We read Hostinger's India WordPress hosting page and its web hosting page one after the other on 6 September 2026, and they sell the same thing: Single at Rs. 69 a month, Premium at Rs. 149, Unlimited at Rs. 249 and Cloud Startup at Rs. 599, on 48-month terms, with identical totals, renewal rates, storage, site allowances, backups and guarantees. The only published difference is a line naming AI Builder credits on the web hosting page. The number that decides the real cost sits below the badge: Single is Rs. 3,312 for the first 48 months and renews at Rs. 289 a month — Rs. 13,872 for the next four years, a 319% step. Premium goes Rs. 149 to Rs. 449, Unlimited Rs. 249 to Rs. 649, Cloud Startup Rs. 599 to Rs. 1,599.

Re-read from Hostinger's own India plan page on 2 September 2026: shared hosting from Rs. 69 a month on the 48-month term, shown as 83 per cent off, unchanged since our 21 August read. The Monsoon Sale branding is long gone, while Premium and Unlimited have risen from Rs. 139 and Rs. 199 to Rs. 149 and Rs. 249. We put the number the page buries next to the headline: the renewal rate. Single costs Rs. 3,312 for four years and renews at Rs. 289 a month, so the next four cost Rs. 13,872 - a 4.2x step-up, the steepest on the page. Premium, Unlimited and Cloud Startup renew at Rs. 449, Rs. 649 and Rs. 1,599 for step-ups of 3.0x, 2.6x and 2.7x. The badges are computed against a regular price that is simply the crossed-out monthly rate times 48 months; measured against each plan's own renewal rate the real reductions are 62 to 76 per cent. Plan-by-plan storage, backup cadence, website limits and email allowances, plus five ways to pay less. Hostinger publishes no end date.

GoDaddy's Indian web hosting page listed four cPanel plans on 31 August 2026 — Starter at Rs. 89 a month against a struck Rs. 299, Economy at Rs. 219 against Rs. 599, Deluxe at Rs. 329 against Rs. 849 and Ultimate at Rs. 399 against Rs. 1,099. Every rate is quoted for the first three-year term, so the real commitments are Rs. 3,204 to Rs. 14,364 over 36 months, and the page publishes no renewal rate at all. The detail that decides the choice is website count: Starter and Economy both host exactly one site, so Economy's extra Rs. 130 a month buys 15 GB, a free domain, free email and a one-year SSL rather than room to grow. Deluxe at Rs. 329 is the first plan that hosts more than one website, at ten, and Ultimate's 25 sites work out to Rs. 15.96 each.

Hostinger's India cloud hosting page, read on 31 August 2026, quotes Cloud Startup at Rs. 599 a month, Cloud Professional at Rs. 899 and Cloud Enterprise at Rs. 1,899, all on 48-month terms paid upfront. The number that decides the cost is underneath: Cloud Startup renews at Rs. 1,599 a month, so four years cost Rs. 28,752 and the next four cost Rs. 76,752. Every plan steps up the same way — Single 4.19 times its introductory rate, Premium 3.01, Unlimited 2.61, Cloud Startup 2.67. What Cloud Startup adds over the Rs. 249 Unlimited plan is headroom rather than storage: 2,000,000 inodes against 600,000, 100 PHP workers against 60, four CPU cores against two and a dedicated IP. Hostinger does not publish renewal rates for the two larger cloud plans.

The cheapest real web hosting you can buy in India right now is shared hosting, and Hostinger's Single plan is the sharpest version of it: Rs. 69 a month on the 48-month term, billed Rs. 3,312 upfront, with 10 GB of SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, weekly backups, a mailbox and a 30-day money-back guarantee. This explainer walks through what that Rs. 69 actually buys, the term-length and renewal fine print nobody reads, and the traffic point at which the cheapest plan stops being the right one.

Hostinger's Indian business email page showed three plans on 30 August 2026, every price quoted per mailbox on a 48-month term. Starter is Rs. 29 a month against a struck Rs. 149 with 5 GB of storage, Standard Rs. 49 against Rs. 199 with 20 GB, and Premium Rs. 79 against Rs. 299 with 50 GB. The number that decides the real cost is the renewal rate printed under each: Rs. 69, Rs. 119 and Rs. 179 a month, or about 2.3 to 2.4 times the introductory price. One Starter mailbox costs Rs. 1,392 for the first four years and Rs. 3,312 for the next four. Storage is the real differentiator and gets cheaper as you go up — Rs. 5.80 per GB a month on Starter against Rs. 1.58 on Premium. Every figure is per mailbox, so multiply by headcount.

GoDaddy's India website builder page on 29 August 2026 shows four plans: a Free tier with 50 AI credits a month and no card required, Starter at Rs. 699 a month, Professional at Rs. 1,699 and Ultimate at Rs. 6,499, every paid one billed annually at Rs. 8,388, Rs. 20,388 and Rs. 77,988. Eight days earlier we read the same URL and it showed three differently-named plans at Rs. 249, Rs. 599 and Rs. 899. The product has been rebuilt around monthly AI credits, and the credits get more expensive as you climb: Rs. 4.66 each on Starter against Rs. 8.67 on Ultimate. Per published site the order reverses, from Rs. 699 down to about Rs. 130, which is what the tiers are actually priced on.

Hostinger's India domain page prices eight extensions and prints both the first-year and the renewal price on each card. A .com is Rs. 1 for the first year and Rs. 1,499 a year after; a .in is Rs. 1 and then Rs. 899. Only .io behaves like a normal price, at Rs. 3,099 rising to Rs. 7,259. Because the eight extensions carry eight very different renewal multiples, the cheap-to-expensive ranking inverts with time: .online is the third cheapest domain in year one at Rs. 99 and the second most expensive over three years at Rs. 7,077, behind .icu, .xyz, .cloud and .pro. The cheapest domain over any realistic holding period is the .in at Rs. 1,799 for three years. The same page advertises .com transfers from Rs. 969, below its own Rs. 1,499 renewal.

GoDaddy's India Website Builder pricing panel, read 21 August 2026, shows three paid plans under its Annual Plans toggle: Basic at Rs. 249.00 a month, Premium at Rs. 599.00 and Commerce at Rs. 899.00, alongside a free tier and a 7-day trial. Templates, a free custom domain, professional email, Airo AI tools and advanced analytics appear on all three cards, so the paid tiers buy marketing volume and selling rather than a better builder. Two things an Indian buyer should read first: four payment and selling bullets on that rupee-priced page carry GoDaddy's own US-only or US-and-Canada-only notes, and the Commerce card quotes a 2.7% + 30c card transaction fee in cents. The panel states no renewal price.

Hostinger's India website builder page showed three plans on 28 August 2026: Premium at Rs. 149 a month, Unlimited at Rs. 249 and Cloud Startup at Rs. 599, badged 75, 64 and 65 per cent off. Underneath each monthly figure the same card prints the actual transaction - 48 months for Rs. 7,152, Rs. 11,952 and Rs. 28,752, which are those monthly prices multiplied by 48 and paid in advance. The renewal rates are printed too: Rs. 449, Rs. 649 and Rs. 1,599 a month, so the second four years cost Rs. 21,552, Rs. 31,152 and Rs. 76,752. One number is worth pausing on - Premium's own stated regular price of Rs. 28,752 is exactly what Cloud Startup costs today. The Premium-to-Unlimited step is Rs. 100 a month and buys ecommerce, unlimited sites and mailboxes, email marketing and priority support.

Hostinger prints two numbers on every plan card: the total for the 48-month term and the monthly rate it renews at. Read on 27 August 2026 from its own India pages, those are Rs. 3,312 and Rs. 289 a month on the entry Single plan - which means year five costs Rs. 3,468, more than the first four years put together. The same pattern runs across the range: Rs. 7,152 then Rs. 449 a month on Premium, Rs. 11,952 then Rs. 649 on Unlimited, Rs. 28,752 then Rs. 1,599 on Cloud Startup. The renewal multiple is steepest on the cheapest plan, at 4.2 times, and gentlest on Unlimited at 2.6 - the opposite of what the discount badges suggest. Premium's introductory Rs. 149 a month is also cheaper than Single's Rs. 289 renewal, for three times the websites. Every figure is Hostinger's own; the multiplication is ours.

We read both VPS pricing pages on 27 August 2026 and matched the plans by hardware rather than by name. At one rung the specifications are identical - 4 vCPU cores, 16 GB of RAM and 200 GB of NVMe storage - and Hostinger advertises it at Rs. 1,099 a month against GoDaddy's Rs. 3,299. The pattern holds down the ladder: Rs. 599 buys 4 GB of RAM at Hostinger, Rs. 649 buys 2 GB at GoDaddy. Both sets of numbers are introductory rates on long committed terms, and each company withholds something the other prints. Hostinger states its renewal rates openly - KVM 4 goes from Rs. 1,099 to Rs. 2,399 - but never says how long the introductory term runs. GoDaddy states the term as three years but publishes no renewal rate at all. This page lays out all eight plans, both gaps and the arithmetic.

We read all four Hostinger KVM VPS plan cards on 26 August 2026 and found the same pattern on every one: the discount badge is measured against a crossed-out rate higher than Hostinger's own renewal rate, printed two lines below it. KVM 1 is struck from Rs. 1,649 to Rs. 599 for a 64 per cent badge, but renews at Rs. 999 - so the honest discount is 40 per cent. Across the range the badges say 62 to 69 per cent and the real figures are 33 to 54. The plan Hostinger flags MOST POPULAR, KVM 2, has the weakest real discount and the gentlest renewal; KVM 4 has the largest genuine cut and the harshest step-up at 2.18x. KVM 1 is the smallest cheque on the page and also the most expensive memory, at Rs. 250 per GB at renewal against Rs. 150 on KVM 2. All prices exclude GST, which Hostinger states.

We rendered GoDaddy's own India hosting and website-builder pages on 20 August 2026 and transcribed the plan cards exactly as they appear. Web hosting starts at Rs. 89.00 a month on the Starter plan, with Economy at Rs. 219, Deluxe at Rs. 329 and Ultimate at Rs. 399. Every one of those is a first-term price tied to a three-year commitment, which GoDaddy states on the card, alongside struck-through standard rates of Rs. 299, Rs. 599, Rs. 849 and Rs. 1,099 a month. Over the full term the four plans cost Rs. 3,204, Rs. 7,884, Rs. 11,844 and Rs. 14,364 - and twelve months of Starter at the standard rate costs Rs. 3,588, more than the entire three-year introductory term. The step from Starter to Economy is the one that matters for a first website: it adds a free domain, free email, an SSL certificate and 15 GB of storage for Rs. 130 a month. Website Builder tiers are Rs. 249, Rs. 599 and Rs. 899.

We read both brands' own Indian pricing pages on 18 August 2026 - four shared-hosting plans each - and the comparison is closer than the advertised prices suggest. Hostinger starts at Rs. 69 a month and GoDaddy at Rs. 89, but both are first-term rates: Hostinger's needs a 48-month commitment costing Rs. 3,312 up front, GoDaddy's a 36-month one costing Rs. 3,204 - so GoDaddy is the smaller cheque and the shorter lock-in. At renewal the two are ten rupees apart, Rs. 289 against Rs. 299 a month. What genuinely separates them is the entry plan's contents: Hostinger's Single lists a free domain, weekly backups and a CDN, while GoDaddy's Starter includes no domain, no email and no SSL, which begin at its Rs. 219 Economy plan. On multi-site plans Hostinger's Rs. 249 Unlimited tier beats GoDaddy's Rs. 329 Deluxe on both price and site count. One caveat on every figure: Hostinger's page states its prices exclude GST, and GoDaddy's cards do not say either way.