“Hostinger is an extremely affordable web hosting option. With a wide range of servers, their popular shared hosting is a hit with beginners and experts alike. “
James Wilson Hostinger Review: What is Hostinger?
If you’re looking for a budget web host that combines fantastic reliability, read our Hostinger review to find out more!
Starting its journey in 2004, Hostinger’s services now reach almost 1.5 million users, with an ICANN accreditation and thousands of new sign-ups every day.
I’ve been testing and monitoring Hostinger for the past 10 months and throughout this period it’s impressed me in terms of server response times and uptime.
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Hostinger Review: Packages & Pricing
Hostinger’s shared web hosting comes in 3 different pricing options. Unlike some web hosts, Hostinger includes free features across ALL of their pricing plans, including:
- Website builder
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 24/7/365 customer support
- Control panel
- 1-click installations (like WordPress)
- 30-day money-back guarantee
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I’m going to briefly mention Hostinger’s cheap web hosting plan (single) which is only 1.49p per month. This is some of the cheapest web hosting I’ve ever seen, costing just pocket change to get your website live (it’s actually the cheapest provider we’ve tested so far).
Single Plan (£1.49/Month)
The single plan includes 1 website, 1 email account, 100GB bandwidth, and 1X processing power and memory. Hostinger recently updated its shared hosting plans to increase SSD storage. The single plan now includes a generous 50GB SSD storage!
If you’re someone who is just starting out creating a website, or wanting to host a small blog, this is really the perfect solution. Often people just want to experiment before getting their teeth stuck in, so opt for free trials or free web hosting. The problem is, free usually comes with a price (adverts, banners, and branding).
Premium Plan (£2.59/Month)
The slightly more expensive premium plan is definitely worth the investment. What’s on offer is unlimited (literally) including the amount of website you can host, bandwidth, MySQL databases, email accounts and more.
You’ll get free domain registrations and free backups. Considering the price of this shared hosting plan, I’m amazed at what’s on offer!
Business Plan (£3.99/Month)
For those who are wanting to sell products online or run their own business, the business plan would be my recommended option.
The business plan comes with all the same features as the premium plan, but also 5x faster speeds, daily backups (instead of weekly backups), extra support, free SSL certificate, and more processing power and memory.
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Usability & Features
Hostinger, for me, is one of those companies that go out of their way to make things easier for us (their customers). Simple features and tools can make a hosting experience so much better, without much effort.
I can’t explain my frustration when I come across little things with web hosts that could easily be improved. I explored Hostinger’s control panel, account, dashboard, and website in general so I could report to you how easy it was to navigate and use.
Hostinger’s control panel demo is available to use for anyone. I’d recommend checking it out for yourself beforehand!
The dashboard shows all of your current hosting servers, as well as options to manage individual hosting or manage all of your hosting in one place. It also helpfully shows when the hosting is due to expire so you’re not going to be in for a surprise.
The control panel is really simple to use and understand. All of your services are clearly displayed at the top and are broken down into each section (hosting, domains, servers, etc.).
Hostinger’s control panel gives you an overview of the important information you might need. Within the hosting section, you’ll have easy access to manage your emails, websites, domains, and pretty much everything related to your hosting package.
Other useful features and usability tools include:
- Easy domain transfer from existing domains to your Hostinger account. The intuitive control panel makes the process simple. For a small cost, you can expedite your migration and Hostinger will fast track the process.
- Simple to keep track of all accounts in one place. Reduces the need for separate logins, allowing you to update your information, billing, domains, or even sign up to new hosting services.
- Control panel represents similar usability to cPanel (industry standard). However, Hostinger’s control panel makes things even easier with larger icons and better overall organisation.
- Easy access to customer support, as well as guides, live chat, and support tickets.
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Hostinger Review: Performance & Uptime
Hostinger provides the industry-standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. Although this is decent, when you compare it to the likes of SiteGround, it doesn’t seem all that great.
I decided not to let this alter my perception of Hostinger though, as so far, they’ve been really great. If Hostinger doesn’t manage to honour their uptime guarantee, customers are entitled to a 5% credit off their web hosting. I think that’s quite generous as these things can happen.
When I signed up for Hostinger, I also made sure that I recorded my site’s stats. I wanted to be able to provide you with an honest look at my site’s uptime, downtime (if any), and response times.
I think it’s really important to be able to take a real-life case and put it to the test. It’s all well and good saying that they provide guarantees, but is this actually the case? Well, yes it actually was!
Over a 6 month period, my site’s uptime with Hostinger was 99.99% which is great! I must admit, I was dubious given their guarantee is only 99.9%, but very impressed with the results.
During those 6 months, I only had 9 outages, totalling 10 minutes of downtime. 6 months equates to 4380 hours, so 10 minutes out of that is certainly nothing to be concerned about.
I also measured the response time of my test website to see how quickly it would load for any visitors I got. The average site should load in around 3 seconds to ensure that there is no loss in users and limits people abandoning your website.
I was very pleased to get an average 251ms response time with Hostinger. That’s one of the fastest response times I’ve ever got in all the web hosts I’ve tested! I really can’t find any reason to complain about Hostinger’s speed and performance.
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Money-back Guarantee
Not that I think you’d need it, but Hostinger do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Whether you’ve paid via PayPal, Visa, or Bitcoin, you can get your money back if you don’t enjoy your experience.
I always think it’s worth trying a web host out if they offer a money-back guarantee. What’s to lose? Be aware though, Hostinger doesn’t offer this guarantee on all of it’s products. Some products have terms and conditions which are specifically for them only.
Website Builder
Hostinger includes their free website builder in their hosting plans. It’s really easy to get started by following a few simple steps:
- Sign up to the hosting plan that suits your needs
- Select a designer-made website template (or create your own). There’s plenty of features including functions, forms, and drag and drop functionality.
- Customise your site to how you want it to me
- Publish your site live on the internet
I’m not saying Hostinger’s website builder will beat the likes of Wix and WordPress. However, when you consider that it comes free with your web hosting, you may as well make use of it!
Remember, if you choose the premium or business hosting plans, you’ll get a free domain too. Essentially, for the price of a sandwich, you’re getting your entire website built, hosted, and put live available for the world to see!
Support
If you haven’t yet signed up to Hostinger, you can contact them via post or by submitting a ticket. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to access their live chat unless you’ve signed up to a hosting plan.
Their general enquiry forms are really easy to use. Simply enter some details about yourself (name and email address) and fill out your message. That’s all their is to it. Hostinger will respond to you in a timely manner (within 24 hours).
Hostinger is one of those web hosts that really cares about its customers. They put support at the forefront of what they do and they make each experience personal. None of this copy/paste from their knowledgebase rubbish, they actually listen to you and answer your questions as a human being!
One of the unique aspects of Hostinger’s customer support is that it’s multilingual! They have offices dotted around the globe, so they can provide support in a wide variety of languages.
This is something that I find pretty cool! Usually, web hosts can provide support by telephoning a U.S.A. telephone number, or speaking to someone via live chat. This feature would actually make me consider choosing Hostinger even if I knew nothing else about them.
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I recommend Hostinger because…
Their customers think they’re great! It’s all well and good reviewing a company that I think is great, but when other customers also think the same, it bares even more weight.
Hostinger has a good presence on their social media platform, Twitter, too, which is personally a good sign. If they can be bothered to interact with their customers, it gives me the confidence that they know their customers are the bread and butter of what they do!
Scrolling through their Twitter ‘tweets and replies’ shows lots of interaction. Customers are happy with their responses and even get answers to their questions. This customer wanted to know how to get in touch with Hostinger as they couldn’t find a live chat option:
But let’s not forget:
- They’re super easy to use (their control panel is intuitive and has large icons)
- Hostinger guarantee a 99.9% uptime (but I experienced 99.99%)
- If you’ve installed WordPress, you’ll receive free automatic updates
- They have fast response times (251ms is incredible)
- They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee
- It’s easy to transfer domains
- Prices start from just 1.49p per month (put your change into a jar and you’ll collect this in no time at all)
Hostinger Review: Conclusion
As you can see, I’ve tried out a lot of different web hosts. They all offer something slightly different; some have more features, others are cheaper, but Hostinger feels quite well rounded to me.
I was a little dubious about Hostinger’s uptime guarantee of 99.9% as that is admittedly lower than some other hosts I’ve tested. However, I was really pleased to see that my tests over a 6 month period showed Hostinger to be extremely reliable and stable. 99.99% uptime guarantee is certainly not to be grumbled at.
Hostinger makes a real effort to engage with their customers. They do this from the get-go; their website is incredibly easy to use, as is their control panel once you’ve signed up. If you need to contact support, you’ll find their live chat service very efficient, knowledgeable, and quick.
If you’re looking for a fast and reliable web host, I would highly recommend Hostinger.
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