Hostinger Review: The Best Cheap Web Hosting? [2024]

Hostinger is an OG web hosting platform that has been around since the mid-2000s – 2004 to be exact.

Back then, their services were completely free and they had no advertisements (they also went by a different name). Now, they’re one of the top-rated web hosts for building a website at the global level and serve damn near 30 million users across 178 countries (and rising)!

Their growth was chiefly because of Hostinger’s open status policy (their server is always available to public eyes) and affiliation with the almighty WordPress. But they’ve done a stellar job of leading the charge all on their own.

This top to bottom Hostinger review highlights how and why Hostinger became so badass and why you should consider hosting (and maybe building) your next website on their platform.

Already hip to Hostinger and looking for more? After reading this review, check out our list of other best web hosting services you might be interested in.

Overview

Specs at a Glance

• Avg Measured Site Loading Time: 554 ms
• LiteSpeed Cache
• 99.93% Uptime guarantee
• Hosting Plans/Types: WordPress, Cloud, Shared, VPS
• Domains: 100
• Number of Sites: 100
• Email Accounts: 100
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• Storage: 100 GB SSD RAM
• SSL: Free
• Money-Back Guarantee: 30 Days
• WordPress: One-Click Install and Hosting
• Price for Cheapest Plan (One Year): $1.39/month
• Free domain for 1 year
• Free Cloudflare integration
• Chat support 24/7/365

A trained eye can measure the weight of all the specs we just mentioned. If you know nothing or very little about web hosting platforms, here’s the deal:

Hostinger is a relatively fast web host with stellar performance, encompassing features, a gorgeous dashboard, and everything at the ready you’d want when managing a website. This makes it a sweet choice for both beginners and adepts alike.

But the main selling point for Hostinger is the price at which all the treasure gets bestowed. To be frank, it’s a straight-up steal.

Real supply for real demand coupled with being one of the most affordable web hosting services of such a high caliber makes Hostinger shine.

But we should mention that like most things, it’s better to buy in bulk. You’ll get the most out of Hostinger’s charitable prices if you commit to a long-term plan.

Moreover, Hostinger has proved its value to users all across the globe – the US, Russia, China, Israel, Brazil, India, Franc, et cetera, et cetera. As their worldwide reach continues to develop, so too will the hardware and utility of this already solid web hosting platform.

How well-reviewed is Hostinger? What does the community have to say?

We’re not the only Hostinger supporters on the block. The Hostinger club has come into large success over the past 5 years only because of what it provides to the good people of the world.

It’s easy to support something that actually works for you – and works hard, too.

We looked at about 15 popular websites for hosting advice and site-building, as well as some top-ranking forums for PC software.

From the looks of it, most customers give Hostinger an overall rating of 4.2 – 5 stars. So we’d bet their overall customer review average falls somewhere between that range.

What we love particularly about Hostinger and their team is that whenever we did come across a shitty review (usually due to an unfortunate anomaly in the system) Hostinger always reached out in a constructive way to make things right.

It sucks when things just happen and you’ve got to bear the burden of loss. In such cases, rectification goes a long way.

Top Features

Loads Super Fast

It’s just priceless when you can get cheap hosting at your fingertips without having to compromise on speed. And let’s be real – in this day and age, speed is everything.

Without a doubt, poor hosting speed is a top (if not the highest) cause of small business failure. Our generation doesn’t like to wait!

Hostinger’s speed blew our socks off after we put it to the test – more details on that later.

Top website hosting platforms like Hostinger operate at the international level. Typically, your location will dictate the behavior of your software and how well or poorly it’ll operate. 

That’s because each smaller server (a.k.a. your computer) works in tandem with a much larger server somewhere nearby. These larger servers are called datacenters, and the closer they are to you, the faster data can travel between you and them.

Hostinger has a total of 8 datacenters around the world in the USA, Lithuania, UK, Netherlands, Indonesia, Brazil, and Singapore.

Each and every one of their datacenters reported high speeds, even for locations pretty far away. So no matter where your users are located your website will still operate at breakneck speeds for them.

99.93% Uptime Guarantee

In case you don’t know, uptime is essentially the amount of time your website is “up” and available for access. It’s obviously an obligation to have a site that’s up and running if your business is to be any success.

Therefore, any web hosting platform needs to have a nearly infallible uptime to be worth your time at all.

As security for this operational hazard, Hostinger offers an uptime guarantee for even its most basic package.

With the guarantee, if your site’s downtime dips below 99.93% due to Hostinger’s faults, just contact them to get 5% of your monthly fee credited back to you.

No one wants to lose customers on account of them not even being able to make it on the site, but at least with the guarantee, you’ll be paid for the potential of that kind of situation.

SSL Certificate Available

An SSL, or a Secure Sockets Layer, is a security layer in the data transport thread of your website that protects against information theft and forgery.

In other words, an SSL protects the data of customers in connection with your site(s), like personal credit card information or the emails of those signed up to your newsletter.

Without an SSL your site is less secure and can be compromised. It’s also a Google ranking factor. If you have a website, you need to get an SSL Certificate.

Fortunately, Hostinger offers a free SSL for all of its already cheap website hosting plans!

Sweet right? That way, you get to do your boss thing free of hacker-stress with encryption (where it matters) from the jump!

Speed/Uptime

Our Results

We tested Hostinger’s load speed and uptime for ourselves, as seen above. 

The uptime results came back at 99.93%. That’s not a fantastic uptime, but it’s not bad either. It’s good enough to beat the guarantee we mentioned earlier, so nothing to fuss about.

The speed came back with an average of 554 ms of load time per page. That means a site using Hostinger’s platform will load pretty damn fast.

FYI: Google considers a “fast website” as one that loads completely in under 3 seconds. Realistically speaking, a great site needs to be obnoxiously lightning speed fast, which would be as close to 0 ms as possible! That being said, so long as you’re above 3 seconds, Google will still think you’re fast.

What makes Hostinger Fast?

The biggest reason for this significant speed boost is the utility of LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress, or, LSPCP. It’s a digital server with a collection of operation features built specifically to accelerate WordPress.

This cache can be managed via the “Cache Manager”, and here’s the cool part – you can make your site even faster by enabling the automatic cache. 

In laymen’s terms, this will store the static copies of your pages so you can accelerate the rendering process each time someone visits said page on your site. A super clutch too.

It’s also compatible with most popular plugins like WooCommerce and Yoast SEO, so no worries on that end. 

Lastly, the extra layer of firewall security protects against latency, which we’ll get into later. The reliably high speeds are definitely a strong point that make Hostinger one of the best cheap hosting websites available.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Hostinger operates like a charm in conjunction with WordPress, hence the WordPress-specific speed cache. That’s a great thought since WordPress is hands down the best website builder on the market.

New to the game and feeling some WordPress FOMO? No problem. Check out our full-bodied tutorial on how to use WordPress.

Hostinger’s Transparency

One other thing that sets Hostinger apart from the bunch is its transparency; one key example is that they offer the performance results of its servers to the public.

So you can always check the uptime performance within the past week, month, or 24 hours of any particular server. You can also check average response times and service disruptions or outages by country. That’s fly.

Ease of Use

Streamline Interface

To get started with Hostinger free, or any of the Hostinger plans, the signup process is clear and simple. Just choose your package, input your name, email address, and password, and you’re good to go.

Once you’ve got the ball rolling, you’ll slip onto an incredibly user-friendly interface like no other you’ve used before. That’s because Hostinger has actually had the balls to do away with the MVP cPanel everyone’s accustomed to for their own hPanel.

And although the beloved cPanel is truly missed, their home-designed hPanel puts the rubber to the road – no smoke.

The dashboard is clean, open, and intuitive. There are large icons that are all divided into simple categories that just make sense. It’s far less convoluted than traditional cPanel-sites, so you won’t waste your time sifting through options you’ll never use.

In our opinion, this reinvented super streamline interface makes Hostinger perfect for beginners especially, and a hit for pros too.

Managing your site from the hPanel dashboard is also a breeze. Effortlessly set up email accounts, track logins, perform manual backups, update billing information, manage domains… everything!

Looking to get a broader perspective on the two panels side by side? Hostinger has a cool hPanel vs cPanel post that compares the two interfaces and highlights the insights into Hostinger’s alternative choice.

Free Domain Name

When you purchase the Shared Hosting Package or greater package for at least 1 year, Hostinger also offers a free domain name for your site!

The domain is free for the first year only (it renews at a regular rate of $9.99 afterward), but that’s still an awesome imperative and rarely seen perk from a web hosting platform.

In the case you do end up getting a domain name from another service, connecting it is easy. Just paste the selected domain name under your “nameservers” information on your site’s dashboard.

Simple WordPress Install

Like we’ve said, WordPress is awesome. Hostinger makes it fudge-brownie-easy to install WordPress from the dashboard of your website hosting.

Actually, you can install a bunch of stuff without breaking a sweat (or ventricle) using Hostinger’s Auto-Installer Tool. That\'s right. With this tool you punch in a few website details, choose a CMS (Content Management System) and click install.

It only takes a few seconds and you’re ready to step. Absolutely no complaints here.

Ecommerce & Security

If you wanna get paid online, you’ll need some poppin’ e-commerce tools to build that bridge. At the Hostinger store, you can find a bunch of dope tools like OpenCart, ZenCart, and Simple Invoices.

Hostinger has even dedicated code for WooCommerce and PrestaShop hosting. Both are extremely popular CMS plugins with large bandwidths, intuitive admin areas, and flexible customization. Use them to seamlessly set up an online shop on your website.

In matters of security, the first stack in the bank comes in the form of the free SSL Certificate that we went over early on in this article.

Depending on your plan, you also have access to weekly or daily backups which can be performed manually. Plus, it’s possible to set up a 2FA, or 2-factor authentication as an extra security measure.

Hostinger themselves have pretty tight internal security with servers being monitored 24/7 and equipped with essential security modules like PHP open_basedir.

They also have strong DDoS protection. Incoming traffic is analyzed and firewalled accordingly with Wanguard, while Imunify360 and Bitninja add yet additional firewall security.

Honestly, most of the heavy security lifting gets done for you on the back end.

Even with all of that, the star of the show is probably the free Cloudflare DNS firewall install you get when you sign up for a year. Cloudflare hoards a host of web security software – we’re talkin’ protection out the Wazoo. You’ll never have to worry about encryption again with a lineup like this. 

Other Notable Features

• HTTP/2 – It’s the figurative successor to HTTP1, except it’s more secure and much faster.
• Git Support – Git is an open-source version control system. It was created so that developers could work on projects together in a smooth way, no matter the size, structure, or circumstance. 

You’ll likely never personally need to utilize Git support, but if you happen to hire a team of developers to build something for your site, they’ll surely appreciate the Git!

No wonder a bunch of successful big companies like Google, Microsoft, and Netflix use Git!

• Optional Minecraft Servers – Minecraft servers were created specifically for gamers (good news gamers!) and game developers. There are 5 plans available for Minecraft hosting. 

With Hostinger’s Minecraft Hosting you can install your own mods, enable in-game advertisements, and establish game rules. 

Cons

No Daily Backup

This one comes with heavy eyes. Daily backups are a secure thought to have when you’ve got a website, especially if you’re used to the cushion already from other web hosting platforms.

Well, to be fair, daily backups are available for the Shared Business Hosting plan only, which is the most expensive plan they offer and likely not everyone’s first choice when choosing a plan.

And to be fair, they do have Weekly backups included in Premium and Single shared plans; so you\'re not totally uncovered, just a bit more ass-out than we\'d prefer.

No Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting means your server gets placed on a site all its own, allowing it to leverage the full power of the server during its operations. If you’re expecting large swaths of traffic to visit your site, dedicated hosting is especially important. Hostinger doesn’t offer it, unfortunately.

Sneaky Clauses

There are a few sneaky clauses inHostinger’s contract that we were unhappy with. Namely, users only have 4 days to receive a refund for a new domain name registration (that includes the processing time).

Also, domain name renewals and privacy protection are non-refundable, which isn’t clear-as-day clear to users on the platform.

Plans & Pricing

Hostinger has quite the arsenal of specialized hosting avenues – Cloud hosting, WooCommerce hosting, cPanel hosting, WordPress hosting, and more.

For the sake of simplicity and generality, we’ll only be covering the default Shared Hosting plans offered by Hostinger.

Also, as briefly mentioned before, you’ll definitely want to commit to a long-term plan (the longer the better… think “4-year plan” if you can) to make the most out of Hostinger’s plans.

Not only will you save a good buck that way, some perks like free domain name access and free SSL access only come by going with the 48-month plan!

It’s far from the norm for a site hosting platform to ask customers to commit to such a long-term deal, but the investment is well worth it.

Choosing to go with the yearly or bi-yearly plans aren’t bad options either, in case you’re apprehensive to commit full force. Prices for those plans are more in line with the industry standard.

Free

There is free website hosting on Hostinger via their partner site 000webhost.com, but it’s only good for getting a general idea of what the Hostinger platform is like. It’s definitely not something we’d recommend for anyone who’s serious about building and maintaining a lucrative website.

Hostinger free only allows for 300 monthly visitors and a shoddy 300MB HDD storage limit… And the bandwidth caps at a mere 3GB. A good aperitif, but nothing more.

Single Shared Hosting

The Single Shared Hosting plan is where Hostinger starts to strut its stuff. Comes with 30 GB SSD storage, free SSL, one email account, and 100 gigs on the bandwidth.

This is solid enough for sites that get up to 10K monthly visitors.

With the all-in 4-year discount, you’ll save a whopping 85% on the total price, bringing the total to just $1.39 per month!  After the first 4 years, the plan will renew at $2.99 per month.

We feel this plan is ideal for beginners who want to build a low-cost website that packs a punch and offers enough perks for gratification.

Premium Shared Hosting

We’d rank the Premium Shared Hosting plan as the best overall deal amongst the shared hosting packages. This choice is definitely the best fit for most folks looking to host a personal website.

At just $2.59 a month you get access to 100 websites, 100 GB SSD storage, free SSL and domain name, up to 100 domain-based email accounts, ready-to-use WordPress installations, and more.

At this level is where the unlimited features kick in, namely, unlimited databases, cronjobs, FTP accounts, and of course, bandwidth!

It renews at $5.99 after the 4 years are up. Truly a kickass offering, and probably the best cheap web hosting plan you’ll find anywhere.

Business Shared Hosting

The Business Shared Hosting plan drops in at $3.99 a month and is ideal for small business owners. It has all the features as the Premium Shared plan, with the addition of +100 GB of SSD storage, and a free CDN.

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is an awesome tool to have when dealing with high levels of international traffic like a small business owner probably would. 

Basically, it caches content and minimizes images for site visitors from far geographic locations, which tremendously reduces load time. It’s also an anti-spam application. 

Lastly, aside from the bread and butter stuff, the most valuable addition to this package are the daily backups. Hostinger protects sites built on this plan with daily backups which they keep for 7 days, in case shit hits the fan and you need to recover lost information.

The business plan renews at $8.99 a month after your 4 years are up and is good for sites with up to 100k monthly visitors.

Payment Options for Hostinger

As expected, payments can be made on Hostinger using most commonplace credit cards, Paypal, and Google pay.

What may be perhaps unexpected is that Hostinger also allows you to pay using cryptocurrency! So if for whatever reason you want to remain anonymous and leave no paper trail in your payment history, Hostinger has recognized your desires.

Oh, and absolutely all plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee (minus new domain registration fees), so if you’re unsatisfied let them know and get a full refund. Sweet.

Support

Support is a huge deal when managing any operation and especially one where the ball always has to remain rolling. If your site goes down for some reason or is facing a technical dilemma, you may need help from support ASAP. A good support team saves you time, and thus, money.

Hostinger trains their support team a breath shy of convention—that is, there is no tier system. In other words, every member of support is trained to be able to answer every single question without having to transfer a question to a higher or lower tier.

This results in much faster problem solving and saves loads of time. With everyone potentialized to solve your problems beforehand, theoretically, you’ll never have to be put on hold.

Chat / Live Chat Support

We put Hostinger’s customer support team under the fire to see if they could handle some of our awkward and far-from-average-joe questions.

Our findings? – we were quite impressed. Not only were the representatives all super friendly (playful almost), but they responded almost always within 1 minute of our queries. 

And they answered our questions around potential (even if not so common) web hosting issues to a degree more than satisfactory. Typically, they’d include a corresponding link to an article highlighting the solution/process in further detail. Nice.

The support is easy to reach too – available 24/7/365 and contactable by way of the purple button which lives at the bottom-right of Hostinger’s home screen.

A live chat support feature is also available on the platform which we were happy to see. You can only access live chat support if you’re signed into a Hostinger account, however, which isn\'t so helpful if you\'ve got pre-signup questions (we\'re here to help out with those in this post!!).

If you don\'t have an account yet, you can hit them up at support *at* hostinger.com and they\'ll get back to you with answers within a day or so.

Also, Hostinger support is multilingual, so if you or anyone in your team thinks and learns better in another language it won’t be a problem. 

Database Support

Aside from the chat support and live support, Hostinger has a tremendous depository of helpful articles in their knowledge database. Staying true to the hPanel’s simplicity, common topics are separated into categories, super easy to navigate and follow along with.

Most of the articles are short and comprehensive (because things are just easy that way). There are guides and manuals, general information, and answers to common questions in the database.

They even offer in-depth tutorials for some of the more complicated processes like search engine optimization and how to build a website. The tutorials usually have images and sometimes videos too.

Hostinger Review: The Final Word

All in all, Hostinger is one of our most highly recommended web hosting platforms on the market right now. It’s a well-performed, powerful, and exceptionally cheap hosting service that has something to offer for everyone, no matter what their entry-level is.

The interface is easy-to-use with a large display and 1-click auto-installs, customer support is phenomenal, and the speed is top brass.

While it isn’t as feature-packed as some other hosting services out there, it’s really got all you need to comfortably host a website (and then some)!

Definitely worth your time and consideration.

If you do get started with Hostinger, we’d suggest going for one of the long-term premium (“personal website”) hosting plans they have available.

And if you use our code CREATEAPRO you\'ll be able to snag an extra 10% off anything you buy (use our \”Try it Now\” button below and it\'ll automatically get applied at checkout).

So that’s all to the Hostinger review folks! If you’ve now, or had already decided on a web hosting platform and want to take the next step in building your site, check out our post on how to design a website!