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Hostinger Full Review: Is It the Best Choice?
Last Updated by Tala S. on
April 18, 2021
Hostinger is not just another web hosting service. Known for its low prices and millions of customers, Hostinger has many features included in its plans, and its own web building application, Zyro, can help you build your site.
Besides, no matter where you’re from, multilingual customer service is available.
Quick Stats
In 2011, the Hostinger brand was created and succeeded with more than 29 million customers worldwide. Known for its low prices and many free features, is Hostinger the right web hosting service for you?
What differentiates it from other web hosting services?
And what are its pros and cons?
Let's take a look at the answers to all your questions:
Hostinger's Plans
Other than shared hosting, what does Hostinger have to offer? With Hostinger, the list is endless, so let's take a look:
- VPS Hosting
- Minecraft Hosting
- CyberPanel VPS Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
- WordPress Hosting
- Email Hosting
- CMS Hosting
- E-Commerce Hosting
- cPanel Hosting
What makes Hostinger unique is that there's even a free website hosting service. But we're here today to focus on their shared hosting plans.
Hostinger Shared Hosting
If you're looking for a cheap hosting plan where you'll have some traffic on your site and share a server with others, you're on the right page. The problem with Hostinger is it can be misleading. Prices start from $0.99 if you're taking the 4-year plan. While if you're taking the Single plan for a year, you'll be paying $2.99/month and a total of $35.88, where you'll be saving $84 due to the 70% discount.
Hostinger offers three shared hosting plans:
| Single |
Premium (Most Popular) |
Business | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Websites | one | 100 | 100 |
| SSD Storage | 10 GB | 20 GB | 100 GB |
| E-mails | One e-mail | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Domains | NA | Free Domain | Free Domain |
| Bandwidth | 100 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Backup | Weekly | Weekly | Daily |
| Monthly visitors | 10,000 | 25,000 | 100,000 |
| Cloudflare | Included | Included | Included |
| FTP Accounts | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| CDN | Not Included | Not Included | Included |
| SSL Certificate | Included | Included | Included |
|
Number of Allowed Databases |
2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Starting Price | $0.99/Month | $1.89/Month | $3.99/Month |
| Renewal Price | $9.99/Month | $10.19/Month | $15.99/Month |
There's a 30-day money-back guarantee if you want to go in a different direction, but we'll doubt you will. However, it's important to note that these prices increase upon renewal like other web hosts.
Special Price- Only $0.99/Month
Pricing
Hostinger is known for its competitively low prices, but prices change depending on the company's available offer. The basic plan is for $0.99 and includes 100GB bandwidth, weekly backups, multiple PHP versions, a free SSL certificate, and 100 installations.
The Premium hosting plan, which is the most popular among users, is a bit more expensive at $1.89 per month. It has more advanced features than the Single plan, including unlimited bandwidth and unlimited e-mail accounts. Lastly, the Business plan provides top-notch hosting benefits with daily backup and a 100GB SSD storage only for $3.99.
However, like any other web hosting provider, prices increase at renewal unless you pay for years in advance. Whether you decide for four years, one year, or one month the choice is yours. You also have the chance to pay extra for daily backups, SEO toolkit, or whatever you need.
If you didn't enjoy Hostinger, you have the chance to get your money back due to their 30-day money-back guarantee that applies to all plans.
It's important to note that their money-back guarantee is limited. They won't give you a full refund; instead, they'll refund all plans except for the free trial month, and they'll charge you for domain transfer and the SSL certificate. It's tricky and misleading, so be careful.
Payment Methods
There are many ways to pay for your Hostinger plan. Whether the usual credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express) or using PayPal. But what makes Hostinger stand out is, you can pay for your plans using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or even cryptocurrencies. Yup, they're all accepted.
Hostinger's Ease of Use
You don't have to be an expert to build and maintain a website on Hostinger. I mean, with over 29 million customers, they didn't only use Hostinger for their low prices. A free website builder is a bonus for beginners, along with the company's hPanel and 100 app installations to help customize your site.
Hostinger also offers complex tools for advanced users, including multiple PHP languages, phpMyAdmin, or a GIT repository with every plan. Despite all the benefits, the Single shared hosting plan doesn't feature unlimited websites; however, you can upgrade your plan or buy the features you want. Not only that, but the upgrades are fast and straightforward.
Overall, the dashboard is organized and simple, so you'll easily find anything you need, even if you're a beginner. The website builder is easy to use, with several templates to choose from.
Customer Service
With 29 million customers, people from all over the world use Hostinger for web hosting services. Making customer service one of their top priorities, the question is, how can Hostinger handle this?
Hostinger has customer service in multiple languages available on different communication channels, including live chat, e-mail, ticketing, and snail-mail.
To make it even better, they reply quickly and try to help you with any questions or guidelines you're looking for. If you don't feel like talking to anyone, don't worry! You can simply refer to the knowledge base full of answers and tutorials to all the questions on features or any challenges you face.
Unfortunately, Hostinger lacks phone support, but that doesn't stop them from answering your questions through other communication channels.
Hostinger's Security
SSL Certificate
While some plans include a free SSL certificate, you still have the chance to buy one separately if it's not included.
What do you need an SSL certificate for?
To secure the connection for any visitor, which is essential, mostly if you're selling products online.
The SSL Certificate Activation comes for free with every shared hosting plan on Hostinger. If you're looking for a more secure website, you can purchase the Comodo PositiveSSL Certificate for $7.49/month. Usually crucial for e-commerce sites to protect customers' personal information.
Password Protected Directories
If you're looking to protect your website using passwords, you can do so from Hostinger's website, hPanel. There's a step-by-step guide in their knowledge base to tell you how you can do so.
Hotlink Protection
If you're looking to protect your bandwidth from other websites linking to your data, Hostinger has got you covered. All Hostinger's plans come with hotlink protection against anything.
Web Application Firewall & DDoS Protection
All of Hostinger's servers come with a web application firewall to protect them from DDoS attacks and any other attack.
Site Backup
When using Hostinger's plans, there are weekly backups, so you don't lose your data. However, if you choose the Business plan, you'll also have a daily backup, so you'll never have to worry about your data.
Two-factor Authentication
To make it even better, Hostinger has enabled two-factor authentication for its users to protect their accounts. This means you need to use your e-mail and phone number to identify yourself, making it more secure.
Extra Security Features
If you're looking for more protection, you can purchase the Cloudflare protection for $19.99 that safeguards your site against any attack.
Special Price- Only $0.99/Month
Load Times, Reliability, and Features
Uptime & Speed
Having a good uptime is essential, as it indicates how reliable and accessible the website is. Hostinger's uptime is above average, with an uptime of 99.95%, which keeps their websites up and running.
Hostinger's load times are known to be fast. If not, you can check the knowledge base for instructions on how you can help optimize pages for speed on your end. This is important to increase website visitors. In fact, Hostinger boosted its servers in the USA, Asia, and the United Kingdom by connecting them to a 1000 Mbps connection.
Features
Hostinger has plenty of features included with every plan; they include the following:
- Free domain name
- Free e-mail
- Unlimited databases
- Google Ads credit
- Backup
- One-click app installer
The Business shared hosting plan comes with an extra CDN and daily backups rather than weekly ones. Overall, all the plans come with the essential features at a low price when starting with your chosen plan. Get your website up and running in no time.
SEO
Besides the lightning speed, the SSL certificate, how does Hostinger help get you a better ranking for your website? There's an SEO setup toolkit to help you optimize your website. The toolkit will guide you with on-page SEO by giving you tips and recommendations.
For Advanced Users
If you're an advanced user, you'll be happy to know there's a Secure Shell Access (SSH). The network protocol allows users to share data safely.
Other important tools for developers include:
- MySQL Database
- FTP Accounts
- PHP 5 & 7
- Python
It's not much, but it's better than nothing.
Server Location
Hostinger has shared hosting servers worldwide. Whether you're in the United States, Europe (UK, Netherlands, or Lithuania), or Asia (Singapore). There are multiple options to choose from but remember, the closer the server is to your target audience, the better.
Website Building
Are you trying to build your website from the ground up? No problem! Hostinger helps you build a website using its website builder: Zyro.
Using the Zyro website builder, you start by choosing a template of your choice and then easily customize the site the way you want it to be. Whether a logo, slogan, or a business name, the application has many cool features.
After you are done, you can choose the domain of your choice, and you're ready to go. It's simple, straightforward, and easy-to-use, so there's nothing to worry about.
E-Commerce
You'll be happy to know there are many e-commerce tools on Hostinger; these include popular tools like OpenCart, PrestaShop, and Simple Invoices.
The basic shared hosting plan includes a website builder and over 100 app installations. E-commerce solutions like WooCommerce and WordPress are examples of the tools that can be used on Hostinger. If you decide to use these tools, you'll have to upgrade to daily backups to ensure your data is saved.
FTP accounts are included in the plans, along with PHP versions and tools and remote MySQL that can be beneficial for your website.
The Downside
Like anything else, there are a few downsides to using Hostinger. Let's start with their misleading prices that cost $0.99 for their four-year plan. If you're registering for one month, you'll be paying the renewal price, which is expensive. Still, it's very cheap and offers all the essential features, so I think it's worth it. Plus, if you change your mind, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Another disadvantage of using Hostinger is there's no phone support. It's sometimes easier to talk to an agent over phone support than doing it over live chat or e-mail. Sadly, that's not an option with Hostinger.
Final Verdict
All in all, Hostinger is a well-known web hosting service due to its low prices. Despite not having unlimited bandwidth with every plan, their plans include many other benefits that you can enjoy, including multilingual customer service, various e-commerce tools, and excellent security. I mean, they do have 29 million customers worldwide; isn't that a good indicator?
The decision is yours…Will you be their next customer?