It can be a struggle to find a good hosting provider for your website for a budget-friendly fee.
After all, you want the best – you need to be prepared to pay much for it.
However, that is not always the case, as there are providers who charge a smaller fee than others while still giving great services.
Hostinger is probably among these providers, as many people know it quite well for being a budget-friendly option.
There are many that are huge fans of the platform, but in the past this was not as much – simply because it lacked so many features that are considered important in web hosting.
Today though, they have gone to great lengths to revamp the platform and give it a new lease of life, through the expansion of plans – and the fruits are showing.
Even though we note in this Hostinger review that the platform still lacks sufficient power to operate networks of multiple websites and large traffic, it still remains among the best options you can get regardless of whether you have plenty or none of hosting experience.
Read on to find out why this is the case.
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What is Hostinger?
The company is a web hosting platform that began offering these services in 2007, although they started under a different name: 000webhost.com.
They initially were offering free web hosting services, with no advertising, and then changed to their current name in 2011.
By the time 2014 was rolling around, their customer base had exceeded 10 million people, and their total customer base reached 29 million people by January 2017.
If you think about it, that growth rate is quite impressive, especially considering it is just ten years since their formation.
Hostinger Review By Hosting Experts & Users
Hostinger Expert Rating:
Overall
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Features
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Performance
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Ease Of Use
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Uptime
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Price/Value
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Reliability & Support
Screenshot of some customers Reviews
More Reviews available at bottom of this article
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Hostinger Features
They claim to offer you a ton of free features and unlimited services – but you might understandably wonder whether the claim is actually true or not.
1. WordPress hosting
WordPress is an open-source, free software, which is widely popular for its ease of installation and the versatility it offers for its users.
As a Content Management platform, it also hosts popular websites and media files, and is popular for bloggers as well.
Hostinger has access to WordPress hosting abilities, although you may not notice it right away – and they even have a detailed guide to help you install the service.
They also place very few limits when it comes to the business of managing your site (such as having very few limits on use of MySQL and PHP), and the approach in pricing is also quite similar to shared hosting prices.
There are 3 main attractions when looking at the WP packages on this platform:
- Few restrictions
- Very affordable pricing
- WordPress-ready hosting
Few restrictions
The platform describes the services it offers as ‘unlimited web hosting’, due to the fact that it has no restrictions on:
- Bandwidth
- Number of sites for each account
- Email accounts
- Disk space
- Databases
- FTP users
All the plans available are for small businesses and home use, and th3e average blogger will be fine with the limits of 1 GB storage and 1000 tables per database.
It will be convenient for you, since you will notice that all the shared hosting plans on Hostinger’s platform are capable of operating WordPress sites as well.
In fact, if you host a site on WordPress through your account, you will experience very high speeds. This is due to their server configuration, which provides a boost in speeds of up to 3, 4 or5 times.
The benefits that apply to all plans are:
- Site Lock website security tool
- Unlimited email accounts
- Automatic backups to the cloud server
- Support for the command line interface (WP-CLI)
- Access to SSH for better security
If automatic WordPress updates are a major issue for you, the good news is that you can get them on Hostinger’s WordPress plans, and cache speeds up the loading time of your site.
Accessibility to SSH is quite unique when it comes to general WordPress hosting plans, since numerous web hosting providers will only allow WordPress users to maintain their blogs through the control panel (cPanel) on the hosting website.
What is SSH?
This is a suite that handles security protocols, and increases security. This is due to its ability to transmit data securely, administer systems on a remote basis, and tunnel applications.
Its security levels ensure that it is increasingly used as a security feature for millions of websites and servers, as shown by its mass deployment.
2. CDN
The performance of any website is a difficult thing to discuss due to its complexity. Aside from factors such as uptime guarantees, there are additional things to look at – especially the latency and geographic location of a server.
This is where a CDN, or content delivery network, comes in – because it spreads out your content on different servers and allowing greater accessibility to visitors of your website to access your content.
In this instance, HostMonster uses Cloudflare and provides complete support for all its plans, regardless of the package you are using.
If you do not have CDN for your website or blog, you can always sign up for the free Cloudflare option then integrate it to your Hostinger account.
It is important to note though, you will need to upgrade to a paid option if you want a CDN with greater features and options.
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3. Dedicated resources
These are bandwidth and disk spaces that are pre-determined thanks to the specific plan you select, and you will not share them with other people even if you are on one server.
The servers that are in use on this web hosting platform all use Cloud technology, which makes them easy to scale, and allows you to expand the capabilities of your business website in the future.
4. Dashboard and all its features
The dashboard will show you all the traffic levels your website has experienced, as well as the resource consumption as time has gone by.
Their dashboard is quite extensive in terms of its features, but you can rest easy knowing that they have covered all the basics.
Some of the things you can do include:
- Managing your billing information
- Managing redirects
- Adding new websites to your plan
- Monitor the usage of resources
- See all the detailed analytics
If you are handling multiple clients, such as in the case of a web designer, it is possible to attach the sites to a variety of companies on the dashboard.
In addition, the dashboard also comes with a greatly detailed log of all the changes you have implemented on your site.
More Useful Features
The company makes it very easy for you to keep tabs on the parts of your website that the public cannot access. This comes in form of the following features:
Hosting dashboard
When you log into the dashboard of the platform, it is possible to see all your servers and plans in a centralized place – which includes dedicated servers, VPS, cloud, and shared hosting plans.
From this area, it is possible to monitor any notifications that relate to your account directly.
From here it is also easy to update your billing information quickly, register new domains or transfer those you currently own, reset your password, make changes to the web hosting plan that you use, and update your personal information.
Domains list
You can also see the domains you have bought from Hostinger, although this is the only thing you see. Unfortunately, it will not show you the hosting plan that the domain is associated with, even if Hostinger hosts it.
5. Website builder
The truth is that website builders have largely gone out of fashion, due to CNS platforms such as WordPress that have taken the job as part of their default operation.
However, there are people that still enjoy using website builders, and Hostinger caters to you with their user-friendly builder if this is among your preferences.
Our Hostinger review shows that the site builder is a tool on their hPanel (similar to cPanel), which is available for shared hosting plans – regardless of the specific plan you go for.
The builder is a template-based menu, which is simple enough to use due to the drag-and-drop format.
You can select from 200 templates. While the templates might look basic, they are modern and clean-looking, which is more than enough for many websites.
Some of the features in the site building menu include:
- Mobile responsive
- Drag-and-drop interface, so you do not require coding knowledge
- Plugins for adding videos, social media, acceptance of payments, and many more
- Capability with e-commerce tasks
All these features make the site builder rather solid, especially considering that it is largely free.
6. Control panel
Aside from the WordPress plans on the platform, all the other hosting plans use a customized version of cPanel – which is the industry basic for control panels.
It if you are familiar with other cPanel on other hosting platforms, Hostinger will not be an issue for you.
Among the benefits you will get when using their control panel is:
- Access to regular backups
- Easier file management
- Easy to use graphical interface that is easy to use
- Easy setting up and use of your email
- Management of databases
- Easy to use app management (Softaculous)
The middle and left parts of the hPanel display screen have links that lead to an assortment of settings, similar to any implementation of hPanel, the options come in the following categories:
- Top applications
- Preferences
- Domains
- Software
- Security
- Files
- Metrics
- Databases
- Advanced (Features)
There is a panel that is on the right side, and this displays the resource allocation of your website, as well as the remaining space it has.
7. Multiple Data Center
Hosting provides you multiple data center. The company has data centers in around 7 regions.
8. One Click Install
Just like other hosting providers Hostinger also gives you one click installer service. This means you can install any CMS in just a click on Hostinger.
9. Money Back Guarantee
Hostinger provides hassle free 30 days money back guarantee. You can try Hostinger & if you not happy with them just cancel your hosting within 30 days and ask for money back. Without any doubt you will get full refund.
One major disadvantage is the lack of standard payment terms, as there are exceptions to the refund policy.
This can be a discouragement if you are looking for a hosting provider with reliable guarantees, and the company itself has different criteria on what they can and cannot refund in case of any problems with your account.
What they can refund
- All hosting plans, except the first payment you make after your free trial
- SSL certificates
- Transfer of domains, except .eu and .es
What they cannot refund
- Renewals of domain names (unless you cancelled them within 4 days of registering them)
- Redemption fees
10. Security
There are a number of security features that we noted on the Hostinger review.
The company takes charge of monitoring DDoS attacks, uptime, and response time. Immediately after any attack occurs, the company is able to stop them.
Thanks to the security policy of increasing website safety by changing them to HTTPS sites, the platform can accept SSL certificates from third-party hosting sites, such as those from the encryption service of Let’s Encrypt.
Other than that, the company has hardware firewalls that use very stringent settings for security purposes, and they also have malware-scanning daemons on a regular basis.
If you want to up the security factor, you can use 2FA (two factor authentication).
11. Performance
The company said 99.9% Uptime Guarantee for their servers. But many users are not happy with their uptime. The good thing is they are much cheaper than others.
Let’s get into the details.
| Month & Year | Server Uptime | Server Response Time | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 2020 | 99.96% | 550 ms | Excellent |
| January 2020 | 99.96% | 501 ms | Excellent |
| December 2019 | 99.95% | 490 ms | Good |
| November 2019 | 100% | 478 ms | Excellent |
| October 2019 | 99.97% | 410 ms | Excellent |
| September 2019 | 99.98% | 1401 ms | Ok |
| August 2019 | 99.96% | 755 ms | Excellent |
| July 2019 | 99.99% | 550 ms | Excellent |
| June 2019 | 99.95% | 355 ms | Good |
| May 2019 | 100% | 466 ms | Excellent |
| April 2019 | 99.96% | 425 ms | Good |
| March 2019 | 99.97% | 980 ms | Good |
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12. Customer service
The main advantage with the site is their excellent levels of customer support, and you can reach them through support ticket, email, or live chat, all on a 24/7 basis.
If you have non-urgent questions, on the other hand, you can post them on the company’s forum on their website. The only drawback we see here is the lack of a telephone option, but this might not be a deal breaker for some people.
All the forums are under constant monitoring, and you will occasionally see responses from the staff in addition to those of other users. In fact, the company promises to send responses within 15 minutes of receipt.
They also offer tutorials on using:
- DNS
- VPS
- WordPress (has the most of all tutorials)
- Drupal
- Joomla
- Website
- SSL
- MySQL
4 Hostinger Drawbacks, Cons or Disadvantages
Hostinger started out in 2007, so it has been around for a fair bit of time.
In that time, it has grown to be one of the cheapest hosting solutions on the market and has grown itself a respectable userbase of over 30 million people.
That being said, what are the major downsides to using this particular company to host your site?
1. Need to Have an Account for Live chat
This may not appear to be a problem at first, but when you look deeper into it, the inconvenience becomes clear.
Say, for instance, you’re a first time customer and have a few questions you would like answered in real-time, or perhaps you’re looking to enquire about migration.
Whereas you could ask a representative with a live chat for other companies, you have to go through the standard email process here, which may take some time.
2. No cPanel
Not having cPanel is a notable downside whenever a company doesn’t take advantage of it.
Not only does this mean you’re forced into using a control panel that you’re not used to, but it runs the risk of being poorly made and hard to use.
On top of that, it makes the topic of migration much harder.
Admittedly, the dashboard that Hostinger has implemented is well made and beginner-friendly, but it would be better just to see a cPanel inclusion.
3. Unusual Refund Terms
Most hosting companies offer a standard money-back guarantee window on its products, that’s the same thing here.
However, there are a few unusual deviances from the norm that you should be aware of.
Domain name renewals, redemption fees, and privacy protection fees are not covered under the companies refund policy, for whatever reason, so you may find yourself in a bit of a bind if you need to get your money back.
4. Only One Domain on The Higher Tiers
The higher payment tiers of Hostinger comes with a free domain.
However, every domain after that is going to cost you extra.
This isn’t the end of the world, but given how much you’re likely to be spending on those high bracket options, more than one domain would have been nice.
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Hosting solutions at Hostinger
Throughout all their packages, our Hostinger review shows that the company is purely focused on offering affordable service for the people that cannot afford more expensive hosts.
Budget friendliness usually means that there are many features lacking – but fortunately, this is not the case here because they offer an impressive range of options and features.
They have the following options you can choose:
1. Shared
Divided into:
Single Shared hosting
The most affordable plan, and the starting payment per month is $0.99 for 48 months, with some of the benefits you will get are:
- 10 GB disk space
- One website
- 1 FTP user
- 100 GB bandwidth
- One email account
- One MySQL database
- Auto installer
- Easy website builder
Premium shared hosting
The benefits under the package include:
- Unlimited websites
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Unlimited SSD disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited FTP users
- 3X WordPress optimized speeds
- Easy website builder
- Free domain name (along with the annual plan)
Business Shared hosting
This is the top shared hosting plan in terms of benefits. Everything that applies to Premium shared hosting applies here, as well as these additions:
- 2X memory and processing power
- Daily backups
- Deluxe live support
- Free SSL certificate that will increase your SEO ranking and secure customer information
2. Cloud hosting
The company also offers cloud hosting, for people that want to increase the power of their websites without the limitations from shared hosting packages. There are three packages:
Cloud startup
The benefits include:
- 40 GB SSD storage
- 300 websites
- 1X speed boost
- 2 CPU cores
- 3 GB RAM
- 12X memory and processing power
Cloud Professional
The most popular Cloud hosting plan. Its benefits include:
- 300 websites
- 2X speed boost
- 80 GB SSD storage
- RAM of 6 GB
- 4 CPU cores
- 24X memory and processing power
Cloud Global
Powered by Google Cloud, it has the following benefits:
- 300 websites
- RAM of 16 GB
- 8 CPU cores
- SSD storage of 200 GB
- 4X speed boosts
- 48X memory and processing power
In addition, all cloud hosting plans have the following benefits:
- DNS management
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Support on a 24/7/365 basis
- Easy website building
- GitHub integration
- Cloudflare protection of name servers
- LSCWP (WordPress acceleration)
- LiteSpeed cache
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Dedicated resources
- Free SSL and domain
- Dedicated IP address
3. VPS hosting
Like the previous two plans, this has 3 packages under it. They are:
VPS Server Plan 1
The benefits are:
- RAM of 1 GB with a 2 GB burst
- Disk space of 20 GB
- 1X CPUs (2.4 GHz)
- Geekbench score of 3513
- Bandwidth of 1000 GB
VPS Server Plan 2
The most popular VPS plan. Benefits are:
- 40 GB disk space
- RAM of 2 GB (4 GB burst)
- Geekbench score of 5363
- Bandwidth of 2000 GB
- Disk space of 40 GB
- 2X CPUs (2.4 GHz)
VPS Server Plan 5
Benefits are:
- Disk space of 120 GB
- RAM of 6 GB (12 GB burst)
- Geekbench score of 10789
- Bandwidth of 6000 GB
- 6X CPUs (2.4 GHz)
In addition, all VPS plans have the following benefits:
- Snapshot backups on a daily basis
- Enterprise SSDs
- Full root access
- 100 MB/s network
- Dedicated IP address
- Use of five global datacenters
- 5 templates for Linux OS
- Firewall management
- DNS management
- CentOS 7, 6 templates
- Ubuntu 18, 16, 14 templates
- Debian 9, 8 templates
- TeamSpeak, Suse, Fedora template
- Monitoring and statistics
- Minecraft template (except in VPS Starter Plan 1)
- Recovery console
- Manual snapshots
Facts on the pricing
There is something worth noting in our Hostinger review – the company’s cloud hosting service I unlike what you will find in many providers.
This is because it is a combination of 2 services: VPS and shared hosting, and it will also combine the efficiency of a dedicated server with an hPanel that is easy to use.
In other words, it is similar to a VPS package without you taking care of backend issues.
You can pay them using Bitcoin, PayPal or credit card, with a 30-day money back guarantee. As a summary of their hosting fees and benefits of each package, we have outlined them below:
- Shared hosting
| Single shared hosting | Premium shared hosting | Business shared hosting | |
| Monthly Price (when you sign up) | $0.99 | $2.89 | $3.99 |
| Price (when you renew) | $2.15 | $3.49 | $7.45 |
| Disk space | 10 GB disk space | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| FTP user | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| MySQL database | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | 100 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email accounts | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
- VPS hosting
| VPS Server Plan 1 | VPS Server Plan 2 | VPS Server Plan 5 | |
| Monthly Price (when you sign up) | $3.95 | $8.95 | $23.95 |
| Price (when you renew) | $7.96 | $15.76 | $47.36 |
| Geekbench score | 3513 | 5363 | 10789 |
| RAM | 1 GB (2 GB Burst) | 2 GB (4 GB Burst) | 6 GB (12 GB Burst) |
| Disk space | 20 GB | 40 GB | 120 GB |
| Bandwidth | 1000 GB | 2000 GB | 6000 GB |
| CPUs (2.4 GHz) | 1X | 2X | 6X |
- Cloud hosting
| Cloud Startup | Cloud Professional | Cloud Global | |
| Monthly Price (when you sign up) | $7.45 | $14.95 | $37 |
| Monthly Price (when you renew) | $15.90 | $31.80 | $80 |
| SSD storage | 40 GB SSD storage | 300 websites | 300 websites |
| Websites supported | 300 | 300 | 300 |
| RAM | 3 GB | 6 GB | 16 GB |
| Speed boost | 1X | 2X | 4X |
| SSD storage | 40 GB | 80 GB | 200 GB |
| CPU cores | 2 | 4 | 8 |
| Memory and processing power | 12X | 24X | 48X |
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Pros & Cons
Pros
- Money back guarantee for 30 days without hassle
- Free weekly and daily data backups
- Unlimited bandwidth and SSD space
- Free domain name (except for the entry level plan)
- Free Bitninja security and SSL certificate for all plans
- One-click WordPress auto installer
- Very fast server responses and reliable uptime
Cons
- Lack of phone support option
- The Let’s Encrypt SSL is free, but you have to set it up on add-on domains manually
Final thoughts
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Company Details
Source: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hostinger
According to our Hostinger review, we find that the platform is a solid one, whether you are a seasoned webmaster or a beginner to web hosting.
Their prices are great and do not sacrifice the most important features you should have, such as security, speed and performance.
It also helps that their packages are quite affordable and user friendly.
Hostinger Expert Rating:
Overall
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Features
-
Performance
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Ease Of Use
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Uptime
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Price/Value
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Reliability & Support
