Cheap domain with hosting: the two bills, and what the bundle really costs

A domain and hosting are two purchases, and almost every offer that puts them together works by making one of them look free. The results for this question are the registrars' own pages and the threads underneath them, and the threads have already settled it: the top answer on r/webhosting, to "what is the best/cheapest company to buy a domain name mainly to use…", is "Cheapest is to get a domain via CloudFlare, they sell the domains at cost."

That answer is right, and it is not the most useful thing you can do with it, because the name is not where the money is.

The two bills, priced from the same registry

As of: 2026-10-21. Every rate on the pricing page is real and published, but this deployment is not connected to a payment provider, so there is no button that takes money.

And here is the name on its own, which is the number a bundle hides. It is five years of one registration plus four renewals, and the middle column is the one to read:

The .com is the same price in year one and in year five — a 1.0× renewal, which is the only kind there is. So a bundle's "free domain" saves you the first year of a name that is roughly $15 against a hosting bill of $179 to $900 over five years. It is a discount, and it is a small one, and it is applied to the part of the bill that was never the problem.

What the bundle actually charges

Three things a bundle page does not print, and three pages here that do:

• The renewal is where the name is priced. The first registration is sold

below cost because it puts a name in your hands; the renewal is set by the registry, not by the registrar. Is a free domain for a year actually free? has the three prices and which of them is on the sales page.

• The registry's fee is not free. GoDaddy's own domain page prints it

beside the offer: "Get a free domain with purchase of any annual plan. Plus an ICANN fee of $0.20 per domain name per year."

• The hosting's renewal is the bigger step. Our audit of Hostinger — the

vendor the budget answers name most often — records its entry rate and the rate it renews at:

A "$2.99/month" headline is not a monthly price. It is a 48-month prepayment divided by 48, and the number that describes what you pay in a year's time is the second column, not the first.

What it costs here

As of: 2026-10-21. Every rate on the pricing page is real and published, but this deployment is not connected to a payment provider, so there is no button that takes money.

The name is registered at cost, with no retail markup, and its renewal is the same number as its signup rate — the 1.0× renewal, printed on the domain prices before you pay, with the registry's own cost schedule published alongside it. The hosting is the larger bill, and it is flat: a one-page site is free for as long as the domain is registered here, and the renewal is the same number as the signup.

And the one thing this page will not pretend to offer: a bundle is cheap because it sells the hosting at a rate it hopes you will not compare. The comparison is two prices, and you can make it.

Three questions to ask whoever sells you the pair

1. What is the name's renewal, in writing? A bundle rarely prints it,

because the bundle's price is the hosting price.

1. What is the hosting's renewal, and is it printed? If the answer is a

monthly figure and no term, ask for the total and the number of months.

1. What happens to the name if I stop paying for the hosting? On a bundle

the name is a perk of the plan, so it goes with it. Bought separately, it stays — and that is the only answer that makes the name yours.

Sources

• The domain prices and the hosting prices

on this site, both derived from the same registry, both over five years.

• Is a free domain for a year actually free? — the

three prices behind a free year, and the registrars that offer a free lifetime domain on condition that you stay.

• Hostinger vs zeso — the audited entry rate, the renewal,

and the step behind them.