Hostinger Review: Is This Newcomer Worth It for US Businesses?

Hostinger is a great website builder for small businesses looking to create a site quickly and easily with the help of AI tools.

It’s one of the fastest and best AI website builders that I’ve tested, able to get you up and running in a matter of minutes. Plus, Hostinger’s AI tools extend beyond simple website creation to text and image generation, removing the burden of creativity.

That said, Hostinger isn’t the best option for businesses looking to grow their online presence through integrated marketing or who want to use their website to sell products or services. That’s because Hostinger comes with virtually no marketing tools, has limited integrations, and only basic sales and bookings features.

In this review, I’ll go over my experience of creating a website with Hostinger, tell you its pros and cons, explain its pricing, and assess its key features. But first, here’s a quick summary:

Getting Started With Hostinger

When I signed up to Hostinger, I was immediately prompted to create a website using Hostinger’s AI website builder. I was a little taken aback by this since other website builders I’ve tested, such as Wix, gave me the option of choosing a template or using their AI website builder, but Hostinger pushes you to use AI.

That said, the AI website builder is Hostinger’s main attraction. I was able to get a website set up by completing two simple prompts, stating my business’s name and describing its purpose. Hostinger then created a draft website in under 30 seconds, making the process faster than rivals Wix or Squarespace, which pose more prompts.

I was quite impressed with the results. The website Hostinger’s AI builder created was visually appealing and looked modern. This is a massive improvement from when I tested Hostinger’s AI website builder a year ago, when the website it generated looked quite dated and was filled with odd AI imagery.

Hostinger’s AI builder also gives users the option to generate a new website if they aren’t happy with the first draft. I tested this feature but was a little disappointed since the second version the AI builder created looked almost identical to the first. Wix’s AI builder was capable of generating a range of diverse websites based on the same prompt.

That said, I did like how easy Hostinger made it to switch between different versions of the AI website drafts, thanks to a toggle. This means that users can always go back to the initial version of the website if they decide it’s the best option.

My experience with Hostinger’s editor

Hostinger has a drag-and-drop editor, which is quickly becoming the most common type of editor used by website builder platforms such as Wix and Squarespace. This type of editor makes it easy to add new elements to a page since all you have to do is drag them from the sidebar menu onto the page you’re editing.

Overall, I found Hostinger’s editor very easy to use. Its sidebar menu was especially clear since it didn’t feature an overwhelming number of tools, unlike Wix’s sidebar menu, and a little legend appeared when I hovered over icons, so I was never left wondering which tool did what.

You can also hover over existing page elements to get options for editing the design, which include AI text and image generation.

That said, one element Hostinger’s editor is missing is a grid layout, so you can easily ensure different elements are aligned. This tool makes customizing a page’s layout easier, but is so far only offered by Squarespace, which is part of why we rate it as the best for creating aesthetic websites.

Hostinger’s Pros and Cons

Here’s a quick summary of Hostinger’s pros and cons:

✅ AI tools to help with website building and content creation

Hostinger has invested heavily in developing its AI tools to make website creation as easy and accessible as possible.

Besides its AI website builder, users can use AI to write text, including blog posts and business or product descriptions. It can also be used to generate images, and users get access to AI-powered SEO (search engine optimization) tips.

All these tools combine to make Hostinger a leader when it comes to AI. Hostinger offers more AI tools than Shopify or Squarespace, which are missing AI SEO support and don’t allow for as many AI text prompts, although it hasn’t quite caught up to Wix, which has extended AI to image and logo editing.

✅ Easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor

As I’ve noted in the section on my experience with Hostinger’s editor, it’s an extremely user-friendly editor. I would say Hostinger’s editor is even easier to use than similar drag-and-drop editors offered by competitors Wix and Squarespace since it’s not overloaded with tools.

While more tools for customising website design isn’t always a bad thing, it can make website builders harder to use, especially for users that are new to website building. Hostinger avoids this by giving users just enough to make their website unique, without too many extra flourishes. I found the experience similar to creating a website with GoDaddy, another option preferred by beginners.

✅ Fast website loading time

Hostinger had the fastest site loading time of all the website builders I tested, with pages loading in one to two seconds on average.

I encountered very little buffering overall, which wasn’t the case with all of Hostinger’s rivals. Wix, for example, can be notoriously slow, an issue it hasn’t resolved over time.

Hostinger’s fast loading times could be due to the fact that Hostinger is first and foremost a website hosting platform, which branched out into website building a few years ago. How and where a website is hosted is largely what contributes to its loading speed, and Hostinger has clearly prioritised optimizing hosting websites made with its builder.

✅ Affordable pricing with discounts for long contracts

With a price range of $2.99 to $13.99 per month, Hostinger costs less on average than most of its competitors, making it a highly affordable option for small businesses. For context, rival Wix’s plans go up to $159 per month, while Shopify’s reach $2,300.

Businesses can also get access to highly discounted pricing if they opt for a long contract. For example, Hostinger’s Premium Website Builder costs $11.99 per month on a monthly billing cycle, but this goes down to $2.99 per month for four years on a four-year contract, renewing at $7.99 per month after that.

❌ Doesn’t offer many marketing tools

Hostinger’s list of built-in marketing and advertising tools is quite thin. In fact, the only real marketing feature it has is integration with Google Ads, a feature that was only added this year. Competitors Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace all integrate with more platforms, including Facebook and Instagram ads.

These same website builder competitors also have built-in marketing tools, such as built-in email marketing and, in the case of Wix, native logo and social campaign creators. Hostinger doesn’t offer any of these tools, and unlike most competitors, it doesn’t integrate with third party apps that do, since it’s one of the few website builders without an app store.

❌ Quality of AI content is inconsistent

Although Hostinger’s AI tools are a key part of its appeal, as is the case with most AI creation tools, the results can be inconsistent.

For example, I noted earlier that Hostinger’s AI website builder doesn’t produce a wide variety of different website versions based on the same prompt. Hostinger’s AI writing tool can also produce quite bland copy, which isn’t good for keeping customers engaged when they visit your website.

❌ Not a scalable option for ecommerce stores

Although Hostinger offers ecommerce tools and can be used to sell products and services online, it’s not a scalable option. There are many factors contributing to this, one of which is that Hostinger has a 500-product limit.

Hostinger also doesn’t integrate with marketplace platforms such as Amazon, and its multi-language site feature can’t be used for ecommerce websites, limiting global reach for sellers. The tried and tested best option for ambitious online retailers remains Shopify.

How Much Does Hostinger Cost?

Hostinger only has two pricing plans, however, it’s pricing structure is a little complicated since it offers a variety of discounts based on contract length. Here’s a quick summary.

What Hostinger calls its Premium Website Builder plan is essentially its basic website builder package. It comes with all the tools to create a website, including the AI website builder, but doesn’t include any ecommerce features or advanced AI creation tools. For those, you need to upgrade to Hostinger’s Business Website Builder.

The Premium Website Builder costs $11.99 per month when paying month to month, which is less than rivals Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Shopify’s cheapest plans, which cost over $15 per month on average. Pricing goes down even further when you pay for one, two, or four years upfront, going down to just $2.99, and renewing at $7.99 on a four-year contract.

Hostinger’s ecommerce plan, the Business Website Builder, is also priced quite low compared to most competitors. The plan costs $13.99 per month when paying month to month, once again less than what Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Shopify charge for ecommerce plans, which start at above $25 per month on average. As with the Premium plan, Hostinger’s Business Website Builder plan costs even less per month if you opt for a long contract.

Hostinger’s Key Features Explained

Let’s take a closer look at Hostinger’s key website builder features, from its template designs to its SEO tools.

Templates and website design tools

Although the AI website builder is the most popular way to build a website with Hostinger, there are also around 100 pre-built website templates to choose from.

Although this isn’t nearly as many as the 900 templates that competitor Wix offers, Hostinger’s selection of templates nevertheless covers almost as wide a range of topics, including often-overlooked categories such as education and technology. Hostinger’s templates are also generally attractive and have a clear layout.

When it comes to tools for editing and designing your website, Hostinger offers a decent range of features.

For example, information can be displayed in a variety of ways besides text paragraphs, including in dropdowns and carousels. Users can also create content maps to help site visitors locate information. That said, Hostinger is missing a few content display features, such as scrolling banners and tabs, offered by competitors such as Wix and Squarespace.

When it comes to images, Hostinger has tools for resizing and cropping existing images, as well as a library of stock images and an AI image creator. Its editing tools aren’t as advanced as Wix’s, however, which allows for image background and object removal.

Blogging

Hostinger’s blogging tools are one of its strong suits, making it a great option for any business that wants to include a dedicated blog section on its website.

There’s a dedicated button in Hostinger’s editor for creating a blogging section, making the process very easy. This feature creates a new website section, adds it to the menu, and prepopulates the blog section with empty entries that feature a title image.

Hostinger’s blog function also comes with a host of tools for enhancing the design and reach of your blog. These include comment sections, search bars, and writer profiles, as well as the ability to schedule posts, enable social sharing, and monetize posts.

You’ll also get access to blog-specific analytics and SEO support, which can help your blog posts gain more visibility. While competitors Wix and Shopify offer similar blogging tools to Hostinger, GoDaddy and Squarespace are missing analytics tools.

Marketing

Hostinger’s built-in marketing features are more or less non-existent, and it doesn’t integrate with many third-party marketing and advertising apps since there’s no app store/market.

Unlike competitors Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and GoDaddy, Hostinger doesn’t have built-in email marketing tools that allow you to create and manage email campaigns. It also doesn’t integrate with third-party email marketing apps such as Mailchimp.

Additionally, unlike its top competitors, Hostinger doesn’t integrate with social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and it doesn’t have tools to support social media marketing such as a post creator or scheduler. The only ad integration Hostinger has is with Google Ads.

Because of its limited marketing and advertising tools and the fact that Hostinger doesn’t offer integrations with apps that could make up for its missing tools, it’s not the best option for businesses looking to use online marketing to grow.

SEO

Hostinger offers a decent set of SEO (search engine optimization) tools. If you’re unsure what SEO is or why it’s important, see our guide to on-page and off-page SEO. As a brief explainer, SEO is the practice of making sure your website appears high in the search results on search engines such as Google. There are several ways to do this, including making sure your on-page content and meta content target the words your users search for.

SEO tools Hostinger offers include AI-powered SEO tips, which can help you write better meta titles and meta descriptions for your pages. Users can also create customer URLs for pages and manage their sitemap, all tools that can help Google accurately categorise your content and push it to the right people.

Hostinger is missing a few more advanced SEO tools, such as canonical page tags and the ability to add hreflang. However, the average business owner won’t necessarily know what these tools are or how to use them, so they aren’t vital.

A crucial SEO tool that Hostinger offers is that its website automatically adapts to mobile. Given that more searches are done from mobile than from desktop, this is a crucial tool for ensuring your website remains usable. I tested Hostinger’s mobile conversion tool and found that the page adapted well to a vertical format, with no images or menu items hidden.

Hostinger’s Ecommerce Features

Hostinger’s Business Website Builder plan has enough tools to support a small business processing a modest number of online sales. However, it’s not a good option for businesses looking to scale up since Hostinger only offers one ecommerce plan and has a 500-product limit, among other limiting factors.

Let’s first look at the ecommerce features Hostinger does offer:

• Lists up to 500 products (physical products, digital products, and services)
• Builds a customised product page with optional filters for customers
• Issues abandoned cart recovery emails
• Offers a variety of discounts, including minimum spend, discount codes, free shipping, and category-wide discounts
• Offers different shipping rates based on region or product weight
• Integrates with third-party payment processors, including PayPal, Stripe, Apple and Android Pay
• Gives access to core analytics, such as revenue, stock levels, and conversions

The above tools should be enough for a small business to accept and manage online payments, especially a local service-based business or a product seller that operates domestically.

However, Hostinger is missing ecommerce tools that growing online stores need. Besides the 500-product limit, Hostinger doesn’t allow businesses to sell subscriptions or bundles, which are useful for boosting sales and offered by competitors Shopify and Wix. Shopify also lets businesses sell an unlimited number of products, and Wix has a very generous 50,000-product limit.

Additionally, Hostinger doesn’t integrate with third-party marketplaces, such as eBay, Amazon, or social media, although it does integrate with Google Shopping, unlike its top competitors. This makes it harder to manage sales across platforms. The fact that Hostinger also doesn’t integrate with third-party shipping apps and can’t generate packing labels also slows down the process of order fulfillment, making Hostinger unsuitable for high-volume ecommerce retailers.

If you’re looking to grow your online store, the best ecommerce platform is Shopify since it can support small to enterprise-level businesses. You can find out more about what Shopify has to offer in our Shopify review.

Hostinger’s AI Tools

I’ve covered Hostinger’s AI tools quite extensively in other sections of this review, but to recap, using Hostinger gives you access to:

• An AI website builder
• An AI writer
• An AI image creator
• An AI SEO assistant

As I’ve noted, Hostinger’s AI website builder can create an attractive website quickly. See my “Getting Started with Hostinger” section for my full verdict.

When it comes to Hostinger’s AI writer, I was impressed by the fact that it could produce lengthy pieces of writing based on short prompts, not just one paragraph. However, as with most AI writing tools, the quality of the material is very generic. I wouldn’t recommend using the AI writer to craft blog pieces, however, it could be useful for drafting quick product descriptions.

Hostinger’s AI image creator has improved a lot since I last tested it a year ago, reflecting the general improvement that AI imagery has undergone in the past year. The images look a lot more realistic and less cartoonish than they used to.

That said, it’s still unclear to me how valuable this feature is for the average business. Whether you’re promoting a product or service, I highly recommend you use original imagery on your website, especially for a product you sell or when showcasing your offices.

Other website builders, such as Wix and GoDaddy, offer similar AI tools, including an AI website builder writer and image creator. However, Hostinger’s AI writer is more adept at writing long paragraphs of copy than Wix or GoDaddy’s versions, which are designed for crafting short blurbs.

Getting Help and Support With Hostinger

Hostinger offers decent customer support, although there’s definitely room for improvement.

Customers can access support through various channels, including live chat, email, and a knowledge center with video tutorials. Hostinger is, however, missing over-the-phone support, which is crucial for urgent fixes. Phone support is offered by most competitors, including Shopify, Wix, and GoDaddy.

That said, live chat support is available 24/7, with response times averaging under 30 seconds.

When it comes to the quality of support, Hostinger doesn’t give its customers access to a network of experts on topics such as SEO, marketing, or web development, with support limited to simple technical issues. Competitors such as Wix and Squarespace offer their customers access to a network of website-building experts, which can make maintaining and growing an audience easier.

How Does Hostinger Compare to Competitors?

Here’s a quick overview of how Hostinger compares to the top website builders:

I’ve done my best to compare Hostinger to its competitors throughout this review, but here’s a little recap of the differences:

• Wix – All-around best website builder: Wix is our top-rated website builder here at Expert Market. It may be more expensive overall than Hostinger, but it’s got a forever-free plan and the widest range of website management and content creation tools of any website builder we tested, including built-in marketing features. Read more in our Wix review.
• Squarespace – Creates the most attractive websites: Our second best-rated website builder, Squarespace, is unparalleled when it comes to aesthetics. Like Wix, it’s more expensive overall than Hostinger, but if you’re in a creative industry and are looking to create a visually catching website, Squarespace is the best option. Plus, its recent addition of AI website creation tools has sped up the creation process. Read more in our Squarespace review.
• Shopify – Best option for ambitious online sellers: If the main purpose of your website is ecommerce, and you’re looking to grow your business online, Shopify is the best option. It’s more expensive than most competitors, including Hostinger, but the price is justified since Shopify offers more sales, shipping, and third-party market integration options than competitors. Read more in our Shopify review.
• GoDaddy – A quick and easy option for service businesses: Hostinger has dethroned GoDaddy as the fastest and easiest way to build a website, but GoDaddy still has its merits. Besides offering an intuitive website-building experience for novice users, GoDaddy also includes content creation tools that Hostinger is missing, such as email marketing and social post creation. Paired with its excellent appointment and bookings tools, it’s a great option for service-based businesses such as salons. Read more in our GoDaddy review.

How We Reviewed Hostinger