Hosting contracts turn on six clauses that decide most disputes: auto-renewal and its price, the refund window and its exclusions, acceptable use, ownership of the free domain, responsibility for backups, and the uptime guarantee and how it is compensated. Read those six before paying; you can skim the rest.
Note: this is a practical explanation of what hosting contracts usually contain, not legal advice. The binding agreement is the one the provider publishes, and your local law may grant you further rights.
Prices on this page are read from our table the moment you open it, not typed into the text. Check the comparison page for the latest figures before buying.
1) Auto-renewal and its price
The single most important clause, and the one that most surprises buyers.
Almost every provider enables auto-renewal by default and renews at the full price, not the promotional one. The gap is not small:
| Plan | You paid | Renews at | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger Unlimited | EGP 139 | EGP 349 | 2.5× |
| Hostinger Premium | EGP 79 | EGP 239 | 3.0× |
| InMotion Launch | EGP 244 | EGP 765 | 3.1× |
What to do: ask support for the renewal price before buying and keep the answer in writing. Then set a calendar reminder a month before renewal — that is when you negotiate or move, not after the card is charged.
2) The refund window and its exclusions
Thirty days is standard; some are longer. InMotion Hosting gives ninety days — the longest on our list.
But read the exclusions, which are broadly similar everywhere:
- The free domain is deducted from any refund — take a free domain and its real value (roughly $10–15) comes off.
- Setup fees and add-ons are usually non-refundable — paid SSL certificates, premium migration services.
- Dedicated servers are often excluded or carry a shorter window.
- Monthly billing may carry a shorter guarantee than an annual term.
3) Acceptable use policy
This defines what may sit on the server. The most commonly prohibited:
- Bulk unsolicited email
- Copyright-infringing files
- Mining and sustained CPU-heavy processes
- Using "unlimited storage" as a file locker rather than a website
The phrase to watch is "fair use". "Unlimited" in these contracts means "no published number", not "no limit". The provider reserves the right to throttle you if you consume beyond what is normal on a shared plan.
Which is why we prefer plans that state their resources numerically: InMotion's Pro names two cores and 4 GB of RAM explicitly, and Cloud Professional names 200 PHP workers.
4) Ownership of the free domain
The "free" domain is free for the first year only, then renews at its normal price.
The clause that matters: some contracts require the domain to stay with them for a period (usually 60 days, under international transfer rules) before you can move it. Ask about that if you expect to switch.
Practical advice: for maximum freedom, register the domain with a registrar separate from your host. Then the domain stays yours however often you change hosting. Namecheap is a registrar before it is a host, and that is what it does best.
5) Responsibility for backups
Read this clause carefully: most contracts state explicitly that backups are the customer's responsibility, and that what the provider offers is an extra service rather than an obligation.
Meaning that if you lose your data and had not backed it up yourself, the contract is on their side, not yours.
What to do:
- Choose a plan with daily rather than weekly backups if your site takes data — the gap is one dollar between Premium and Unlimited
- And keep a copy off the server too. That is not redundancy: a backup on the same server dies with the server.
6) The uptime guarantee and how it is compensated
Many advertise 99.9% or 99.99%. The figure sounds reassuring until you convert it:
| Guarantee | Downtime allowed per month |
|---|---|
| 99.9% | about 43 minutes |
| 99.99% | about 4 minutes |
But read the remedy: it is usually account credit rather than a cash refund, and you normally have to claim it yourself within a set period. It excludes scheduled maintenance, outages caused by your own code or plugins, and third-party provider failures.
A checklist before you pay
Four questions save you reading ten pages:
- What is the renewal price? Not the first-year price.
- How long is the refund window, and is the domain deducted?
- What is the backup schedule, and is restoring free?
- Can I transfer the domain whenever I want?
Keep support's answers in writing (a screenshot of the chat is enough). In any later dispute, a written exchange beats your memory.
In short
Hosting contracts are broadly alike, and disputes come from three clauses: renewal, refunds, and backups. Read those alone if your time is short.
We publish the renewal price openly on every plan card for exactly this reason — because what buyers most regret is a number they did not know.
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Related questions: What is web hosting? · Which is the best hosting company? · What is the cheapest hosting? · Cheapest hosting in Egypt · How do I find who hosts a site? · Hosting contract terms
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