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Our independent research into website builders shows that Hostinger (formerly Zyro) packs a punch as the best website builder for uptime reliability. Scoring an overall 3.7/5 in our tests, its uptime reliability will ensure your website is live and accessible while its adaptive AI tools can help you build a website faster.
In this review, we’ll explore Hostinger’s features, pros, cons, and pricing, and compare its website features, design functionalities, ease of use, and customer support with competitor products.
Here at Expert Market, we investigate various website builders, like Hostinger, to help you find the right one for your business. Read on to learn more about Hostinger, or start building your website with Hostinger today!
| Hostinger |
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| Score 4.0 |
| Best For Best for Uptime Reliability |
| Price Range
$2.49 + 3 months free (with the 48-month plan) |
Hostinger’s Pros and Cons
Pros
- 99.9% guaranteed uptime
- 24/7 live chat support
- Adaptive AI-powered tools
Cons
- Doesn’t offer keyword support
- Limited design flexibility
✔ Pro: 99.9% Guaranteed Uptime
Uptime reliability decides how long your website is online and running smoothly. It’s worth mentioning that 100% uptime reliability is a myth. So, Hostinger’s guarantee of 99.9% uptime reliability ensures that your website will almost always be live and accessible for visitors and potential customers.
To emphasize the power of Hostinger’s uptime, our overall top-scorer for website builders, Wix, only offers a 99.8% uptime guarantee.
✔ Pro: 24/7 Live Chat Support
Building a website is no easy feat, so it’s crucial to have a reliable help and support channel. Scoring 3.3/5 in our help and support analysis, Hostinger offers 24/7 live chat support, which comes in handy when you need urgent assistance. You’ll only have to click on the bottom right of the page to be assisted.
Alternatively, you can also take advantage of Hostinger’s vast knowledge center, where you can find various tutorials, such as building your website from the ground up. Squarespace, which tops our help and support analysis with a score of 4.8/5, also features a comprehensive help center to guide you, but it only offers live chat support from Monday to Friday, from 4am to 12am. Sure, Squarespace offers 24/7 support through email and social media, but having a 24/7 live chat channel on your website, as with Hostinger, is more convenient.
▶ Read more: How Much Does Squarespace Cost?
✔ Pro: Adaptive AI-powered Tools
There’s no denying that AI speeds up website creation, and Hostinger is innovating in line with this trend. You can create a personalized logo for your business using Hostinger’s AI Logo Maker. It also features a handy AI Writer tool, which you can use to cook up compelling website text. To use this, choose from topics and categories, according to the type of content you need for your website. Once you’ve chosen, the AI Writer will produce a coherent paragraph that you can use for your site. This will save you time and money, as you’ll no longer have to hire another set of hands to write content for you. But it’s worth mentioning that it may not sound as human as you’d expect it to, given that an AI writes the piece.
Hostinger also offers an AI Heatmap, a valuable tool that predicts how visitors will see and navigate your site. Once you upload an image of your website, the AI Heatmap tool will generate color-coded markers to depict which elements need rearranging or switching up to help boost conversion (such as a successful purchase) on your site.
✘ Con: Doesn’t Offer Keyword Support
Hostinger scores 2.8/5 in our website features analysis, as our research shows that it doesn’t offer keyword support for search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a really critical part of creating a business website because keywords help you understand what your visitors are searching for.
Without keyword research, you’re just taking a blind guess at your content strategy, and could struggle to increase organic click-through rates and website traffic.
If you want to unlock keyword support for your website, Squarespace, which scores 4.6/5 in the website features category, has a Keyword Search Analytics panel which monitors keywords driving traffic to your page.
✘ Con: Limited Design Flexibility
While Hostinger has a wide selection of 130 templates, it doesn’t allow you to switch templates. It’ll also let you preview how your page looks on both desktop and mobile to ensure that everything works and looks properly. So, if you decide to spice up the overall visual appearance of your website, you’d have to create an entirely new website first and then manually transfer all the content from your previous one, which is, to say the least, inconvenient and time-consuming. This is why Hostinger only scores 3.6/5 for design functionality.
If you want to experience more design flexibility, Squarespace which scores 4.2/5 in the same category, allows you to switch between various templates and even repopulates all of your content and elements for a swift visual upgrade.
How Much Does Hostinger Cost?
| |
| Price (Paying Monthly) $13.99/month |
| Price (Paying Annually) $3.99 for first term of contract, then:
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| Best For Small online store |
| Key Features
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Hostinger scores 3.7/5 in our value for money analysis. For only $9.99 per month (paying for a year upfront), you’ll unlock the comprehensive Website Builder and Web Hosting package. This plan includes 24/7 live chat and email support for your urgent needs and website-building assistance, free business email, an array of valuable AI-powered tools, and free SSL certificates to ensure your website stays secure.
Hostinger also offers discounts to its new users, where you’ll only pay $2.99 per month for the first year and get three months free. You can snap up further discounts if you pay for a longer subscription term.
It’s worth noting one way in which Hostinger one-ups our overall top-scoring website builder Wix; Hostinger includes free business email in its plan. With Wix, you’d have to pay upwards of $6 per month for the same benefit. Learn more in our Wix pricing guide.
Overall, though, our in-depth analysis names Jimdo as the website builder with the best value for money, with a score of 4.5/5 in this category. Aside from a free plan that grants you access to all its basic features, Jimdo also offers one of the lowest entry points among the website builders we’ve explored. For as low as $9 per month, you can enjoy a free domain (for the first year) plus SEO tools.
▶ Read more: How Much Does Shopify Cost?
How Does Hostinger Compare With Other Website Builders?
Here at Expert Market, we have a team of skilled online growth experts who probe the ins and outs of the top website builders. We investigate and compare them according to:
- Website features
- Design functionality
- Help and support
- Ease of use
If price is your number one concern – and you only need one website – then you may be better off with IONOS, which costs $9 per month, compared with Hostinger’s $9.99 per month. Find out more in our review of IONOS’ website builder.
Website Features
Hostinger ranks fifth in our website features analysis with an above-average score of 2.8/5. While it will provide you with everything to build your website and get it up and running, it is on the basic end of the spectrum. Hostinger doesn’t have an SEO-specific app that you can use to navigate Google’s strict ranking factors. It also doesn’t have keyword support, which could be handy for curating content for your website and improving click-through rates.
Moreover, Hostinger doesn’t have an app market, unlike Squarespace, Wix, Shopify and other major competitors. That means there are hardly any integrations you can add to your website, and you won’t be able to connect it to external software tools you may use for accounting, inventory management, social media, and so on.
Still, Hostinger punches above its weight with its AI-powered tools that help boost your website’s functionality sans an extra set of hands. Its AI Logo Maker can produce a custom logo for your business within seconds – just input your preferences, and you can choose from the automatically generated logos! Hostinger also has an AI Writer tool that you can use to write website copies and content. Its power-packed tool is the AI Heatmap, which suggests page improvements, from the elements to the content, making it more appealing to your visitors.
Design Functionalities
A well-designed website creates a good first impression for your visitors and promotes a good user experience. Hostinger scores an above-average 3.6/5 in our design functionality analysis. It offers over 130 templates that you can use to start building your website. You can choose from its pre-made templates divided into different categories to help match your niche.
Text and color editing was the right level of complex yet workable. If I came to part of the design where the text didn’t seem clearly legible, I just clicked on it, and quickly found the option to add a colored bar behind it.
The best part was being able to easily dial up or down the transparency on a sliding scale. That’s an impressive level of design control for such a low-cost website builder.
Overall, the auto-generated content was generally well-though out, with attractive stock images balanced by clear navigation features.
However, like Wix, its Achilles’ heel is that you can’t switch between templates. If you want to change how your site looks, you’ll have to start with a new website and manually transfer all your content.
Squarespace scores 4/5 in the design functionality category and will allow you to change your templates while retaining your content and elements. This means it’ll be much easier to update your site, as you won’t have to spend a lot of time starting from scratch.
Ease of Use
Hostinger’s intuitive, beginner-friendly interface sees it score 3.9/5 in our ease of use analysis. It offers you the convenience of editing the look of your website on desktop and mobile, with helpful tips and tutorials to support you along the way.
I found the editor easy to use, and was pleasantly simple to work with. To edit a button or image, all you have to do is click on it, and a mini editing menu appears beside it. That made it straightforward to quickly change a button color, or reposition a text box that wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be.
However, if you want a faster website editing platform with more power-packed features, we recommend choosing Wix, which scores 4.4/5 in the same category. Wix employs the same drag-and-drop feature when editing your website. It also has more editing options than Hostinger, as you can easily customize your site with unique options for every element, plus helpful SEO prompts that can help you optimize your website as you’re building it.
Wix has recently taken away its free plan, however. So if you’re looking for a simple website builder you can experiment with Jimdo has a free plan. Take a look at our Jimdo review to learn more about it.
Help and Support
Scoring 3.3/5 for help and support, Hostinger offers various customer support channels to promote a convenient user experience. You can seek helpful advice from its knowledge center, which grants you access to video tutorials, help articles, and valuable tips for creating a website.
Hostinger’s stellar 24/7 live chat support sees it score extra brownie points, as it ensures you’ll get support at the moment you’re experiencing difficulties. This is vital for busy entrepreneurs who need instant assistance so as not to lose out on sales or see their reputation damaged.
However, Squarespace, which aces our help and support analysis with a score of 4.8/5, has a more extensive knowledge center than Hostinger. However, Hostinger still powers through, since Squarespace only has live chat support on weekdays, whereas Hostinger offers it round the clock.
What Kind of Business is Hostinger Best For?
Hostinger would suit a small business or startup with a budget on the lower end. It’s a versatile tool for companies in all kinds of sectors, including local businesses, healthcare, auto repairs, and personal services.
Best of all, Hostinger will save costs because you don’t need to hire a web developer or web designer to create your site from scratch.
It’s a helpful tool for scaling an SME because you can create up to 100 websites on just one account. That’s invaluable for businesses looking to create more than one brand that needs a home online.
If you’re looking to sell online, then we’d recommend Hostinger for small online stores only. Reason being you can only sell up to 500 products, which is a very low cut off point compared to Wix (with which you can sell up to 50,000 products) or Shopify (with no limit on the number of product listings).
Does Hostinger Have Good Customer Reviews?
Our in-depth online growth research sees Hostinger with a customer score of 3.3/5. A deep-dive into customer reviews from G2, Trustpilot, and Capterra show that its users applaud its stellar customer service and easy-to-use interface. Here are some reviews:
How We Reviewed Hostinger
We tested and researched 16 market-leading website builders, evaluating their functionality, usability, integrations and customer support so we can make the most useful recommendations to US businesses
Our rigorous testing process means these products have been scored and rated in six main categories of investigation and 33 subcategories. We then gave each category score a ‘relevance weighting' to ensure the product's final score perfectly reflects the needs and requirements of Expert Market readers.
Our main testing categories for website builders are:
- Website features: The capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, marketing capacity, and AI tools.
- Design functionality: The aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates, customizable themes, and content display tools (accordions, tabs, etc.)
- Ease of use: How user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Value for money: The balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
- Reputation: External customer opinion; the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder – the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
- Help and support: The assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder. This can include tutorials, knowledge bases, and email or chat support.
Overall, Hostinger offers a comprehensive website builder suite, scoring 3.7/5 in our in-depth research. It offers users an intuitive platform, adaptive AI-powered tools, and an email inbox as standard.
There’s no doubt that it deserves the moniker best website builder for uptime reliability. With Hostinger, you can rest assured that your website is live 99.9% of the time, so your customers can access it without a fuss.
However, Hostinger’s limited design functionality could clip your creative wings. If precise design editing is critical for you, then we recommend opting for Squarespace.
If you’re all set to start building your website using Hostinger, all you need to do is sign up with the security of a 30-day money-back guarantee.
FAQs
Overall, though, our research found Hostinger’s website builder is better than Weebly or IONOS, but not as good as GoDaddy or Wix.
On top of that, Wix makes it pretty difficult to transfer your site to another provider (such as Hostinger). You’ll need to either use an RSS feed to import all of your posts to your new website or an FTP app to download all the files then upload them to the new host.
Note that transferring your domain name is an entirely separate process from transferring your website.
