Hostinger has come a long way since it first launched as a free web hosting service 15+ years ago. Today, it’s one of the most recognized names in web hosting industry—offering affordable plans, high-quality hosting, and other perks for website owners. Whether you’re launching a new site from scratch or switching providers, you can use this in-depth review to see if Hostinger is right for you.
Compare Hostinger to The Best Web Hosting Services
Choosing a quality web hosting service is crucial. Your web host has a direct impact on things like uptime, page loading speed, and other performance metrics that are important for success.
Our team here at Crazy Egg did some extensive research, testing, and analysis on dozens of web hosting services on the market. Then we narrowed down our list of top recommendations.
Based on our research, we can confidently say that Hostinger, Bluehost, HostGator, and Web.com are the top four web hosting providers. These four options stand out above the crowd and accommodate the needs of most websites.
With that said Hostinger is the clear winner, but that doesn’t mean the others are bad choices—they’re still solid options to consider as each one has its own unique features.
Hostinger offers quality and flexible hosting that comes with plenty of storage. It works well for beginners and scaling websites alike.
Plans start at just $1.99 per month, which is one of the most affordable options you’ll find from a hosting service so reputable. But don’t let that price fool you. The service competes with other web hosts that come in at higher price points.
While we like Hostinger for several reasons, it’s just one of many options that could be a good fit for your unique website or use-case-specific needs. See all of our top picks here to check out our other recommendations and decide which one is right for you.
Hostinger: The Good and The Bad
Like any product on the market, there are pros and cons to choosing Hostinger as your websites’ web host. We want to call out a few of the key elements that work in Hostinger’s favor and a couple potential drawbacks, so you get the full story on whether they’re the best choice for you.
The Good
Fast Load Times: It’s no secret that the loading time for your site is very important. If a visitor comes to your website and has to wait for things to load, they won’t stick around. In fact, many people aren’t willing to wait for more than a couple of seconds for a site to load.
That’s why we love that Hostinger provides quick hosting speeds. And we’re not just going off of what they tell everyone on their webpage copy, we’ve tested them out for shared hosting, VPS hosting, and WordPress hosting.
And Hostinger delivers. For each of those hosting types, we put a test site through FreshPing for a full month. Each one averaged well under one-second load times, with Hostinger’s VPS and WordPress hosting averaging right around 470 milliseconds. That’s wonderfully fast and compete well with every other hosting provider we tested in those categories.
The key behind Hostinger’s impressive speed is the use of LiteSpeed web servers (LSWS). The use of LiteSpeed allows Hostinger to deploy its hPanel custom hosting panel. This combination provides better speed and performance than the more traditional use of Apache web servers and the OpenResty hosting panel.
Additionally, LSWS uses a cache to store copies of your web pages, allowing visitors to load everything faster.
Hostinger also maintains data centers across the globe, including North America, South America, Europe, the UK, India, and Asia.
If you leverage Hostinger’s CDN (included with business and cloud plans), your website will use whatever location’s closest to the visitor to keep load times as fast as possible. However, the main advantages of multiple data centers are that you can choose the one closest to your audience and a different data center can take over if the one hosting your site experiences an outage.
Fantastically Affordable: Not only do you get blazing fast site speeds on a Hostinger plan, but those plans come at some of the most competitive price points around.
Shared hosting starts as low as $1.99 per month for a single site, with plans that support multiple sites or allot more resources starting at $2.99 per month. WordPress and VPS hosting don’t require much more of an investment, either, starting at $2.99 and $5.99 per month, respectively.
Additionally, Hostinger’s shared Business tier starts at just $3.99 per month. This is an impressive price for a plan that can handle up to 100,000 visits per month on up to 100 websites. (The 100,000 visits is not a restriction; rather it is an estimation of the number of visitors your hosted site will be able to support successfully each month.)
Considering that you receive access to plenty of websites and plenty of storage at most price points with Hostinger, the value you receive becomes even better.
For example, with Managed WordPress hosting, you receive up to 100 websites and up to 200 GB of NVMe storage at the most popular pricing tier that starts at only $3.99 per month. This is just $1 more per month than the entry-level WordPress plan, which is pretty impressive for double the storage and a free CDN.
You’ll also get daily backups, staging, object caching, on-demand backups, and the AI Assistant plugin at no extra cost.
Now, keep in mind these attractive rates are for a long-term commitment up front of 48 months. That can be a bit of a sticking point if you’re not ready to commit to four years right away. On the flip side, though, it means you lock in that attractive rate for a good while.
With all that in mind, the next few positives that follow should further put your mind at ease about committing to Hostinger and the value you’re getting.
Free Domain: You need a domain to go along with your hosting, and while you can buy your domain and your hosting from separate companies, it’s nice when you can do everything in one place. It’s even nicer when you can get the domain for free. That’s an option for those who opt for any of Hostinger’s web hosting plans above the single-site tier.
Money-Back Guarantee: Not happy with your Hostinger purchase? No problem. You have 30 days to try it out and get your money back if your experience is not all you were hoping for. However, be sure to note that redemption fees, domain name renewals, and privacy protection are some of the things not part of the 30-day money-back guarantee, so keep that in the back of your head.
Otherwise, hosting and SSL certificates are all refundable within 30 days of purchase.
Free AI-Powered Website Builder: Hostinger provides its web hosting clients with access to one of the better website builders on the market—included for free with every plan. Whether you need a basic company website or fully-functional online store. It’s easy for anyone to use, even if you have zero technical experience.
Choose from over 100 different templates to get started, and drag-and-drop your way to the website of your dreams. Alternatively, you can leverage Hostinger’s AI to create a site for you.
Just answer a few simple questions about your business and website, and like magic, the AI builds everything. It even generates SEO-friendly copy and custom images. Then you can use the drag-and-drop editor to make slight adjustments to your liking.
Simple to Get Started: Hostinger is really easy to use, especially when getting everything set up. The hosting service’s clean interface, guided setup, and user-friendly dashboard makes it easy for first-timers; you don’t need to take a class on this hosting service to use it.
Though it’s simple, Hostinger doesn’t skimp on powerful tools and reliable servers.
For example, Hostinger offers its Auto Installer feature as part of hPanel. This installer greatly simplifies the process of installing apps to use with your accounts, meaning you can take advantage of the features in the apps faster.
The effortless use continues after you’ve finished signing up for your hosting plan and right into the actual building of the site.
With the help of Hostinger’s wizard, you will walk you through each step to quickly and easily set up your fully functional website.
Let Hostinger’s wizard walk you through each step. You’ll be amazed by how quickly it results in a fully functional website for you. And if you want to migrate your website to a new host, Hostinger simplifies this process, too.
The Bad
No Phone Support: Sometimes you need a real human on the phone to get help with a problem, and unfortunately Hostinger does not offer that option. The only ways to get in touch with customer support are via a live chat and email or ticket, both of which are available 24/7.
Additionally, Hostinger does offer a series of tutorials, blog posts, and knowledge base articles to help you with specific aspects of using Hostinger. There’s also a Hostinger Academy, which is a series of tutorials on YouTube that you may find helpful.
However, as helpful as these items are, they aren’t the same as a phone call to walk you through things when you are experiencing some frustration.
Spotty Uptime on Shared and WordPress Hosting: Speed and uptime are the two sides of the web hosting quality coin. Whereas speed relates to how quickly your pages load for visitors, uptime is a measurement of server reliability. Hosting servers can go down for any number of reasons, from planned maintenance to unforeseen errors.
Hostinger’s lower-octane plans haven’t performed too well compared to their peers. With their shared hosting and WordPress hosting, we’ve seen a lot of downtime, in the ballpark of one to two hours per month. That’s almost a full day per year that your website wouldn’t be available to visitors.
Fortunately, we’ve seen vast improvements when testing their burlier hosting offerings. Hostinger’s VPS hosting turned in only 17 seconds of total downtime when we tested it in late 2021.
Missing Features on Budget Plans: While not a dealbreaker for everyone, there are some helpful features missing from Hostinger’s entry-level plans that we’ve seen on comparable ones from their competitors. The most notable case is with their WordPress hosting, which doesn’t include a content delivery network (CDN) and automatic daily backups on the entry-level plan. It also doesn’t support on-demand backups or come with a WordPress staging tool.
Make sure you look over the full feature set for the hosting plan you’re considering. You may have to pay for a higher tier to ensure you’re getting all the features and tools you need.
No Free Domain on Single Shared Hosting Package: Even if you only need to host a single website, Hostinger won’t give you a free domain name with its Single Shared plan. You’ll need a Premium plan (that hosts up to 100 websites) at minimum to get this perk. While the free domain deal only applies to your first year, it’s still something that we’d like to see offered at this entry-level tier.
Most new websites in need of a domain won’t need a hosting plan that accommodates up to 100 websites. In fact, the vast majority of you reading this right now likely just need to host a single site.
We’re bringing this up separately from the other missing features on budget plans because Hostinger’s website is somewhat misleading for this particular benefit. You’ll see the words “free domain” on the homepage and on multiple landing pages—making it appear that this is a standard feature. But it’s only until you start comparing the plans side-by-side that you discover it’s missing from the Single Shared tier.
Hostinger Pricing and Options
Hostinger has a number of different packages for you to choose from. Each one offers unique things that are suited for specific needs.
If you’re on a super tight budget, Hostinger offers free hosting (via 000webhost). But we don’t recommend it if you’re serious about starting and growing your website. It’s limitations will cost you far more than the few dollars a month you’ll for Hostinger’s single shared hosting.
Hostinger Single
Hostinger’s most basic plan is part of the shared web hosting offerings, which means that your website exists on a server with other websites. This is great for those who don’t have a budget for expensive web hosting, as the cost of the server is split between numerous others. However, the bad thing about this is site speed could be compromised because there are so many other people using the same server.
However, if you are just starting out with a website, the Single plan gives you what you need to get the ball rolling.
Hostinger’s low prices and overall service led to it making our list of best cheap web hosting services. Because of its low price, its an ideal option for starting a new blog, as you don’t have to invest large amounts of money up front.
The Single plan pricing starts at $1.99 per month with a 48-month commitment, and that price jumps all the way up to $9.99 per month if you sign up for a monthly commitment.
This plan gets you 1 website, 50 GB of SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, weekly backups, unlimited free SSL certificates, a malware scanner, 1 email account, and much more.
Hostinger Premium
Hostinger’s next level, the Premium, offers everything the Single does as well as some added bonuses, including free domain registration (for the first year only), free WHOIS privacy protection for your domain, up to 100 websites, 100 GB of SSD storage, up to 100 email accounts, and more.
Pricing for this starts at $2.99 per month with a 48-month commitment, all the way up to $12.99 per month for a monthly commitment.
Hostinger Business
If you’re looking to level up your plan, then Hostinger’s Business option may be right for you. With this plan you get everything included in the Premium plan, plus daily backups, five times the processing power, 200 GB NVMe storage, and much more.
Pricing for the Business plan starts at $3.99 per month for 48 months and goes up to $13.99 per month for a monthly commitment.
Cloud Hosting
If you’re considering cloud hosting vs. traditional shared hosting, take a look at Hostinger’s offerings.
Instead of your site being hosted on a single server, it is hosted in the cloud, which allows for more flexibility and easier scalability.
Here’s a closer look at Hostinger’s cloud hosting plans:
- Cloud Startup – Starts at $8.99 per month
- Cloud Professional – Starts at $14.99 per month
- Cloud Enterprise – Starts at $29.99 per month
The entry-level cloud plan is great starting place, and every cloud plan essentially comes with the same features. The only difference is at each tier is your storage, processing, and computing.
You get 200 GB of NVMe storage with Cloud Startup. This jumps to 250 GB and 300 GB at the next two levels. The Startup plan comes with 3 GB of RAM, which then doubles at each tier. In terms of CPUs, you’re getting 2 CPU cores with Startup, 4 CPUs with Professional, and 6 CPUs with Enterprise.
VPS Hosting
If you are looking to make waves with your business’ website, then VPS hosting may be right for you. VPS stands for virtual private server, and it means that you have your own server as opposed to sharing one with other users.
This is the logical next step for websites as they start getting lots of traffic, as it’s much more powerful than shared hosting. You’ll benefit from higher uptime rates and faster loading speeds when you upgrade to a VPS.
Every VPS plan comes with the same features, including weekly backups, full root access, malware scanning, dedicated IP, and AI assistant. The only difference is you’re getting more computing power, memory, disk space, and bandwidth at each tier.
Hostinger offers four different VPS hosting plans to chose from:
- KVM 1 – Starts at $5.99 per month
- KVM 2 – Starts at $7.99 per month
- KVM 4 – Starts at $10.99 per month
- KVM 8 – Starts at $17.99 per month
The KVM 1 plan starts with 4 GB of RAM, 50 GB of storage, and 1 TB of bandwidth, while the KVM 8 plan scales up to 32 GB of RAM, 400 GB of storage, and 8 TB of bandwidth.
Minecraft Hosting
Hostinger offers a unique hosting service that many of its competitors don’t: a Minecraft hosting that is geared towards gamers. This hosting starts at $6.99 per month for 12 months and offers plans that go up to $25.99 per month for 12 months.
With this service, you can install your own game mods, along with many other things.
When it comes to hosting, there is no shortage of options with Hostinger. They also offer WordPress hosting, which is a top choice for many people building websites.
There is hosting for everyone at Hostinger, so do some more reading to see which one is the ideal plan for your needs.
