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Hostinger Web Hosting

 & Jeffrey L. Wilson Managing Editor, Apps and Gaming
 & Jordan Minor Principal Writer, Software
 & Gabriel Zamora Senior Writer, Software
Our Experts
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Hostinger Web Hosting - Hostinger Web Hosting (Credit: Hostinger)
4.0 Excellent

The Bottom Line

Hostinger offers several noteworthy plans, excellent customer service, and useful AI tools, but it lacks a few features you get with the very best web hosting services.
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Pros & Cons

    • Unlimited data transfers with the cloud, shared, and WordPress plans
    • AI tools
    • Gaming servers
    • Includes the Hostinger Website Builder
    • Helpful customer service
    • Lacks dedicated web hosting
    • Not every plan has a Windows option
    • No phone support

Hostinger Web Hosting Specs

24/7 Customer Support
Cloud Hosting
Dedicated Hosting
Linux Servers
Linux Servers - Cloud
Maximum RAM - VPS 32
Maximum Storage - Cloud 300GB
Maximum Storage - VPS 400
Product Category Web Site Hosting Services
Reseller Hosting
Shared Hosting
Unlimited Monthly Data Transfers - Cloud
VPS Hosting
Windows Servers
WordPress Hosting

The search for a high-quality web hosting service isn't easy. There are many options, and your choice determines where your business or personal site will live online for years to come. Hostinger is a worthy home, offering budget-friendly hosting, a helpful website builder, and useful AI tools that can save you time and effort when building a website. However, Hostinger lacks some of the features of the very best web hosts we've tested, such as telephone support and dedicated hosting, which you get with AccuWeb, our Editors' Choice winner for that category.

Shared Hosting: An Inexpensive Way to Build a Website

Hostinger, like many other web hosting services, offers shared web hosting. With this most basic hosting tier, your website lives on a server with other websites. In other words, the sites literally share a single server's cost and resources. As a result, shared hosting is often low-cost hosting. The downside? Shared hosting isn't powerful, so your site may load slowly or become unavailable if your content (or that of one of your cohabitants) receives, say, a big social media hit.

Hostinger offers three Linux-powered shared web hosting plans: Premium, Business, and Cloud Startup. The Premium plan costs $11.99 per month, or $3.99 per month with a one-year commitment. This tier lets you create up to three websites and two email addresses, and includes 20GB of SSD storage and unlimited monthly data transfers. Premium also includes a free domain name, five AI-powered vibe coding credits, and WHOIS privacy protection.

(Credit: Hostinger/PCMag)

Next up is the Business plan, which costs $18.99 per month, or $4.99 per month for a one-year commitment. It builds upon the Premium plan by offering daily backups, Hostinger CDN to speed up your site, and 50GB of NVMe storage.

Finally, Cloud Startup is $27.99 per month, or $9.99 per month with an annual plan. This package includes 100 websites, a dedicated IP address, and priority support.

Hostinger's plans come with two-year and four-year deals that grant significant discounts. They're good shared hosting plans for a mom-and-pop shop that just wants to list its inventory, but they're not good picks if your business needs Windows Server hosting (Hostinger doesn't offer that OS). However, HostGator offers superior shared web hosting packages for a wider range of users. Not only does HostGator offer a choice of Linux or Windows servers, but it also has unlimited email at each shared hosting tier. Likewise, HostArmada, another top pick for shared hosting, bests Hostinger on price (starting at $12.95 per month) and on fast NVMe storage with each plan.

VPS Hosting: Moving Up to More Powerful Servers

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting is the minimum web hosting tier you want if you're serious about creating an online presence for your business. Compared with shared hosting, VPS hosting gives your website additional server resources because fewer websites share the server.

Hostinger offers four VPS plans, and they're all Linux-based with no Windows option. The entry-level KVM 1 plan includes 4GB of RAM, 50GB of NVMe storage, and 4TB of monthly data transfers for $19.49 per month (or $6.99 per month with a one-year commitment). On the other side, the top-tier KVM 8 plan includes 32GB of RAM, 400GB of NVMe storage, and 32TB of monthly data transfers for $73.99 per month (discounted to $28.49 per month for a one-year commitment).

(Credit: Hostinger/PCMag)

Those plans will serve your website well, but Hostwinds remains our top pick for VPS hosting. Hostwinds offers wallet-friendly, well-rounded VPS plans starting at $10.99 per month for 1GB of RAM, 30GB of storage, and 1TB of monthly data transfers. Plans scale up to $526.99 per month for 96GB of RAM, 750GB of storage, and 9TB of monthly data transfers. Hostwinds also has Windows-based VPS options, which are helpful if you plan to use the ASP.NET framework.

Hostinger also offers game-specific VPS hosting for online multiplayer titles such as Minecraft and Palworld (as well as Steam games). Four game-specific hosting options are available, starting at $19.49 per month (or $7.49 per month with a one-year commitment). With them, you can install game mods, establish rules, and enable in-game advertising.

No Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is one of the most powerful hosting options you'll encounter. A dedicated hosting plan places your website on a server by itself, letting you leverage the server's full power. If you expect high traffic volume, a dedicated server is an excellent choice. Hostinger doesn't offer dedicated servers, so we recommend checking out AccuWeb if you need one.

WordPress Hosting: Leveraging Plug-in Power

WordPress is the world's most popular content management system. Thanks to its simplicity and robust plug-in and theme ecosystems, WordPress is extremely easy to customize as you see fit—one of its key attractions.

Hostinger's WordPress plans mirror its shared hosting plans and pricing. In fact, they are the same plans. However, it is worth noting that Hostinger's cutting-edge WordPress AI tools are only available to Business and Cloud Startup subscribers (more on the AI tools in a bit).

(Credit: Hostinger/PCMag)

Hostinger's convenient WordPress-relevant optimizations make using the world-famous CMS a cinch. This includes a super-easy onboarding flow that gets your site up and running in just a few minutes. There's also an option to migrate existing sites either manually or using a Hostinger agent. A convenient staging tool lets you create and test pages before they go live to the public. Hostinger pushes out automated core and security patch updates whenever WordPress updates its CMS, keeping your sites current and secure.

Various AI tools help with SEO and content creation. The WordPress AI assistant, for example, integrates directly into the WordPress environment, which helps you generate content. It also offers WordPress AI Troubleshooter for website error detection. For instance, it can notify you of an issue via hPanel (Hostinger's control panel), at which point you can decide whether you want to fix it yourself or have the AI perform an analysis and apply a solution. Hostinger claims that its AI takes a median of 17 seconds to fix website errors, compared with 1-10 minutes for manual correction.

For more robust WordPress hosting, check out Bluehost, our top pick for small business hosting. If you want enterprise-class WordPress hosting, WP Engine is the way to go.

Cloud Hosting: Sourcing Power From Multiple Servers

Cloud hosting is a type of hosting in which your website is powered by multiple servers. You can scale resources in real time because your site isn't constrained by physical server limits. If you need muscle for your website, cloud hosting is Hostinger’s answer, especially since the company lacks dedicate servers.

Hostinger has three cloud hosting tiers: Cloud Startup, Cloud Professional, and Cloud Enterprise. Cloud Startup starts at $27.99 per month, or $19.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $25.99 per month after a year). It comes with 4GB of RAM, 4 CPU cores, 100GB of NVMe storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers.

The Cloud Professional plan starts at $47.99 per month, or 14.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $44.99 per month after a year). It has 6GB of RAM, 5 CPU cores, and 200GB of NVMe storage. The Enterprise tier starts at $69.99 per month, or $39.99 per month with a one-year commitment (renewing at $64.99 per month after a year). It features 12GB of RAM, six CPU cores, and 300GB of NVMe storage. Hostinger's cloud plans all include a dedicated IP address, a free SSL certificate, WHOIS privacy protection, and a 100-website limit. Two-year and four-year plans are available for these packages, too.

That's a good offering, but if you want truly powerful cloud hosting, Ionos is the way to go. Its four plans start at 0.8 cents per hour ($5.76 per month) for a single-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 60GB of SSD storage, and unlimited monthly transfers. The offerings max out at 12.5 cents per hour ($90.00 per month) for a 16-core CPU, 64GB of RAM, 960GB of SSD storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers. There are managed and unmanaged options, as well as customizable plans.

(Credit: Hostinger/PCMag)

DreamHost is another top pick for smaller-scale sites that need less-demanding cloud hosting services. It comes with four vCPU servers (8GB RAM each), 80GB SSD storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers for $48 per month. If you need even more power, you can call up a sales rep for a custom quote. Though DreamHost's RAM and storage totals aren't as high as those offered by Ionos, you can select either Linux- or Windows-based servers.

Reseller Hosting: Becoming a Web Hosting Service

If you're looking to get into web hosting but don't want to deal with infrastructure, consider reseller web hosting. Hostinger offers three Agency Hosting plans: Agency Startup, Agency Professional, and Agency Growth. Agency Startup is $69 per month, or $49 per month with a one-year annual commitment. This plan gives you 12GB of RAM, 300GB of NVMe storage, unlimited monthly data transfers, and 100 websites. Agency Professional is $89 per month, or $69 per month with a one-year plan. This package ups the stats to 20GB of RAM, 500GB of NVMe storage, and 200 websites. Agency Growth is $109 per month, or $89 per month with a one-year plan. It tops out at 30GB of RAM, 700GB of NVMe storage, and 300 websites.

Hostwinds, by comparison, offers unlimited storage and data transfers with each tier. It's our top pick for reseller hosting.

Building a Website—Now With New AI Tools

Hostinger has several options for building a website, including its own drag-and-drop Hostinger Website Builder. The free tool offers many cool and useful features, including a logo builder, a slogan builder, and a business name generator. We found it a breeze to whip up a site with images, text, and a bit of visual creativity using the included tools.

Its most notable feature, however, is Hostinger Horizons, a no-code website builder. After keying in what we wanted for a retro-gaming website (a 1990s focus, pixel art aesthetics, and pages for news and reviews), Hostinger Horizons produced a website in under five minutes. It wasn't anything spectacular; the pages were fairly generic, with a neon green-and-black look. We still recommend the human touch when designing a website.

E-Commerce and Security

Making money online requires e-commerce tools, and Hostinger has them in abundance. Hostinger's auto-installer offers popular and useful tools, including AbanteCart, osCommerce, and PrestaShop. There is also a WooCommerce option for WordPress-based online stores, as well as the option to add email marketing tools (starting at $18.99 per month).

If you're looking to secure your website, Hostinger offers many tools to help you do just that. For example, you get a free Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate with shared and VPS hosting plans, or you can buy one separately. The technology secures the connection between your website and a visitor's computer, which is vital for security (especially if you wish to sell products). Hostinger gives its clients unlimited free SSL certificates. Likewise, Cloudflare protection is offered with all Hostinger plans (it safeguards your site against DDoS attacks and other threats).

Helpful Customer Service and Uptime

If you encounter a problem or just have a question, you can reach out to Hostinger's customer service squad via web chat 24/7. We found the staff to be incredibly friendly and informative, and they answered our test questions with the appropriate links. Hostinger's customer support squad is among the best we've encountered in the web hosting game, up there with GoDaddy's excellent team.

The one big caveat is that Hostinger lacks phone support. If you want to contact a human being, it's web chat or bust. The company contends that web chat is faster and easier for customers versus phone support, so this might not be a problem for you. On the upside, Hostinger has a sizable knowledge database that answers common (and uncommon) web hosting questions. Hostinger's plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is typical for web hosting services.

Uptime is an extremely important web hosting element, as it measures your website's availability. Sites with good uptime are considered dependable; sites with bad uptime are inaccessible and unreliable. The company guarantees 99.9% server uptime, so you can count on Hostinger to keep your website online.

Final Thoughts

Hostinger Web Hosting - Hostinger Web Hosting (Credit: Hostinger)

Hostinger Web Hosting

4.0 Excellent

Hostinger offers several noteworthy plans, excellent customer service, and useful AI tools, but it lacks a few features you get with the very best web hosting services.

Get It Now
Best Deal£1.79 Per Month + 3 Months Free With 10% Off Code "PCMAG10"

Buy It Now

£1.79 Per Month + 3 Months Free With 10% Off Code "PCMAG10"

About Our Experts

Jeffrey L. Wilson

Jeffrey L. Wilson

Managing Editor, Apps and Gaming

Since 2004, I've written about consumer tech for many publications, including 1UP, Laptop, Parenting, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. I now apply that knowledge and skill set as the managing editor of PCMag's apps and gaming team.

The Technology I Use

As a member of the App & Gaming team, I use a wide variety of apps and services. Google Drive is an essential file-syncing service for moving documents between team members in this work-from-home era. Scrivener has been an invaluable writing tool as I rework my fiction manuscript. YouTube Premium and YouTube TV deliver hours of entertainment (though I only use the latter service during the F1 and NBA playoff seasons).

In terms of hardware, I use a Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 laptop for work and an Origin PC tower for playing PC games. I also have a Steam Deck, which lets me play my favorite titles under a shade tree. Of course, I have a smartphone, and the Google Pixel 9a is my handset of choice.

My main input devices are the Das Keyboard 4 Professional and Logitech MX Vertical Ergonomic Mouse, though I bust out the Hori Fighting Commander Octa or Hori Fight Stick Alpha when mixing it up in fighting games. I have a thing for arcade sticks. I collect Neo Geo AES games, too, but only if I can find the carts on the (relative) cheap.

For video and music consumption, I fire up my Lenovo Tab P11; it has a sharp screen and great Dolby Atmos-powered speakers. My Kindle Paperwhite has received much use, too. I have a standalone, Sony Blu-ray player connected to a TCL television when it's time to go full cinephile. I'm also a vinyl guy, so the Bluetooth-enabled Audio-Technica AT-LP60XBT keeps the wax spinning.

My first computer was a Commodore 64. Long live BASIC and retro computers!

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Jordan Minor

Jordan Minor

Principal Writer, Software

My PCMag career began in 2013 as an intern. Now, I'm a senior writer, using the skills I acquired at Northwestern University to write about dating apps, meal kits, programming software, website builders, video streaming services, and video games. I was previously a senior editor at Geek.com and have written for The A.V. Club, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine. I'm the author of the gaming history book Video Game of the Year: A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977, and the reason everything you know about Street Sharks is a lie.

The Technology I Use

I use the newest Android and iOS smartphones for testing, but I currently use an iPhone 14 as my personal phone. I just hate that we gave up headphone jacks.

I've always favored gaming laptops over desktops. On that note, I have a 16-inch HP Envy with an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. No matter what machine I’m working on, an alarming amount of my personal and professional life revolves around cloud-synced Google Drive files.

For food subscriptions, my household sticks with CookUnity and HelloFresh for meals. Video streaming is a bit more complicated. While there are too many services to list, we're subscribed to most of the major ones. These days, I find myself drawn to HBO Max's movies and shows, as well as Peacock's reality trash.

I've been a lifelong Nintendo fan, and I sincerely believe the Nintendo Switch will go down as one of the best gaming consoles of all time. It has an unbelievable library of new and old games from Nintendo and third-party companies. The handheld/console hybrid approach makes playing games so much more flexible, a legacy that continues with the Nintendo Switch 2 and Valve’s Steam Deck.

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Gabriel Zamora

Gabriel Zamora

Senior Writer, Software

In 2014, I began my career at PCMag as a freelancer. That blossomed into a full-time position in 2021, and I now review email marketing apps, mobile operating systems, web hosting services, streaming music platforms, and video games as a senior writer. I'm a graduate of Hunter College, a hard-core gamer, and an Apple enthusiast.

The Technology I Use

I play many video games in my spare time, especially on my gaming rig, which is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, and 16GB of RAM. The Nintendo Switch 2 also sees a lot of action thanks to its backward compatibility, but I'll also occasionally hop on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. 

I'm currently using an iPhone 15 Pro Max, coupled with the Apple AirPods Max that my brother gifted me for Christmas, to listen to music or podcasts on the go. That said, I always carry my iPad Mini with me. The tablet line has served as my faithful drawing canvas for years, and is the one piece of tech I upgrade whenever I can. Paired with an inexpensive Wacom Bamboo Duo stylus, I have a compact, reliable, and convenient doodling set to keep me busy during long commutes across the Big Apple.

Cooking is my dearest passion next to gaming, and I embrace any tech that makes modern cookery a little easier. I discovered the Paprika Recipe Manager during my stint as a chef at Google HQ and fell in love with its simple yet feature-packed toolset. It makes saving and editing online recipes a cinch, and having easy access to them on my phone is a tremendous convenience.

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