Hoststar Alternatives

A .ch domain renewal that cost more than the hosting

The email that sent me down this rabbit hole was from a reader in Bern. He'd signed up with Hoststar — a Swiss host he'd used for years for a small business site — and noticed two things at renewal: his hosting price had stepped up from the promotional rate, and a domain extension he'd bought on a cheap first-year deal now renewed at over thirteen times what he'd paid. He wanted to know if that was normal. It is, unfortunately, which is exactly why HostingSpotter exists — and it's the lens I want to use for this review.

Hoststar is one of Switzerland's established hosting companies: shared web hosting on Linux and Windows, reseller packages, virtual servers, managed servers, a WordPress offering, and their own in-house control panel rather than cPanel. Their flagship shared packages at time of writing — checked against their site and a pricing directory that catalogues both rates — run roughly like this in Swiss francs, VAT included: StarMini around CHF 3.75/month on the current promotion, renewing around CHF 4.95; StarEntry around CHF 10.45, renewing near CHF 13.90; StarBiz around CHF 12.90, renewing near CHF 17.15; and StarPlus around CHF 23.85, renewing near CHF 31.75. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee on core hosting products, free Let's Encrypt SSL, unmetered traffic on the shared range, and an assisted migration service for a one-time fee (CHF 89 at time of writing).

None of that is scandalous. The first-term discount is around 25%, the renewal step is disclosed, and a Swiss host charging Swiss prices for Swiss infrastructure is a fair trade. But between the annual billing model, the domain renewal pricing, and some real questions about support hours, there are plenty of reasons people go looking. Let's get into them.

When it makes sense to leave Hoststar

The annual billing model doesn't fit your cash flow

Hoststar's standard contract is billed annually in advance, on a one-year minimum term, auto-renewing unless you cancel at least 30 days before the period ends. If you're a freelancer, a student, or a business that prefers monthly commitments, that's real money locked up front and a cancellation deadline you can forget. Several alternatives below bill monthly or even hourly. The annual model isn't a scam — plenty of hosts do it — but it shifts all the risk of "I didn't need it after month four" onto you.

Domain renewal pricing caught you out

That reader's story above wasn't a bug. At time of writing, Hoststar's .ch domains renew around CHF 14.95/year and .com/.net around CHF 26.95, which is ordinary — but some newer extensions on promotional first-year pricing renew at dramatically higher rates (I've seen .site and .online listed with first-year prices around CHF 3 and renewals above CHF 40). If your portfolio has accumulated cheap first-year domains, audit every renewal line before you decide whether the hosting itself is the problem. Sometimes the right move is keeping the hosting and moving the domains to a registrar with flat renewal pricing.

You need support beyond weekday mornings

This is the complaint that comes up most in the customer feedback I've read: telephone support is limited to weekday business hours — mornings, specifically — outside of their ticket channels. For a personal site, that's fine. For an online shop that breaks on Saturday afternoon, it is not fine at all. Swiss business-hours support makes sense for Swiss business customers; it makes less sense for anyone running revenue through the site outside those hours. Check your own risk profile honestly here, because support hours are the one thing you cannot retrofit later.

The reviews have moved against them

Hoststar's aggregate customer-review picture is mixed-to-poor at time of writing — their Trustpilot score sits low even as other directories rate the service respectably. I read that split as a company with solid infrastructure and uneven customer-facing experiences: billing disputes and support frustrations dominate the negative threads. You may be perfectly happy there; plenty of long-term customers are. But if your own experience has started matching the negative pattern — slow ticket responses, billing surprises, price creep across product lines — you're seeing a trend, not an anomaly.

You've outgrown shared hosting entirely

If your site needs root access, guaranteed resources, or software the shared environment doesn't offer, the question of which shared host to use is the wrong question. At that point compare VPS and cloud options instead; a couple of picks below cover that route.

When you should stay

Your audience is Swiss and your requirements are simple. Local infrastructure, local invoicing in francs, a company operating under Swiss jurisdiction, and a shared platform that handles WordPress and ordinary business sites without fuss — that's Hoststar doing its actual job. For a brochure site, a club site, or a local business, this is genuinely fine hosting.

The renewal price is known and acceptable to you. The step from promo to renewal is disclosed up front — roughly 25% — and if you've priced it into your budget, you're better off than customers of hosts that triple the bill without warning. The known quantity is worth something.

You value the in-house control panel and the bundled extras. StarPlus and the higher tiers throw in useful extras (VPN access, file cache acceleration, generous SSD/NVMe allocations, big mail storage). If you use those features, the value per franc is reasonable.

You're within the money-back window and testing. The 30-day guarantee (written cancellation with a reason, domain charges excluded) gives you a real trial period. If you're three weeks in and happy, staying is the low-risk option.

Your domains and email live here too. Hoststar's email packages are competent and the domains are under one roof. Migration drag is real: when hosting, mail, and DNS are bundled, the cost of leaving is bigger than the hosting line suggests. If the bundle works, the bundle's convenience is part of what you're paying for.

The alternatives

For Swiss customers who want to stay local, European customers who want EU data residency, and everyone else who just wants honest pricing. Numbers are as verifiable at time of writing — Swiss francs, euros, and pounds depending on the host.

Hetzner Webhosting — the price-to-honesty benchmark

Hetzner's shared web hosting is the pricing model I wish everyone used: Webhosting S around €1.90/month, M around €4.90, L around €9.90, and XL around €19.90 — and crucially, those are the prices. No teaser rate, no renewal cliff, no "first term only" asterisk. Domains cost extra (external domains are billed per domain per month), and support is efficient rather than cuddly. German and Finnish data centres, and a company with a cult following among technical users for exactly this transparency. Best for: anyone in Europe who wants the renewal-price problem to simply not exist. The trade-off: it's self-service hosting; you manage WordPress yourself.

Krystal — UK hosting with a conscience and flat pricing

Krystal is a UK host running on renewable energy with a strong reputation for fair dealing: shared hosting from around £7/month at time of writing (their Amethyst plan covers one site with 10 GB NVMe storage), managed WordPress from around £15/month, and renewal at the price you signed up at in my experience — no step-up. UK data centres, cPanel on shared plans, and support that answers like humans. Best for: UK and European customers who want ethical hosting and a flat renewal bill. A very good landing spot if Hoststar's support hours were the problem.

SiteGround UK Servers — polished shared hosting, price check required

SiteGround's shared platform is genuinely well-built: custom caching, solid WordPress tooling, helpful support, and UK server locations for British audiences. The catch is the pricing model — introductory rates are low and renewals are substantially higher (on the order of three to four times the intro price at time of writing, depending on term). If you can stomach knowing the year-two number in advance, it's good hosting. Best for: small sites that want a polished experience and are prepared to budget for the real price.

Hostinger EU — budget pricing, EU data centres

Hostinger's EU plans are the budget end: aggressive introductory pricing (single-digit euros per month or lower on long terms at time of writing) with a custom control panel rather than cPanel, EU data centre options, and renewal rates several times the intro price. It's honest about being cheap if you commit for four years and expensive if you don't. Best for: students, side projects, and first sites where the first-term price is the one that matters — and for anyone disciplined enough to re-shop at renewal.

Eco Web Hosting — small, green, and personal

Eco Web Hosting is a smaller UK host with a genuine environmental focus, planting trees and running on renewable energy, with straightforward shared plans at modest prices. You get the kind of support where a person who knows your account answers the ticket. Best for: environmentally-motivated site owners with small-to-medium sites who'd rather be a customer than an account number.

Host Europe — German-market alternative with a big catalogue

Host Europe is one of Germany's established hosting brands, offering shared hosting, WordPress packages, servers, and cloud products with German data centres and a broad product range. Pricing varies by product and term — check current rates and renewal terms directly, as this market moves. Best for: businesses that want a German provider with a wide product catalogue and the option to grow into servers without changing vendors.

One last scenario worth naming: the customer who should move but not yet. If your contract renews in eight weeks and you're weighing options, the cheapest sequence is usually to test an alternative now — most of the hosts below let you set up an account and rehearse a migration while your current term runs out. You keep all your options open: you can cancel within the notice window if the rehearsal goes well, or do nothing if it doesn't. Deciding at the last minute is how people end up auto-renewing another year of something they'd already decided to leave.

How to switch without downtime

If your domain, mail, and hosting all sit with Hoststar, plan the migration as three moves, not one. That's the mistake people make — they move the website and discover their email broke at 9am Monday.

1. Inventory everything first. List domains, DNS records, mailboxes and their forwarding rules, the website files and database, any cron jobs, and anything that points at the old host by IP address. Mail forwarding and catch-all addresses are the items people forget.

2. Register the destination and restore a full copy. Take your own backup (files plus database), restore it at the new host, and test it on a temporary URL. Run WordPress updates in a maintenance window if needed, but don't mix version upgrades into a migration — move first, upgrade after.

3. Decide the mail strategy deliberately. Either migrate mailboxes to the new provider (with a sync window so nothing is lost) or keep mail where it is and change only web hosting. If you're leaving because of support rather than price, keeping mail stable during the move reduces risk dramatically.

4. Lower DNS TTLs two days before cutover. When you flip the A record for the website, low TTLs mean the change propagates in minutes. Do the MX records in a separate, deliberate step — ideally at a quiet hour for your inbox.

5. Keep the old account alive through the notice window. Remember Hoststar's cancellation terms: annual contracts renew unless cancelled in writing at least 30 days before the period ends. Set yourself a reminder well ahead of that date, and keep the old account active until the new one has run clean for at least a week. Cancelling too early to save a few francs is how people lose mail.

6. Verify everything over a full business week. Forms, mail delivery in both directions, DNS resolution from a couple of different networks, backups running on the new host, and SSL certificates issued and auto-renewing. Only then close the old account and move the domains if they're still there.

How we evaluate hosting providers

We do this for one reason: renewal pricing. HostingSpotter's reviews lead with the year-two number, because that's the price you actually live with, and we score hosts down when intro rates and renewal rates are engineered to mislead. After that we weigh resource honesty, support hours and quality, contract terms (annual billing and cancellation deadlines count), and data location claims. We don't take payment for rankings, and when prices are in francs, euros, or anything else, we convert nothing — we quote the currency the host bills in and date our figures. Check the source links in the metadata if you want to verify the same numbers I did.