A very reasonably priced web server, Hostinger offers packages for every kind of website, from basic blogs to e-commerce sites. With a 99.9% uptime guarantee, their global data centers keep your website operational at nearly all times, and their secure storage safeguards your personal information. Additionally, you may test it without risk, thanks to their 30-day money-back guarantee. Hostinger is a fantastic choice for most websites since it is dependable and safe despite its storage not being the quickest.
Let us start this hostinger review by understanding the pros and cons of Hostinger:
Table of Contents
Hostinger Pros & Cons
Pros
- Extremely Cheap: Hostinger is regarded as one of the most affordable web hosting platforms. It is great for beginner or mid-level websites.
- Near-Continuous Uptime: They promise a 99.9% uptime rate, which implies that your website will be accessible virtually at all times.
- 24/7 Live Chat Support: Take advantage of their round-the-clock live chat support to get assistance anytime.
- Fairly structured plans: Hostinger has fairly structured plans as per the features they offer. Features like the user-friendly hPanel, one-click WordPress installation and free backups can be great for beginners.
- Free Online Builder: With their free website builder, which is a part of every plan, you may easily design your website for free.
- Free SSL & Domain (Premium Plans): With higher-tier services, receive a free domain name and an SSL certificate for enhanced professionalism and security.
- No hidden charges: Hostinger does not upsell or add any hidden charges at the time of checkout.
Cons
- Limited Email Accounts: Basic plans provide only one business email account, which may not be sufficient for teams.
- Emphasis on Novices: As their main target market is novices, they do not offer complex features such as dedicated servers.
- LiteSpeed PlugIn: Their servers are on the LiteSpeed plugin by default, so WP Rocket would conflict with it. Users must turn on the LiteSpeed plugin from the hPanel for maximum performance.
- Live Chat Only assistance: Although they provide live chat assistance around the clock, phone support is not available.
Performance
Checking the performance of the hosting platform is more like checking a car’s engine. It is important to ensure that it runs smoothly at all times.
This is what we observed regarding Hostinger’s performance. Even after ten weeks of testing, we discovered that Hostinger’s most basic shared hosting plan is dependable and has 100% uptime. The average response time of 382 ms was a little slow, but the page load time of 878 ms was excellent, ranking it in the top 25% of providers. Although performance did somewhat decline during peak demand, which is typical for shared hosting, the plan also performed well throughout stress testing. Overall, Hostinger operates better than other budget hosts, especially considering the cheap pricing point. Remember that these are the results for the most basic plan and that other hosting solutions may perform differently.
Real User Opinion
Web hosting management was difficult in the past, particularly for beginners. These days, businesses are improving the usability of their control panels. This section will examine Hostinger’s control panel, hPanel, to determine its level of beginner-friendliness.
To put it briefly, the UI of Hostinger is excellent. It contains features that are simple to locate, has an intuitive control panel, and a straightforward setup procedure. There are instructions included for even the sophisticated settings, and a search option is available to locate whatever you need. Additionally, they offer solutions that let you quickly install well-known applications! Despite your lack of experience with web hosting, all of this makes administering your website a snap.
Hostinger is best for
- Moderately trafficked websites seeking reasonably priced web hosting without compromising performance.
- Global websites with traffic coming from all directions; Hostinger has data centers all around the world.
- Beginners who are looking for a simple hPanel interface to manage their hosting.
- Customers who are looking for fair plans with sufficient resources and features and dependable 99.9% uptime.
- There are free bonuses with every plan.
- Customers who desire yearly savings through continuous promotions.
Important Considerations When Using Hostinger:
- Opt for the LiteSpeed caching plugin for optimal website performance on Hostinger servers. This plugin ensures the best efficiency since Hostinger servers are optimized for LiteSpeed.
- Use live chat support, as phone assistance isn’t accessible for website proprietors.
- While the premium plan suffices, upgrading to a business plan provides added power and performance.
Performance Testing
On average, a website must load within 4 seconds. We tested Hostinger on four different parameters to see if it could ace the speed test. These were: Speed Test, Server Response Time Test, Uptime Test, and Stress Test
Speed Test
- According to GTMetrix reports, Hostinger’s premium plan scores highly in speed tests, averaging an A when caching is enabled and a B when it isn’t.
- Turning on the LiteSpeed plugin or caching greatly impacted the speed scores. With caching on, the premium plan loads in at least 1.2 seconds.
- The loading speed is slower in locations that were from the server’s data centre.
- The premium plan, however, has enough resources, like RAM and bandwidth, which are better than other entry plans. Even when caching is off, it doesn’t slow down as much.
- The speed score ranged from 68% to 99% for the premium plan.
Server Response Time [TTFB] Test
When we checked the server response time, it offered a 99.998% uptime, standing true to its claims. We just experienced a downtime of one day in the last 11 months.
Stress Load Test
Stress load test is the performance test of a website in cases of a sudden traffic spike. This is what we found:
During a 5-minute load test, Hostinger’s servers received 32,346 requests, with the highest load happening in the 3rd minute. Despite this heavy traffic, Hostinger performed exceptionally well. The average response time was an impressive 2.30 seconds, and no errors occurred. Such heavy loads can typically cause servers to crash and show a “503 Service Unavailable” error, but Hostinger’s servers remained stable throughout the test. This demonstrates their efficiency, reassuring us that Hostinger can handle sudden spikes in traffic without any issues.
Core Web Vitals Test:
Factors like loading speed, server response time, and other elements play a crucial role in determining your core web vital metrics. These metrics are also vital for Google’s ranking algorithm, as they provide insights into the user experience of your website pages. Here is what we observed
If the website pages are static, then Hostinger can excel in core web vitals. But if your website is dynamic and has numerous scripts loading, Hostinger’s basic plans might not deliver the same level of performance.
Security features in Hostinger
Here are some crucial security features of Hostinger:
- All of your Hostinger sites come with free SSL installed automatically for life.
- DDoS protection defends against intrusions and malicious access.
- Themes & Plugins vulnerability detection is integrated.
- The Cloudflare DNS protection firewall improves nameserver security.
- Constant monitoring is provided via a malware scanner.
- Team access may be managed with Secure Access Manager.
- A further bonus is domain WHOIS protection.
- It is possible to use 2FA or two-factor authentication.
- Password-protected directories and IP Blocking are supported features.
Types of Hostinger services
Here are the different hosting services by Hostinger:
Shared Hosting
With shared hosting, your website shares resources with other websites hosted on the same server, making it an affordable alternative. For new users or websites with mild to moderate traffic, it’s a great option. Three shared plans are available from Hostinger: Cloud Startup, Business, and Premium. The $2.49 monthly Premium package offers free SSL and a simple WordPress setup. At $2.99 a month, the Business plan is a little more costly but comes with extras like daily backups, 100 email accounts, and a free domain. The ideal option for online businesses using WooCommerce is the top-tier Cloud Startup plan, which starts at $8.99 monthly.
VPS Hosting
When you go from shared hosting to VPS hosting, you get your dedicated portion of the server with more resources, which results in better performance. VPS plans from Hostinger range in price from $5.99 (discounted for extended subscriptions) to $49.99 per month. Since these plans are unmanaged, you’ll be responsible for performing server maintenance independently, which is great for seasoned users but may be difficult for novices. Furthermore, the 100Mbps connection speed may hinder the functionality of websites with a lot of traffic.
Cloud VPS
Like VPS but with simpler maintenance, Hostinger’s cloud hosting provides dedicated resources (CPU, RAM) for better performance. Every subscription has a dedicated IP address, daily backups, free SSL, and unlimited bandwidth. With 200GB of storage and three CPU cores, they start at $8.99 a month (less for longer periods), and for bigger e-commerce enterprises, they go up to $29.99 per month for 300GB of storage and six CPU cores.
Hostinger customer service
The customer service offered by Hostinger is crucial since low-cost hosting companies frequently cut corners in this department. Since we didn’t use cloud computing and instead used a shared plan, we looked at how timely their non-premium plan assistance is. Hostinger provides email and live chat help around the clock in addition to a knowledge library.
Evaluating Hostinger’s Costs
Hostinger hosting plans stand out for offering the cheapest in the market, and they truly deliver on this promise. Also, there are no attempts to upsell additional add-ons that would inflate your hostinger pricing, ensuring transparency with no hidden charges.
Their plans are tailored to accommodate varying needs based on the number of sites and storage requirements. Additionally, to enhance customer satisfaction, many plans offer complimentary features such as a free domain, backup, CDN, SSL, migration, and other perks.
Here’s the table of different Hostinger hosting plans:
Factors | Premium | Business | Cloud Startup |
---|---|---|---|
Cost (4 Years) | $2.69/mo (₹134.10/mo) | $3.59/mo (₹224.10/mo) | $8.99/mo (₹629/mo) |
Website | 100 | 100 | 300 |
Storage | 100 GB SSD | 200 GB NVMe | 200 GB NVMe |
Does Hostinger have a website builder?
Sure, Hostinger provides a builder for websites! If you’re not experienced in website creation and find WordPress complicated, this is a decent choice. You may select from some beautiful pre-made templates, and drag-and-drop makes adding content like images and videos simple. Everything may be personalized with your own words and images.
The greatest part is that Hostinger’s website builder includes free hosting, domain names, email addresses, and even capabilities for online stores, so you have everything you need to get going. Furthermore, it’s cheap, costing just $2.49 monthly (discounted rate).
However, since it’s a simple tool, it might not be strong enough for websites with complicated requirements or huge organizations. If your website becomes popular, there is also no way to upgrade for more features. However, in general, it’s an excellent option for building small commercial or personal websites.