If you’re looking to host a website, you are probably going to go through a lot of different hosting service reviews in order to find the best-suited option for yourself. Well, in this Hostinger review, we’ll be talking about a service that tends to come up in most of the “top hosting” lists.
Admittedly, Hostinger has a lot of strengths at its disposal - it offers fast web hosting with some great uptime statistics, and is considered to be one of the most-affordable service providers in this particular industry.
However, is it truly the right choice for you? Are there any cons that you should be aware of, and what are the exact services that the company offers, in the first place? We’ll discuss all of that in the Hostinger review ahead!
TL;DR: Hostinger web hosting is an extremely affordable service. You have multiple hosting plans to pick from, so you’ll be able to tailor the service to your specific wants and needs. The uptime statistics are great, and sites hosted on Hostinger’s servers tend to load in a fast manner. The only complaints that some users have relate to upscale popups, and mediocre customer support services.
Pros
- Very affordable
- 99,9% uptime
- Very fast hosting service
- Free plan available
- Easy to use and navigate
Cons
- Customer support may take somewhat long to answer
- Inconsistent uptime stats
Table of Contents
- 1. Hostinger Review: PROS
- 1.1. Easy to Navigate and Use
- 1.2. Fast Website Loading Speeds
- 1.3. Good Uptime Statistics (99,9%+)
- 1.4. Free Domain Name + Website Builder
- 1.5. Free SSL Certificate… Most of the Time
- 1.6. Free Plan - Available!
- 2. Hostinger Review: CONS
- 2.1. Fluctuating Uptime
- 2.2. Mediocre Customer Support Response Time
- 3. Price
- 4. Conclusions
Hostinger Review: PROS
To start things off on the right foot, we’ll begin this Hostinger review by discussing the main benefits and features that the web hosting platform offers to all of its potential users.
Admittedly, hosting can be a pretty confusing topic to get into - there are a lot of criteria to consider when picking out the best website hosting service provider for yourself! That’s why we’ll start off from the simpler-to-discuss aspects, and make our way from there.
Speaking of simple things, one feature that most people are bound to appreciate with Hostinger is the user interface.
Easy to Navigate and Use
While the site hosting interface may not necessarily be the place that you will spend most of your website creation-related time on, it’s still a place that you will have to visit in order to choose your plans, renew your domain name, set up the hosting service, access your admin area, and so on.
Naturally, no matter if you’re just starting out or are already a professional website creator, you’d probably prefer these processes to be as simple as possible. Well, user Hostinger reviews will tell you that the platform in question is very easy to use.
Indeed - after you log into your Hostinger account (this is post account creation and setup, mind you), you will be presented with your existing domains. Accessing one of them will take you to the account page.
Here, you are bound to appreciate the simplicity of the interface design - you’ve got all of your main areas of interest at the top (emails, servers, hosting, SSL, etc.), and everything related to your account right in front of you, at the center of the page.
While not many of the aforementioned user Hostinger reviews will tell you this, but some hosting providers keep it really old-school - their interfaces are bulky, outdated, and very confusing to navigate and use, in general.
Not an issue with Hostinger, though. You can navigate the UI (or, if you prefer - the hpanel) with just a click of a button, and the layout is very straightforward.
The simplicity shines through whether you want to renew your site subscription, visit your admin area, upgrade your plan, or even manage your emails and website file backups. That’s awesome!
The truly-awesome thing here is that Hostinger has found a way of how to make things simple and straightforward, but also still provides easy access to advanced site management tools, too.
If you’re a professional website developer, and you use WordPress as your primary CMS, you should have a pretty good experience navigating Hostinger’s interface and finding all of the features that you’d need!
All things considered, no matter if you’re looking for Hostinger free hosting or some paid plans, the sentiment still stands true - the service provider has definitely done well in terms of optimizing the UI to be smooth and user-friendly. Great start!
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Fast Website Loading Speeds
One of the main features that people look into when picking out the best site hosting provider for themselves is speed - in other words, how fast the content of a website loads for the visitor when they enter the URL of your website into their search engines, and click on the hyperlink leading to the site.
It makes perfect sense, too - site speed is an absolutely crucial part of a successful website. No matter if you’re running a blog, an eCommerce site, or any other type of website out there, if it takes half-a-minute to load up, there’s a huge probability that your potential visitors aren’t going to wait, and will exit before even reaching the homepage.
Hosting providers know this very well - multiple user Hostinger reviews will tell you that the company houses servers in Europe, Asia, and the United States of America - servers that are optimized to host your website in a way that would allow it to load up at the top-speeds that are possible.
Talk is cheap, though - let’s take a look at the numbers.
This is the score of a website that I’ve ran through the Google PageSpeed Insights checker - a website that utilizes Hostinger’s services, that is:
As you can see for yourself, the site takes 1.2 seconds to load completely. If you think that’s awesome, allow me to be the first one to say - it is, but there's actually more to it!
I’ve taken an example of a not-so-well-made website - one that lacks a lot of optimization from the administrator’s side of things, and that can be improved, drastically. The fact that Hostinger’s servers manage to load this type of website as fast as they do is really noteworthy!
As far as this Hostinger review is concerned, site speed is something that I can attest to myself - for as long as I’ve used Hostinger’s services, I have never encountered issues with my website taking too long to load up completely. Since I do try to keep my websites up-to-par, optimization-wise, this is definitely worth keeping in mind!
Reading through other user Hostinger reviews, it’s clear that the situation is very similar, if not the same - Hostinger is quite often named as one of the fastest hosting providers in the current industry, and you can really see why that’s the case, too. Superb!
Good Uptime Statistics (99,9%+)
The two terms - uptime and downtime - are among the ones that you will probably hear the most of during your search for a reliable hosting provider. They do come up whenever you’d read various user Hostinger reviews, too.
What is uptime? Well, the answer does kind of lie in the term itself - it refers to the time that your website is available to be reached by a potential visitor. As opposed to that, downtime refers to the period of time that your site is down, either for maintenance, or due to some hiccup from your hosting service provider.
Indeed, the uptime of your site is almost solemnly dependent on the hosting service that you use. To add to that, it’s obviously one of the most important metrics that you could possibly look into!
Think about it - if a web hosting service has average uptime statistics, this means that your website is going to be down and unable to be reached for an extended period of time. If this is the case, no other feature really matters. The hosting provider can have great prices, unlimited bandwidth, or any other type of awesome feature - if your site is unreachable, none of that is important!
Where does Hostinger fit into all of this? Well, the company has an estimated uptime of around 99,9%. The numbers do vary by quite a bit, depending on the year, but in most cases, you will find this average to be correct.
Is this good? Well, yes, it is exactly that - good. It’s not the best possible uptime statistic (that would be 99,99%, obviously), but it’s still much better than with many other hosting companies.
Below, you can see what this means in practice. With the help of our uptime calculator, we can determine that, with an uptime of 99,9%, your site should be down no longer than around 1,26 minutes per day. This equates to around 8,45 hours per year, give or take.
It sounds like a lot, I agree! However, you must keep in mind that no server is perfect, and there are a lot of variables that come into play, too. You could be looking at half-a-year of complete uptime, and then some periods of extended downtime - various user Hostinger reviews will tell different stories of their experiences in this regard!
In any case, the general sentiment still remains true - if uptime is what you’re worried about most when looking for the best web hosting service provider, Hostinger has got you covered, big time. You can choose your preferred Hostinger plans freely, without worrying about this aspect one bit!
Free Domain Name + Website Builder
Moving forward with our Hostinger review, upon coming across and browsing through the plans offered by the platform, you will quickly notice a couple of distinct features.
For starters, Hostinger offers all of its Premium and Business plan users free domain name registration for a year. Basically, if you were to choose either one of those Hostinger plans, you wouldn’t have to pay for your domain name for a year straight, thus saving some money there.
That’s not the best part, however.
As with many other hosting-providing companies, if you decide to use the services of Hostinger, you will have access to WordPress (the Content Management System, not the website builder, that is).
In most cases, this is awesome - as far as CMSs are concerned, WordPress is surely the most popular option, and with good reason, too - there isn’t a site that you couldn’t build with WP, and it’s a tried-and-tested site creation tool, in general.
That being said, admittedly, some user Hostinger reviews do note that WordPress has a pretty steep learning curve - if you’ve never created a website before, and this is your first time hearing about WP, it might prove to be a bit of a struggle, having to figure everything out.
Well, Hostinger lends a helping hand here, too - the hosting service has a website builder that you can use. Not just any builder, though - Zyro.
If you’ve been following the website builder industry, you’ve probably heard of Zyro by now - it’s a site creation tool that has been making waves among site creation enthusiasts! Zyro’s quickly climbing the ranks to become one of the best builders for most types of people - it’s got some revolutionary, AI-based technology, is eCommerce-friendly, allows you to utilize beautiful site templates, and so on.
Back to the company in question, Hostinger allows all of its paid users to utilize the services of Zyro, and create whatever type of website that you’d like. If coding isn’t really your cup of tea, this is definitely something to keep in mind!
Free SSL Certificate… Most of the Time
Right - bear with me on this one.
SSL certificates are like an extra added layer of security for your website. In layman’s terms, SSL certificates make sure that your connection to a website is private and secure, and that any data that you type into that site (emails, passwords, billing info, etc.) is encrypted and kept safe from any malicious third-parties.
Sounds awesome, right? Well, it definitely is - you probably don’t even need to read through many user Hostinger reviews to learn that SSL certificates are literally mandatory for any website that wants to get any number of visitors, and earn a good reputation, in the long run.
That said, though, how should you know whether a website has an SSL certificate or not?
Simple - take a look at the top-left corner of the screen, where the URL of the site that you’re visiting is located. If you see a lock icon there (on Chrome, at least - other browsers may use different identification), you’re golden.
Having said all of that, some user Hostinger reviews do point out the fact that SSLs can get somewhat expensive, in the long run. However, this is once again where Hostinger steps in to save the day - as of writing this review, free SSL certificates are available with all of the company’s hosting plans.
I word it that way for a reason, though. Some users of the service note that the company has been a bit inconsistent with the plans that do include SSL certificates free of charge - whether your plan has one or not, this is something that you will need to look into before making a purchase!
Free Plan - Available!
Many people online are looking for Hostinger free hosting services. Evidently, the company does offer a free plan to its users - however, I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t really be looking at it in just a second.
In theory, free website hosting is great - you get to create a site of your own, and not pay a single dime for the hosting service. However, as you could imagine, there are many restrictions in place - restrictions that make it quite an uncomfortable experience to be had.
With Hostinger free hosting, you won’t be getting an email account, a domain name, or an SSL certificate - all of these things will have to be bought separately. Your bandwidth is going to be very limited, too, and the worst part is that your site is only going to be reachable by around 300 visitors per month.
What’s the use of free hosting, then? Well, it can be used to “get a feel” for the company and its services, or even some specific school projects, too.
All of the negatives aside, though, it’s still awesome that Hostinger free hosting is a thing. It allows you to choose the option that suits you best - granted that Hostinger’s priced plans are insanely affordable (more in that later), though, there really is no reason why you should be using the free hosting service.
Hostinger Review: CONS
Now that we’ve discussed all (well, most. Pricing is something that we’ll get to in a bit) of the most prominent features and benefits of the hosting service in question, let’s take this Hostinger review and turn our sights towards the more-negative sentiments that users have regarding the service.
Fluctuating Uptime
Earlier on in the article, we’ve discussed the fact that Hostinger has some really good uptime statistics. That’s true - if you were to choose the hosting provider in question as your go-to option for site hosting, you could rest assured that you’ve picked one of the best options on the market!
However, this doesn’t change the fact that the uptime does tend to fluctuate. Not by a lot, and for most people, this is going to be unnoticeable. That said, though, it can still be a slight nuisance, especially for anyone who needs their uptime to be perfect, all the time.
Now, there is no hosting service out there that would offer 100% uptime - that’s simply impossible. However, some user Hostinger reviews state that the uptime stats for Hostinger can go down to as low as 99,6%.
Yet again, for the absolute majority of individuals reading this article, this isn’t going to make a difference, or be noticeable, at all. Still, it’s something worth mentioning, nonetheless - if uptime is an absolutely crucial stat for you, then this might be important!
Mediocre Customer Support Response Time
Customer support is often viewed as one of those areas that are either a “hit or miss” when it comes to hosting providers. Reading through various user Hostinger reviews, this is seemingly a bit different with the company in question.
For starters, Hostinger does have 24/7 customer support that can always be reached via the live chat function on the company’s official website. That’s great!
What’s even better, though, is the fact that the support agents appear to be very knowledgeable in regards to web hosting, in general, and are able to answer all of the questions that you might have (or at least direct you to a place where you can get those questions answered).
So, then… What’s the issue?
Well, there is one notable aspect that does tend to come up in multiple user Hostinger reviews - the time that it takes for the customer support agents to get back to you.
Some users - myself included - haven’t experienced this issue. However, there are still quite a few claims that some individuals needed to wait for up to an hour in order to get their inquiries answered via live chat! Naturally, with email inquiries, this process does take much longer, too.
Evidently, in most scenarios, this might not be too big of an issue. However, if you’ve got some sort of a technical problem with your account, or some part of the hosting service isn’t working as it’s intended to, every minute can make a difference - I mean, if a visitor comes to your site, and sees that it’s, say, down, they might never come back again!
Apart from the mediocre response times, though, there aren’t really any other complaints regarding the customer service of the support agents over at Hostinger.
Price
Now, then - let’s talk prices.
As mentioned earlier on in the Hostinger review, pricing is undoubtedly one of the strongest features of this hosting service provider. It’s definitely not a secret that Hostinger plans are among the most-affordable options on the entirety of the web hosting service market!
How affordable are we talking about here, though? Well, take a look for yourself:
I’ve not included the free plan in the above-given list, since it’s a whole separate option, but do keep in mind that there is one, too.
The fact that you can start hosting a website for just $0,99 per month is absolutely insane - you would struggle to find any better deal out there! Now, sure, all of these plans concern the shared web hosting service, but seeing as that is the most-common option that people go with, it’s still amazing.
The Single plan is a bit limited, in that it doesn’t come with a free domain name, offers only 2 MySQL databases, only allows you to create a single website, and a few other things. However, if you’re just starting out with website building, and are simply trying things and figuring out what works for you, then this plan should be more than enough!
The latter two plans are directed towards individuals who are serious about their site creation ventures, do already know exactly what they want, and have built sites before, be it with WordPress, or any kind of website builder. The Premium plan is going to be great for the absolute majority of different types of websites, while the Business plan is, admittedly, directed towards eCommerce stores and other high-traffic sites.
All of that being said, the idea stands true - if you’re looking for an affordable option as far as website hosting is concerned, you can be sure that Hostinger plans are among the most affordable on the market. That’s awesome!
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Conclusions
To finish things off, all that’s left to answer is but a single question - would I personally recommend using Hostinger?
Well, as you might have gathered from this Hostinger review, the answer to that question is a very firm YES!
While the absolute majority of the company's customers leave very positive feedback online, and mention the endless benefits that you will receive by choosing Hostinger as your web hosting provider, I can fully attest to most of those sentiments, too.
I’ve been using Hostinger’s services with my own, personal sites for a very long time now. I’ve never experienced any issues with downtime or slow site loading speeds, and the seemingly-uncountable number of questions that I had were always swiftly and effectively answered by competent customer support agents.
Furthermore, Hostinger does appear to truly possess some of the fastest servers in the industry, followed by incredibly affordable pricing plan options that will surely fit most individuals out there.
Table: The main features of Zyro and Wordpress
All of that being said, do make sure to check out our WordPress and Zyro reviews before you start using Hostinger, in order to figure out which of these website creation tools is going to be better for you. You can also read about the best website builders on the market, too!
With that, though, I would like to thank you for reading this Hostinger review - I hope that you are much better-informed about the services provider in question, and that this article helped you with figuring out if it’s the best option for you! Cheers, and until next time!