This detailed Hostinger Review includes different types of Hosting plans provided by Hostinger, its features, and comparison with other platforms:
Web hosting is something many people don’t even consider in their conversations until they have a dire need for it. It is of course one of the Internet’s strongest pillars, and extremely essential if you want to run a powerful business. So important fact is that many small businesses have gone bankrupt because they didn’t have an agile hosting platform supporting their website.
Many of your favorite videos, podcasts, and eCommerce platforms wouldn’t exist without web hosting.
Table of Contents:
Hostinger Review
In this article, we will be looking at one such web hosting platform that has gained quite a strong fanfare in its brief span in the market. We are talking about Hostinger. It promises to get your business or blog online with unmatched efficiency. So we took our sweet time in picking this tool apart feature-by-feature to find out whether the web hosting platform holds true to its promise.
But first, some background on the platform would be a nice launching pad for our Hostinger review.
It is perhaps one of the best affordable shared hosting providers for making the rounds today. With origins that began in 2007, it has evolved to competently stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the most popular hosting providers in the market.
It had humble beginnings, starting out with as ‘000webhost’ with no advertising, before eventually taking on the mantle of Honstinger.com in 2011. Ever since its adopted moniker, Hostinger has only grown by leaps and bound.
Fact Check: As of today, the founders of Hostinger have set up shop in over 39 countries, with 6 data centers established around the globe. Despite being fairly new, it has still managed to accumulate a strong customer base of over 29 million users in 178 countries around the world as of 2020.
With constant upgrades to their platform, Hostinger has quickly established itself as a powerhouse of the web hosting business. As of today, it enjoys revenue of $13.5 million annually and enjoys a consistent active user base.
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One of the reasons they enjoy the fanfare is because of the services being offered by Hostinger at relatively affordable prices. But, is the hype surrounding this often raved about platform worth it?
In this article, we take a deep dive to understand the hype around this powerful hosting platform and unearth whether the features and services it offers are worth giving a try or not.
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Types Of Hosting Plans By Hostinger
- VPS Hosting
- Shared Web Hosting
- WordPress Web Hosting
- Cloud Web Hosting
- Email Hosting
Hostinger provides its users with a plethora of intuitive and pragmatic hosting options that are relatively more affordable than the price many of its competitors offer in the market.
| Hosting Option | Price |
|---|---|
| VPS Linux Hosting | Starting at $3.95 / month |
| Windows VPS Hosting | Starting at $26 / month |
| Shared Web Hosting | Starting at $0.99 / month |
| Cloud Hosting | Starting at $7.45 / month |
| WordPress Hosting | Starting at $2.15 / month |
| Email Hosting | Starting at $0.99/ month |
#1) VPS Hosting
VPS Hosting or virtual private server hosting is the bare minimum web hosting one should opt for if they are seriously considering taking their business online. Hostinger offers six Linux based VPS plans along with four Windows-based VPS plans.
Pricing: An entry-level Linux tier will provide you with 1 GB RAM, 20 GB storage, and 1000 GB worth of monthly data transfers. It will cost you around $3.95 per month. The platform makes a three month sign up mandatory when opting for this plan.
On the other hand, the top-tier Linux plan provides you with 8 GB RAM, 160 GB storage, and 8000 GB worth of monthly data transfers. It will cost you around $29.95 per month. A three-month sign up is mandatory.
The Windows-based plans come with slightly modified specs. An entry-level Windows tier provides 2 GB RAM, 50 GB storage, and 4000 GB worth of monthly data transfers. It will cost you around $26 per month. On the other hand, the top-tier Windows VPS plan provides you with 16 GB RAM, 400 GB storage, and 7000 GB worth of monthly data transfers. It will cost you around $250 per month.
Like other hosting platforms of its caliber, Hostinger also offers shared web hosting. This means your website gets to co-exist with other websites on a single server. This of course results in many benefits, like splitting the hosting costs between the sharing parties. However, there is also a very palpable downside to this.
Shared web hosting simply isn’t powerful enough and is plagued by problems of the slow or disruptive website.
Pricing: Hostinger provides three shared hosting plans to cater to clients with varying preferences and budget. The single plan costs around $0.99 per month, which lets you host one website, 10 GB of storage data, and 100 GB of monthly data transfers.
The premium plan starts at $2.89, provides you with 20 GB of storage, and rewards you with unlimited site hosting, email, and monthly data transfer abilities. The business plan starts at $3.99 per month and provides all the benefits of the premium plan along with some added rewards like daily backup, SSL certificate, and substantial processing power.
#3) Hostinger WordPress Web Hosting
WordPress is perhaps known worldwide as a powerful content management system. Many customers expect a hosting platform to support WordPress in order to build their site, especially if you need your website to contain a blog page.
Thankfully, Hostinger provides you with a robust and pragmatic theme and plug-in system that makes WordPress customization extremely easy. It also offers you with its own dedicated WordPress plans. You get to choose between the Single, Premium, and Business plan. In our opinion, all three of these plans are quite solid and more or less share the same specs too.
The starter plan begins at $2.15/month, offers 100 websites, 20 GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth, the premium plan starts at $7.45/month, 100 GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth. The business plan starts at $14.95/month offers 300 websites, 140 GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
#4) Cloud Web Hosting
Those who like their website to be impervious to physical server constraints should try opting for Cloud Web Hosting. In cloud hosting, a particular website is powered by multiple different servers, which allows you to scale your resources in real-time.
Pricing: Hostinger offers three cloud hosting plans. All of these three plans come with the added benefits of a free SSL certificate, unlimited site hosting, and a dedicated IP address.
The cheapest plan starts at $7.45 per month and offers 3 GB RAM, 40 GB storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers.
The middle-tier plan starts at $14.95 per month and offers 6 GB RAM, and 80 GB storage whereas the final plan starts at $37 per month and offers 12 GB RAM and 160 GB storage.
#5) Email Hosting
Hostinger also helps out businesses by renting out email servers to help their professional outreach endeavors. A hosted email address can go a long way in establishing your business’s professionalism and building a strong brand image. A hosted email address can provide companies with specialized IDs with their company name being featured prominently.
All of this helps create a strong positive perception of your company.
Pricing: Hostinger provides two email hosting plans. The Business plan starts at $0.99/month and offers two mail filters, 10 GB email storage, and 50 email aliases. The Enterprise plan starts at $2.49/month offers unlimited mail filters, 30 GB email storage, and 50 email aliases.
Features That Stand Out
Features Overview:
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Loading Speed | 350ms |
| Apps Supported | Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, WordPress, OpenCart |
| Average Uptime | 99.95% as of January 2020 |
| Bandwidth | 100 GB |
| Customer Support | 24/7 Live Chat Support, Tickets, Email |
| File transfer | Single Site File transfer |
| Hosting Plans | Shared, VPS, Cloud, WordPress and Email |
| Pricing | Cheapest plan Starting at $0.99 |
| Storage | 10 GB |
#1) Phenomenal Uptime
Uptime is the prominent feature to look out for when seeking a hosting platform. Thankfully, Hostinger is pretty good in this department. It offers an Uptime you can depend upon. In our testing period of two weeks, we faced no issues with our site.
Most users who have been using Hostinger for quite a while now have reported an average Uptime of 99.95% which is pretty phenomenal in our books and thus makes it a very powerful hosting platform.
#2) Agile Load Times
Your business websites cannot afford high bounce-back rates. One of the culprits behind a high bounce-back rate is a website with snail-paced load time. If your prospects are stuck on the front page of your website, waiting for it fully manifests, then they will abandon it for sure.
Thankfully, Hostinger has servers in Asia, Europe, and the USA that are connected to 1000 MBPS connections to avoid such issues. In our tests, we clocked a Hostinger powered website’s load time at 350ms, which spells a good speed that doesn’t annoy your website’s visitors.
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#3) Versatile Customer Support
If there is one area where Hostinger really excels it is in its rendering of customer support. It perhaps has one of the best customer support services among its competitor hosting platforms. The platform offers multilingual customer support teams to conveniently communicate with their customers over live chat or their integrated intercom system.
The response is also very quick. We’ve never had to wait for more than a minute for a representative to respond to our queries. The team is also quite capable of handling customer grievances with utmost politeness.
#4) Ecommerce Support
Hostinger offers a variety of e-commerce tools for customers to make money online conveniently. Its store is home to such popular e-commerce tools such as ZenCart, PrestaShop, OpenCart, etc, thus making it super easy to open an e-commerce website online.
#5) Easy User Interface
No platform should assault its users with a complicated user interface that is confusing to navigate. Hostinger takes note of this and offers a platform that is easy to use and smooth to navigate through. Your dashboard allows you to perform multiple tasks like manage your domains, monitor emails, and update billing information. Everything you need is on the dashboard.
It also avoids the cPanel control panel in favor of large icons to make it even more accessible to its users. In short, it hits it out of the park when it comes to abiding by an austere interface.
#6) Unlimited Features
If you are going for the Premium or Business plan of its diverse hosting plan option, then you will be rewarded with unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, and email accounts. You get the option to establish autoresponders, forward emails, or enable and disable email accounts.
Free Website Builder
Building a website with Hostinger is very easy and can serve a variety of purposes. You get a Hostinger free website builder with any plan you decide to go with. It provides you with tons of different templates to decorate your website with.
You can later customize the website conveniently with the help of the drag-and-drop editing feature. You get to add a variety of website essentials like social media links, slideshow, contact forms, etc. to create a dynamic website for your business.
30 Day Money Back Guarantee
This is something that many customers find compelling about the hosting site. It is confident enough in its abilities that it is willing to offer your money back in 30 days if you are not satisfied with the platform. Although, customers should note that not all products here are refundable. Read their refund policy to know more.
Issues That Stick Out
#1) No Dedicated Hosting: Dedicated hosting is considered to be the most powerful kind of hosting in the market today. It places your website on a server all by itself. If you expect your website to attract heavy traffic, then dedicated hosting is the perfect option due to its unparalleled functionality. Unfortunately, Hostinger does not offer a dedicated hosting plan.
#2) Absence of traditional cPanel: Hostinger abandons the traditional cPanel in favor of the much more comprehensive large icon display. Although this makes the dashboard more convenient for some users, people with an affinity towards the cPanel aesthetic will find this a tough pill to swallow.
#3) Log-in mandatory to access live chat: Hostinger boasts of the best customer support service in the business, albeit with one major flaw. You can only access its live chat if you are logged in. This means you have to be a customer to get your queries addressed.
This turns off many prospects who might have a question or two before choosing Hostinger as their hosting companion. The only option these individuals have is the ‘contact us’ button at the bottom of their page. You are required to fill in the inquiry form and wait for the representative to respond.
#4) No Extra Free Domains: Although affordable, Hostinger only offers one free domain registration with its business and premium plan. Dole out a few bucks more to get those additional domains. You get unlimited sub-domains with their Premium and Business plan, but an additional domain remains charged.
Comparing Hostinger To Other Platforms
Hostinger Vs Bluehost
| Name | Hosting Options | Performance | Customer Support | UI | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger | Shared, VPS, Cloud, Email | 99.9 % uptime | 24/7 Live Chat support | hPanel | Starting $0.99 per month |
| Blue Host | Dedicated, Shared, VPS, Cloud | 99.89% uptime | 24/7 Live chat and phone support | cPanel | Starting $3.95 |
When it comes to competitors, Bluehost has been Hostinger’s most prominent competition throughout its run in the market. So we compared both the tools on factors such as Price, Hosting Options, UI, and Customer support. Here’s what we found.
Pricing: When it comes to pricing, Hostinger takes the cake by offering relatively affordable monthly rates on its hosting packages. While Hostinger’s basic sharing plan starts at $0.99 per month, offering 10 GB storage with 100 GB bandwidth, Bluehost has its shared hosting package priced at $3.95 per month and offers 50 GB storage with unlimited bandwidth.
Although priced less, Bluehost does offer more robust features to justify the pricing of its basic plan. However, Hostinger appears more flexible by offering customers an option to go with the cheap package to cater to their austere needs.
Hosting Options
Hostinger offers its users with multiple hosting options which include Shared Web Hosting, VPS hosting with Cloud flare protection, Minecraft hosting, and Hostinger WordPress hosting. Each of these hosting options differs in the storage, bandwidth, and disk space they offer their customers.
Bluehost also offers its customers with shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and VPS hosting. Perhaps what really give Bluehost an edge over Hostinger is the fact that it also provides dedicated hosting, which is imperative for businesses with large scale projects undertow.
User Interface and Customer Support
Both Bluehost and Hostinger have a great user interface and customer support that really elevates the experience of navigating through their dashboard. Everything you need is on the dashboard itself. It also rids itself of the complex cPanel with large icons to make the platform more digestible for everyone.
While Hostinger offers a live chat option in its services, Bluehost goes a little further by offering phone support for a much more personal touch to their customer support service.
Hostinger Vs SiteGround
| Name | Hosting Options | Performance | Customer Support | UI | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger | Shared, VPS, Cloud, Email | 99.9 % uptime | 24/7 Live Chat support | hPanel | Starting $0.99 per month |
| SiteGround | Shared and Cloud | 99.9% uptime | 24/7 Live Chat and phone support | cPanel | Starting $3.99 per month |
Like Bluehost compared before, we also compared Hostinger to another one of its strong competition in the market–SiteGround. Here’s what we found.
Pricing: Hostinger’s shared hosting plan starts at $0.99 whereas SiteGround starts at $3.99. Hostinger clearly comes up on top here with regards to affordability. Despite being relatively expensive, SiteGround only provides 10 GB storage space whereas Hostinger provides you with 20 GB storage space.
Other features like an unlimited number of email, FTP accounts, and MySQL database offerings are the same between both platforms.
Hosting Options
Apart from the above-shared hosting plan, Hostinger also provides 6 VPS hosting plans to its providers. SiteGround does not offer VPS hosting to its users.
Both SiteGround and Hostinger provide cloud hosting plans. Hostinger’s cloud hosting plan offers 200 GB storage space, unlimited bandwidth, eight CPU cores, daily backup, and 24/7 customer support.
SiteGround, on the other hand, offers daily backups, collaboration tools, 120 GB storage, eight CPU cores, and 5TB data transfer.
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Despite limited features, SiteGround’s cloud hosting plan is way more expensive than Hostinger’s. Where Hostinger’s professional plan costs $14.95/ month, SiteGround’s business plan costs $120/month.
User Interface and Customer Support
While SiteGround uses the tried and tested cPanel look to make their interface available to users, Hostinger uses its own hPanel user interface. Both of these user interfaces are very comprehensive and avoid complexities in navigation.
As for customer support, SiteGround offers 24/7 customer support over the phone, live chats, or ticketing system. Hostinger does not offer phone support but more than makes up for it in the live chat and email department with quick responses to customer queries.
Frequently Ask Questions
Q #1) Does Hostinger provide you with a Free Domain?
Answer: You get one domain name registration for free if at all you decide to sign up to their Business or Premium plans.
Q #2) What payment methods does Hostinger accept?
Answer: You can make purchases via credit cards, Bitcoin, and PayPal.
Q #3) What are Hostinger’s benefits when it comes to starting an eCommerce website?
Answer: Hostinger offers Free SSL, shopping carts, and payment processing tools along with fast servers and strong security features to ensure you can indeed start a lucrative eCommerce store using it.
Q #4) Are there refunds if Hostinger fails to meet its promised uptime guarantee?
Answer: The company promises 99.9% uptime to its users. It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you feel the service is subpar, however, we advise you to read their refund policy for yourself to get some clarity on this.
Conclusion
Although there are some issues with Hostinger mainly with the fact that it does not offer dedicated hosting, there is still so much it offers that more than makes up for its ignorance in that department. It showcases superb speed and offers uptime speed that consistently remains at an average of 99.95%.
It is also relatively affordable with regards to the services it offers, making it extremely appealing for customers and small businesses with limited funds. Building a website with Hostinger is also incredibly easy, thanks to its drag-and-drop editor. If all of this wasn’t enough to entice you, it also makes a proposition to return your money in 30 days if you believe their services are subpar.
We believe the tool is only going to further evolve as it continues to enjoy an overwhelmingly positive reception from its loyal customer base. As such, Hostinger has our highest recommendation.