Hostinger Review

Founded in 2004 in Kaunas Lithuania as a personal project, Hostinger (“Hosting media” previously) became a major webhosting provider. The company owns a couple other subsidiaries offering webhosting services as well in different markets, 000Webhost (Worldwide), Hosting24 (Worldwide), Niagahoster (Indonesia), Weblink (Brazil).

Hostinger claims to have achieved a good customer base from 2004 until now, with 15K websites installed on average, 10K new user signups on a daily basis, and over more than 30 million customers worldwide.

BitNinja

For those who don’t know it, BitNinja is a server protection solution that provides a real-time protection against a wide range of threats that a web server might encounter. Hostinger uses this solution on all their servers in order to ensure maximum protection.

CloudFlare

Hostinger also relies on CloudFlare as a security and protection method against DDoS attacks. And while this service is great for protecting websites individually, it doesn’t help much when the whole server or IP are subject to an attack, in this case the IP is nullrouted and all the websites on that server/IP become inaccessible. This happened to our test site and when contacting the support we were told to just wait until the attack ends.

Hostinger offers 3 types of web hosting types, Shared Hosting, Cloud Hostinger, and Virtual Private Servers (VPS).

Shared Hosting.

Given the resources provided with this kind of hosting, this is what most users will need to start their websites with. It’s also the cheapest compared to Cloud and VPS and can basically get the job done and provide you with the necessary tools to start your online project.

Hostinger’s shared hosting is offered under three plans, Single, Premium, and Business which we will break down bellow:

• Single (Starting at 0.99$/Month): This is what you’ll need if you’re planing to create one website only, the plan allows to host one website only, offers 10Gb of storage, 100Gb of bandwidth, 1 database, and 1 email account. And while this plan is limited in terms of resources and features, it’s also cheap in price and is considered to be a good option for those of you who are limited in budget and looking to start a single and basic website with limited features.
• Premium (Starting at 2.89$/Month): Dedicated to small and medium websites, the Premium plan is advertised by Hostinger as the most popular. And you can see why. It’s considered to be the entry plan to hosting multiple websites (single plan doesn’t offer this possibility), and you also gain 10GB more (20Gb total) compared to Single plan.
• Business (Starting at 3.99$/Month): This plan comes with a great storage space of 100GB, unlimited bandwidth, the possibility to host an unlimited number of websites, and basically most of the features of Premium. The main advantages over Premium are the storage space, the daily backups (weekly on Premium), the inodes set at 600000 (400000 on Premium), and some servers values like the RAM, entry processes, and active processes.
  We found this plan to be the best when it comes to value for money, because you get pretty much everything you need to host your website comfortably without worrying about hitting the limits, especially when you’re just starting out. And it will also allow you to add multiple websites while using the 100GB storage which should be enough for most websites and blogs.

Cloud Hosting:

This is the kind of hosting that you’d go for when you’re ready to add more horse power to your plan. It’s mainly designed for medium and big websites and can support a higher number of visitors and load compared to Shared Hosting.

• Cloud Startup (Starting at 7.45$/Month):
• Cloud Professional (Starting at 14.95$/Month):
• Cloud Global (Starting at 37.00$/Month):

Virtual Private Servers (VPS):

Hostinger offers a good number of VPS plans to choose from. You’ll have the choice between both Linux and Windows VPS servers, only we found the last ones to be more expensive. So unless your project strictly requires a Windows VPS, we recommend you to go for a Linux based one.

One thing to keep in mind is that all VPS plans offered by Hostinger are unmanaged. This means that unless you have a background in web servers setup and administration, you’d save yourself a huge headache by staying away from this type of hosting.

What about the support? Can they assist with this?

Well yes and no. Meaning that you can contact the support asking or help with the VPS configuration, but you will mostly get referred to guides and tutorials on how to do it yourself.

Initial Price

Checking Hostinger’s website you’ll notice that the displayed prices are pretty competitive. I mean let’s be honest, 0.99$/month is pretty cheap for a paid hosting.

But then again, you need to take into account that just like other hosting provider, the prices displayed are for the longest subscription period available.

Let’s take the Single plan as an example. It is priced at 0.99$ a month right? This pricing is for a period of 48 months only. So if you were to pick a lower subscription period let’s say 12 months, the price jumps to 2.99$/month, so you get the idea.

Renewal Price

Given that the initial prices are discounted, it’s logical that when it comes to the renewal, you should expect a price increase, which normal because this is a common marketing strategy in the web hosting industry.

The question is, how much?

Well we did our pricing inspection and found out that in most plans, the renewal prices go up significantly.

To give you an idea, here is an example: The price tag on a Single plan for 48 months would be $0.99 with a total of $47.52, when the renewal comes, the price will be increased to $2.15/month, $103.2 for the whole period. Which results to a whooping 117% increase.

Note: Don’t forget that you can easily consult the pricing of any plan from Hostinger according to the available subscription periods and discover the renewal price as well via our Hosting Promotional price Calculator.

Hostinger is one of the few Hosting providers that chose to make their own control panel as opposed to using the famous cPanel. We took our time to check it out and test it and we can safely say that it delivers. The control panel, hPanel as they call it, is very easy to use and not cluttered at all, which is also convenient for beginners who will find all the functionalities they need without feeling overwhelmed by complicated options they might not need. Hostinger provider a demo for their control panel (hPanel) which you can check out here.

Just like many other major web hosting providers, Hostinger provides a 30 days money back option that allows you to request a refund in case you’re not satisfied with the service. Please note that this option applies on hosting services and other services only, we recommend checking their refund policy via this link.

24/7 Support

A quick look at Hostinger’s website is enough to notice the importance this provider dedicates to their support. They appear to be very proud of their support which they call “customer success”, and available to give assistance to their users 24/7.

But the question is, is it really a round-the-clock support?

From our experience. Not so much. And here is why:

We interacted with the support team at Hostinger on a couple of occasions in order to evaluate their service, and while we found them to be knowledgeable and able to offer convenient solutions, they tend to be slow to respond at times.

So, do we consider their support to be a real 24/7 service? Not really.

That’s why as a user, be prepared for some delayed responses especially during busy days, for example when there is a promotion/discount launch.

There is also the concern of how will this affect the usage of their hosting services especially in case you need assistance.

Well, unless you’re running into a a very urgent issue, then you should be fine, as you will eventually get a response with a solution to your problem.

Knowledge Base

The knowledge base is also a great tool that Hostinger uses in order to educate the user on how to use their services.

You can basically find a relevant answer by simply searching your question or browsing through the categories until you find what you’re looking for.

The only flaw that we noticed while using this section is that some answers were outdated and contained either details of images that were not relevant anymore.

Tutorials

In addition to the knowledge base, it was also great to see a tutorials section providing hundreds of tutorials that can be very useful for you either as a beginner or an advanced user.

Again, some of the tutorials that we checked were outdated and were no longer applicable. So that’s something to consider.

Does Hostinger offer a money back guarantee?

Just like many other major web hosting providers, Hostinger provides a 30 days money back option that allows you to request a refund in case you’re not satisfied with the service. Please note that this option applies on hosting services and other services only, we recommend checking their refund policy via this link.

Does Hostinger offer a free domain name?

Yes. When you subscribe to any annual plan (except Single plan), you benefit from one free domain registration. Just bear in mind that this domain is free for the first year only, and you will need to renew it afterwards.

Does Hostinger support WordPress?

Yes. WordPress is supported on Hostinger on all plans, and can be installed either manually of via their Auto Installer.

The pricing is also competitive but not as cheap as we we would’ve hoped, and definitely not as cheap as they advertise. At all!

So, do we recommend this web hosting provider?

Absolutely! Hostinger is great if you’re just starting out with your first website, or just looking to transition to a better provider, they’ve got a great support, an easy to use control panel, great features, and everything you need to build a successful website or blog.

Of course the prices tend to get higher during renewals, which you can deal with by going for cheaper plans.