Background: Hostinger started in 2004 as a private company called “Hosting Media”. They later changed their name to 000webhost.com – a popular web hosting provider that is offered for free. With massive growth and expansion, Hostinger has achieved a huge milestone of having 1 million users, just 6 years from the day they started. Today, Hostinger Web Hosting manages more than 29 million users and has established local offices worldwide, working with 39 people in 150 countries worldwide.
Starting price: 1.99
Currency: USD
Go online: https://www.hostinger.com
Review summary and ratings : 5
Hostinger offers a variety of hosting solutions ranging from advanced with VPS to cloud hosting planning for beginners who just want to get started with a cheap shared server hosting. While the ultra-low price tag is tempting, is the company and its servers reliable?
To find out, I set up an account with Hostinger and added a test site (go here) to their platform. Since web hosts are very easy to use, I have added more sites from my other projects to Hostinger accounts and have become actual users of their servers.
In this review, I will take you behind the scenes and show you the features through my Hostinger account.
I have talked to various directors of Hostinger and I have been working with them to discuss their services over the years. You will see one of their responses below.
Professionals
- Ultra-cheap hosting with great features
- Great hosting performance
- Flexible hosting options
- Choice of data centers across three continents
- Free and very cheap domain price
- User-friendly control panel
- Wide range of payment options
Difficulty
- Price increases during renewal
- Free SSL headaches
Hostinger service overview
| Features | Hostinger |
|---|---|
| Server plan | Shared hosting, Cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, |
| Shared hosting | $ 1.99 – $ 4.99 |
| VPS hosting | $ 2.99 – $ 77.99 |
| Dedicated hosting | – |
| Cloud hosting | $ 9.99 – $ 29.99 |
| Reseller hosting | – |
| WordPress Hosting | $ 1.99 – $ 11.59 |
| Server location | North America, Asia, Europe |
| Website builder | Gyro Website Builder |
| Sources of energy | Traditional |
| Free trial | 30 days |
| Control panel | hpel |
| Free SSL support | Yes |
| Payment SSL | Komodo Positive SSL – $ 7.49 / year |
| Popular option | A2 Hosting, Cloudways, InMotion Hosting |
| Customer support | Live chat, email |
| Tech support number | – |
| Payment | Credit Cards, PayPal, Crypto |
Hostinger Professionals: What Makes Hostinger Ticks?
1. Ultra cheap shared server with great features
Hostinger is not one of the cheapest hosting providers in the vicinity but it does offer a nice leg up for Buck. You will find that you pay more than the competition; Integrated caching even on shared plans and support for more than 10,000 visits at most entry-level. Make it a little more, and you’ll get SSH and GIT access for high-level shared plans.
This value-packed utility makes it one of the most effective platforms for newbie website owners. This is simply the best launch point.
Hostinger The cost of a single shared hosting plan is less than ড 2 per month. For 1.99 / month, you get 30GB SSD storage, 100GB data transfer and a built-in website builder. For higher levels – users can host more websites and get a free domain, Google Adwords credit, GIT and SSH access and unlimited databases.
Notable Features Hostinger Shared Plan ($ 1.99 / month and up)
- Support PHP 8, HTTP / 3, IPv6, Lightspeed caching by default – great feature for good website speed, available on all shared plans
- Gyro Website Builder – Website Builder that helps you design websites with built-in templates available in all partnership plans.
- WordPress Acceleration – Best Optimized WordPress Performance, Available on All Shared Plans
- Free SSL – Available on all shared plans for better branding and HTTPS connectivity
Features Hostinger Premium & Business Shared Plan (2.99 / month and up)
- Github Integration – Convenient for web development and versioning
Free Domains – Save Cost (Not much, but everyone loves it for free) - Unlimited Databases – Do more with your shared hosting account
- Unlimited Cronjobs – for website automation and easy management
SSH Access – for improved security and easier website management - Free CDN – Quick page load time for visitors from different geographical locations
2. Solid server performance: Excellent uptime and speed
My Hostinger rating is partly based on proven information. In case you didn’t know – my team and I launched a new system called HostScore in 2019 to track hosting performance. We now have a system that tracks server uptime every 5 minutes and runs speed tests from 4 locations worldwide every 10 hours. The huge data collected by the system enables me to better understand the performance of a web host and to make more accurate judgments.
Hostinger Hosting Uptime
From my observations, hosting servers have become really stable with almost 100% reliability over time. Our Hostinger test site’s uptime and speed test results show that Hostinger is not nearly fooled when it comes to server reliability.
April 2022
Hostinger Server Uptime for April 2022: 99.93%
June 2021
Hostinger Server Uptime for June 2021: 100%
January 2021
Hostinger Server uptime for December 2020 and January 2021: 99.98% and 100%. We had a short downtime with Hostinger server on 2/12/2020 where the site was down for 10 minutes. The test site was always up and running for the rest of the time. For more and upstream Hostinger uptime data, see our HostScore Hostinger review page.
Hostinger Hosting Speed Test
Hostinger is not the fastest in the neighborhood but is reasonable for what you provide during the response. Overall I would like to say that efficiency actually falls below the price range.
Hostinger Bitcatcha Server Speed Test (June 2022)
Using BitCatcha Speed Test – We tested Hostinger speed from 9 countries and got an “A” rating. The test site performed an average for Brazil (358ms response time) but did well with Asian countries including India, Japan, and Singapore. You can see the actual results here.
Hostinger webpage test speed test (July 2021)
We also run Hostinger speed tests with third party tools to ensure our results in our in-house system. WebPageTest.org recently (July 891) rated our test site TTFB (2021ms) “A”. See actual test results here.
3. Flexible hosting options
Lots of room to grow your site
With Hostinger there are different types of hosting you can choose – depending on the needs of your website.
For new users
There are shared server hosting plans which are divided into three separate packages: single, premium and business. The unit offers you the basic features needed to run a single website Premium, on the other hand, offers more features and performance while businesses focus on ecommerce websites and offer features and performance for them.
For experienced users
A large website may choose to go for VPS or cloud hosting, which gives the best performance in terms of speed and server resources. As all the different hosting plans increase from $ 9.99 / mo to $ 77.99 / mo when signing up your website, there is a lot of flexibility for users who need higher hosting capabilities to grow and expand your website.
Hostinger Web Hosting Solutions Extensive offers Hostinger hosting packages range from 1.99 / mo (shared) to 77.99 / mo (VPS) for special plans, ranging from sharing Hostinger hosting packages to WordPress, VPS and even Minecraft servers.
Host with cipanel, hpanel or cyberpanel
Unlike many competitors, Hostinger has always advanced to the beat of his own drums. While this may have caused some frown in the past, it is actually an advantage given how the hosting landscape has changed.
An obvious example is the rising cost of cPanel licenses. Since Hostinger uses its own hPanel, they are able to offer much more competitive deals than those who have traditionally relied on cPanel.
For VPS planning, Hostinger uses CyberPanel, a web hosting control panel powered by LiteSpeed. This allows for better levels of speed performance and flexibility as well as helps keep VPS pricing competitive.
4. Choice of data centers across three continents
Part Hostinger’s vision is to have as much presence around the world as possible – which is why it has more than 150 offices worldwide. The same can be said for their data center.
As of today, Hostinger has seven data centers across the United States, Asia, and Europe – all of which you can choose from. Host your website. All data center servers are connected to a 1,000 Mbps connection line which ensures maximum speed performance and stability. This means that you will get maximum speed for your website.
Having multiple is certainly helpful in keeping your website loading fast, in part because it helps reduce delays when users try to access your website data closer to their physical location.
| Hostinger Plans | Server Locations |
|---|---|
| Shared / Cloud Plans |
|
| WordPress Plans |
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| cPanel Shared Plans |
|
| Linux VPS plans |
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For domain name registration, Hostinger offers some more affordable price for domain extensions.
Compared to the popularity of domain registrars such as GoDaddy, Hostinger is much cheaper for popular extensions like .com and .net.
With less popular domain extensions like .xyz or .tech, you can get it for as low as $ 0.99 which is available at D 1.17 and $ 10.17 respectively compared to GoDaddy.
| Domain Extensions | Hostinger | GoDaddy * |
|---|---|---|
| .com | $ 9.99 | $ 3.17 |
| .net | $ 12.99 | $ 15.17 |
| .xyz | $ 0.99 | $ 1.17 |
| .প্রযুক্তি | $ 0.99 | $ 10.17 |
| .online | $ 0.99 | $ 1.17 |
| .store | $ 0.99 | $ 2.17 |
User. User-friendly control panel
Hostinger uses their internally developed web hosting control panel, called hPanel, for their shared server platform. It works just like cPanel but it comes with a great design and some modern usability changes – which in my opinion makes it even better than cPanel.
The entire layout of the HPanel dashboard makes it easy for users to manage web files using the drag-and-drop uploader in the file manager, set up email accounts or change your passwords, as well as access to important system functions such as switching to PHP version and web tracking. Usage (see images below).
Hostinger hPanel Demo
Hostinger hPanel Demo: Here you configure your website – install a CMS (such as WordPress), add new subdomains, access your MySQL database and explore your web files. Note that if you are hosting multiple domains Hostinger, you need to select your domain (green pointer in the screenshot) before making any changes to your configuration.
Roy: What I really thought about Hostinger
Hostinger brings a lot to the table, from fantastic pricing to a wide range of server locations and depth of planning type. However, some of these benefits come at the time of abandonment – such as lack of migration support and some minor SSL headaches. Of course, you should be satisfied with the increase in the cost of renewing the plan, but it is quite common with low cost hosting providers.
Bottom line, Hostinger is a good choice for those looking for one-stop cheap hosting solutions – especially for those who are just starting out.
Hostinger option
Despite Hostinger’s extremely cheap signup rates and user popularity, not everyone will find their ideal fit. It is important to understand that there are many Hostinger options that may fit your website well.
Below are some Hostinger options that come at the top of our hosting recommendation list.
Alternative Hostinger Shared Hosting
- Bluehost (2.95 / MO) – Recommended by WordPress.org; Top for user-friendliness and overall popularity (detailed comparison).
- TMD Hosting ($ 2.95 / MO) – Affordable shared hosting with built-in Weebly site builder and various server location options.
- GreenGeeks (2.95 / MO) – Global leader in eco-friendly hosting services; Comes with a great Let’s Encrypt Free SSL support and five data centers.
Alternative Hostinger VPS hosting
- Cloudways ($ 12.00 / mo) – Digital Ocean, Vault-powered cloud hosting, Amazon AWS, or Google infrastructure. Affordable and highly scalable.
- A2 Hosting ($ 43.99 / MO) – Managed VPS hosting with 4GB RAM and 150GB SSD storage (see comparison).
- InMotion Hosting (5.00 / MO) – Affordable and flexible VPS plan with 24 × 7 expert support.
Frequently Asked Questions
How good is Hostinger?
As I mentioned in the review – Hostinger is especially good in terms of cheap price, wide range of server location and depth of hosting type. However, these advantages come with some exceptions – such as lack of migration support and some minor SSL headaches.
Why is Hostinger so cheap?
For some companies, the hosting business is a cut-throat competition and many of them will do whatever it takes to win market share. So too in Hostinger where their shared hosting price is 30% – 50% less than the normal market rate. Lucky for consumers like us – that means we get the cheapest price when signing up.
Is Hostinger safe to use?
Yes. Our Hostinger-hosted test site is still safe and healthy. Hostinger servers come with advanced security modules such as Apache mod_security, Suhosin PHP hardening, PHP open_basedir protection – these features meet the current hosting security standards requirements.
Is Hostinger good for beginners?
Absolutely. Great Future, Cheap Shared Hosting Prices and Responsive Support Team – Hostinger is a writ choice for newcomers looking for one-stop hosting solutions.
What is the best Hostinger shared plan?
The Premium Shared Hosting Plan offers the largest savings and capabilities for hosting up to 100 websites. We think you are new but this is the best plan to start.