Unbiased Hostinger Review – After my two years of experience

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Price is one of the main concerns when buying Hosting for your business. You won’t want to invest a majority of your money on hosting when you are just starting out or have a low budget. You’ll also need the funds to sustain in the market for a while and let your business grow.

One of the most renowned names people find out about on social media and blogs in the field of affordable hosting is ‘Hostinger‘.

However, the question frequently arises at this price point: “Are they really as good as they claim?“

I also decided to buy this hosting in August 2019. I found Hostinger as a perfect match and decided to check it out.

I have been using and testing Hostinger for over two years now. I’ve done a variety of tests to assess their performance, including traffic speed testing, loading testing, and uptime monitoring.

This Unbiased Hostinger Review is based upon my experience with their Shared Business Plan on one of my live websites and two more basic sites. I will analyze various features, pricing plans, payment options, pros and cons, best alternatives, and who should buy this hosting!

This is a completely unbiased review of hostinger fully based on my personal experience and testing results.

So, Let’s get down to business.

About Hostinger

Hostinger is a well-known affordable shared hosting service in the Hosting industry. It is one of the most popular hosting services used by many bloggers and small businesses.

Hostinger’s story started in Kaunas, Lithuania in 2004. The main idea was to let people create a website for FREE.

In 2007 they launched 000webhost.com, a brand providing free web hosting worldwide with no advertising cost.

In 2008, Hosting24.com, a high-quality cPanel web hosting business, was created.

By 2011, ‘Hosting24.com’ formally changed its name to Hostinger as it hit the jackpot of 1 million users.

By May of 2014, Hostinger had already reached ten million users and by January of 2017, 29 million people were using their service.

There is no looking back after that. Since 2017, they are consistently getting around 1 new client every 5 seconds.

Doesn’t that sound amazing?

No doubt Hostinger has performed exceptionally well and with their tons of free available features, they are growing in popularity.

But how good are they actually?

Let’s take a look at it ahead.

Hostinger Web Hosting at a Glance

Perfect Combo for Beginners

The main question that arises at this price range is, where did hostinger cut costs? Will it be able to provide both features and performance, while still meeting all of my expectations?

Hostinger astounded me. Despite the low cost, Hostinger did a very decent job. It provides everything a start-up website needs from plenty of resources to tools that boost performance.

Hostinger offers three shared hosting plans – Single, Premium, and Business. All the plans come with SSD storage, free SSL, free email, and a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee.

Unlike traditional cPanel, it comes with its own control panel, ‘hPanel’, which gives you a unique experience. The hPanel offers many great features including one-click installation for dozens of content management systems (CMS), importing websites, and accessing File Manager, but it lacks some features which we will discuss further.

Furthermore, Hostinger offers nearly every payment option including UPI and cryptocurrency. This is the first time I’ve encountered such an extensive list for hosting companies!

Hostinger Plans and Pricing

Their single shared hosting plan comes with 30 GB SSD Storage, 1 Free Email Account, Free SSL, and 100 GB Bandwidth. This is enough resources to build a very respectable website. However, for better performance and security, I recommend going with their premium or business plan.

I signed up for their business shared hosting plan, which comes with 200 GB SSD Storage, unlimited sites, unlimited email accounts, Free Domain, Daily Backup, and much more.

One critical feature that caught my attention above their premium and single shared hosting plan is Daily Backup rather than weekly in the two. I also received a free domain for one year, which felt like a great deal.

Remember that the maximum discounts are applied f you purchase these plans for 4 years. When you reduce the plan duration, you get a lesser discount. This is not a good idea at all.

Note: The features I’m referring to in this article are based on my experience with the shared hosting plans. You can still try its Managed WordPress Hosting, which is identical except that it is managed by the hostinger team in the background. In case you are looking for their Cloud or VPS hosting plan, I better suggest going with other great alternatives. I personally prefer Cloudways for my cloud hosting selection.

Hostinger’s own hPanel vs Traditional cPanel

Unlike the traditional cPanel, Hostinger provides its own easy-to-use hPanel.

In my experience, they have done quite a good job with the user interface and customization. They have continually improved it to meet the needs of beginners.

I think they’ve done a good job with the user interface and customization. They have continually improved it to meet the needs of novices.

The hPanel provided by hostinger is ideal for beginners. It comes with loads of features at pocket-friendly costs.

It has a very modern, attractive, and user-friendly interface that allows you to manage your website with ease. All the functions from DNS Management, site backup to Website Migration are easily accessible.

The hPanel also comes with big icons for each feature, so you won’t overlook anything if you search for them carefully.

Despite all these benefits, it is still not advanced as cPanel. hPanel doesn’t provide you the features to select the PHP version in it. Also, Advanced email features, like mailing lists, filters, and routings are also missing from hPanel.

Another issue I experience was that it felt a little slow. While accessing, the loading sign kept popping up numerous times, which annoys you if you’re in a hurry.

Really Fast or Fake?

The biggest concern at this price range is, will you get the optimum speed required for your website. Especially when speed is an important factor for ranking your site and fewer customer returns.

It is very important to choose a web hosting that is not just affordable but fast. Also, your server location matters. It must be closer to the area you are targeting so your visitors have a better visiting experience.

Once again, Hostinger has done a good job. For my basic websites, it provided adequate speed. But after I did some heavy designing and installed more plugins for my work, I noticed a little issue with my site’s loading speed.

Moreover, it has server locations all over the world including the US, Europe, and Asia(Singapore) which gives you an advantage over many hostings.

To find out more, we have tested hostinger at many prospects. Here are the results that might enlighten you and clear your doubts.

Speed and Performance Test in GTmetrix:

The GTMetrix is a free online tool that we may use to check the page speed and performance. It also displays the web vitals scores, which are crucial from an SEO standpoint.

Here is our GTmetrix analysation report for US Locations:

I received a response of 1.4 seconds to load my page, which is remarkable, despite my server’s location being in Asia (Singapore).

In some cases, we noticed it takes 2 seconds or more to load in the US locations because we discovered significant fluctuations in speed there.

Our GTmetrix analysation report for Indian Locations:

In both the cases, we got a wonderful score of A and our page took slightly over 1 sec to load. The ideal time for a page load is under 3 seconds.

Server Response Time

The server response time is an important value to keep track. No matter how well your website is optimized, it will be slow if your server response time is high.

What is a good server response time?

According to Google and other speed test tools, a server response time of less than 200 ms is ideal and Everything over 500 ms is an issue.

Your server response time can vary according to the server’s location. Hostinger has servers in different locations around the world including Singapore, the USA, and the UK. We tested the servers in a few locations and here are the results.

Singapore Servers

I discovered that the Singapore servers responded faster to requests from Asian locations including Singapore, Mumbai, Japan, etc in comparison to US and UK locations.

Unbelievably, the server response time in Singapore was just 2 milliseconds.

US Servers

While on US Servers, the response time was a bit higher for the Asian locations and it varies a little sometimes on other locations including Sydney and Germany.

Overall, both servers have done an exceptional job and passed our response time test. But still, when you are looking to use some heavy design or tools on your website. It might give a totally different result.

Hostinger Lightspeed Server:

It has already been proven that lightspeed servers are faster than other web servers including Nginx and Apache.

Hostinger uses Litespeed servers, giving your website that extra boost it needs. They also include in-built caching mechanisms, allowing you to use “Automatic Cache” and speed up your websites.

Uptime Performnace

Uptime is the time duration for which your website remains online and accessible to visitors.

It is the most important thing to check when it comes to picking up the right host, especially when you are selling something online. A poor uptime may have a devastating impact on your business, as well as the loss of customers.

Hostinger guarantees to give you a 99.9% server uptime. However, in our uptime test for last year (18 November 2020 to 17 November 2021), many times we faced that the site was down by more than 1%.

Here you can check how my site performed during the last 365 days.

Last 12 months average uptime:

• October 2021. : 98.355%
• September 2021 : 100%
• August 2021 : 99.963%
• July 2021 : 100%
• June 2021 : 97.231%
• May 2021 : 98.673%
• April 2021 : 100%
• March 2021 : 98.937%
• February 2021 : 100%
• January 2021 : 100%
• December 2020 : 99.596%
• November 2020 : 98.641%

The average uptime Hostinger delivered was 99.283%, which isn’t terrible but it falls short of what hostinger promised.

Also, we noticed there were 69 incidents of downtime, but most were not for a long duration which is a good thing.

Unlimited Free Migration

Migrating your website can be a big headache if you are not familiar with it. Also, it can take a few hours from your hectic schedule. But with hostinger, you don’t have to worry about it. Hostinger offers free migration on all of their hosting plans.

After buying your hosting package from hosting, you have to follow these three simple steps:

1. Go to the hostinger hPanel.
2. Under the Website section, Select Migrate Website.
3. Click Add request.

Just need to add certain details as mentioned:

• Access to WordPress, cPanel & WHM, etc.
• Domain name
• Admin login page URL
• Username and password
• Previous web hosting service

After you submit your request, someone from their team will transfer your website from your previous hosting for free.

In case they face any trouble, they might ask you for more data to help you in a better way.

24×7 Customer Support

Customer support is one not to miss criteria before buying a service online.

Hostinger offers a decent 24×7 live chat and email support (No call support) in 20 different languages. However, wait times for conversation support are generally around 20 to 60 minutes, which I don’t believe is particularly useful.

Anyway, I tried to chat with their support a few times, and fortunately, I never had to wait for more than 20 minutes.

Their mail support was also quick in my case. They were able to respond to me within 6 to 8 hours.

In my experience, the Hostinger staff is quite knowledgeable and helpful. The only drawback is that you may have to wait longer than you should, which doesn’t give a good customer experience.

Furthermore, Hostinger provides a good knowledge base and lots of online tutorials to assist you to get started!

Hostinger Refund Policy

Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all its plans. So, if you’re not satisfied with your hosting after your purchase, you have 30 days to ask and you can get a 100% refund.

However, there are a few exceptions to their money-back guarantee. You can learn more about their refund policy at: https://www.hostinger.com/refund-policy/.

Hostinger Security Assurance

To make sure its users are safe and secure, Hostinger has pretty good security features in place. Their team of experts takes care of servers data, while users’ data is secured with their SSL.

Hostinger also provides weekly or daily backups of your data, depending on which plan you are in. There offer various more security features. Let’s check them all in detail:

Expert server security

Hostinger servers are monitored 24*7, and they are equipped with advanced security modules such as mod_security, PHP hardening, and PHP open_basedir protection. It makes sure your security level is top-notch.

Free SSL

An SSL Certificate is a must for your website’s security. SSL protects information transmitted between two systems by encrypting it, providing security and privacy.

When you purchase a hosting plan on Hostinger, you will receive 1 free SSL Certificate. However, if you host more than one website, they will ask you to pay for more SLL certificates.

But don’t you worry! We still have Cloudflare, through which you can easily set up a free SSL certificate for your website.

DDoS protection

All the plans of hostinger support Cloudflare. It is effective to protect your website from malicious traffic and DDoS attacks.

There is also Bitninja security applied on all their servers. It protects it from malware, DDoS attacks, brute force assaults, and more.

Bitninja has a powerful feature that immediately blocks suspicious logins and do not approve until they verify themselves.

Daily or weekly backups

Imagine, one day you open your website and discover it’s all messed up. What would you do?

Hostinger backup and restoration is a useful feature for every moment when you want to roll back the most recent version of your website that is working properly.

You get unlimited weekly backup on all of its plans, with your data stored in a different server location for 30 days.

With Business Shared Hosting, you can get free daily backups. But, for other plans, daily backups cost extra.

Patchstack Security

Hostinger has also collaborated with Patchstack, a WordPress security plugin, providing extra security for Hostinger WordPress websites.

If you run a WordPress website, Patchstack will notify you of vulnerabilities arising in any WordPress plugins.

2FA

2FA is a security measure that requires two pieces of information to confirm a user’s identity. It adds an extra layer of security and prevents any unauthorized users from accessing your accounts.

Once you enable it inside Hostinger, alongside entering your regular password, you will need to enter another confirmation data, such as a one-time password. or a code from an authentication app like Authy, LastPass, or Google Authenticator.

Altogether, these security features make it a good package to protect your website against the most prevalent threats.

Hostinger Pros and Cons

Pros

• Affordable shared hosting plans.
• LiteSpeed Web Servers with built-in cache engine.
• Unlimited free Migration.
• So many payment options.
• Easy to use hPanel for beginners.
• Weekly back available on every plan.

Cons

• Customer support is slow and no phone support.
• Only one free SSL.
• Refund policy has some exceptions which create confusion.

Who Should Buy Hostinger?

I have been using it for over two years now and am confident that I can give you the correct answer to this question.

From time to time, I have tested hostinger at many different scenarios, and as per my experience and the reports we currently have, I can suggest that it can be a great hosting for beginners.

Hostinger is an excellent solution for anybody looking to start a blog or a small website. If you have low traffic right now and don’t need to create heavy sales pages, Hostinger might be the perfect web hosting solution on a budget!

Though there are still a few areas where hostinger falls short, but for any of the work mentioned above and at the price they are offering, no other company can beat it. This is one of the primary reasons I have remained with them for over two years and still going with them.

Still Not Happy? Check Out the best Alternatives

I can understand if you still have some doubts about Hostinger. It might not match up with all the needs you desire. Don’t worry, here are some alternatives which might help you in deciding which hosting is best for your needs.

Hostinger vs GreenGeeks

Both are easy for a beginner and the best in the market. Hostinger is cheaper than GreenGeeks, but in terms of hosting features, GreenGeeks give fierce competition to Hostinger. These two hosting providers have great security packages. Greengeeks has a slightly little advantage due to their highly responsive support and traditional cPanel.

Hostinger vs Bluehost

Both Bluehost and Hostinger create user-friendly hosting platforms for their customers. Hostinger is a smarter choice if you are looking for an affordable solution and faster web hosting with a small audience. Bluehost, on the other hand, is geared towards WordPress and WooCommerce optimizations.

Hostinger vs HostGator

HostGator has a custom dashboard known for its sleek design and aesthetics. However, there are limitations to it, and that’s why Hostinger’s dashboard is neater and more eye candy. It is well-organized, and you won’t feel lost while navigating it. The speed and features of cloud options are quite similar in both these brands.

Hostinger vs Namecheap

Hostinger is relatively wallet-friendly, but Namecheap isn’t a bad competitor. While Namecheap takes the credit for better performance, Hostinger outshines it with security and lightning-fast support. Downtime is again a downside for Namecheap.

Hostinger Review – Conclusion

Hostinger is an all-around performer and affordable hosting option, especially if you are just starting out with your small website or blog.

You don’t need to worry about the performance or security of your website, because hostinger has covered it all.

It has designed its complete system for a better user experience for beginners. The customer support is a bit slow but able to solve your issues with their experience and facilities they have.

All you need to do is go through the link below and launch your website with hostinger.

FAQs by many interesting prospects