Price is typically the leading factor when it comes to choosing a web hosting provider. However, using it as the deciding factor can often cause you to overlook other features with the sole goal of staying within your budget. But why should you settle for the cheapest offer without first looking at what the package offers? Our Hostinger WordPress Hosting review looks at what this budget-maximizing option offers and gives you the information you need to make an informed decision.
Remember, this is a company that has taken close to a decade to get to where it is today. During this period, the company has grown from a small web host serving hundreds to now serving more than 29 million users globally.
Hostinger WordPress Hosting Overall Rating
Hostinger is among the most affordable solutions available today. The $1.99 per month WordPress starter Hostinger plans are more than appealing for anyone looking for an affordable hosting provider. Even when compared to its competitors, this is more than a pocket-friendly price, leaving you to ask one question – what’s the catch?
Well, the catch is, to get the best deal possible, you’ll have to sign up for at least four years of hosting and pay for it at sign-up. Although this may seem like quite a commitment, the upside is that Hostinger will provide you with a fixed and highly discounted price for nearly five years.
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WordPress Hosting 4.9 |
For many users, this is a good thing. Especially considering that the platform promises to continue offering excellent services for the entire duration.
So, the question that remains is, ‘can it really hold up its end of the bargain?’.
Considering that we have tested Hostinger WordPress hosting plans several times over the last few years, we would say very probably – depending on your needs.
Hostinger primarily provides shared and WordPress hosting plans which are aimed at beginner website owners. Its marketing indicates that there’s plenty of help available for newbies, including entrepreneurs looking to host online stores and business landing pages.
The WordPress Hostinger plans are definitely something to consider if you’re looking to migrate your site from an underperforming or overpriced web host. You should also note that the provider does, in fact, have plans for resellers.
Its plans will work well for you if you’re a web development agency or a solo web designer serving small businesses or individual clients that have sites with average traffic. Also note that apart from English, its services are available in a dozen other languages.
Today, its customer interface is available in Ukrainian, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Indonesian, Portuguese, and Lithuanian. All this is done with the aim of ensuring that its clients in all the markets are catered for and content with its services.
Pricing
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Pricing 4.9 |
Typically the first thing most customers looking for a Hostinger WordPress hosting review are interested in finding out is surely the price. After all, awesome hosting doesn’t mean much to a site owner if it breaks their budget!
Keeping this in mind, Hostinger offers some surprisingly low pricing options for its WordPress hosting plans. For example, a simple website starts at only $2.79 per month plus three months free with its promotional pricing. Please note that this only applies for the first billing cycle.
With this deal, you get to make your ideas happen and, at the same time, receive a free domain and guaranteed support around the clock. And did we mention that the offer comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee?
In addition, all its higher-tier hosting plans have free backups and will allow you to build unlimited WordPress sites on your hosting account. This is one of the most affordable hosting plans available today, especially when you consider its fantastic server speeds.
WordPress Hosting Plans
Hostinger’s managed WordPress hosting comes with ready-to-use features allowing you to begin building your website immediately. With these plans, you get to enjoy its one-click installer, user-friendly control panel, excellent SSD storage, and automated WordPress updates.
Moreover, the host pre-installs some of the best marketing tools and speed optimization plugins that you need to grow your online presence faster. Furthermore, you can always reach its Customer Success team via live chat. And that’s regardless of your time zone or the issue you’re facing.
Single WordPress
Hostinger describes it as the ideal solution for beginners. The solution has a starting price of $1.99 per month. Thus, allowing you to save up to 80% from its usual price of $9.99. Please note that this price will increase to $3.99 monthly when you renew.
There are some limitations, of course – you get no SSH access, only 1 FTP account and 2 subdomains. We would not call this a deal-breaker, though. This plan is great for beginners. Let’s look at the features you will get:
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Single WordPress 4.4 |
- One website
- Two databases
- 50GB SSD storage
- 100GB bandwidth
- One email account
- Up to 10,000 visits per month
WordPress Starter Package
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Starter Package 4.4 |
Hostinger describes it as the ideal package for any person looking to run a personal website. The package has a $2.79 per month starting price enabling you to save up to 75% off its normal starting price of $10.99 per month.
Please note that this package also gives you three months free and will require you to shell out $6.99 per month on renewal. At this rate, you can expect to enjoy the following top features from Hostinger:
- 100 websites
- 100GB SSD storage
- Up to 25,000 monthly visitors
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free Email
Business WordPress
The Hostinger business WordPress package is optimized for small businesses and comes with a $3.99 per month price tag. It gives you three months of free hosting and attracts an $8.99 per month price tag on renewal.
This plan includes a ton of perks which will save you a lot of hassle. You can then focus on more important aspects of your business – content, promotion, etc.
Its top features are:
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Business WordPress 4.5 |
- 100 websites
- 200GB SSD storage
- Up to 100,000 monthly visits
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free Email
WordPress Pro
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WordPress Pro 4.5 |
Last but not least on this list of Hostinger WordPress hosting plans is the WordPress Pro package. Hostinger describes it as best for small and medium businesses. It comes with an $11.59 per month price tag and three free months of hosting.
A huge distinction between this plan and the others – dedicated resources! Perfectly optimized for your website, granting you speed and efficiency.
Its features include the following:
- 300 websites
- 200GB SSD storage
- 200,000 visits per month
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free Email
WordPress Hosting Features
The best way to describe Hostinger is as a highly-optimized platform that has plenty of resources. With prices as low as they are, our anxious personalities immediately went into overdrive. Trying to identify the two areas where the host may try to pull one on us – features and performance.
While we would love to pay less than what other platforms are charging, we sure don’t want to end up with a fraction of what they offer. Fortunately, our journey to exploring the platform allowed us to discover that it does, in fact, offer a ton of resources.
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Features 4.5 |
It does, for instance, come with plenty of built-in WordPress optimization and all the other essential features you may need to get your website off the ground. We opted to focus on testing the WordPress Starter option, and the following is what we learned about it.
Custom Domain
Apart from WordPress hosting, a custom domain is needed for running your online business or personal blog. The WordPress starter Hostinger package offers a free .com domain to all its new hosting users, valid for 12 months.
It’s an offer that extends to its other WordPress hosting plans, except for the Single WordPress plan. The host also offers new domain registrations at market-friendly rates. You should note that the prices charged on sign-up are only valid for a year and will change on renewal.
Free Email
While many users may want to use free email with their hosting provider, you should note that the WooCommerce Hostinger plans don’t have this option. However, the host does offer two paid versions: Titan Email hosting and Google Workspace Email Hosting.
Titan/Business Email Hosting
The Titan Business Email Hosting plan allows you to look professional as you build your brand. Here, you get to choose between the Business Email service, with a $0.99 per user price tag, or the Enterprise Email service, with a $2.49 per user price tag.
Depending on the chosen option, you can find yourself with 10 GB or 30 GB of email storage. Other features to look forward to include an inbuilt calendar that has contacts, email templates, and read receipts.
Google Workspace Email Hosting
The Google Workspace Email Hosting package provides you with everything you need to get your work done. Hostinger describes it as the best way to create, collaborate, and communicate with your contacts.
It comes with familiar tools providing you with the space you need to make things happen. The package attracts a $6 price tag for each mailbox. With this, you get up to 30 GB of email storage, antivirus checks, unlimited mail filters, and a total of 30 email aliases.
Support
Customer support is a factor that can either make or break a hosting provider. The reality is that you stand to lose tons of sales if your site goes down for some reason and you’re unable to contact the support team.
Hostinger WordPress hosting understands this and doesn’t disappoint on this front. The platform has a multilingual support team, a live chat option, and has integrated Intercom as the primary support system.
You should, however, note that the live chat option is only available to users logged into their Hostinger accounts. You can find the icon immediately upon logging into your account, as it will appear in the bottom right section of your page.
When penning this Hostinger WordPress hosting review, we used the live chat feature to ask technical questions and were impressed with the responses. The support team was fast and offered knowledgeable replies backed up by links showing what to do.
Hostinger also has an extensive knowledge base that has tons of short and comprehensive articles. Here, you can find guides, answers to questions, and any other information you may need to know about its numerous WordPress hosting solutions.
Security
For any site owner looking to secure their WooCommerce store, you’ll find that Hostinger has lots of tools that will allow you to do just that. For example, you’ll receive a free SSL Hostinger certificate with most of its plans. You can also buy one separately.
The SSL technology allows you to secure the connection between your online store and the visitor’s computer, which is crucial for security. You need to take advantage of this feature if you wish to sell your products and services online.
Hostinger provides a lifetime SSL that will auto-renew for a one-off fee of $11.95. You also have the option to buy a Comodo PositiveSSL at a $7.49 annual fee. Cloudflare protection, a tech that helps safeguard against DDOS attacks, is available for $19.99 annually.
Note that you get Cloudflare protection for free if you commit to at least one year of service.
Migration Tools
Hostinger-managed WordPress hosting provides unlimited free website migrations on all its websites. To request this service, you’ll need to start by selecting your website control panel (WHM, cPanel, WordPress) and mention the following:
- Your domain names
- The Admin login page URL
- Your username and password combination
- Your previous web hosting services provider
Once you have submitted your migration request, you need to wait for someone from their customer support team to transfer the site for you. The personnel will handle the transfer from your previous host at no cost to you.
Kindly note that it may take between two to four days to complete the migration process. You’re advised to exercise patience during this period and to allow the Hostinger personnel to handle things on their end.
Free Trial
Hostinger WordPress Hosting does, indeed, offer a free trial. The host is one of the very few platforms that allow their customers to try out their services before committing to having their sites hosted with them.
With the free trial, you can try out its WooCommerce and WordPress hosting solutions. You will be able to see how their services would help improve your business. The free trial lasts for 30 days and includes all its essential features.
During this time, you’ll have plenty of time to try out all its different features without having to worry about paying for anything. Hostinger will expect you to choose a hosting package once this period has lapsed.
Additionally, Hostinger doesn’t require a credit card for users to activate the trial accounts. All you need to do to get started is to sign up for an account and follow the prompts that will show up on the screen.
Money-Back Guarantee
You can request a refund for products purchased from Hostinger within 30 days of the date of your transaction. While at it, note that digital assets, tokens, and cryptos are generally irreversible due to their transitory nature and highly volatile exchange rates.
Hostinger is quick to mention that it will not issue a refund for products purchased using tokens, digital assets, and cryptocurrencies. For cases where a refund can’t be issued using the payment method chosen initially, the host will offer a refund to your hosting account.
The ‘date of transaction’ mentioned in its terms typically refers to the date you purchased the products in question. It, therefore, includes the date that the host processes any renewal request you may have submitted.
Before you initiate a refund request, Hostinger recommends that you ensure that you have downloaded all your account data since it will cancel all services after sending the refund. This means that your emails, databases, and site files will be deleted permanently.
Performance
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Performance 4.7 |
Hostinger business WordPress hosting is one of the fastest budget hosts in the market today. Despite being significantly cheaper than most other entry-level hosts in the market today, Hostinger did remarkably well in our performance tests.
We found it to be one of the best-performing WordPress hosting providers we have ever tested, and it wasn’t too far behind other top-rated hosting providers. Hostinger offers data centers in South America, the US, Asia, and Europe.
Make sure to choose a data center closest to the location that you’re targeting. To ensure that we tested it fairly, we built a site that simulated a typical promotional text filled with lots of complex code for interactive elements, high-quality images, texts, and custom fonts.
The following are our findings:
Speed
For the speed tests, we used Pingdom, which is an effective and popular tool designed for this specific purpose. All its basic tests are free. To complete our speed test, we used a simple website loaded with a default theme and made sure to add several plugins.
Once this was ready, we then went ahead to input the URL of our site into Pingdom before proceeding to run the speed tests from several diverse locations. The results shown below demonstrate the average speeds recorded from each location.
- Tokyo: 1.57 seconds
- Washington DC: 0.81 seconds
- Sydney: 2.49 seconds
- London: 0.54 seconds
- San Francisco: 1.12 seconds
Overall, these results are impressive. Google recommends that you keep your page loading times to below two seconds. Anything above this can harm the site’s bounce rate.
From what we can see here, the Hostinger servers are performing excellently in either part of the United States and remarkably well in London. Moreover, all the locations we tested are within acceptable limits, showing that the host has a serviceable speed globally.
Uptime
Our Hostinger WordPress Hosting performance review also included a test of its reliability. After all, many site owners don’t care how fast a hosting provider can make their stores load if their websites are never online, to begin with.
To test its uptime, we used Uptime Robot to monitor the test website for a period of 30 days. We like this tool because it makes a recording of every instance a downtime occurs. In our case, there was no downtime to record.
The test website remained online and accessible for the entire period. Some hosting providers that have more expensive and extensive plans at times struggle to match such a result. Note that Hostinger provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee to all its users.
What this means is that you can claim compensation from the host via its service credits if it fails to fulfill this uptime guarantee. The 99.9% uptime guarantee provided by Hostinger is the industry standard and is what many other hosting providers offer.
Response Time
Based on our performance tests, we can safely say that Hostinger is the perfect example of how a web hosting provider should look like. Even though the platform provides a standard uptime guarantee of 99.9%, it somehow managed to maintain a perfect 100% during the testing period.
While this is an impressive rate, Hostinger may have a hard time maintaining this performance in the long term. It’s something that even the most expensive providers in the market have a hard time doing.
You need to understand that there are occasions when server maintenance will be happening, causing you to experience one to two minutes of downtime. The good news is that such a performance points to the reliability of the Hostinger WordPress packages.
The average response time recorded during our tests was 511ms. To help you understand this better, anything over 600ms is considered average for WordPress hosting. Hostinger is, as such, above the accepted limits.
Load Time
Fast page loading times are crucial if your site visitors are to have a good user experience on your site. To prove this, consider the number of times you have found yourself leaving a site because it took too long to open a page.
Studies show that 30%+ of web visitors are likely to abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds for it to load a page. Hostinger WordPress Hosting boasts servers in Europe, Asia, and the US, with each being reportedly connected to a 1,000 Mbps connection.
This type of connection is required to guarantee fast and stable loading times. During our tests, Hostinger managed to deliver an average loading time of 307ms. Thus, being among the top 10 fastest WordPress hosting solutions we have ever tested.
Ease of Use
One of the key factors that enabled Hostinger to rank highly in our list is its ease of use. And especially when getting started. We noted that the hosting provider has a clean interface, a user-friendly dashboard, and a guided setup.
All this works well for beginner site owners as it means that they don’t have to take a class to host their eCommerce stores. And while the host is simple, you’ll love it because it doesn’t skimp on reliable servers and other powerful tools.
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Ease of Use 4.9 |
Its effortless use continues even long after you have completed the sign-up process and signed up for a hosting plan. Its built-in wizard will take you through each step of the site buildup process, allowing you to set up all the features you need on your store.
Allow the wizard to walk you through every step, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly it results in a fully functional website.
Self-Managed vs. Fully Managed WordPress
Choosing a WordPress hosting plan typically comes down to your business needs, technical competence, and the amount of traffic the site receives. Irrespective of the hosting plan you settle for, each will come with its own pros and cons.
So, what’s the difference between self-managed and fully managed WordPress hosting?
Self-Managed Hosting
Self-managed hosting, also known as Unmanaged hosting, refers to a situation where you receive the same services as managed hosting but where you handle all the maintenance. In this case, it will mean that you’ll also do all the server monitoring.
With Unmanaged hosting, you’re required to dedicate technical staff to maintaining the server aspect of your eCommerce platform. Please note that the hosting provider won’t provide any experts to help you maintain the website.
Additionally, the staff assigned to these roles will need to be dedicated to their work. Their expertise may be needed at a moment’s notice. With this type of hosting, you’ll need to handle server maintenance and still continue to market your business.
Hostinger Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed hosting refers to a situation where Hostinger gets to provide you with all the services needed to run an eCommerce platform. In this regard, the host will take care of all server issues, including its management and ongoing maintenance.
As a result, you’ll not have to dedicate any personnel to the aforementioned tasks. Most users prefer this option as it frees them from the hassles that come with maintaining a site on their own.
With managed hosting, you get more time to concentrate on growing your venture.
Hostinger Pros and Cons
Like all other products available in the market today, there are advantages and disadvantages to choosing Hostinger WordPress hosting solutions. We want to point out a few of the critical elements that work in its favor and those that don’t to help you make an informed decision.
Pros
Fast Loading Times
It’s no secret that the time a website takes to load a page is very important for your site visitors. If visitors to the site have to wait for more than three seconds for it to load, many will opt to leave and check out your competition.
Hostinger understands this and has provided quick hosting speeds. As mentioned earlier, we put a test site up for a month and were impressed by the speeds recorded throughout the test duration.
Fantastically Affordable
Not only does Hostinger provide you with blazing-fast speeds on its hosting plans, but these plans also come at the most competitive rates you can expect to find anywhere. You should, however, note that these rates require you to make a commitment of at least one year.
Money-Back Guarantee
Not happy with your recent purchase? Worry not. Hostinger has a 30-day free trial offer that allows you to try out its services without having to provide your credit card details. However, note that domain name renewals, redemption fees, and privacy protection aren’t part of this.
Free Domain
Website owners need a free domain to go along with their hosting solutions. While it’s possible to purchase your hosting and domain from separate providers, it’s better and cheaper to buy everything from the same company.
It becomes even more likable when you’re able to get a free domain with your hosting account. Free domain is an option for site owners who want to opt for any of its WordPress hosting plans.
Simple to Get Started
Ease of use is one of the many things we like about Hostinger. The host has a clean interface, a user-friendly dashboard, and a guided setup process. All these make it easy for first-time users to host their sites.
Cons
No Phone Support
There are times when you need to talk to an actual human on the phone to receive help with a problem that you may be facing. Hostinger doesn’t have this option, which means the only way to contact customer support is via the live chat feature.
Missing Features on Its Budget Plans
Even though this is not a deal breaker, certain helpful features are missing from its plans. A notable example of this is the lack of a content delivery network. Its plans also lack automatic daily backups.
Final Verdict
Hostinger WordPress Hosting has improved its services over the years and today boasts of an attractive interface, excellent speeds, and automated backup options. We, however, feel that the platform can improve on its customer support speeds and the performance of certain servers.
All in all, we are satisfied with its overall performance. So, if you’re planning to target a US-based audience, we recommend a WordPress hosting plan with US servers.
We have tested these servers and found them to be exceptional in terms of their speeds and performance. For those targeting audiences in other locations, make sure to choose a data center closest to your audience to ensure that they won’t have to worry about performance.
Overall, Hostinger is a good choice for both newbies and experienced developers. It provides knowledgeable customer support, fast loading times, free SSL certificates, and affordable pricing plans.
Good one. Thanks for posting