Hostinger Review 2023: Expert Rated 4.6/5

What Are the Pros and Cons of Hostinger?

Hostinger is undoubtedly easy to use and affordable, but it may not be the best choice for all businesses. It offers more than 100 pre-built templates that are all optimized for mobile users, but it isn’t as customizable as other website builders. Here’s how Hostinger excels or needs to improve:

Pre-built templates

Hostinger offers over 100 pre-built templates for site design. Keep in mind that some of them are meant for online stores, but they don’t have to be. You can turn the shopping cart or bag on or off as needed. In fact, all of Hostinger’s templates are fairly customizable. Change the layout of your header menu; remove, add, or move sections on a page.

As far as design goes, I think Hostinger leaves a lot to be desired. The templates are clean and modern, but end up feeling very similar to each other. If you don’t have website design experience, it is nice to have plug-and-play templates from professional designers who do understand how to use negative space.

All of Hostinger’s templates are mobile-responsive, so they’ll look great on any device. As you’re customizing your design, click on the mobile device button at the top to preview your site in its shrunken form. Also, editing the pre-built templates is intuitive — simply click or double-click to reveal a menu with options.

Drag-and-drop editor

It’s important for a website builder to have an easy-to-use site editor along with the ability to customize everything, otherwise, you may as well build a site from scratch. Hostinger makes it easy to edit all elements on your site with its intuitive layout, menus, terms, and helpful tips in popup windows.

Although you don’t need to know about grids in layout to modify your design, Hostinger offers a switch you can turn on to enable grid gaps. Having them on will make it a cinch for you to align images with text and other elements, making your design more visually pleasing.

There are two sides to the customizing coin. On one hand, Hostinger makes it so easy to add, move or modify any element that you can really mess up a good-looking website.

As I played with the design of my Hostinger website, I noticed that while it’s simple to drag and drop any element onto a page and build it out, it’s also easy to drop an element in the middle of a page and completely ruin a design. To prevent a messy design like in the above screenshot, you should stick to the grid and add sections before adding elements.

The intuitive left-hand menu gives you access to your pages and navigation, where you can add or remove pages (or simply hide them). You can also drag and slide a page up or down to reorder it in your menu on your website; that’s the navigation part. Choose page settings to add details, including page title and description, which will help with SEO.

I really do find Hostinger’s website builder easy to use and flexible, but it isn’t without its faults. For example, as I was changing the style of this site, the options for colors just disappeared. The good news is that simply reloading the browser page (F5) reset the styles. A beginner might panic, though.

A small feature that I absolutely love from Hostinger’s site editor is the implementation of Ctrl+Z to undo an action. It saves me so much time to not have to hunt for an undo button by mouse. Another added feature I like is the built-in image library. You can add free photos supplied by Unsplash, or you can upload your own.

AI tools

Hostinger offers several artificial intelligence-powered tools to help you with your marketing plans, such as creating content, coming up with a new business name or tagline, or overcoming the dreaded writer’s block with AI-generated blog content.

These AI tools also help you in polishing your brand identities with logos, favicons, and image enhancements.

I already showed you the logo maker and the AI content creation tool. I tried out all the tools, and the most impressive one, in my opinion, is the background eraser. Upload any image to the AI background image eraser, and you’ll get back one with no background. I used this tool a few times, and while it isn’t perfect, it did a good job of erasing the background of most images. In some cases, white bits of an image that were in the foreground were also erased.

Creating a content plan for your website takes a lot of time, so having AI-generated content could help speed up the process. Hostinger means well with its free AI writer, but the results are less than desirable.

You can pick a category and then have the AI automatically write content for your site, but it won’t be specific to your brand — only your topic. So, the only benefit you might get here is accidental keyword targeting. Your other option is the wildcard content creator. Write a couple of sentences in the field and the AI content creator will “write” a couple of paragraphs for you that might work.

You can also use the tools to create a privacy policy, refund policy, and terms and conditions. Perhaps the best part of these AI tools is that they’re free for anyone to use. You don’t have to have a subscription to Hostinger to use any of them.

Online store

Although I’m focusing on Hostinger as a website builder, I should point out that it’s also a viable e-commerce solution. You can easily upgrade your Website subscription to a Business plan, which allows you to build an online store. You can even choose from pre-built e-commerce templates to start designing.

More importantly, you’ll be able to start selling digital or physical products from your site. You can list up to 100 products and easily manage them from your Hostinger dashboard. After adding a product image, choose what type of product you’re selling, and then you can set your price, sales price, and add an SKU number.

Hostinger’s inventory management system makes it easy to track your stock and categorize your items. You can even add variants, so if you offer a t-shirt design in sizes small to extra-large, you can add those. Unfortunately, you can only add one variant per product. So, if you offer the same design in different colors, you’ll have to add the different colors as separate products.

Though Hostinger isn’t technically a point-of-sale (POS) system, it does let you set up payment processing so you can accept payments online. You can accept more than 20 different payment methods using some of the biggest gateways, including Apple Pay, EPS, Sofort, and more. Transaction fees vary from the third-party payment processing companies, and you’ll have to pay 1% to Hostinger.

Marketing tools

Hostinger doesn’t offer proprietary marketing tools, but it does have integrations that can help with marketing. For example, you can connect to social media ads to create campaigns for your brand. On a related note, you can connect your Facebook Messenger to your website so you can offer live chat to customers.

A big part of making sure your prospects don’t leave before purchasing is tracking abandoned carts and then recovering that sale. A recent change from Hostinger removes this feature from most users now. The abandoned cart recovery feature is only available to those who purchased an advanced store plan before July 5, 2022.

Hostinger handles the basics when it comes to security. Your website will be secure with lifetime free SSL certificates, and Hostinger is PCI compliant. So, there’s no need to worry about data breaches when accepting payments online. Also, Hostinger creates automatic backups of your website whenever you publish or update a published website. Beyond those security features, Hostinger doesn’t offer anything else to combat or alert you about fraud or data loss.

First, you can only contact Hostinger support via live chat if you’re already a customer — you must be logged into your account to get in touch with anyone. Alternatively, you can fill out a contact form or email the team.

The good news is that Hostinger updates its help center often. I found many of my questions were answered in its well-written articles. Most articles include screenshots and instructions to guide you through how to do anything on Hostinger (or answers to why you can’t do something).

Compare Hostinger Alternatives

Hostinger is an easy-to-use website builder, so I suggest it to new users. However, you may want more polished pre-built templates, like from Squarespace, or a more established brand in website building like GoDaddy. We tested each website builder below and spent hours researching their features and reputation to determine which is best for you.

Compare Hostinger to some of the top website builders:

How I Rated Hostinger

At Digital.com, we know how important it is to test products thoroughly and compare how they measure against the industry leaders. I spent hours familiarizing myself with Hostinger’s dashboard, setup process, website builder, and all of its features. While my definition of “easy to use” may differ from others, I approached this as though I was new to website builders and compared it to my experience with some of the top site builders we’ve also reviewed.

This comprehensive overview of Hostinger can quickly answer whether it’s the right website builder for you. We also drilled down to specific features, so you can have a more detailed look at features or services. I gave more weight to some parameters, including features, security, support, pricing, ease of use, and how Hostinger has improved since our last review.

Hostinger scored decently in most of the areas we focused on. It offers an easy-to-use website builder, so anyone can create a basic website in just a few hours.However, we keep the renewal price in mind, along with the added services you may need to purchase to make sure your website gets seen. All in all, Hostinger is a good starter website builder, but it may not offer enough flexibility or customization for your needs.

I test website builders based on the following factors:

• Customization options: Can you change the look and feel of a template or add your own code?
• Ease of use: Is the navigation intuitive with built-in tools, such as an in-app photo editor?
• Value: Can you get a free plan or trial to give the builder a test drive? Are there extensive features on paid plans that justify the cost?
• Security: What does the website builder do to keep your site and your customers’ data safe?
• Templates: Are the templates attractive, updated, and generally high quality? Can you find many to choose from?
• Support: Can you get help when needed, whether it’s from a human or support center articles?
• Recent improvements: Has the builder done anything lately to step up its offerings?

Learn more about our review methodology.