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We like Hostinger (it’s difficult not to).
7/10
6/10
8/10
9/10
574ms
99.98%
Average uptime for all hosts in January 2018 (to date) is 99.80% while average response time for all web hosts in January 2018 (to date) is 1,254ms.
Like a lot of hosts they advertise monthly rates without allowing users to pay monthly. Their ‘Single’ package is advertised at $2.15 per month however to qualify for this rate you have to pay 36 months in advance.
We decided to pay 12 months in advance and the total cost was $39.00, which, if you were actually paying monthly, would work out at $3.25 per month. Hostinger also affords users the option to subscribe for 6 months (total cost $21.30 for the term) or 3 months (total cost $11.97 for the term).
Firstly, this is very cheap relative to other web hosts (albeit Hostinger offers fewer features relative to slightly more expensive hosts).
Secondly, and like most hosts, Hostinger automatically renews your package at the end of its term for another of the same duration. However, unlike most web hosts, the renewal price is the same as the introductory price (at least it is in the UK, and Hostinger seems to offer the same package features and service between the US and the UK).
While that may not sound surprising, and it may be subject to change, it’s highly unusual for web hosts to offer such a low introductory rate – particularly when we consider how good Hostinger’s package is relative to the price – without ramping up the price when it comes to renewing for another term.
Sadly, they don’t appear to offer website migrations – a number of web hosts of free website migrations, however there’s no mention of this on their website. They also lose marks for only offering a free domain on the ‘Premium’ and ‘Business’ packages, not the ‘Single’ package.
When you factor in the cost of a domain at most registrars (typically about $15), it brings Hostinger’s introductory price up to $54 – at least it would if Hostinger charged the same rates as every other registrar (they don’t).
Their domain prices are among the cheapest we’ve found – you can register a .com domain for just $8.99 (Web.com charges an absurd $37.99, Siteground charges $14.95 and iPage charges $10.99 but $16.99 for renewals).
Domain privacy at Hostinger.com is also remarkably cheap relative to other web hosts – they only charge $5 per year. Siteground charges $12 and Bluehost charges $14.88.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any information about domain renewal prices on their website – we’ll submit another support ticket after a few days and update this review accordingly (we’ve pestered their support team enough for one day!). They really should have this information freely available on their website though.
Setup was also remarkably easy, largely because their admin panel and checkout process is excellent.
Hostinger requested information on our domain after checkout. Immediately following checkout, and after we’d paid for our hosting package, we were given nameservers to point our domain to.
It may seem insignificant, but Hostinger made it easier than every other company we host with to set-up an externally registered domain (we don’t even want to repeat how long it took us to find GoDaddy’s nameservers). All in all, it took about 6 hours till we went live.
Hostinger places a number of restrictions on accounts on its shared hosting servers.
Restrictions are always difficult to compare because most web hosts will restrict you without telling you what the limit of the restriction is (in other words, just because a restriction isn’t specified don’t assume it doesn’t exist) eg they’ll give you a percentage value you aren’t permitted to exceed.
It’s worth noting that InMotion restricts entry processes at 20, A2 Hosting restricts them at 15 and GreenGeeks restricts them at 100 (a lot of hosts don’t specify what the restriction is and all of the aforementioned – who’ve been transparent with their offering – are more expensive than Hostinger)
The maximum permitted size of a MySQL database is 1GB and MySQL databases are not permitted to contain more than 1,000 tables (more than enough for the average user). You’re also restricted to 1 email account and that account can be no larger than 200MB (this is very low relative to other web hosts).
All Hostinger accounts come with a 30 day money back guarantee and a 99.0% or 99.9% uptime guarantee.
They’re a little sneaky with the uptime guarantee – we were wondering why we’d seen the uptime guarantee advertised in some places as 99.9% and in other places as 99%; it’s because the uptime guarantee for the ‘Single’ package is 99.00% (marketed as 99%) while the uptime guarantee for the ‘Premium’ and ‘Business’ packages is 99.90% (marketed as 99.9%).
What’s the difference between 99.90% uptime and 99.00% uptime? 99.9% uptime guarantee allows for about 43 minutes of downtime per month while a 99.00% uptime guarantee allows for about 7 hours 18 minutes of downtime per month.
This only becomes apparent when you compare every feature of their package side-by-side on their full feature list comparison page.
If they fail to honour the guarantee – if they fail to less than 7 hours of downtime each month they are the worst host ever! – they’ll give you 5% off the cost of one month of hosting (which contrasts to, for example, Hostgator, which offers one month of free web hosting).
We’re a bit disappointed by the rate of compensation – and the sneakiness around the uptime guarantee – and feel they could offer more.
It’s also worth noting that what constitute downtime or uptime is solely determined by Hostinger (ie you can’t provide your own performance data).
Products purchased with cryptocurrencies will be non-refundable and are not included in the 30 day money back guarantee. There are some other exceptions, too:
Automated backups are offered on a weekly basis for the ‘single’ and ‘premium’ packages and you can access these very easily in their admin panel (you can also download them to your computer). You can also generate manual backups from the same place (and it’s quick!)
It’s the best admin panel we’ve reviewed. The vast majority of web hosts utilise cPanel – as does Hostinger – however most installations are quite slow and clunky; Hostinger’s admin panel is lightning fast, usable and aesthetically pleasing.
While a number of web hosts have ‘hacked’ the cPanel installation or created their own information architecture (navigation and labelling) on top of cPanel, Hostinger has kept most of the traditional installation.
If you ever host your website with Hostinger and then move to another web host you’ll quickly realise how much you miss their admin panel.
Good luck getting through!
It’s disappointing – Hostinger excels in most other areas however they need to improve customer service response times before we feel comfortable recommending them.
