A few dumb questions about web hosting / Bluehost renewal

[redrocker]

I started a site using Bluehost almost 3 years ago. It was originally intended to keep up with former coworkers as well as family as I transitioned away from Facebook. However, I haven't added contact more than a couple times a year. When I was just paying the $16/yr doman registration the last couple of years, I figured I'd just keep the website.

Just got my renewal email from Bluehost and it's $411 for the next 3 years. That's just not worth it for what I've used it for. So my question is, can I just keep the domain and not pay the "Plus Hosting" fee, thereby sacrificing tech support and other benefits (that I'm not using), I assume? If not, how could I go about maintaining the domain and the posted content?

It's probably apparent but I'm not a coder/computer geek kind of person. I'd be fine switching to an account that is free for me but ad-supported I just don't know how feasible that is to move the content (there's a fair amount of photos, I'm not worried about copy-pasting text)

[JoJo]

I'll be in the same boat as you in a year.

I know if you move to a professional site such as Siteground, they will do the move for you, but that's more expensive than bluehost.

I'd pick which host you want to go with and then google "moving from bluehost to X"  There's some good blogs on topics like this.  Good luck. 

[jamalot]

This literally just happened to me with GoDaddy (surprise renewal of $400). I switched to Namecheap Shared Hosting, on sale for $15/yr. They transferred my entire website for free in 24 hours. There are ways to transfer/backup your site before you cancel with the company that overcharged you.

[terran]

Domain registration and hosting are not the same thing. Domain registration (under $15/year) lets you own the domain. You'll need web hosting to be able to keep the content online. The $11.42/month you're paying isn't awful, but there are definitely cheaper options out there.