With 15,000+ new users signing up for the Hostinger web hosting every day, and over 29 million users host with them. Hostinger must be doing something right! Right? Well that is what this Hostinger review aims to find out.
Hostinger’s promise is to create an easy to use, reliable, developer-friendly web hosting service that offers stellar features, security, fast speed, and great customer service at a price that is affordable to everyone.
But can they keep their promises, and can they keep up with the other big players in the web hosting game?
Pricing and Payment Methods
Hostinger is known as one of the most affordable web hosting services, though prices tend to vary somewhat based on the company’s current offers. We started our review with the basic Single plan, which starts at $0.99 a month, and were surprised to see the number of features included.
Hostinger offer solid and reliable web hosting services for both beginners and seasoned webmasters at great prices without compromising on must-have features such as performance, speed and security. They are one of the cheapest hosting providers out there (from just $0.99 per month), Hostinger offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and cloud hosting services at great prices without compromising on superb features, reliable uptime and page loading speeds that are faster than the industry average.
Being one of the cheapest web hosting doesn’t hurt either.
PROS
- 30-day hassle free money-back guarantee
- Unlimited SSD disk space & bandwidth
- Free domain name (except on the entry-level plan)
- Free daily & weekly data backups
- Free SSL certificate & Bitninja security on all plans
- Solid uptime and super-fast server response times
- 1-click WordPress auto-installer
- Take advantage of Hostinger’s intuitive drag-and-drop website builder to create a website in minutes.
- Quickly resolve issues via live chat, email and ticketing 24/7/365.
- Clearly defined plans and features make it easy to choose the right package for you.
- Unlimited bandwidth and SSD space in most plans keep your site running smoothly.
- Easily set up e-commerce shopping carts with 1-click installations.
- Very low monthly prices accommodate extremely tight budgets.
- Enjoy fast, reliable service with above average uptimes and load times.
Cons:
- Features that are free with other services, such as free SSL certificates or unlimited email accounts, are only available with an upgrade.
- Hostinger doesn’t offer dedicated server plans.
- Although they have a 1-click installation process for WordPress and are optimized for the platform, Hostinger doesn’t have a specific WordPress hosting package.
Load Times and Reliability
With approximately 29 million users to support, we were concerned that Hostinger might not be able to deliver the superior uptimes and load speeds they promise. However, months of testing clearly demonstrated that their uptimes were consistently 99.9% or above, placing them far above the industry average of 99.4%.
Additionally, we found that their load times were incredibly fast at approximately 1s per page. This is at least in part due to the company’s Cache Manager solution, which they claim radically reduces loading times. However, Hostinger’s extensive knowledge base also offers step-by-step instructions for customers to optimize their pages for speed on their end .We put our Hostinger US test site through a speed stress test using our proprietary server speed checker (still the best and only server speed checker in the world #shamelessplug), benchmarking it against Google’s recommendation of 200 ms, and here are the results.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
| 69 ms | 28 ms | 98 ms | 239 ms | 130 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
| 331 ms | 233 ms | 165 ms | 38 ms | 100 ms |
US Datacenter Average Speed: 143.1 ms
Ladies and gentlemen, the speed test results of our Hostinger US test site came back with a worldwide average of a blazing fast 143 ms, which ranks them as one of our A+ top tier hosts!
Next, we tested our Hostinger Singapore site to see how it responds to pings from all over the world
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
| 194 ms | 229 ms | 246 ms | 5 ms | 349 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
| 99 ms | 191 ms | 70 ms | 212 ms | 163 ms |
Singapore Datacenter Average Speed: 175.8 ms
If you intend to cater to audiences in Asia (and Australia / New Zealand), you’ll be happy to know that Hostinger returned a stupid fast response of 5 ms from Singapore, with an average speed of 176 ms around the world. Hostinger Singapore gets an A+ ranking from us.
Last but not least, we’ve got our Hostinger EU site to evaluate.
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
| 142 ms | 100 ms | 54 ms | 236 ms | 209 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
| 314 ms | 265 ms | 235 ms | 84 ms | 11 ms |
Netherlands Datacenter Average Speed: 165 ms
For those of you targeting European markets, Hostinger would be one of the fastest web hosts for you. 54 ms from London, those are really impressive speeds! Hostinger Europe is equally speedy like their Singapore and American counterparts, and they returned decent worldwide average speeds of 165 ms, which means that they’re ranked a solid A+!
If you study our test results, you might be a little concerned that locations far away from their designated data centers aren’t that great. That’s actually quite normal as the data has to travel further to get to their target destination.
This should be a non issue though, because Hostinger has a grand total of 6 datacenters across the globe, namely in the USA, EU, Brazil, Netherlands, Singapore & Indonesia (there’s 1 more being built in their home country of Lithuania). Just pick data center closest to your users and they’ll get to enjoy your site’s breakneck loading speeds in all its glory!
Ease of Use
The 15,000 customers that flock to Hostinger every day might initially come for the low prices, but we suspect they stay because of how simple it is to build and maintain your website with the service. The free website builder is a helpful tool for newbies, though the company’s well-ordered cPanel and over 100 one-click app installations really give beginners a customizable and manageable website.
Even so, users like us that require more advanced tools and more complex functionalities can still benefit from Hostinger. The company offers the option of building a GIT repository with every plan – critical for collaborative teams like ours – as well as multiple PHP language support and phpMyAdmin. Though some features like free SSL certificates or unlimited websites are only available with upgrades, Hostinger’s very low price points put these features in reach without stretching your budget.
Scaling is an important part of any business plan, so we upgraded our test site several times to see how smooth the process was. In each case, upgrades were fast and relatively simple thanks to the expert help of Hostinger’s friendly customer support team.
Features
Any concerns we had about Hostinger’s low prices limiting the number of features they offer dissipated within the first few minutes of our using the service. Basic packages include all sorts of helpful features like the company’s website builder and 1-click installation tool for over 100 apps, which include WordPress and e-commerce solutions like WooCommerce. Though basic plans come with weekly backups, you’ll have to upgrade if you want daily backups for your site.
We were similarly happy with the many advanced features that even the basic and mid-range packages offer and which gave us more control over our test site. Unlimited FTP accounts (in most plans), a range of PHP versions and tools and remote MySQL empowered us to craft a backend that completely met our needs. Finally, in spite of the low prices, we were very happy with the level of security that went into each account. FTP over SSL, frequent infrastructure updates and BitNinja are just some of the ways that Hostinger invests in account security.
Customer Support
Hostinger claims that customer support is one of its top priorities, and for the most part that seems to be the case. We found that the company’s responses and resolution time were above the industry average for all four communication channels—ticketing, snail mail, live chat, and email.
Just about every interaction with a representative had us paired with a pleasant expert who was able to get to the bottom of our questions quickly.
Perhaps the most wonderful part of Hostinger’s customer service is the fact that we didn’t have to use their services very frequently. Hundreds of informative articles in their knowledge base, frequently updated tutorials on complex technical features and a lively blog helped us find our way through most challenges we encountered using Hostinger.
Conclusion
Hostinger manages to blend extremely low prices with a plethora of features and utilities, augmenting both with copious documentation and a knowledgeable, pleasant support team. This trifecta of affordability, a rich catalogue of features and robust support makes it a strong choice for customers no matter where they’re at in their web hosting journey. Beginners get the basic features they need to instantly get their websites going, from a website builder to ample bandwidth and more.
While more advanced users don’t have a dedicated server option to give them extra flexibility and control, we found that Hostinger’s shared, cloud, and VPS plans offer many benefits to keep webmasters satisfied. A robust cPanel, over 100 1-click apps installations and access manager can all play a part in allowing you to simply and efficiently customize your website’s behind the scenes.
So far, we’ve been happy with Hostinger’s uptime!
