Hostinger Review – Has The Fame Ruined My Favorite Host?

IntroductionIntroduction

A year back when I first published Hostinger review on my channel, I found their service to be a good ratio between cheap plans and excellent performance. Because they were mostly unknown, there was plenty of server space. 

But since then, a lot has changed. Hostinger kind of exploded and is now competing with popular web hosts like Bluehost or HostGator.

So what has changed? Is their service still good today?

This is exactly what I will find out in my review. I’ll check the prices, user interface, performance, and customer support.

So before you get a plan with Hostinger, let’s see what you should know about it.

Hostinger PricingHostinger Pricing

Hostinger is cheaper than their competitors with a starting price of $0.99 per month for the Single shared hosting plan. Even the more advanced plans – managed WordPress for $1.99/mo, Cloud for $9.99/mo, and VPS for $3.95/mo, are still below the industry average prices.

Personally, I think that Single and Business plans offer the best value. Single is good for that one small personal website you might need and it won’t leave a dent in your bank account. Meanwhile, the Business plan is a big upgrade from Premium for just $1 extra. It adds 5x more server space for files and daily backups that are alone worth $1 per month. 

Just keep in mind that the prices are based on a “one-time fee” basis. You’ll need to pre-pay the full period up-front. And they do change depending on how long the period is. 

You’ll get the best deal by picking the Single shared hosting plan for 4 years. The total will be $47.52 for 48 months worth of hosting for one website, an SSL certificate, and one professional email address. 

While you’re forced to pay upfront, it’s the same with almost every provider. In comparison, here’s what it would cost to get the cheapest possible price with a couple of providers:

• Hostinger – $47.52 for 4 years
• Bluehost – $99 for 3 years
• SiteGround – $83.88 for 1 year
• DreamHost – $93.24 for 3 years
• HostGator – $98.83 for 3 years

Hostinger’s deal is the best both for the length of your hosting plan and the price. It also pushes the more expensive renewal ($2.15/mo after your first billing period ends) further away.

But wait a second, the price can get even sweeter.

Use one of the links in this review and the code EMITREVIEWS to get an additional 10% discount from any of the plans. For example, Single shared hosting would cost you $42.77 with my coupon code. 

So, here’s my recommendation. Pick Hostinger if you need low priced hosting. Shared plans will be great for most of the websites, especially if you’re just getting started.   

Hostinger InterfaceHostinger Interface

Instead of the good old cPanel that keeps increasing its prices every year (and so hosting costs), Hostinger has developed its own control panel. Proudly, they named it hPanel. It’s clean, modern, and has every functionality you might need.

So this is what Hostinger is using at the moment:

Neat, right?

And this good old-fashioned one is what you are “missing out” on:

Hostinger’s hPanel definitely looks good. But to be completely honest, it’s both a blessing and a curse. 

Why so?

• hPanel is super easy to use, especially for beginners.
• It looks nice and is easy to navigate.
• It does not increase hosting costs the way 3rd party tools do.

So, what’s my issue with hPanel?

It is freakin’ slow. Want to open the subdomains folder? Go get yourself a coffee while you wait. Want to configure your database? That’s a lunch break while the application loads.

Okay okay, I might be exaggerating. But hPanel is definitely slower than cPanel and you’ll need to get used to some pauses in between your clicks. 

Apart from a couple of seconds of delays, hPanel is beautifully made and very intuitive. It’s made with beginners in mind but has every advanced functionality to customize your hosting. 

Hostinger PerformanceHostinger Performance

Hostinger constantly outperforms cheap, mid-range, and even some of the top-tier web hosting providers. For this Hostinger review, I am doing 3 tests – speed, stability, and stress. We’ll see how fast the provider loads pages, how it performs in the long-term, and how well it handles multiple visitors at the same time.

To test Hostinger, I created a website. It has images, plenty of text, buttons, and various other design elements. Basically, a regular website you’d expect to see online.

Using GTmetrix, I tested how fast it loads. 

Hostinger’s test website loaded in 1.9s. That’s a really good result for quite a heavy page. If this result does not tell you much, consider Google’s analysis. They say that a page loading time of up to 3 seconds is relatively good. And Hostinger barely touches 2 seconds mark.

To put it in a perspective, premium speed-focused providers like SiteGround or A2 Hosting load the same website at a similar speed using way more expensive plans. You get equal performance for 3 times cheaper price here.

Generally, your website will be almost as fast as it can get on a cheap shared hosting plan. 

But that was a lab test in a very controlled environment with GTmetrix. In other words, that’s an empty website test – look, in reality, you’ll be expecting at least some users browsing through your site, right?

So how would the same website perform when a bunch of users visits it? Let’s stress-test the host.

As I don’t have a team of 50 at the stand-by to go and break my websites, I’m using K6 Cloud software to sent bots to do that. 

After the test was finished, I can say that 50 users at the same time might be the limit for Hostinger’s shared hosting. Once we hit the 50 visitors mark, the server slowed down by quite a lot. So you can expect the best performance from the Premium shared hosting plan that I’m using at around 40 visitors.

But let’s make this clear. 50 visitors at the same time is a lot. I had a site that would get thousands of visits weekly. But the number of users at the same time would rarely climb over 30. That’s because people constantly change – some leave, more join in. And that happens in seconds so your server is not overloaded.

The last test was by far the longest. I monitored Hostinger for a year. 

And the results are impressive. My website was online for 99.93% of the time which is even better than the guaranteed 99.9%. That was just 3 hours of downtime. A year. Or in other words … Hostinger was online for 8757 hours out of 8760 hours that a year has. 

All results summed up, Hostinger is fast, reliable, and can handle a bunch of visitors at the same time.

Technology UsedTechnology Used

How does Hostinger achieve such performance was always my question. At first, I thought that servers were simply empty as not many people knew about the company. But now that’s not the case. Turns out, there’s some seriously impressive tech behind this host. I’m talking about multiple data centers, strong hardware, and greatly optimized software.

#1 Servers across the globe

While Hostinger’s team is located in Europe, they have data centers spread across the globe. You can host your website in Europe, the US, or Asia regions. 

The closer your website is hosted to the audience you target, the faster it can load. It’s like WiFi; the closer you are to the router, the faster the internet connection is. 

#2 Innovative hardware and software solutions

Hostinger uses LiteSpeed servers. These servers are some of the fastest in the industry. Also, they come with LiteSpeed cache pre-installed. It dramatically increases page load times. 

I’m still not sure how Hostinger affords this tech without increasing the prices. So let’s just hope it stays the same. 

Customer SupportCustomer Support

Hostinger has 24/7 live chat and email support together with a broad and detailed knowledge base. During my first review, they seemed to work efficiently and responded to my questions almost immediately. The only drawback was the lack of phone support.

But Hostinger grew. A lot, since the last time I was testing it. So how are they dealing with thousands of more users and even more of their problems? 

As far as my experience goes, the agents are always able to solve the problems quickly. The wait times vary – sometimes an agent responds in a minute and sometimes it could be a 20-minute wait.

Reading through Hostinger reviews on my channel I also noticed that users are not always happy about customer support. The main complaint – long wait times. So what I want to say is that experience with support can vary greatly. It depends on the time of the day and how busy the support actually is.

I was also disappointed to see that live chat was turned off for a big chunk of time in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit. It was reserved for people who bought priority support. We, regular users, were left with an email ticket option. Agents explained that it was due to the situation and everything went back to normal in the summer.

On a positive note, the Hostinger’s used live chat system is modern. You can close it completely and once an agent replies, you’ll get a notification and can join the chat again. All conversations are saved so you can refer to them later.

What I like more is that you can easily send images, links, and even gifs using the live chat. It surely helps to explain your problems more clearly. 

You can refer to the knowledge base too. 

It has lots of screenshots and step-by-step instructions for every aspect of web hosting

So, Hostinger’s support is mostly good as far as my experience goes. Sure, busy times happen and wait times can get long, but all of the agents seemed to be professional and capable of solving any problem you might have.

RecommendationHostinger Review – Do I Recommend this Host?

Yes, I do recommend Hostinger. It’s my go-to option when it comes to affordable and fast hosting. This company often outperforms mid-range and even some premium hosts and does that for low prices

Hostinger’s cheap plans are best if you are creating a portfolio or a small personal blog. It provides you with the needed tools to create a website easily. Also, it will look professional and visitors won’t have to wait for ages for the pages to load. 

I also highly recommend it to beginners. If it’s your first time creating a website, you don’t need to spend a lot on hosting. Grab a cheap plan from Hostinger and focus on attracting visitors. Then you’ll be able to invest in more powerful solutions. 

If you are considering buying one of Hostinger’s plan, consider using the links in this review and EMITREVIEWS discount code to get an additional 10% off. Happy hosting!