Hostinger Review: Is Hostinger Good For You?

In the year 2004, the industry of web hosting has been introduced to a new name – Hostinger. This Lithuania based company was started as “Hosting Media” and has been successful ever since. On top of that, the company has always remained independent.

You will be surprised to know that in addition to Hostinger they also run two more hosting brands with the names: 000webhost & Hosting24.

000webhost is an ad-free free hosting service while Hosting24 is a cPanel web hosting. Talking about the customer base, jointly they have over 29 million users in 178 countries.

When I visited their site for the first time and scrolled down to the hosting plans, I got surprised to see how affordable their hosting service is. All their hosting plans are exceptionally affordable in comparison to some of the leading names in the industry. And that without compromising on performance and features.

Perhaps, this is the major reason, Hostinger has quickly become the most popular hosting service among the newbies, startups and small businesses.

In this post, I will be reviewing their pricing, customer support, control panel, and many other services. So, if you’re interested in Hostinger and want to know more about them before making the final decision, you must go through this review.

Let’s begin with the pricing first.

The very first thing that impresses me is that they have a solid lineup of services. You can start with their shared hosting service and later according to your requirements and budget can go for robust hosting services such as VPS hosting and Cloud Hosting anytime.

In short, at Hostinger, no matter what your hosting requirements are, you don’t need to look outside, you will find everything under the same roof. Let’s take a look at their different hosting services one by one.

Shared Hosting Service

It is one of the most popular hosting options for those who are entering into the internet world for the first time. This option is not only affordable but also easy to manage. When I take a look at hosting plans offered by Hostinger under their shared hosting service, I find them not just economical but feature-rich as well. For example, if I talk about their entry-level Single Shared hosting plan, it offers you 10 GB of disk space and 100GB of bandwidth at the price of $0.80.

Here, I would like to mention that even with the most popular hosting companies such as Bluehost ($2.95), SiteGround ($3.95/mo), etc. you won’t get shared hosting service at such an affordable price.

Talking about their other shared hosting plans: Premium and Business, they are not going to break your bank as well.

Premium Shared Hosting plan charges monthly bill of $3.49 and offers you 2X processing power, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited disk space. Moreover, you can host an unlimited number of websites and email accounts.

People who want to see their website fully maximized can go Business Shared Hosting plan with which you get all the benefits from premium plan along with some additional features such as free SSL certificate, daily backups, and 4X processing power & memory. And the cost that you need to pay every month for this plan is $7.95.

Here it is worth mentioning that unlike most hosting providers, Hostinger uses SSD (Solid State Drive) even in their shared hosting servers. In comparison to traditional HDD drives, these drives are 3 times better in terms of data writing and reading.

VPS Service

If you want to sign up for a hosting service that gives you a set amount of resources which you don’t share with anyone, Hostinger VPS service can be a good choice for you.

I have been using their VPS service for quite some time and I must confess that I never had any issue on performance part. The provider offers a reasonable variety of VPS plans to choose from. The best part is that each plan comes with full root access, SSD disk drives, IPv6 Support and 100 MB/S Network.

 

The basic VPS plan starts at $4.99 for a month and offers 1 GB Memory, 2GB burst RAM, 2.4 GHz CPU power and 20 GB storage. While the most premium VPS plan will cost you $65.56 for a month and you will be offered 8GB memory, 16GB burst RAM, 14.4 GHz CPU Power and 160 GB storage.

With VPS service, you get a plenty of features and accessibilities that are not carried out by shared hosting plans. For instance, you get the liberty to choose from a wide range of the operating system. At Hostinger, you can choose from six widely used operating system. These are Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Open Suse, Debian, and Fedora.

All these templates are Linux-based and can be simply installed with a few mouse clicks. However, you must have advanced technical skills to set up a virtual server and take its advantage fully.

 

Cloud Hosting

Nowadays, this hosting type has grown in popularity and that for good reasons. Hostinger cloud hosting offers you the power of cloud computing along with the simplicity of shared hosting. Hostinger offers 3 plans under the cloud hosting: Startup, Professional, and Enterprise.

 

The entry-level plan (Startup) comes with 3 GB RAM, 40 GB disk space and 2 CPU cores at the price of $12.98/mo. Speaking of the Professional plan that costs $24.95 for a month offers you 6 GB RAM, 4 CPU Cores and 80 GB disk space.

For more higher configuration, you can go for the Enterprise plan. You will see a big difference in pricing here ($45.95/mo) but the configuration is also higher. This plan includes 160 GB disk space, 12 GB RAM and 6 CPU Cores.

Dedicated IP and Unlimited bandwidth are the part of their each Cloud hosting plan. Hostinger cloud hosting is a great option for those who want to enjoy better website performance.

In addition to this, you also get fully managed 24/7 dedicated support with it. With Hostinger, you can put all your efforts into making the most out of your project as the team at Hostinger is always available server monitoring.

Since Hostinger’s cloud hosting is designed to offer 3x more speed, your users won’t experience slow website loading. Their cloud environment allows you to take full advantage of the speed and power.

Domain Registration

It is another service that you will see in Hostinger’s service section. The one major aspect that you must check when finalizing a domain name registrar is ICANN Accreditation list. And it comes as no surprise that Hostinger is listed in this list.

This list confirms that whether or not the domain registrar is certified. There are many companies that just resell domain names from other registrars. As you can see in this list Hostinger is a certified domain registrar since 2013 you can buy a domain from there without any fear. At Hostinger “.com” domain extension starts from $ 8.99/yr.

User-Friendliness

I have used hosting services of plenty of other providers but I never came across such user-friendly hosting service before. Their hPanel uses the same concept as the Microsoft tiles. Every option and tool has a picture that offers a bit of insight on what option you are going to open.

Hostiger’s hPanel is little different from standard cPanle but you can easily see all important tools and features in the first fold. Additionally, with large buttons, it is easy to find anything you require at any point in time. Tools like Website builder, Auto Installer, File Manager, Backups, FTP Accounts, Import Websites, etc. are always available at your fingertips.

Fast Server

The speed of your site is the first impression of your online business. Therefore, it is crucial that your site loads quickly. If your site is loading in a second or two, it will make a strong first impression.

Hostinger has servers in the United States, Asia, and the United Kingdom. The good news is that all their servers use 1000 Mbps connection. Moreover, their SSD drive based servers offer better speed comparatively.

When I personally checked their server performance using Bitcatch tool I got satisfactory results that I am sharing with you in the following screenshot.

Uptime

It is important to make sure that your site is not down often. As it can directly impact your revenue because if your users will find your website down most of the time they will never visit it again. In beginning, I wasn’t sure about the uptime of Hostinger. Although they display the status of their servers on real-time I wanted to test it personally. For that, I installed Uptime Robot on my site for the entire one month.

I must say throughout the month, there were no noticeable downtimes on my site.

Security & Privacy

As security issues are becoming all too common nowadays, every website needs a good security and privacy. For Hostinger, security is a serious concern. Therefore, Bitninja comes with all their plans. For those who don’t know, it is all in one real-time protection that prevents a wide range of security threats such as brute force, DDoS, Malware, script injection and various other automated attacks.

In addition to these security features, you also get SpamAssassin. It is an email spam filter that scans for spam emails and removes them automatically.

Customer Support

Believe me, there are tons of things that can go wrong when running a website. Therefore, you must have a good customer support team supporting you 24/7. Fortunately, Hostinger has the well-rounded team that includes specialized that can tackle different sorts of issues. With Hostinger, I always get outstanding service and that without waiting for too long.

There are two major mediums that you can choose to contact the support team at Hostinger and that is Live Chat and Ticket Support.

Their Live chat is blazing fast, especially after the massive update that was happened in mid-2018. This support is available 24 hours all seven days of the week. So, it doesn’t matter even if any issue raises its head in the midnight. But their ticket support may take a couple of hours to get back to you.

Hostinger also offers a superb knowledge base that includes Video walkthroughs, tutorials, and guides on a wide range of topics. The knowledgebase is quite useful for anyone who is entirely new to the hosting platform.

Cons of Hostinger

Sorry to say, but like every hosting provider, Hostinger also has some downsides. But their features are compelling enough that it will be difficult for you to pass up this provider. Still, I must tell you their negatives so that you can avoid Hostinger if any of negatives is a big concern for you.

-As I said above, Hostinger uses hpanel that is quite different from standard cPanel. Although it is user-friendly, people who are habitual of using standard cPanel may take some time to understand its functions.

-In order to use their Live chat, you will need register at Hostinger. If you’re not their member, you can’t make even an inquiry through their live chat.

-To get an attractive price on hosting plans you will need to commit for 48 months and more.

Do I recommend Hostinger?

Yes, it is an excellent web host for both newbies and experienced webmasters. You get so many great features regardless of which plan you decide to purchase. Since they’re offering the 30-day money back guarantee with all their plans you shouldn’t hesitate to give it a try.