I initially decided on the current host NearlyFreeSpeech because of its business model. No monthly minimums, and I only pay for what the site consumes.
Having used FatCow and HostGator in the past, I can say with much confidence I doubt I'd care to use them again.
FatCow was one disaster after another in terms of both setting up what should be really easy Wordpress installs and website uptime. HostGator was much better, but putting off doing anything with the website became a regular habit until I was only using it maybe once every 3-4 months. It was also on a 3-year contract with only the first year massively discounted (oh but it was in very tiny print!). Obviously, with the cost to effort ratio being massively high, I decided to put the website out of its misery and save my mom's money.
"Pay for what you use" sounded perfect for my procrastination. If I keep the hosting space empty, I barely pay (read: get punished) for being lazy. Even if I got my marbles together and put together the site you see now, the cost is still pennies (literally) compared to what FatCow and HostGator charge.
On a tangential note, don't fall for the upmarked "unlimited disk space + bandwidth" plans! They're extremely seductive psychological traps (I speak from personal experience) because chances are you will never be in the population that actually needs it. This is how the companies profit off your belief "but what if I ended up neeeeeding it?" for no extra effort. Unfortunately, this same argument against UNLIMITED!1!!1! does not apply to your internet service providers' plans, which are meant to nudge people into shelling out for the extortionist unlimited bandwidth plan, if it's even available.
Back to the topic. I took a look at my billing report, and the results are pretty clear.
When I signed up for NFS in 2018, I initially deposited $50. This pool of money is used whenever I'm charged for resorces. The total 2018 cost for setting everything up on NFS and then failing to do anything with the hosting was $31.71, average $6.34 a month.
For 2019 up until July, I've paid $3.60. So in total, between last year to today, 11 months, doing nothing with the hosting cost me $35.31. This would be anywhere from 4-9 months of (first year discounted) hosting on any other service.
When I initially left the hosting, I still had the setup files in my server. If I bothered to delete them, I would've saved $0.26 a month. Almost a quarter a month. Almost trivial, but the ways to save on pocket change are still there.
If you thought "daaamn $35.31 from August to July?!" allow me to reveal something even better.
$20.68 was spent on registering my domain for 2 years, and $7.25 for using RespectMyPrivacy, a service that hides my personal information as the owner of a space on the interwebs.
So, if we ignore the one-time fees, the true cost for the past 11 months of empty server hosting is $7.38. At most 2 months of hosting anywhere else.
In other words,
haha top keks dee xd i wasn't punished for being a lazy little shit