Bluehost after 2023.
- Blocked pages. Hostinger's US-dollar pages are blocked from the Wayback Machine, so there is no USD history. Its UK and India stores were archived through early 2025.
Where we could only estimate a figure, the tracker marks it with an asterisk rather than presenting it as exact. Do the same in your own notes.
What the Method Showed Across 11 Hosts
Here is a short summary of what the archive-reading approach turned up. Each figure comes from our full tracker, which carries the dates, sources and confidence marks.
| Host | What the archive shows (2022 to 2026) |
|---|---|
| Rocket.net | $30 a month, unchanged in every year checked |
| Pressable Visit Pressable → |
$25 a month, unchanged in every year checked |
| Kinsta Visit Kinsta → |
One step, $30 to $35 in 2023, flat since; promo and renewal matched in every year |
| SiteGround Visit SiteGround → |
Renewal $14.99 to $17.99 a month in 2024 |
| GoDaddy | $8.99 to $11.99 in three steps |
| HostGator | 36-month regular price $6.95 to $10.99 in three steps |
| DreamHost | Renewal up 84% in 2026 with the plan rename |
Two lessons come out of it. First, a host that has moved its price in several steps is telling you something about its habits. Second, a flat record is a good sign, but only a record: it is not a promise about next year.
Step 5: Turn the History Into a Real Cost
Once you know how a host behaves, put the numbers into a total. Our Hosting Cost Forecaster takes an introductory and a renewal price and shows your 3, 5 and 10-year total. For the full ranking of introductory-to-renewal gaps across hosts, see our renewal prices guide.
Before you pay, ask support in writing what the plan costs at its first renewal, and keep a screenshot of the checkout order summary. If a host offers a written price commitment, read exactly what it covers.
Speed matters as much as price when you compare shortlisted hosts, so run the five-step TTFB check as well. Our full reviews of Rocket.net and Kinsta, the two hosts above with the steadiest records, cover plans and trade-offs.
Check Kinsta's Current Pricing → Read the Rocket.net Review →
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Wayback Machine accurate for hosting prices?
It is accurate for what it captured, but not every page was captured, and prices that load with JavaScript are often missing from the archived copy.
Treat a clean snapshot as good evidence and a blank price box as no evidence, not as a free plan.
Why does a host's price look different on different days?
Common causes are a monthly versus annual billing toggle, a different contract length, a regional store with its own currency, or a temporary promotion.
Always note which billing term and region a price was shown for before comparing two figures.
How do I find out my renewal price before I sign up?
Look for the regular or renewal price on the host's pricing page and in its help-centre price chart, then read the order summary at checkout.
Ask support in writing what the plan costs at the first renewal, and keep the answer and a screenshot of the checkout page.
Which hosts have held their price flat?
In our tracker covering 2022 to 2026, only Rocket.net ($30 per month) and Pressable ($25 per month) held exactly the same entry price in every year checked. Kinsta raised its entry plan once, from $30 to $35, in 2023 and has held it since.
A past record is not a guarantee of future pricing.
Does price history predict the next increase?
Not reliably, but it shows how a host behaves. A host that has raised prices in steps several times is more likely to do so again than one that has never moved.
Use it as a risk signal and pair it with a written price commitment where the host offers one.
The Bottom Line
Ten minutes in the Wayback Machine will tell you more about a host's pricing habits than its pricing page ever will. Pick one snapshot per year, compare the same plan and billing term, and treat blank boxes as unknowns.
Then work out the real multi-year cost, ask for the renewal price in writing, and decide with the full picture in front of you.
Sources: Price figures from our Hosting Price History tracker, built from Wayback Machine snapshots (revised September 2026) and each host's own pricing and help-centre pages. Wayback CDX query format from the Internet Archive's published CDX server documentation, read October 2026.