Quality web hosting is a cornerstone of modern day web development excellence. You can pour as much resources into the development of your website as possible, but without reliable web hosting, the results will not reciprocate the effort put in. That is why, above all else, you ought to find a web hosting provider that guarantees elite performance and premium features without breaking the bank.
Today, we aim to make your decision of choosing a web hosting provider slightly easier, with our review of one of the web hosting world’s rising star – Hostinger.
In a sea of established web hosting providers, Hostinger has been making waves and disrupting the status quo with its affordable packages – or so they say.
We are here to investigate those claims, and will review the available plans, their prices and features provided by Hostinger. Furthermore, we will look at the performance of the platform, particularly with regards to WordPress. So, buckle up and read on to find out whether Hostinger is actually worth the hype, or is it just a waste of your money.
Hostinger Pricing
Pricing is a major reason for Hostinger’s rapid ascendance in the web hosting market. In fact, there is a good chance that you first heard about Hostinger in a discussion of affordable web hosting options. There are no surprises here – Hostinger is every bit as budget-friendly as it is made out to be.
You can start using Hostinger for your websites at only $2.15 a month. While this base package doesn’t give you much in the way of features, it is a good place to start getting familiarized with the platform. This price point is a fairly accessible entry point for most people, especially if you want to host only one website.
Following this is ‘Premium’ package which will run you a monthly bill of $3.49. As per Hostinger, this is their best-selling plan, which means that this plan will fulfill the needs of most people. And at $3.49, there are a number of perks that really have no business being available at such a lowly price point (discussed in a further section). Unless you’re a major business with several high-availability websites, this plan should suffice.
Speaking of major businesses, Hostinger has a ‘Business’ hosting plan geared towards those very candidates. It will cost you $7.95/month, which really isn’t much for that added layer of reliability and performance boost you get. While most people won’t need this package, it’s good to know that it exists in case you want to upgrade to the next level.
Available Hosting Plans
The 3 pricing options listed above correspond to subscriptions plans provided by Hostinger. Let’s see what each plan offers and whether it is worth anyone’s hard earned cash.
The basic plan is known as the Single plan. Costing you $2.15/month, this plan has a limited set of features. Users can host only a single website, maintain a single database with support of only one email account. Storage is also limited to 10GB. Bandwidth speed will also be regulated to remain below 100GB. Not the most attractive plan, but would still get the job done if you want to power a smaller sized WordPress blog.
Next up is the bestseller standard plan. Hostinger calls this the Premium package, which should tell you what you need to know about where it stands amongst the rest. There are no such limitations on number of sites, disk space, databases, email addresses and bandwidth as seen in the ‘Survival’ plan. To make the deal even sweeter, Hostinger throws in a free domain name for subscribers of this plan.
WordPress users should also delight in the fact that this plan is optimized for WordPress, claiming to give a performance increase of 3x over standard WordPress hosting. Hostinger recommends this for users wanting to host several medium-sized websites, which covers the majority of customers.
Last, but in no shape or form the least, is the Business plan. As discussed above, this is a niche plan, with features that exceed most customers’ requirements. With this plan, you get all the benefits of the previous plan, with twice as much processing prowess and memory.
WordPress optimization is taken to another level as well, at 5x the speed of standard hosting. Bonus features include daily backup of your websites, as well as free SSL certification. This plan should be used if you want to completely eliminate any bottlenecks on the hosting provider, although it will cost you more than twice as much as the Premium package.
Hosting Features
While pricing takes the cake as Hostinger’s most prized asset, the web hosting provider has squeezed a few neat features in such an affordable pricing scheme. These are enough to keep the platform competitive with established names in the industry, whilst maintaining its characteristic low fees. Let’s have a look at these features in more detail:
SSD Hosting
Hostinger, like all other major hosting providers, has migrated over to servers that use SSD storage. This means an improvement of up to 4x in read/write speeds over traditional storage. SSD storage is also more reliable, making it the perfect option for websites that demand high-availability. Some hosting providers do charge a premium for SSD hosting, so it’s good to see that Hostinger offers it at such an affordable price.
Website Builder/Auto-Installer
Hostinger also gives users free, easy-to-use auto-installer and website builder tools. The auto-installer can quickly install various popular applications, such as WordPress, with a single click. You can then customize this with the website builder, which comes with a ton of free templates to choose from, developed by the development community. Most effects can be achieved via simple drag-and-drop tools, which is convenient for the non-technical among us.
WordPress Optimization
Hostinger prides itself as the platform of choice when it comes to hosting WordPress websites. And for good reason – the web hosting provider is a good example of how a dedicated WordPress platform should look like. Out of the box, customers get PHP7 support (you can easily switch between different PHP versions) and a ton of optimizations specific to WordPress sites. Hostinger even has a custom caching plugin, taking care of most generic optimization techniques without the customer’s intervention.
Security
Security is a fundamental property of a successful web hosting business. Hostinger shapes up nicely in this category as well, when compared to the competition. While absent in the lower-tier subscription plans, SSL certification can be availed in the Business plan. This adds an additional layer of encryption on your HTTP packets. Hostinger also provides protection against DDoS attacks via Platinum BitNinja’s DDoS protection. This will ensure that your site remains accessible at all times.
Hosting WordPress on Hostinger
At this point, you might be wondering where Hostinger falls short. Surely, with the features discussed above at such inexpensive price points, there must be a compromise somewhere.
Here, we will test and see if it is so easy to setup WordPress in Hostinger as this hosting claims. We will also test the speed of the freshly installed WordPress.
WordPress installation is pretty straight forward and not much different than on any other hosting provider:
- Login to Hostinger profile and select the relevant web hosting account (if you have more than one)
- On the following page, look for the Website section. Here you will find both the Website Builder and Auto Installer tools. Click on Auto Installer.
- You will see a wide range of applications that you can install with a single click. You can either choose to locate WordPress yourself, which should be placed in the Content Management section or simply enter WordPress in the search bar. Once it appears, click it.
- You will now be taken to the configuration page of your new WordPress installation. Fill in the necessary details: URL, website title and website tagline. All the others fields have been auto-filled, though you can modify whatever you wish. When finished, click Install.
- Now wait for a few seconds for the installation to complete, and refresh the page. You should see a new installation along with the creation date and URL you just entered.
That is pretty much it. You now have a fully functional WordPress website. But what about the performance? We all know that even low tier hosting providers offer auto WordPress installation. Let’s use pingdom.com and see if WordPress performance is as good as they claim.
According to pingdom, our freshly installed WordPress is faster than 81% other tested websites. Not bad for a hosting which positions itself as a cheap hosting provider.
In addition to easy deployment and pretty good performance of WordPress websites, Hostinger also provides a plenty of tutorials on WordPress features, errors, and optimizations.
Wrapping Up
If you are looking for a budget-friendly web hosting provider, Hostinger is a more-than-decent option. It doesn’t have groundbreaking features, but for the price you’re paying, expect much less from the competition. Hostinger particularly shines with WordPress websites.
So, if you want to host WordPress sites, look no further. We hope you found this review helpful, and have a clearer picture in mind of whether to go with Hostinger or choose a different web hosting provider.