Hostinger review 2024: is it a good host?

Hostinger is one of the most popular web hosting providers. It’s inexpensive, fast, and easy to use, even for complete beginners. Most importantly, Hostinger offers great value at an affordable price.

Unsurprisingly, Hostinger has been our #1 pick for a long time; however, it has recently lost that title. This doesn’t mean that Hostinger is bad in any way. It’s still an excellent web hosting solution with only a few minor downsides.

Over the past two months, I’ve been testing Hostinger with the Cybernews research team, evaluating its performance, features, ease of use, security, pricing, and customer support to help you decide if it’s the right choice for you.

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 hostingStarting priceBest for
Shared hosting $2.54/monthStartups and small businesses, freelancers, blogs
WordPress hosting $2.54/monthSmall to medium websites built on WordPress
Cloud hosting $6.79/monthSmall to medium businesses and blogs that are experiencing growth, and need exceptional performance.
VPS hosting $4.24/monthMedium to large businesses experiencing growth and needing more flexibility

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:

Once you subscribe to Hostinger, go to the Home Page of your hPanel and find your hosting plan under Account actions.
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.
Find Account actions again and click Setup near the pending setup order. This will start the onboarding process.
When the Hello! page opens, hit Start now and provide additional information about your web hosting project.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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