Hostinger Review 2025: is it a good host?

Hostinger has established itself as a leading name in the world of web hosting. It’s budget-friendly, swift, and user-friendly, making it perfect for even those just starting out. Above all, Hostinger provides tremendous value without breaking the bank.

While Hostinger has long been our top choice, it has recently been surpassed in our rankings. This in no way diminishes Hostinger’s quality. It remains a fantastic web hosting option, with only a few minor drawbacks.

Over the past two months, I’ve collaborated with our research team to thoroughly test Hostinger. We’ve assessed its performance, features, user-friendliness, security, pricing, and customer support to help you determine if it’s the ideal fit for your needs.

Hostinger Features Overview 

⭐ Rating	4.6
💲 Price	Starts From $2.99/mo
⚡ Speed	1.1 sec
🕒 Uptime	99.95%
🔗 Free Domain	✅ Yes
🌎 Data Centers	India, US, Singapore, Europe
➡️ Migrations	Unlimited
👨‍💻 Support	Live Chat, Phone, Email
🛡️ Security	Free SSL, Malware Protection, DDoS Protection, 2FA, Firewall
🔄 Backups	Weekly Backups
💰 Money back guarantee	30 Days
🔥 Coupon Code	Visit Link

Hostinger pros and cons

Hostinger is a great option for complete beginners and basic websites, with its user-friendly features and affordable pricing. It also stands out for its VPS plans, which offer good value for experienced users comfortable managing their own servers.

Here’s what excites me:

• – Every hosting plan comes with an easy-to-use web builder.
• – Enjoy a complimentary domain registration for the first year with any plan.
• – Get a free business email included with all web hosting packages.
• – Benefit from unlimited, free SSL certificates.
• – Experience a user-friendly custom control panel—hPanel.
• – Our servers span 4 continents and 9 countries, ensuring optimal performance.
• – Enjoy peace of mind with free weekly or daily backups for emergencies.
• – Utilize the power of LiteSpeed Web Servers.

Here’s what could be improved:

• – Occasionally, hPanel might experience some lag.
• – VPS hosting may be challenging for beginners.
• – Renewal prices are standard, without discounts (which is common among providers).
• – Email accounts share storage space.
• – Dedicated hosting is unavailable.

Hostinger pricing and hosting plans

The most popular and affordable solution by Hostinger is its shared hosting, starting at just $2.54/month. Hostinger’s plan allows you to launch up to 100 websites and includes 100GB of SSD storage, which is more than enough for most users. However, if you’re just starting out, you likely won’t need that many websites. For beginners, I recommend Bluehost, which lets you launch up to 10 websites and comes with 10GB of NVMe storage. Bluehost’s shared hosting plan is also budget-friendly, starting at just $1.99/month.

Nonetheless, if you require more resources at a low price, Hostinger would be a better option. Here’s an overview of Hostinger’s hosting types and their starting prices:

Type of hosting	Starting price	Best for
Shared hosting	$2.54/month	Startups and small businesses, freelancers, blogs
WordPress hosting	$2.54/month	Small to medium websites built on WordPress
Cloud hosting	$6.79/month	Small to medium businesses and blogs that are experiencing growth, and need exceptional performance.
VPS hosting	$4.24/month	Medium to large businesses experiencing growth and needing more flexibility

It’s obvious that no matter in what stage your project is, there’ll be an option suited for it.

Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all of its web hosting plans. However, please note that payments made using cryptocurrencies are non-refundable.

Hosting management – is Hostinger easy to use?

When it comes to ease of use, I’d say Hostinger is easy to manage as it is designed with beginners in mind. Automatic wizards will take care of setting up websites, emails, domains, and VPS services.

Moreover, its control panel is not just good-looking – it combines great simplicity and functionality too. However, I sometimes feel like Hostinger updates the interface too often, which, from time to time, confuses me. I’ll show you some examples in the following sections.

Hosting setup process

I had no issues setting up Hostinger and found the whole process pretty straightforward. First and foremost, you must decide what type of hosting you need and select the web hosting provider that offers it. For instance, Hostinger has Shared, Cloud, VPS, WordPress, and Minecraft hosting types. I chose the Shared hosting plan for my website.

After making these decisions, the process of setting up hosting is rather easy and doesn’t need an abundance of technical expertise. Here’s how you set up a hosting plan:

1. Once you subscribe to Hostinger, go to the Home Page of your hPanel and find your hosting plan under Account actions.
2. Locate the Setup option in your control panel and click it. If you have any pending payments, you will be requested to complete them before proceeding.
3. Find Account actions again and click Setup near the pending setup order. This will start the onboarding process.
4. When the Hello! page opens, hit Start now and provide additional information about your web hosting project.
5. Choose whether you want to create a new website or migrate an existing one. You may create a new website using Hostinger Website Builder, WordPress, and other website builders.
6. Name your website by choosing a new domain name or using the one you already own.
7. Review the summary of the setup process to see if any changes need to be made, and finish up the setup.

Now that your hosting plan is set up, you’re ready to create your website.

Creating a website with Hostinger

Creating a website with Hostinger is very easy. Its website builder is designed for newbies in website creation and the built-in AI assistant streamlines the whole process. If you have a little more experience, you can build your website with WordPress AI plugins developed by Hostinger, which is still easy, but a bit more complicated than just using the web builder.

Its free AI Assistant is available with the Web Business and other plans. You can add this plugin to your existing WordPress site or when creating a new one.

Below, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to add a website to a new account and how to start creating one:

1. After setting up an account, go to the Websites tab in the menu at the top.
2. You will see all plans that you have in the Websites section. Click Add website and choose WordPress, Hostinger Website Builder or Empty PHP/HTML website. Here, I show you how I built a website with WordPress, since we already have a totally separate article for Hostinger Website Builder, and a PHP/HTML website is for advanced users.
3. First, you will need to create a WordPress account. Then, Hostinger will ask you what type of website you want to create. I chose a blog.
4. Next, you will be presented with a variety of pre-built websites and themes. You can either pick a pre-built template or create a blank site and build it yourself from scratch. What I also liked in this part is that Hostinger provides explanations for both pre-built websites and themes.
5. After picking your pre-built website, in the next step you will get recommendations of plugins for the type of website you chose. Since I chose to create a blog, I was recommended to install All in One SEO, Omnisend, Google Site Kit, and other plugins (they were already marked to install, I only needed to confirm or deny them). My honest tip – always check which plugins you actually need, since not all recommendations by hosting providers are necessary and will take up storage space (that applies to all web hosting providers). A lot of these plugins are recommended because hosting providers make partnerships with plugins to promote them.
6. Now, you’re ready to manage your website. The dashboard shows you information about the website, including the domain, performance, email, and security.

Now, let’s have a look at Hostinger’s in-house dashboard, the hPanel, and see how it works with an active website.

Hostinger hPanel and the features within

While the most popular control panels remain cPanel and Plesk, Hostinger decided to go with a custom option. It’s called hPanel, and it’s effortless to navigate.

If you’ve used cPanel before, you won’t be lost. Meanwhile, first-timers should not be scared either – Hostinger doesn’t lack recommendations. Since the last time I reviewed Hostinger, its hPanel design and WordPress section looked like this:

Back then you were able to enable LiteSpeed and Object Cache, Flush Cache, and check for WordPress updates, all in the WordPress dashboard.

Now, you can still do these things and more. For example, you can force HTTPS and enable maintenance mode. In the WordPress dashboard, navigate to the security section and you’ll be able to identify vulnerable plugins and themes installed on your website. Hostinger will prompt you to fix them by updating (or, in the worst case scenario, if nothing can be done, deleting them).

It’s a really useful feature that makes locating vulnerabilities in your website easier. In my case, the recommendations part was empty because everything on my website was up to date. If there are issues with your website, you may receive recommendations such as Update available or Update to safe version.

What else is new? You can find the AI troubleshooting section for WordPress, which will help you analyze and fix errors on the website. Personally, I did not get a chance to test it yet, since I did not have any issues with my website.

Additionally, there are two more noteworthy features: the Staging section and the Learn section. The Staging tool allows you to create a replica of your website to safely test changes before making them live. The Learn section provides access to tutorials and guides, making it easier for beginners to get started with website management and troubleshooting.

You will notice other improvements on the hPanel as well, such as a new Analytics section with traffic information, HTTPS errors, and more.

Judging by what I’ve noticed over time, Hostinger is committed to its control panel. So much so that the provider is constantly updating hPanel to make it more intuitive and more convenient for users. So, if it’s going to change a bit while you’re using it, don’t be surprised.

The main things that you’ll be doing in hPanel are:

• Managing your websites
• Using File Manager
• Installing applications
• Migrating your existing website
• Checking databases
• Restoring/downloading backups
• Identifying security issues
• Tracking performance
• Adding websites
• Creating email accounts

Looking in detail, everything is well-organized. The only issue with hPanel is that it can get slow. However, other than this occasional annoyance, I’ve found no issues.

Altogether, hPanel is a good tool to manage your website. It has every functionality needed, and, if you can overlook the speed, there are no other flaws.

Free website migration

Hostinger’s free website migration is very simple and depends on your preferred method. You can request it as many times as you want; however, you can only have five active migrations at a time.

If you want to do it through a migration request form, follow these steps:

1. First, go to the Websites tab, click Add website, and choose Migrate website.
2. Add a domain name and confirm your ownership. You can also use an existing subdomain.
3. Choose if you want to provide WordPress Admin details and confirm a few more options. Aside from WordPress, you can also choose cPanel and WHM or a completely different panel. You can also provide migration backups and Hostinger’s team will migrate the website for you.
4. Once Hostinger finishes the migration process, you’ll be able to continue using your website on Hostinger’s hPanel.

Pro tip

Note that website migration between hosts usually includes DNS changes. DNS propagation can take a couple of hours, during this time your website won’t be accessible. Therefore, I suggest migrating at the time when you get the least traffic, such as night time. This applies to migrations with all web hosts, not only Hostinger.

One thing I learned while using Hostinger for a couple of years is that internal migrations (migrating from one Hostinger account to another) aren’t actually free and will have to be done manually. Hostinger provides a guide on how to do it.

The reason that it’s not free is probably due to the fact that some people want to avoid higher renewal costs by buying a new hosting plan with a new-user discount. And that, of course, comes with a price of having to deal with migration yourself.

Essential features: free domain and website builder

Now, to make the website creation process even simpler, Hostinger includes all the necessary features like a free domain, email accounts, and even a free website builder. A combination of all that makes this provider excellent for both startup and personal website hosting.

Hostinger’s shared hosting plans include free domain name registration, and an SSL certificate. This means that even the cheapest shared plan hosting is well suited for small businesses to start with – it’s cheap (from $2.54/month) and has all the necessities included, so you won’t need to spend extra.

The available free TLDs (top-level domains) include: .com, .net, .xyz, .online, .website, .space, and many others.

Another topic is how you’re going to build a website. WordPress is the #1 choice for many, but Hostinger also has another tool – Hostinger Website Builder.

Generally, website builders offer an easier and quicker way to launch a website. That’s because all design elements are readily available, and absolutely zero programming knowledge is needed.

Talking about Hostinger Website Builder specifically, here’s what you get:

• Over 150 modern templates
• Drag-and-drop editor functionality
• AI builder that generates unique websites with every request in 3 steps (as a bonus, AI-built websites have a gradient background that matches the overall website theme)
• AI-generated website content
• Integrated Google Analytics
• Blogging, SEO, and email services tools
• Prices that start from $1.79/month

Hostinger business email

A professional email address usually consists of your name or specific noun and the company name, for instance, jane@companyname.com. This adds a layer of trust for your clients and partners.

Luckily, you can have a professional-looking email account with Hostinger. All Hostinger’s hosting plans allow up to 100 business mailboxes, with a 1GB storage limit per account for free. I was surprised to see Hostinger updated its Email dashboard since my last review. Unfortunately, I was less than impressed with it and actually prefer the previous design. Take a look.

I find the new design a bit confusing. Let me walk you through the process of setting up a free email to give you a better idea.

Let’s say I have a domain for which I want to add a new email account. I’ve added this domain to my hosting plan some time ago, and I know that I have the right to a free email service. From what I see, Hostinger has a section Set up free email service with a button Set Up, so naturally, I click it, expecting a smooth sailing from there.

However, I can’t find my domain there. I go back and click on + Get plan or mailbox and select Get a mailbox, I see my domain there, but it asks me to pay.

Finally, after spending way more time researching than I needed to, I found that I simply needed to click on the Manage button in order to create my free email account.

Even though I have some experience with web hosting, I found it a bit too complicated to figure out. It might be an even bigger problem for those that are new to hosting.

Nonetheless, setting up your email with Hostinger is easy once you figure out how to do it. Fill out the required details and after a few clicks your email will be ready to go.

Most importantly, Hostinger’s mailbox is one of my favourites. It’s sleek, intuitive, and has all the features a small business might need, such as aliases, forwarders, spam detection, and more.

It will work for individual users or small businesses to get their contact form submissions or for contacting partners.

Mind you, for big email marketing campaigns, you’d be better off with a separate email server. That would guarantee good deliverability.

All in all, Hostinger is easy to use. As you saw, the interface is nice and modern, you can reach all the tools easily, and everything works just fine.

Performance – is Hostinger fast?

I can confidently say that Hostinger is a prime example of what web hosting performance should look like, regardless of the price point. This host is reputable, known for its stability, speed, and ability to handle a good amount of traffic even on its more affordable plans. To thoroughly evaluate Hostinger, I conducted three types of tests to identify any potential areas where this provider might struggle.

Server uptime and response time

Hostinger maintained a perfect 100% uptime throughout my testing period, which is higher than other top hosting providers, such as DreamHost and SiteGround. However, keeping 100% uptime is unrealistic in the long term, so you will see an occasional 1 or 2 minutes of downtime, which is normal for all web hosts, at least from my experience.

Other than that, the host offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. The average response time was also pleasantly surprising. Hostinger proved to be very stable with its response times, and the average I observed was 175ms.

Speed

Hostinger allows you to choose from 9 data center locations all over the world, including:

• USA
• United Kingdom
• Netherlands (only for existing users)
• France
• Germany
• Lithuania
• Indonesia
• India
• Brazil

Hostinger also introduced a new data center in Boston, Massachusetts. It’s a green data center that is great for site owners with clients in such major US and Canada cities as New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.

To measure the page load time, I employed the webpagetest.org tool. For the test, I used a Hostinger server that was located in Arizona, US. As expected, Hostinger offers strong performance in the United States. The LCP (Largest Contenful Paint) score is 1.728s.

However, European users do not seem to get to experience the same performance. When I performed the same test with a server located in Frankfurt, Germany, I observed a slight decrease in speed. That said, the results were still solid.

Overall, Hostinger seems well-suited for global use, but, of course, it offers best performance for users in the United States.

Stress testing

To perform a Hostinger stress test, I evaluated the performance of a system using 50 virtual users (VUs) over a period of 5 minutes and 12 seconds. The load zone was set to Ashburn, Virginia. A total of 7056 requests were made, with no HTTP failures.

The peak request rate was 46 requests per second (RPS), while the system maintained an average request rate of 23 RPS. The 95th percentile (P95) response time was 56 milliseconds, indicating good system stability under this load.

During my analysis, I observed relatively stable response times throughout the testing period, and there were no significant failures reported during this period.

As a whole, performance-wise, Hostinger appears to have no weak links. The technology used by the provider is the cause for the great Hostinger performance review results I got.

Is Hostinger a secure host?

Hostinger offers robust security to ensure your website’s protection, contributing to its 99.9% uptime guarantee. The infrastructure is fortified with advanced security modules like mod_security and PHP hardening, which intercept malicious requests during PHP processing.

Hostinger provides all the basic security measures you’d expect, including SSL certification, DDoS protection, and 24/7 server monitoring – features that are standard across most hosting providers like Bluehost and SiteGround.

The features include:

• Free SSL certificates that encrypt data between your server and visitors
• DDoS protection with multi-layered defense to keep your site online during traffic surges
• A malware scanner that constantly monitors for threats along with daily or weekly backups for quick restoration in case of data loss

In addition, Hostinger offers advanced tools such as:

• Two-factor authentication (2FA) for added security
• Secure Access Manager to help manage user permissions and secure collaboration
• Domain privacy to protect your personal domain details and reduce spam and unsolicited contact

Hostinger’s Secure Access Manager and Domain Privacy are standout features. Most top hosting providers, like Bluehost and SiteGround, do not offer Secure Access Manager, making it a unique addition for users needing advanced access control. These special features further enhance Hostinger’s overall security offering.

Hostinger customer support

Like any reputable hosting provider, Hostinger offers a wide range of customer support options.

	Hostinger
24/7 live chat:	✅ Yes
Email:	✅ Yes
Ticketing system:	✅ Yes
Phone line:	❌ No
Knowledge base	✅ Yes

Hostinger includes 24/7 live chat, a ticketing system, email support, and an extensive knowledge base. And while there is no phone support, the live chat was more than enough for me to not feel the lack of it.

While testing the 24/7 live chat, I found that Hostinger agents now take a bit longer to reply. However, the interactions remain very helpful and professional, ensuring that my issues were thoroughly addressed.

Hostinger’s customer support has evolved quite a bit over the years. A few years ago, support agents went the extra mile to make sure your problems with web hosting were resolved. They even assisted users with website-related tasks, such as deleting WordPress plugins and fixing other issues.

Now, Hostinger’s customer support takes a more laid-back approach, providing links to tutorials and troubleshooting guides instead of personal assistance or offering to find a web developer to help. I think it’s completely fair that Hostinger is no longer helping users with their websites. After all, web hosting support is there to help solve hosting-related issues and not develop websites. As far as I know, all web hosts’ do the same.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Hostinger has bad customer support, especially considering that it has a strong knowledge base that’s frequently updated, but it’s a far cry from what it used to be.

Interestingly, Hostinger has recently introduced Kodee AI, an AI-powered chat assistant, which is supposed to streamline Hostinger’s customer support. I’ve had a chance to try it out myself, and I’ll let you know how that went in the next section.

Hostinger’s Kodee AI assistant

Kodee, introduced in September 2024, is the latest addition to the Hostinger suite.

Besides resolving common customer queries, Kodee now supports eCommerce users by integrating with Hostinger’s AI-powered tools, such as generating product descriptions and customizing online store layouts.

I had a chat with Kodee myself and was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t expect a lot from a chatbot; however, Kodee answered all of my questions and walked me through the processes step by step.

For example, I wanted to include a donation button on my website, but it was difficult to find information on how to do it online, so I asked Kodee for help. It immediately understood what I was asking for and directed me to the appropriate guide.

My second question was about plugins. I was looking for something similar to WordPress plugins on Hostinger’s Website Builder, and asked Kodee where I can find them. Kodee explained that there are no external plugins but it can help me add built-in features that serve the same purpose.

Kodee doesn’t just stop at answering questions. For instance, when I explored setting up my online store, Kodee guided me on using Hostinger’s AI tools to create detailed product descriptions and customize my store layout, saving significant time and effort.

However, not everything is perfect with Kodee. While it excels in navigating Hostinger’s features, I ran into an issue when verifying some information about Hostinger’s data centers. Kodee told me that there were no data centers in Boston, Massachusetts, but I found a blog article stating otherwise.

This conflicting information led me to contact Hostinger support directly. They apologized and admitted that Kodee had misled me, explaining that they are still fine-tuning the AI assistant and occasional hiccups can happen.

Overall, Kodee AI appears to be on the right track when it comes to streamlining support with Hostinger’s products. Unlike some AI assistants that struggle with accuracy, Kodee delivers clear, actionable responses and even guides users through specific workflows, like setting up eCommerce features or resolving compatibility issues with WordPress themes and plugins.

Just keep in mind, Kodee might be great for navigating the service, but less reliable when extracting information from blog posts or sources outside the help center.

To get help from Kodee, simply click Ask AI and type out your question. Whether you’re seeking step-by-step guidance or tips for advanced customization, Kodee will efficiently handle your requests through its integration with Hostinger’s AI-powered tools.

Is Hostinger a good option for you?

Hostinger is great if you want to switch from hosts with expensive plans or poor performance or start fresh with good yet affordable hosting. I also recommend it for complete beginners. Its easy-to-use interface, robust security measures, and helpful customer support are beginner-friendly.

Feature	4.6★★★★★	High-quality hosting on a budget
Pricing	★★★★★	Hostinger is cheap with the lowest price of $2.54/month. To get similar features with other providers, the price would be noticeably higher.
Ease of Use	★★★★☆	Hostinger’s hPanel is modern, functional, and easy to navigate. Initial setups help you launch your website. However, email hosting could be improved as I had a hard time locating it.
Performance	★★★★★	Hostinger nailed all of the tests. The provider was highly reliable, very fast, and handled increased traffic on the site like a pro.
Security	★★★★☆	The provider takes care of all essential security measures but does not elaborate too much on them.
Support	★★★★☆	Hostinger has some of the friendliest customer support agents. You can reach them via live chat or email 24/7. The agents of the live chat option replied to my requests almost instantly. However, recently the quality has dropped, with support agents not willing to go the extra mile for Hostinger users.

Who do we recommend Hostinger to?

Hostinger is a great choice for beginners building their first websites. It’s affordable, high-quality, and easy to use. It is not without reason WordPress.org even recommends Hostinger for beginners and experts alike on its own hosting page. With the recent introduction of Kodee AI, Hostinger is sure to make the website building and management process even easier. With servers on 4 continents, LiteSpeed Web Servers with built-in cache, free weekly or daily backups, free domain name registration, an easy-to-use custom hPanel, and a website builder included, it offers everything you need to get started.