Just to be clear: I don't find such pricing models customer friendly, and this is just an example of how some companies manage to find their path in such a "brutal low-margin industry". Since shared hosting – just like VPN – is a commodity product, they primarily focus on marketing, sales, and support.
The founders of NordVPN have recently invested in Hostinger[1], which has successfully adopted their extremely profitable pricing model: charging for 2-4 years in advance, by default. This way, even those who would have paid $5 / month and cancelled and a few months later, end up spending $100+ for 24-48 months at once, often without having a clear need for it, thus leaving a lot of resources underutilized – and available for overselling. The company has more than doubled in size in the last 3 years, more than a decade after its inception.
[1] https://www.hostinger.com/