Hostinger Review. One of the cheapest hosting providers

Established in Lithuania in the year 2004 Hostinger is a relatively modest company that is owned entirely by its staff. Their reach, however, is truly global, as evidenced by the fact that they host 29 million websites across 178 countries.

In the beginning, they provided web hosting at no cost to their customers. Although this is no longer the case, they continue to take pride in their reasonable prices and the fact that they combine powerful features with those designed for professional websites.

Their ability to help you "save smart" is actually one of their company's slogans. However, as we will discuss in this evaluation, it's possible that you're not getting as much value for your money as you believe you are. Let's dive in.

Hostinger Pricing

• Single — $5.99.
• Premium — $6.99.
• Business — $8.99.

Caution is advised when considering the "door-busting" offer made by some web hosts. You'll find that ridiculously low price displayed in large letters on the landing pages of their website as well as in advertisements. After the first year, the price that you pay with Hostinger may increase by a factor of ten.

Now, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the price of the renewal will change depending on how long your initial contract will be.

In the case of the Single plan, for example:

• Pay by the month only: $9.99.
• Pay for 12 months at $2.39, renewal is at $5.99 / month.
• Pay for 24 months at $1.99, renewal is at $4.99  / month.
• Pay for 48 months at $1.59, renewal is $3.99 / month.

This is how it appears when you have Premium:

• Pay by the month only: $11.99. Renews at $11.99 / month.
• Pay for 12 months at $2.39, renewal is at $6.99 / month.
• Pay for 24 months at $2.39, renewal is at $7.99  / month.
• Pay for 48 months at $2.39, renewal is $6.99 / month.

This is the final price you will pay for Business:

• Pay by the month only: $16.99. Renews at $16.99 / month.
• Pay for 12 months at $3.99, renewal is at $8.99 / month.
• Pay for 24 months at $3.99, renewal is at $9.99  / month.
• Pay for 48 months at $3.99, renewal is $8.99 / month.

You will see prices advertised for as little as $1.59 per month, so yes, you will see those prices. These prices are insanely low for a contract that lasts for forty-eight months.

What features and benefits are included with each Hostinger plan?

All of the plans will include freebies such as the following:

• 1-click app install.
• Manager of the cache.
• Weekly backups.
• DNS management.
• 24/7 Support via live chat.

On top of that, each plan includes a respectable assortment of tools and features that are user-friendly for developers. Users who are technically inclined may also appreciate the fact that they have control over Cloud Linux, client-side libraries such as Curl and Curl SSL, InnoDB for database management, and, most importantly, GIT integration for version control.

The Pros and Cons of Hostinger

Pros

• Easy to use. The Hostinger control panel is a breeze to use thanks to its well-organized and understandable menus and settings.
• Cheap first term. The hosting costs for the first few months are discounted significantly. Prices for renewals can skyrocket depending on how long your initial contract is, but if you buy for a longer period of time, for example 48 months, the prices are ridiculously low.
• Generous bandwidth. Even the lowest-tier plan's 100 GB is sufficient to accommodate thousands of new customers each month, and the higher-tier plans offer unlimited storage space.
• Developer-friendly features. Those individuals who prefer to maintain complete command over the underlying technology stack of their hosting environment will discover that Hostinger provides a wide variety of useful tools.
• Speed. When we measured its velocity, we obtained very satisfying results.

Cons

• Confusing pricing for renewal. That is the method by which they catch you! There is a correlation between the length of your initial contracts and the prices of the renewals. Be sure to read the fine print to avoid having your initial monthly rate multiplied by as much as ten times.
• Daily backups only in the expensive plan. You can certainly create manual copies of your website, but relying solely on weekly backups is a risky game to play because you could lose everything.
• Limit the number of sites. With the Single plan, you will only be able to host one website, while the Premium and Business plans will allow you to host up to one hundred.

When to use Hostinger hosting?

If you have a project that will only require a website for a limited time (for example, for the next four years), the combination of inexpensive prices for the first term, features, and generous bandwidth could make it a profitable venture.

However, there is a significant catch: there is a possibility that your website will experience some significant downtime. However, for things like hobbies or side projects, this might be sufficient.

When not to use Hostinger hosting?

If the performance of your website needs to be above average, I would look in a different direction. If you are looking to save money, you should know that the prices increase so dramatically after the first year that I would also recommend other options such as DreamHost or SiteGround, which are a little bit more expensive but deliver better results.

Features of Hostinger

• Ease of use. A sleek and user-friendly control panel, with menus that are thoughtfully organized. A few upsells here and there, but nothing that significantly detracts from the otherwise excellent user experience.
• Domain names. The two more expensive plans both come with a free domain name for the first year, but after that, you will be required to pay an annual fee of between $15 and $25.
• Emails. 1 user account is included in the Single Plan, while the number of accounts is unrestricted for all other tiers. It is important to keep an eye on this aspect of your marketing campaigns because the rate at which you can send emails is capped anywhere from 200 to 500 per hour, depending on the plan that you select.
• Databases. On the other hand, the Single Shared Hosting plan only allows for two databases, while all of the other packages include unlimited database space. It is not possible for individual databases to exceed 3 gigabytes in size.
• Applications. There is an automatic installer available for dozens of different applications. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or Zen Cart are some of the alternatives.
• Webspace limit. 50 GB, 100 GB, and 200 GB of storage space are all available. Each plan also includes a restriction on the maximum number of inodes, which is analogous to the total number of files you can host. 200,000 inodes are included in the Single plan, 400,000 are included in the Premium plan, and 600,000 are included in the Business plan.
• Monthly data transfer limit. The amount of bandwidth that you get is not measured in any way by Hostinger.
• FTP accounts and secure FTP. 1 account is included in the Single plan, but the number of accounts is limitless with the other two tiers. The top two packages also enable connections to be made using SSH.
• Server location. Your website can be hosted from one of seven different locations thanks to Hostinger. Choose any one of these countries: the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, the Netherlands, Singapore, Indonesia, or Lithuania.
• Security features. Free SSL certificates are included with hosting by default. You can add an additional layer of protection by utilizing the most recent version of PHP and turning on two-factor authentication, also known as 2FA. On the entry plan, SSH access is not a possibility.
• In addition, there is the Cloudflare nameserver protection, which is designed to protect data from being hacked, and Double RAID, which is intended to maintain several safe copies of your website in the event that it experiences an interruption.
• Server speed. When I tested it earlier this year, I found that its speed was very impressive.
• Uptime. In our tests for this year, Hostinger's uptime was satisfactory.
• Backups. You will receive 1 backup per week with the Single and Premium plans, and they will keep the backups for a total of 30 days. After upgrading to the Business plan, you will have daily backups of your data. You are able to download the backups, and you can even manually create backups whenever you need them (once a day max.).
• CDN. Because Hostinger already has pre-integration with Cloudflare, adding a content delivery network (CDN) is very simple. The most expensive plan includes free integration of a premium CDN service.
• Server features. You are free to work with the most recent releases of MySQL and PHP (versions 7.3, 7.4, and 8.0, respectively). In addition to that, there is a system for caching that is integrated. Version control (via Git) can be easily integrated into your Hostinger account thanks to the included system. The shared hosting plans offered by Hostinger do not provide support for additional programming languages like Perl or Ruby.
• Refunds and guarantees. Hostinger offers a refund policy that lasts for thirty days and guarantees that your website will be accessible 99.90% of the time, which may sound impressive but is not a particularly impressive uptime ratio (your site can be down almost 44 minutes every month).
• Assistance and support. Live chat is available around the clock for customers to use to get in touch with Hostinger. There were times when I was required to wait in order to obtain a response from the support agents.

Hostinger Backups

On all of our plans, we perform automatic backups on a weekly basis, and each backup is stored for a full month. In addition to that, if you are a Business user, you will receive daily backups of your data.

I would look into manual backup options because it's possible that making one save point every week won't be enough to give you complete peace of mind. You have one choice to generate the backup, and there are a few things that you can bring back to their previous state.

It is initially a little bit confusing, but you can quickly learn how to get to the important part, which is creating a ZIP file that can be downloaded locally on your computer.

Hostinger and WordPress Hosting

You can also build a substantial number of websites with Hostinger's dedicated WordPress hosting plans, which come with unlimited space and bandwidth.

Each of the plans comes with a platform that has been optimized specifically for use with WordPress. However, you can also install WordPress on a regular shared hosting plan if you choose to do so. It is very simple to accomplish from your administrative dashboard.

Scaling with Hostinger

If you require something more robust than a standard shared hosting plan, Hostinger offers Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting, and even a specialized hosting package designed specifically for running Minecraft servers. I'll just summarize the most important distinctions and list the cost of renewal for each option below.

Cloud Hosting

Dedicated IP addresses, integration with Cloudflare, and LiteSpeed Cache are included in every single one of the plans.

VPS Hosting

Every single one of the plans includes a dedicated IP address, complete root access, a network speed of 100 MB/s, and support for both IPV4 and IPV6. They utilize a technology known as OVZ virtualization to function.

Be aware that there are more advanced plans available, each of which comes with increased performance and storage space, just in case you end up needing them.

Final Hostinger Review Comments

So, should you sign up for Hostinger? To tell you the truth, it's difficult to recommend this hosting provider for more serious projects. It's true that you can save a ton of money on your first purchase, especially if you sign a deal binding you to the company for the next four years.

You do, in fact, get a very good user experience and a variety of useful features, such as a large amount of bandwidth and storage space. And even a decent rate of speed.

However, the downtime was about par for the course. Should you try to save a few bucks each month at the expense of the user experience that you provide for your visitors? Possibly, if you only host a casual website, such as a portfolio or a hobby site.

However, if you are looking to host a professional or e-commerce website, I would recommend looking into much better alternatives such as SiteGround, DreamHost, or A2 Hosting. If you require cloud hosting, Cloudways is also a good option.

And don't forget that those super low prices for the first term will go up on renewal; as a result, other inexpensive web hosting providers and low cost WordPress options compete very well with Hostinger when you consider the longer term!

It is my hope that this Hostinger review has assisted you in determining whether or not this web hosting provider is a good fit for you; however, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to answer them.

The overall quality of the user experience is very high, and they provide a respectable selection of features. Because of its historically poor uptime, it was previously difficult to recommend Hostinger for serious projects. However, uptime has significantly improved over the course of the past year, and those searching for feature-rich hosting at an affordable price may find Hostinger to be an alluring option.

FAQ

How can Hostinger offer such reasonable prices?

You are most likely looking at the plan that costs $1.39 per month and has a contract length of 48 months. It continues to renew at the very affordable price of $2.99 per month (for another 48-month contract). It goes up to $9.99 per month if you pay for it on a monthly basis.

What do they mean by “unlimited”?

There is always a sneaky asterisk next to the "unlimited" claim made by every hosting provider. In theory, you are permitted by Hostinger to have an unlimited number of websites as well as bandwidth; however, the number of files that you are able to host is still capped. These are known as inodes, and depending on the plan you choose, you will receive anywhere from 200,000 to 600,000.

How can I pay for a Hostinger plan?

You can pretty much interpret this however you want. There is support for PayPal, in addition to major credit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and others... In addition to that, they accept cryptocurrency payments in the form of Bitcoin and Ethereum, amongst others.

Is it possible to close my account?

Yes, and there is no effort required. Simply navigate to your dashboard and look for the "Other" section to locate the "Deactivate" button.

Will I get a refund?

Yes, if it's still within the first 30 days of your membership. The 30-day money-back guarantee is valid, unless you paid with a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin. In that case, the guarantee does not apply.

If you decide to cancel after the initial 30-day period, you will not receive a refund of any kind.