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#1
Verpex Highest score on the list
The plan page says the whole sentence: $3.00/mo on 12 months, $36.00 today, then $6.00/mo on renewal. Few of the pages we read name all three together.
Daily backups and a free domain inside the entry plan
The one plan among those we read that names all seven items on its own page: $2.95/mo on 12 months — $35.40 today — renewing at $13.95/mo. And the cart holds the plan alone, with not one add-on.
The advertised $3.49/mo demands 24 months up front — $83.76 today — and the card prints the $10.99/mo renewal beside it. The cart then adds a line the page never says: after those four years the renewal is billed for one year, not four.
The renewal is printed beside the offer on every term
Their own CDN inside the plan, and unlimited free migrations
Every term in the order form names its own renewal beside it: $2.50/mo on 12 months, renewing at $7.00/mo whatever term you pick. The cart opens at $30.00 though, not at the hosting price alone.
Every term and its renewal are written in the order form
Six phone numbers published, and one renewal price whatever the term
support around the clock
a refund window of 30 days
Price7.2
Support7.0
Features4.5
Refund8.0
Raised from 6.7 to 6.8 on : Price 7.0 → to 7.2. We re-read its page and found the first payment we had recorded appears on no page of it, while the page itself says twelve months costs thirty dollars, so we corrected the figure.
ScalaHosting Renewal jumps to 4.1× the opening price
$2.95/mo on 36 months — $106.20 today — with the $11.95/mo renewal printed on the card. Seven days before it falls due, an invoice arrives carrying the amount.
ChemiCloud Renewal jumps to 4.3× the opening price
The offer is $3.49/mo on 12 months, $41.88 today. The renewal figure is not on the page: the sentence says the plan renews "at the regular rate found in your control panel" — a panel that does not open until you have bought.
$2.89/mo for the first year, then $10.99/mo, both printed on the card. The term selector offers two terms, though, while the page’s own data carries four — and the four-year term, priced under the two the selector shows, is not on sale.
We read every one of these companies’ own pages: the pricing page, the cart, the refund terms, the support page. What follows is not a summary of what a company says about itself, it is what we found written there and what we did not find. The order is the order of the scores, and the card under each name redoes the arithmetic in front of you.
This site is funded by commission from the companies listed, when you sign up through “Visit site”. No agreement has started yet. Rankings are computed from the score alone. Link disclosure
#1
Verpex
One year, and the renewal is double the opening price
7.6Good
The plan card says all three figures in one sentence: what you pay today, how many months it covers, and what it renews at. The flaw is that the entry plan is guaranteed less uptime than the plans above it, and that the renewal figure is printed two different ways on the same page.
Price and renewal transparency8.133%
Refund and billing8.020%
Support availability7.027%
Published features7.020%
Term demanded
12 months
Paid today
$36.00
Then per month
$6.00
Three years
$180.00
Renewal against the opening price
2.0×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
For a 1-year term. Pay $36 today, then $6/mo on renewal.
And what it does not say: The page does not say that this plan is guaranteed less uptime than the two above it, nor that the contact page offers live chat alone while the plan table promises phone and tickets beside it.
The advertised $3.00/mo on a 12-month term means $36.00 leaves your account today, then $6.00/mo. Over three years that comes to $180.00, under what the rest of this list asks, because the renewal here is only 2.0× the opening price. The entry plan carries 5/7 of the items we count: a certificate, daily backups, a domain for a year, email and free migration. What it does not carry is a CDN and a staging site, both of which start one plan up.
The refund window is 30 days, but the terms add two limits the card does not mention: it may be used once only, and it covers the first term, not a renewal of it. Domain fees sit outside it, and the free domain itself does not come with monthly billing. The acceptable-use policy then puts numbers behind the word "unlimited": a cap on multimedia, a cap per mailbox, a cap per database, and a comparison against what other customers use.
The checkout offers thirteen currencies, and the riyal, the dirham and the Egyptian pound are not among them: you can pay in Rwandan francs and Ugandan shillings but not in your own. The only published phone number is a British one, and their contact page returns a 404. They name no language they answer in, and there is no Arabic site.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
The renewal price is on the pricing page
Against it
Publishes no Arabic support
Billing does not state the renewal and its price
Suits: Anyone who wants to read both figures before paying either, and accepts a one-year commitment.
Does not suit: Anyone who needs a CDN or staging in an entry plan, or who wants to pay in their own currency.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
The only plan on this list that names all seven items on its own page, and its cart holds what you chose and not one thing more. The flaw is that the renewal jumps to 4.7× the opening price, and that the backup the card sells is deleted after two days.
Published features10.020%
Refund and billing8.020%
Support availability7.027%
Price and renewal transparency5.333%
Term demanded
12 months
Paid today
$35.40
Then per month
$13.95
Three years
$370.20
Renewal against the opening price
4.7×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
Total due today $35.40. Renews at $13.95/mo after your first term.
And what it does not say: The pricing page has no term selector at all: every button goes to the annual term, and you do not see the other two until you have started an order — where they cost several times the annual rate per month.
The advertised $2.95/mo on a 12-month term is $35.40 today, then $13.95/mo, and three years comes to $370.20. For that you get 7/7 of the items: a certificate, daily backups, a domain for a year, a staging site, email, a CDN and free migration. No other plan on this list gathers all of them, and the cart itself offers you not one paid add-on.
"Daily backups" on the card, and in their own backup article: the copies are removed after forty-eight hours, the first restore in a month is free and the ones after it carry a fee, and their policy forbids you to store your own backups on the account. Then they write, themselves, that relying on their backups alone is not safe. The refund window is 30 days, and it covers neither setup fees nor add-ons nor renewals.
The order form defaults your country and your server to Singapore, not to where you are; miss it and your billing address and your server both end up there. One payment method is offered — a credit card, no PayPal and nothing local — and no tax line appears whatever country you pick. There is no Arabic site, and no language switcher anywhere on the site.
In its favour
7/7 published features
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
Against it
Renewal jumps to 4.7× the opening price
Publishes no Arabic support
Suits: Anyone who wants everything inside the advertised price and never needs to restore a backup themselves.
Does not suit: Anyone who relies on the backups, or who pays by anything other than a credit card.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
Names Arabic, and answers it with a bot rather than a person
7.1Good
The one company on this list that names Arabic on its own pages, and its plan carries a CDN and unlimited free migrations. The flaw is in the detail: the Arabic is for the automated agent, the support specialists answer in English with machine translation, and the backups run weekly, not daily.
Support availability9.027%
Refund and billing8.020%
Published features6.020%
Price and renewal transparency5.833%
Term demanded
24 months
Paid today
$83.76
Then per month
$10.99
Three years
$215.64
Renewal against the opening price
3.1×
On top of that the checkout adds an estimated 14% VAT, taking today’s payment to $95.49 as we saw it from Egypt on . The rate follows your billing country, so a buyer in Saudi Arabia will see a different figure.
Hostinger CDN is available on Premium Web, Business Web, Cloud, and Agency hosting plans.
And what it does not say: The pricing page names no guaranteed uptime at all; the figure sits in the hosting agreement alone, together with the line that a failure is determined "as solely determined by us". Nor does the page say that a staging site starts on a higher plan.
We price their plan on 24 months because that is our cap, though their page opens on twice that. The advertised $3.49/mo means $83.76 today, then $10.99/mo, and three years costs $215.64. The plan carries 5/7 of the items: a certificate, a domain for a year, email, a CDN of their own making, and free migrations with no cap on how many sites. The renewal is 3.1× the opening price, and it is on the card before you buy, not after.
The two mailboxes are free for one year, and neither the cart nor the pricing page says what they cost in the second. Their agreement puts the backup at "once a week", overwriting the previous one, with only two weeks kept. And "unlimited" meets a cap in the same agreement: on database size and count, on file-transfer accounts, and on scheduled jobs. The refund window is 30 days, and cryptocurrency is always outside it.
Here it gets strange. Their page at the address ending in "ar" is not Arabic: it is Argentina, in Spanish, and the Arabic site sits at the Egypt address. In their own location list, searching for "Saudi" returns not one result, and the UAE is listed in English while Egypt and Morocco are in Arabic. The Arabic page then sells a fourth, cheaper plan that does not exist on the English page at all — and it comes with no free domain. Your account currency is fixed when the account is created and can never be changed after.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
Publishes Arabic support
Against it
Renewal jumps to 3.1× the opening price
The plan names no daily backups or staging site
Suits: Anyone who wants a CDN and uncapped migrations inside the price, and accepts a human answering in English.
Does not suit: Anyone expecting a person to write to them in Arabic, or who wants a daily backup.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
Will not show you a total until you give it a domain
6.9Fair
Daily backups kept thirty days, and chat, phone and ticket support around the clock inside the entry plan. The flaw is double: the renewal jumps to 6.0× the opening price, and you cannot see what you will pay today until you have committed to a domain name.
Published features8.520%
Refund and billing8.020%
Support availability7.027%
Price and renewal transparency5.333%
Term demanded
12 months
Paid today
$35.88
Then per month
$17.99
Three years
$467.64
Renewal against the opening price
6.0×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
Renews at $17.99/mo. Prepaid for 12 months. Ex. VAT
And what it does not say: The words "Ex. VAT" sit on the features page and are missing from the pricing page a reader reaches first. That pricing page says "1 website with unlimited traffic", while the features page gives the same plan an approximate monthly visit count.
The advertised $2.99/mo on 12 months, renewing at $17.99/mo. We have not recorded what you pay today, because they do not show it: the domain step is mandatory with no way past it, and jumping to the next step sends you back. What we do know is that three years costs $467.64 before tax. The plan carries 6/7 of the items: a certificate, daily backups, a domain for a year, email, a CDN and free migration. Staging starts one plan up.
The real ceiling on the entry plan is published inside a hover tooltip on a secondary page: a file limit, a memory cap per process, and a count of CPU seconds per hour, per day and per month. The "free" domain is clawable: the terms say its fees "may be due upon cancellation, even if waived initially", so anyone refunding within 30 days may be charged for the domain. And the remedy for downtime is an extension of your term, not money back.
Their region list runs to ten, with no Arab or Gulf region among them, and the Arabic page returns a 404. They name no language they answer in anywhere, and they do not name the provider of the CDN they promise. The advertised offer carries no expiry date anywhere on the page.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
The renewal price is on the pricing page
Against it
Renewal jumps to 6.0× the opening price
Publishes no Arabic support
Suits: Anyone who wants daily backups and phone support in an entry plan, and accepts learning the total after choosing a domain.
Does not suit: Anyone who wants to see what they will pay before committing to anything, or who compares prices with tax included.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
Their order form writes, for every term, its price and its renewal in the same sentence — which nobody else on this list does — and the renewal is the same whatever term you pick. The flaw is that the cart opens with a domain and Whois privacy already ticked, and that backups are weekly.
Refund and billing8.020%
Price and renewal transparency7.233%
Support availability7.027%
Published features4.520%
Term demanded
12 months
Paid today
$30.00
Then per month
$7.00
Three years
$198.00
Renewal against the opening price
2.8×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
And what it does not say: The page leads with "$2.50 first month" while the order form opens on 12 months, not one. Nor does the page say the cart will be carrying two other lines before you reach it.
The advertised $2.50/mo on 12 months, renewing at $7.00/mo — a jump of 2.8×, and the same across all four terms they offer. Three years costs $198.00. But $30.00 is what the cart asks today, not the hosting price alone: the difference is a domain and Whois privacy ticked for you. The plan carries 4/7 of the items: a certificate, email, a CDN and free migration.
Backups are weekly, and the terms state plainly that the customer is responsible for backing up their own files and that the company is not answerable for their deletion. "Unlimited" meets a file-count cap in those terms, a ceiling on server resources, and a per-gigabyte fee for anyone using "an unreasonable amount". The refund window is 30 days and covers hosting alone; cancelling must happen three days before the renewal date, or the cancellation takes effect only after the next one.
Their contact page publishes six phone numbers — New Jersey, a US toll-free line, London, Tel Aviv, São Paulo and Mexico City — and none in the Gulf or North Africa. The currency in the cart is a dropdown with one option: dollars. No support language is named, and the arbitration clause in their terms states that proceedings are conducted in English. There is no Arabic site.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
The renewal price is on the pricing page
Against it
The plan names no daily backups, free domain year or staging site
Publishes no Arabic support
Suits: Anyone who wants to see every term’s renewal before picking one, and who deletes what was placed in their cart.
Does not suit: Anyone who relies on a daily backup, or who pays in their own currency.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
The term ladder runs backwards: a year costs less per month than two
6.7Fair
Daily backups, a staging site and a CDN inside the entry plan, and a clean cart with nothing ticked for you. The flaw is that the page never names the term attached to the advertised price, and that the backups it sells cannot be restored by you on this plan.
Published features8.520%
Refund and billing8.020%
Support availability6.027%
Price and renewal transparency5.433%
Term demanded
12 months
Paid today
$23.88
Then per month
$9.95
Three years
$262.68
Renewal against the opening price
5.0×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
And what it does not say: The page does not say how many months that sum covers. You learn it in the cart alone — and there you also discover that committing two years costs more per month than committing one.
The advertised $1.99/mo and the $9.95/mo renewal are both written on the page. Only the term is missing: 12 months, which you learn in the cart, where you pay $23.88. Three years costs $262.68, and the renewal is 5.0× the opening price. The plan carries 6/7 of the items: a certificate, daily backups, email, a CDN, free migration and a staging site. And the cart adds nothing to it that you did not ask for.
The card ticks "Performance Boost" on this plan, and that item’s own tooltip says the plan has no performance boost and no additional guaranteed resources. The page promises thirty daily backups and "unlimited full or incremental restores", and the entry plan’s tooltip puts free restore outside it. The refund covers 30 days from the initial payment alone, and the domain fee "is always withheld, even if this fee was waived at the time of purchase". Miss a renewal by five days and the account and every backup copy are deleted.
The data centres offered in the shared-hosting cart number six, none of them in the Middle East, while the page advertises twelve-plus centres across fourteen countries. An account is required before the payment step, so you see no payment method and no tax before it. There is no Arabic site and no alternate-language tag on the page at all. And "We Speak Your Language" on their page is about programming languages, not human ones.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
The renewal price is on the pricing page
Against it
Renewal jumps to 5.0× the opening price
Publishes no Arabic support
Suits: Anyone who wants backups and staging at a low opening price, and reads the cart before paying.
Does not suit: Anyone who assumes a longer term lowers the monthly price, or who needs to restore a backup themselves.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
Tells you the amount seven days before it takes it
6.7Fair
The cart is entirely clean, and an invoice reaches you seven days before renewal carrying the amount — a commitment few companies on this list make. The flaw is that the plan’s real ceiling is published only in the terms, and that declining a renewal blocks you from buying a new package for the same domain for a full year.
Refund and billing10.020%
Published features8.520%
Support availability6.027%
Price and renewal transparency4.133%
Term demanded
36 months
Paid today
$106.20
Then per month
$11.95
Three years
$106.20
Renewal against the opening price
4.1×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
And what it does not say: The page does not say that this plan is capped at a percentage of CPU and memory, nor that its email is limited to a number of messages an hour — both written out, with numbers, in the terms.
The advertised $2.95/mo on 36 months is $106.20 today, and the $11.95/mo renewal is printed under the button on the card itself. The plan carries 6/7 of the items: a certificate, daily backups, email, a CDN, free migration and a staging site. The free domain is not among them — it starts one plan up. Their control panel is their own rather than cPanel, and it is what the cart selects by default even though the card offers both.
The hero calls the guarantee "anytime" and "unconditional"; the terms give it a full 30 days window then a pro-rata refund, restrict it to new clients, and exclude dedicated servers, certificates, domains and licences. Cancellation is not accepted by email: "Cancellation requests sent via e-mail will not be considered legitimate and you will still be billed." And anyone declining the standard renewal price may be refused a new package for the same domain for twelve months.
The contact page opens by saying support is available around the clock, then its own table beneath says billing and pre-sales run on weekdays within set hours on a US clock. The published number is for pre-sales, not support. No language is named, the page declares English alone, and there is no Arabic site. There is no currency switcher anywhere, and payment is by card, PayPal or bank transfer.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
The renewal price is on the pricing page
Against it
Renewal jumps to 4.1× the opening price
Publishes no Arabic support
Suits: Anyone who wants to be told the amount before it is taken, and does not mind a control panel that is not cPanel.
Does not suit: Anyone who might come back to the same domain within a year, or who needs to know their CPU share before buying.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
Theirs is the only policy on this list that promises to name the renewal amount before taking it, and their support explicitly covers billing around the clock. The flaw is that the default term is four years, that the renewal is a single charge about five times what you paid, and that the subscription renews for "successive periods of equal duration".
Refund and billing10.020%
Support availability7.027%
Published features7.020%
Price and renewal transparency3.533%
Term demanded
48 months
Paid today
$95.52
Then per month
$9.99
Three years
$95.52
Renewal against the opening price
5.0×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
And what it does not say: The page writes "Honest pricing… no lock-ins or minimum terms" above a default option of forty-eight months. Nor does it say that their uptime figure appears as three different values on three of their own pages.
The advertised $1.99/mo on 48 months is $95.52 today, then $9.99/mo — a jump of 5.0×, paid as one charge every four years. The plan carries 5/7 of the items: a certificate, daily backups kept thirty days with self-serve restore, a domain for a year, email and free migration. Their own plan data publishes what others hide: the processor count, the memory, the file limit, and the number of mailboxes and the capacity of each.
"Unlimited" bandwidth and a specific monthly page-view count are two fields in the same plan record. The guarantee runs 30 days and "applies to only your first term, not to subsequent extended terms" — in a product whose first term is four years. Setup, domain and migration fees are "not refundable at any circumstance", while migration is sold as free on the same page. The company is the former A2 Hosting, registered in Delaware.
Their domains page carries the heading "No surprise renewals" and publishes first-year prices only, with not one renewal price for any extension. No page names a support language. All fees "are calculated in US Dollars", with a warning that non-dollar prices may rise or fall. There is no Arabic site, and the only regional editions are in English.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
The renewal price is on the pricing page
Against it
Renewal jumps to 5.0× the opening price
Publishes no Arabic support
Suits: Anyone who wants to know the renewal amount before it is taken, and accepts a four-year cycle.
Does not suit: Anyone who does not know where their site will be in four years.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
An extended refund window, with its exclusions named one by one
6.4Fair
The refund window here runs beyond what the rest of the list publishes, their terms name every exclusion rather than gesturing at it, and they commit to ten days’ notice before an invoice and thirty before a price rise. The flaw is that the pricing page names the renewal figure in no sentence at all.
Refund and billing10.020%
Published features8.520%
Support availability6.027%
Price and renewal transparency3.333%
Term demanded
12 months
Paid today
$41.88
Then per month
$14.95
Three years
$400.68
Renewal against the opening price
4.3×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
will automatically renew after the initial term at the regular rate found in your control panel
And what it does not say: That control panel does not open before you buy. The figure does exist — inside the cart, and only after you have given it a domain — and the page gives no hint that it is there.
The advertised $3.49/mo on 12 months is $41.88 today, renewing at $14.95/mo — a jump of 4.3×. Three years costs $400.68. The plan carries 6/7 of the items: a certificate, daily backups, a domain for a year, email, a CDN and free migration. The cart offers not one add-on and no upsell step.
The refund window is 45 days, and its exclusion list names about twenty items, among them the Inodes Add-on and the Disk Space Add-on — the things you buy when the plan runs out. It is for "first-time accounts" only, and the company is "the sole arbiter" of it. The backup text says thirty days in the prose and ten in the comparison table for this plan, and one-click restore is a feature of the plans above it, not of this one.
The page title advertises a monthly price that appears nowhere inside it. The card says the nearest data centre is Frankfurt, then the cart selects Portland in the United States by default. The free-domain list runs to twenty-seven extensions with no Saudi, Emirati or Egyptian one among them. There is no currency switcher, no tax appears whatever country you pick, and the two payment methods are card and PayPal. There is no Arabic site.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 45 days
The refund exclusions are written down
Against it
Renewal jumps to 4.3× the opening price
Publishes no Arabic support
Suits: Anyone who reads refund terms and wants them written out in detail, and accepts learning the renewal from the cart.
Does not suit: Anyone who wants the renewal figure on the pricing page before handing it a domain.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
A Black Friday code from a year gone, with no expiry
6.2Fair
Daily backups inside the entry plan, a cart that holds only what you chose, and a card that prints both figures. The flaw is that the term selector offers two while the page’s own data carries four, and that backup retention is not published for this plan at all.
Refund and billing8.020%
Support availability6.027%
Price and renewal transparency5.933%
Published features5.020%
Term demanded
12 months
Paid today
$34.68
Then per month
$10.99
Three years
$298.44
Renewal against the opening price
3.8×
VAT is added at the checkout according to your billing country. We have not walked this company’s cart to measure it.
And what it does not say: The page does not say that every one of its sale buttons carries a seasonal promo code from last year, and it shows no expiry date for it anywhere.
The advertised $2.89/mo on 12 months is $34.68 today, then $10.99/mo — a jump of 3.8×. Three years costs $298.44. The plan carries 3/7 of the items: a certificate, daily backups and a domain for a year. Email is a three-month trial added by a separate button and then billed yearly, not a line inside the price. There is no CDN and no staging site on this plan.
Their own FAQ says every card shows the exact renewal rate and "you will never have to dig through fine print", while their terms bind you to "the then-current, non-promotional rate" with no notice and no amount. The refund window is 30 days and covers card and PayPal payments only: "other forms of payment are non-refundable". Domain fees are "not refundable under any circumstances". Their uptime guarantee is a hundred per cent, the count of an outage starts when you open a ticket rather than when the site goes down, and the credit is capped at a tenth of your next renewal.
Their prices in dollars, euros and pounds are identical numerals: only the symbol changes, so a euro buyer is not paying a converted price. There is no support phone number — chat and email only. They write that their support representatives are "multilingual" without naming a single language, and Arabic appears on no page. The Arabic address redirects to a 404, and the hosting page carries no alternate-language tag at all.
In its favour
Support around the clock
A refund window of 30 days
The renewal price is on the pricing page
Against it
Renewal jumps to 3.8× the opening price
The plan names no staging site, email, CDN or free migration
Suits: Anyone who wants daily backups and a cart that adds nothing, on a one-year commitment.
Does not suit: Anyone who needs email or a CDN inside the price, or who wants to know what happens to their backup.
Not yet measured: speed, uptime, support reply time, the control panel, and a refund actually claimed. Those five need a bought plan and a measurement round, and none of them is in the score today.
Use this table once you know what matters to you. Start with the column that fits your project: response from your audience's city, the first payment and renewal if budget is the constraint, or the reply language if you will lean on support. Narrow the list with the filters below. Every “Not yet measured” cell is a criterion left out of the score until we check it, not a zero. Reading one row: Verpex scores 7.6, it scores 8.1 on price, it answers from Riyadh in 0 ms, you pay $36.00 today and then $6.00/mo, and it was checked on 16 September 2026.
Arabic support: all three support replies came in Arabic. Servers in the region: a data centre in the Gulf or Egypt on the tested plan. WordPress-ready: a one-click WordPress install on the tested plan. Renewal under $8: the monthly renewal price.
The table is wider than the screen: scroll sideways for the entry and renewal prices, the first payment, published support hours and channels, and the refund window
Service
Score
Price
Support
Features
Refund
Renewal jump
Term demanded
Entry
First payment
Renewal
Refund window
Published features
Support hours
Arabic support
Checked
Verpex
7.6
8.1
7.0
7.0
8.0
2.0×
12
$3.00/mo 12 mo
$36.00
$6.00/mo
30 days
5/7
support around the clock
English
GreenGeeks
7.2
5.3
7.0
10.0
8.0
4.7×
12
$2.95/mo 12 mo
$35.40
$13.95/mo
30 days
7/7
support around the clock
English
Hostinger
7.1
5.8
9.0
6.0
8.0
3.1×
24
$3.49/mo 24 mo
$83.76
$10.99/mo
30 days
5/7
support around the clock
Arabic
SiteGround
6.9
5.3
7.0
8.5
8.0
6.0×
12
$2.99/mo 12 mo
$35.88
$17.99/mo
30 days
6/7
support around the clock
English
InterServer
6.8
7.2
7.0
4.5
8.0
2.8×
12
$2.50/mo 12 mo
$30.00
$7.00/mo
30 days
4/7
support around the clock
English
FFastComet
6.7
5.4
6.0
8.5
8.0
5.0×
12
$1.99/mo 12 mo
$23.88
$9.95/mo
30 days
6/7
support around the clock
English
ScalaHosting
6.7
4.1
6.0
8.5
10.0
4.1×
36
$2.95/mo 36 mo
$106.20
$11.95/mo
30 days
6/7
support around the clock
English
hosting.com
6.4
3.5
7.0
7.0
10.0
5.0×
48
$1.99/mo 48 mo
$95.52
$9.99/mo
30 days
5/7
support around the clock
English
ChemiCloud
6.4
3.3
6.0
8.5
10.0
4.3×
12
$3.49/mo 12 mo
$41.88
$14.95/mo
45 days
6/7
support around the clock
English
DreamHost
6.2
5.9
6.0
5.0
8.0
3.8×
12
$2.89/mo 12 mo
$34.68
$10.99/mo
30 days
3/7
support around the clock
English
No service matches these filters.
Reading window: 16 to 16 September 2026 · every figure read on the company’s own pageNot yet checked means the criterion is excluded from the score until we check it
Which host for your project?
No single host suits every project. These are cases we hear about often, each with the criterion that decides it, the host that leads on it among the ones we recommend, and what to watch for.
A blog or brochure site kept for years
A site you keep for years is paid for twice: the first-year price, then the renewal. What matters here is what you pay after the offer ends, not before.
Lowest 36-month cost among the hosts we recommend ($180.00): Verpex, scoring 7.6. What to watch for: the plan names no staging site or CDN.
A store needs backups, a certificate, email and a staging site. What matters here is what the company includes in the plan, not what it sells you at checkout.
Most published features among the hosts we recommend (7/7): GreenGeeks, scoring 7.2. What to watch for: billing does not state the renewal and its price.
The advertised price is not the price you pay for long. What matters here is the gap between the opening price and the renewal, and who writes it on their page.
Smallest renewal increase among the hosts we recommend (2.0×): Verpex, scoring 7.6. What to watch for: renews at 2.0× the opening price.
“From $2.95 a month” is true and misleading at the same time. That price usually comes only with a prepayment of several years, and it rises at renewal. Before you compare monthly prices, compare two numbers: what you pay today, and what you pay in the first 36 months.
Take the services that led a criterion this round. GreenGeeks asks only $35.40 today, but its first 36 months cost $370.20, while Hostinger asks $83.76 today and costs $215.64 over the same period. A small first payment does not mean a small cost, and a large one can save you money if you stay.
Scroll the table sideways for the 36-month total and the monthly average.
Service
You pay today
First 12 months
First 36 months
Monthly average over the first 36 months
Verpex
$36.00
$36.00
$180.00
$5.00
GreenGeeks
$35.40
$35.40
$370.20
$10.28
Hostinger
$83.76
$83.76
$215.64
$5.99
SiteGround
$35.88
$35.88
$467.64
$12.99
The table shows US dollars before VAT, as the hosts list them. Add VAT for your country, convert at the rate on the day you pay, and remember that your card fees can add a little. In your currency: Verpex's first payment of $36.00 is about 135 SAR before VAT, and about 155 SAR with 15% VAT in Saudi Arabia, at the rate on 24 September 2026.
Choose the prepayment length you are sure to stay for. If you might leave within a year, compare the first-12-months column, not the 36.
Where the prepayment is longer than the period, the whole prepayment is shown because nothing shorter can be bought at that price. Prices in US dollars as shown on the providers' sites. For reference, $1 ≈ 3.75 SAR ≈ 3.67 AED ≈ 48.5 EGP at the rate on . Add VAT (15% in Saudi Arabia, 5% in the UAE, 14% in Egypt) where not included. mada and Fawry are accepted by: .
What the small print means
Plans pages use words that sound clear, but what they mean is in the terms. These are five we read in every review, what they usually mean, and what to do before you believe them. These definitions are a general guide from the terms we read, not measured figures. Every number on this page comes from the company’s own page.
“Unlimited”: Unlimited storage and data transfer come with a file-count (inode) cap and a CPU cap, and an active store can hit the cap within the first year. Ask about the file-count cap before buying if you are building a shop.
“24/7 support”: Means the chat is open, not that anyone answers in Arabic or within minutes. We read the hours, the channels and the languages a support page names. Reply time we have not measured: that needs a paid account, and it is not in the score today. Try it yourself: send a question in Arabic before you pay. What we found: 1 of 10 services state on their support page that they reply in Arabic.
“Free domain”: First year only, then renewed at market price ($12 to $20). It may be held back if you cancel. Register the domain in your own name, and check its renewal price.
“Money-back guarantee”: Usually excludes the domain and add-ons, and runs from the purchase date, not the activation date. Read what is excluded, and count the window from the purchase date.
“Free migration”: Usually cPanel to cPanel only. Moving from a site builder or a dedicated server is paid. Check that your site is the kind they move for free. What we found: 9 of the 10 hosts on the list advertise free migration.
Before you pay
Before you type in your card number, take ten minutes for these steps. Each one protects you from a mistake that recurs across these companies’ pages. Every review on this site lists the refund window, how to cancel and the renewal price for its host.
Confirm the refund window and whether it covers what you bought. Many hosts exclude the domain and add-ons, so only part of the money comes back.
Know how to cancel: from the panel or by phone only. Some hosts cancel only by ticket or phone, which eats into the refund window.
Put the renewal date in your calendar with the new price. The new price is charged automatically, often without a clear reminder.
Confirm you can export a full backup yourself. That copy is what lets you leave if the service goes bad.
Choose the server region before paying; some services will not change it afterwards. Changing region after the account exists means moving the site all over again.
Message support in Arabic before buying and time the reply. What happens with a pre-sales question tells you what will happen after the sale.
What these companies’ own pages said
We read the pages of 10 companies in one day. We bought no plan and wrote to no support desk. What follows is not a judgement of service quality; it is a count of what each company says about itself on its own page: how far the price rises, how long it demands up front, what it promises, and what it does when you ask for your money back.
Three numbers summarise what we found, all computed from the same list you are about to read.
4.3×median renewal jumpwhat the offer price becomes at renewal, in the middle of the list
9/10print the renewal on the pricing pageof the 10 companies we read
1/10publish Arabic supportof the 10 companies we read
The third number is the one that matters to an Arabic-speaking reader: nothing on this list promises Arabic on its own page. The companies that publish their support languages name English, Spanish and German, and the list ends there.
What the score means, criterion by criterion
The score is out of ten: four sub-scores multiplied by their weights. For each criterion below: what it means in a buyer’s terms, where every company stands on it, and the formula that produced the number.
Price and renewal transparency
33%
The renewal jump alone is not enough: a company demanding four years up front at a flat price can cost you more than one that raises its price after a single year. So this criterion adds four things — the jump, the term demanded, whether the renewal is written down at all, and how much leaves your card today.
Verpex8.1
InterServer7.2
DreamHost5.9
Hostinger5.8
FastComet5.4
GreenGeeks5.3
SiteGround5.3
ScalaHosting4.1
hosting.com3.5
ChemiCloud3.3
Verpex sits at the head here (8.1); ChemiCloud sits at the foot here (3.3).
The formula as we apply it: The plan we price: the entry plan on the longest prepayment a company offers, capped at 24 months, because a four-year commitment and a one-year one are not the same product; each term is on its card. Renewal jump: 10 points when the renewal equals the opening price, minus 3.0 per extra multiple. Term demanded: 10 points for monthly billing, minus 1 per 6 months demanded up front. Renewal price on the pricing page: 10 or 0. Paid today: 10 points at nothing, minus 1 per $20 of first payment. Price transparency = 40% jump + 20% term + 20% published + 20% paid today.
Support availability
27%
We do not know how long they take to reply, because that needs a paid account. What we do know is what they publish: when you can reach them, on how many channels, and in what language.
Hostinger9.0
GreenGeeks7.0
hosting.com7.0
InterServer7.0
SiteGround7.0
Verpex7.0
ChemiCloud6.0
DreamHost6.0
FastComet6.0
ScalaHosting6.0
Hostinger sits at the head here (9.0); ScalaHosting sits at the foot here (6.0).
The formula as we apply it: Published support hours: 10 points for around the clock, 5 for business hours, 0 when none is published. Channels: 10 points for all three (chat, tickets, phone). Arabic support published: 10 or 0. Support availability = 40% hours + 30% channels + 30% Arabic.
Published features
20%
The seven items are not worth the same to someone running a small site: a daily backup saves a site, an email address does not. So each feature is weighted by what it is worth, not counted.
GreenGeeks10.0
ChemiCloud8.5
FastComet8.5
ScalaHosting8.5
SiteGround8.5
hosting.com7.0
Verpex7.0
Hostinger6.0
DreamHost5.0
InterServer4.5
GreenGeeks sits at the head here (10.0); InterServer sits at the foot here (4.5).
The formula as we apply it: Published features: the seven items are not equal. Daily backups are worth 2.5 points, a free domain year, a CDN and a staging site 1.5 each, and a certificate, email and migration one apiece. Ten in total, and an item the page does not name does not count.
Refund and billing
20%
A refund window on its own is a promise. Two things make it usable: the exclusions being written down, and knowing the renewal figure before it is charged rather than after.
ChemiCloud10.0
hosting.com10.0
ScalaHosting10.0
DreamHost8.0
FastComet8.0
GreenGeeks8.0
Hostinger8.0
InterServer8.0
SiteGround8.0
Verpex8.0
ChemiCloud sits at the head here (10.0); Verpex sits at the foot here (8.0).
The formula as we apply it: Refund window: 10 points at 30 days, minus 1 per 3 days short. Exclusions written: 10 or 0. Billing states the renewal: 10 or 0. Refund and billing = 50% window + 30% exclusions + 20% billing.
How to read a number out of ten
Eight and above: the company writes down what you will pay and when, and gives you a way out. There is no nine on this list, and that is not modesty on our part — we did not find a page that earned one.
Seven to eight: a mostly clear page with one flaw worth reading before you pay.
Six to seven: the advertised price is far from the real one, or the term demanded is long, or something basic goes unmentioned.
Under six: the page hides more than it says. The company still has a link here, because the decision is yours, but read the weaknesses first.
Where two scores tie after rounding, the higher unrounded sum ranks first. No position is moved by hand.
What we did not measure, and why you should know
We bought no plan from anyone on this list, ran no site on one, and sent no question to a support desk. That means speed, uptime and real reply times enter no score on this page.
That is a choice, not a hidden gap: we published what can be verified today instead of waiting for a purchase budget, and we state its limits. When we buy and measure, those criteria enter the arithmetic, the scores move, and the change appears in the changelog with its date.
Until then, what you are reading answers one question precisely: what does this company say about itself, and does it say it clearly?
▲Up: InterServer 6.7 → to 6.8: Price 7.0 → to 7.2. We re-read its page and found the first payment we had recorded appears on no page of it, while the page itself says twelve months costs thirty dollars, so we corrected the figure.
The scoring model changed: five criteria that assumed we had bought the plan became 4 that are read from the companies’ own pages — price 33%, support 27%, features 20%, refund 20%. Speed and uptime left the score entirely until they can be measured on a bought plan, and the page says so everywhere.
Each measurement's points are now rounded to two decimals before they are weighted; no score changed.
Frequently asked
What does hosting really cost in the first year?
Among the hosts we recommend, the first 12 months cost between $35.40 (GreenGeeks) and $83.76 (Hostinger), counting the whole prepayment where it runs past a year. That is roughly 133 to 314 SAR before VAT.
How much does the price rise at renewal?
The gap varies widely from one service to the next. Largest renewal increase on the list: SiteGround renews at 6.0× its opening price, then hosting.com at 5.0× and FastComet at 5.0×. Read the renewal price before the first-year price.
Should I buy the domain from the host?
Not necessarily. The free first-year domain is convenient, then it renews at market price, and some terms hold it back or deduct its fee from any refund. Registering it with an independent registrar keeps the domain separate from the hosting and makes moving later easier.
Can I move later, and what does it cost?
9 of the 10 companies on this list publish free migration on their plan page: Verpex, GreenGeeks, Hostinger, SiteGround, InterServer, FastComet, ScalaHosting, hosting.com and ChemiCloud. It is usually cPanel to cPanel only; moving from a site builder or a dedicated server is a paid service, and some terms cap how many sites move free.
Is free hosting enough for my site?
For a simple portfolio, perhaps. For a site that receives customers, no; free services usually come with ads and no backups. We did not measure any of them in this round.
