The search for a high-quality web hosting service isn’t easy. There are many options, and your choice determines where your business or personal site will live online for years to come. Hostinger is a worthy home for your time and money, as it offers excellent uptime and premium offerings for a decidedly non-premium price. However, Hostinger’s plans lack some of the features you’d expect in a top-tier web host, such as dedicated hosting and telephone support. For that, check out Editors’ Choice winner AccuWeb.
Shared Web Hosting With Hostinger
Hostinger, like many other web hosting services, offers shared web hosting. With this most basic hosting tier, your website lives on a server with other websites. In other words, the sites literally share a single server’s cost and resources. As a result, shared web hosting is often low-cost web hosting. The downside? Shared hosting isn’t powerful, so your site may load slowly or become unavailable if your content (or that of one of your cohabitants) receives, say, a big social media hit.
Hostinger has three Linux-powered shared web hosting plans: Premium, Business, and Cloud Startup. The Premium plan costs $11.99 per month, or $2.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $7.99 per month after the first year). The plan lets you create up to 100 websites and email addresses, and offers unlimited monthly data transfers and 100GB of storage. Premium also comes with a free domain name and WHOIS privacy protection.
The Business plan is $13.99 per month, or $3.99 per month for the first year’s commitment (renewing at $8.99 per month after the first year). It builds upon the Premium plan by offering daily backups, Hostinger CDN to speed up your site, and 200GB of NVMe storage.
Finally, Cloud Startup is $24.99 per month, or $8.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $19.99 per month after a year). This plan includes 300 websites, a dedicated IP address, and priority support.
Hostinger’s plans come with two-year and four-year deals that grant significant discounts. These are good shared hosting plans for a mom-and-pop shop that just wants to list its inventory. Still, HostGator offers superior shared web hosting packages for a wider range of users. Not only does HostGator offer a choice of Linux or Windows servers, it has unlimited email and monthly data transfers at each shared hosting tier.
For more on web hosting, check out how to create a website and our 10 SEO tips to boost your traffic.
VPS Web Hosting With Hostinger
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting is the minimum web hosting tier you want if you’re serious about creating an online presence for your business. Compared with shared hosting, VPS hosting gives your website additional server resources to work with, as there are fewer websites on the server.
Hostinger offers four Linux-based VPS plans. The entry-level KVM 1 plan has 4GB of RAM, 50GB of NVMe storage, and 1TB of monthly data transfers for $13.99 per month (or a discounted $4.49 per month for a one-year commitment). The top-tier KVM 8 plan includes 32GB of RAM, 400GB of NVMe storage, and 8TB of monthly data transfers for $49.99 per month (discounted to $14.99 per month for a one-year commitment). Unfortunately, Hostinger lacks Windows as an operating system option—its offerings are exclusively Linux-based affairs, utilizing Litespeed servers for hosting tasks.
Those plans will serve your business well, but Hostwinds remains our top pick for VPS hosting. Hostwinds has wallet-friendly, well-rounded VPS offerings that start at $4.99 per month for 1GB of RAM, 30GB of disk space, and 1TB of monthly data transfers. Plans scale up to $328.99 per month for 96GB of RAM, 750GB of disk space, and 9TB of monthly data transfers. Hostwinds also has Windows-based VPS options, including fully managed VPS packages featuring either the Linux or Windows operating systems.
(Credit: Hostinger)No Dedicated Hosting, Yes Game-Related Hosting
Dedicated hosting is one of the most powerful forms of hosting you’ll encounter. A dedicated hosting plan places your website on a server by itself, letting you leverage the server’s full power. If you expect high traffic volume, a dedicated server is an excellent choice. Hostinger doesn’t offer dedicated hosting, however. Check out AccuWeb if you want excellent dedicated hosting.
Hostinger may lack dedicated hosting, but it offers game-specific VPS hosting for online titles such as Minecraft and Palworld. There are four game-specific hosting options, starting at $13.99 per month (or $5.99 per month with a one-year commitment). The lowest-level plan gives you a server with 4GB of RAM and one vCPU hardware.
You can install game mods, establish rules, and enable in-game advertising. Hostinger’s Game Panel supports more than just Minecraft or Palworld: You can use its VPS services for Steam games. Check out our story on how to build a Minecraft server for a deep dive.
WordPress Web Hosting With Hostinger
WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system. Thanks to its simplicity and robust plug-in and theme ecosystems, WordPress is extremely easy to customize as you see fit—one of its key attractions.
Hostinger’s WordPress plans mirror its shared hosting plans and pricing. In fact, they are the same plans. It is worth noting, however, that Hostinger’s cutting-edge WordPress AI tools (more on that in a bit) are only available to Business and Cloud Startup subscribers
Hostinger offers convenient WordPress-relevant optimizations that make using the world-famous CMS a cinch. This includes a super-easy onboarding flow that gets your site up and running in just a few minutes. There’s also an option to migrate existing sites either manually or using a Hostinger agent. A convenient staging tool lets you create and test pages before they go live to the public. Hostinger pushes out automated core and security patch updates whenever WordPress updates its CMS, keeping your sites current and secure.
Hostinger offers various AI tools to help with SEO and content creation. The WordPress AI assistant, for example, integrates directly into the WordPress environment, which can help you generate content. It also offers WordPress AI Troubleshooter for website error detection. Users are notified of the issue via hPanel, at which point you can decide whether you want to fix it yourself, or have the AI perform an analysis and apply a solution. Hostinger claims that the median time it takes its AI to fix website errors is 17 seconds, as opposed to the 1-10 minutes it can take for manual correction.
For more robust WordPress hosting, check out A2 and Bluehost, our top picks for small business hosting. If you want enterprise-class WordPress hosting, check out WP Engine.
(Credit: Hostinger)Cloud Web Hosting With Hostinger
Cloud hosting is a form of hosting in which your website is powered by several different servers. You can scale resources in real time, as your site isn’t limited to physical server constraints. If you need muscle for your website, cloud hosting is Hostinger’s answer. As mentioned, the company lacks dedicated server options for enterprise-class businesses. Its flexible and highly scalable cloud hosting tier is an option to consider instead.
Hostinger has three cloud hosting tiers: Cloud Startup, Cloud Professional, and Cloud Enterprise. Cloud Startup starts at $24.99 per month, or $9.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $19.99 per month after a year). It comes with 3GB of RAM, 2 CPU cores, 200GB of NVMe storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers.
The Cloud Professional plan starts at $39.99 per month, or 14.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $32.99 per month after a year). It has 6GB of RAM, 4 CPU cores, and 250GB of NVMe storage. The Enterprise tier starts at $64.99 per month, or $29.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $54.99 per month after a year). It features 12GB of RAM and 300GB of NVMe storage. Hostinger’s cloud plans all come with a dedicated IP address, a free SSL certificate, WHOIS privacy protection, and a 300-website capacity. Two-year and four-year plans are available for these packages, too.
That’s a good offering, but if you want truly powerful cloud hosting, Ionos is the way to go. It has plans starting at $0.0056 per hour (with a maximum $4 per month charge) for a single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, 30GB of SSD storage, and unlimited monthly transfers. The offerings max out at $0.44 per hour for a 24-core CPU, 48GB of RAM, 480GB of SSD storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers. There are managed and unmanaged options, as well as customizable plans.
DreamHost is another top pick for smaller-scale sites that need a less-demanding cloud hosting service. Its plans start at $4.50 per month (for 512MB of RAM, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers) and top out at $48 per month (for four CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers). Though DreamHost’s RAM and storage totals aren’t as high as those offered by Ionos, you can select either Linux- or Windows-based servers.
Reseller Web Hosting With Hostinger
If you’re looking to get into the web hosting business but don’t want to deal with infrastructure matters, consider reseller web hosting. Hostinger no longer offers reseller hosting services in the traditional sense. Instead, it offers Hostinger Pro: cloud-based hosting plans with a unique, all-in-one Pro panel to accommodate multiple client websites. These mirror the features and pricing tiers of the Cloud hosting plans featured above.
If you would prefer a more conventional reseller service, take a look at Hostwinds, our Editors’ Choice for the category, which offers unlimited storage and data transfers with every tier.
Setting Up a Website With Hostinger
Hostinger has several options for building a website, including the company’s own Hostinger Website Builder. The free tool has many useful features, such as a logo builder, a slogan builder, and a business name generator.
Its coolest features, however, are its AI-powered ones. AI Writer generates unique copy based on a topic you select, while AI Heatmap provides insights on what website visitors will focus on when they visit your site. In fact, you can even let AI create your entire website with the AI Builder feature. In our tests, Hostinger Website Builder produced respectable starter text. We could see a company using AI Writer and tweaking the copy to suit its needs.
Hostinger E-Commerce and Security
Making money online requires e-commerce tools, and Hostinger has them in abundance. Hostinger’s auto-installer offers popular and useful tools, such as Abante Cart, osCommerce, and PrestaShop. There is also a WooCommerce option for online stores built with WordPress.
If you’re looking to secure your website, Hostinger has many tools that let you do just that. For example, you get a free Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate with shared and VPS hosting plans, or you can buy one separately. The technology secures the connection between your website and a visitor’s computer, which is vital for security (especially if you wish to sell products). Hostinger gives its clients unlimited free SSL certificates. Likewise, Cloudflare protection is offered with all Hostinger plans (it safeguards your site against DDoS attacks and other threats).
Terrific Customer Service
If you encounter a problem, or just have a question you’d like to ask Hostinger’s customer service squad, you can hit up the support crew via web chat on a 24/7 basis. We found the staff to be incredibly friendly and informative, and they answered our test questions with the appropriate links. Hostinger’s customer support team is the best we’ve encountered in the web hosting game, surpassing even GoDaddy‘s excellent team.
The one big caveat is that Hostinger lacks phone support. If you want to contact a human being, it’s web chat or bust. The company contends that web chat is faster and easier for customers versus phone support, so this might not be a problem for you. On the upside, Hostinger has a sizable knowledge database that answers common (and uncommon) web hosting questions.
Hostinger’s plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is typical for a web hosting service. That said, DreamHost offers a sizeable 97-day money-back guarantee for shared plans that gives you more time to explore its options.
Excellent Uptime
Uptime is an extremely important web hosting element, as it’s a measure of your website’s availability. Sites with good uptime are considered dependable; sites with bad uptime are inaccessible and unreliable.
In our testing over two weeks, Hostinger proved itself a reliable web hosting service. Our test site didn’t go down once during the 14-day observation period. The company guarantees a 99.9% server uptime rate, so, you should be able to count on Hostinger to keep your website online.
Verdict: A Feature-Rich Host That Won’t Break the Bank
Hostinger is a versatile web host that offers great uptime and customer service, as well as a mix of traditional and cloud-based hosting, paired with excellent WordPress support. It’s also easy to use and has game-oriented VPS servers if you want to explore sandbox or competitive video games in a new way. Hostinger’s lack of dedicated servers dulls the experience a bit, though its beefy cloud hosting picks up some of the slack. If you’re looking for higher-powered dedicated web hosting, look to Editors’ Choice winner AccuWeb, which has excellent dedicated hosting plans and Windows servers, as well as telephone-based support.
Mike Williams contributed to this review.
https://au.pcmag.com/web-hosting-services/61336/hostinger-web-hosting-review
