Every now and then, an offer does the rounds offering “lifetime” hosting for a one off fee.

And my reaction is the same every time:

Don’t touch it.

And strongly consider unsubscribing from anyone offering it to you as they’re more likely to have the interests of their wallet at their heart rather than your best interests.

Hosting has ongoing costs:

• Computers – they don’t last forever and eventually can’t be repaired so will need replacing. Any critical components that fail need to be replaced fast. And the computers themselves need to be housed somewhere and use electricity to keep running as well as being kept in an environment that’s probably temperature and humidity controlled.
• Bandwidth – that costs depending on the amount used but unless every account is dormant (which it won’t be due to robot traffic) it keeps on mounting up every month and needs to be paid. It’s only cheap hosting accounts that offer “unlimited” bandwidth and there’s normally a small star that says if you use too much of that unlimited bandwidth then the company will likely ask you to upgrade.
• Control panel software – normally charged monthly or annually and needs to be maintained if you don’t want every script kiddie to have one click access. Cpanel and other control panels spend lots of money making sure their hosting is safe and patching any security holes that appear.
• Support staff – they don’t keep answering calls forever for a one-off payment. Even chat bots cost money to develop and maintain – and they don’t often offer particularly good answers.
• Domain fees – hosts have to pay those every year, same as everyone else. They also need to make sure that their nameservers are working so that your domain always shows when people type in the name.

That’s just a list off the top of my head – there are almost certainly other ongoing costs: offices, phones, accounting fees, taxes and so on.

And people are typically loyal to their host, partly because it’s a hassle to change.

Most hosts you’ve heard of pay commissions – often most of the first year’s fee – but they’re relying on you staying with them for many years to come.

With a one-off lifetime fee the opposite applies – the longer you stay, the more expensive you are to the host. So their business model would prefer you didn’t stick around.

Hence not touching lifetime hosting, even with a 10 foot pole.

You’ve probably already got a reasonable host so keep with them. Or if you need a change, click this link.