I am always on a lookout for cheap but valuable deals. That is why my friends call me “Kanjoos Baniya”.
Whether it is saving money, making money, I am constantly looking for value deals. Deals that have the potential for long term value creation.
The home page of Hostinger hosting caught my attention while I was looking for an alternative to Siteground hosting for my readers who asked me about a cheaper hosting.
I thought -are the prices offered are for real?
Or there is some kind of trick?
You know the hosting services providers like Blue Host claim to be the cheapest but then have crowded shared hosting space. Then you frequently have resource problems and struggle with customer support.
All of which made me a bit curious to dig deeper into Hostinger’s shared hosting offers. The article reflects what I found regarding Hostinger Hosting.
Presently, I do not have any of my websites running on Hostinger but plan to have them as hosts for future projects.
I have done complete Hostinger review – that will help you decide whether Hostinger is really a value deal, i.e can save money for you while offering reliable hosting.
What Makes Hostinger Hosting Cheapest Yet Value For Money Shared Hosting
#1. Lowest Introductory Prices
The Single shared hosting plan from Hostinger is the lowest in the industry. Where else you get a hosting plan for under $1 per month. The only catch here is that – you need to purchase a 48 months long plan period.
You need to shell out $47.52 on hosting for 4 years. That is just to grab, insane offer by any standard.
The short duration plan costs in the range of $9.99 for one month period to $1.59 per month for a 24 months plan. But keep in mind the renewal cost of $2.15 per month after a period of four years.
#2. Hostinger h-panel
Hostinger hosting uses an in-house developed hPanel interface instead of the commonly used cPanel.
Like cPanel, the hPanel offers an easy-to-use interface where you can find everything you need in one location. The best part is that the icons are large. That makes locating an icon easy.
Hostinger’s custom dashboard is clean, easy to navigate and very intuitive. All the features are sorted by categories and have well designed minimalistic icons that are easy to locate.
The hPanel is good for beginners who are still new to hosting and interface usage. But some advanced users might miss cPanel for the flexibility and advanced features.
#3. Free Domain
Hostinger offers free domain registration with Premium and Business web hosting plans that are charged at a few other hosting service providers. Thus you save around $10 for the first year. Not a big amount.
The only catch is that- you need to pay $5 for WHOIS personal information protection. A service that is free when you purchase with domain registrars like Name Cheap.
#4. Discloses Server Status
The hosting industry has providers hiding on server performance. There are a handful of hosting service providers who tell you the present server status.
Hostinger is one of them. On their website, they have a server monitor with the last seven days Uptime, Latest Downtime details and Quick Stats.
Features & Benefits of Hostinger Hosting
Fast Speed
Fast website speed is a synonym for audience traffic and engagement. Following is the Think Google insights into page load speeds.
Visitors do not have waiting times. They expect your website to be blazing fast. Any load time of over 1-second increases the bounce rate sharply. Even the page load speed of one second is too high.
The Hostinger test website, when checked for response time on Bitcatcha, gave the following results.
The highest time taken was 299 ms. Which is under 400ms, a real quick page load time.
I checked on stats.pingdom.com for the uptime and the response time history for Hostinger.
The last 15 month’s average uptime was 99.94% and the average response time is 344ms. Which is pretty fast. The uptimes too have a decent history with 99.99% uptime record for 9 out of 15 times. Hostinger’s worst uptime was 99.65% in October 2019.
Hostinger fast speed is because of the following
#1. Solid State Drives (SSD)
A typical hard disk drive (HDD) takes 5000 to 10,000 microseconds to access data. Whereas SSD has a data access speed of 35 to 100 ms. Faster access speed means programs can load and run more quickly.
SSD uses flash memory to store data and has no moving parts. Thus has better performance and reliability over HDD.
Hostinger has SSD servers for all plans but has the disk space differs from plan to plan. The business shared hosting plan comes with a 30GB SSD disk space. Whereas the single shared hosting plan offers 10GB of SSD disk space.
#2. Customizable Server Level Caching
Being able to cache at a server level helps in getting faster speeds. Hostinger provides “Cache Manager” a caching option right from the dashboard for quicker load times and improved speed.
To access “Cache Manager” open hPanel and click “Manage” for the website you want to cache.
Scroll down below to find “Advanced”. You’ll see “Cache Manager” listed as one of the options.
The cache manager stores the static content of your websites on extremely high-speed cache servers. That allows users to bypass PHP requests and render web pages extremely fast.
#3. Global Data Centres
Hostinger has seven global server locations in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Lithuania, Singapore, Brazil and Indonesia. That makes your website reach the audience in no time.
The global locations servers store the static web content and deliver them super quick.
Security
#1. Advanced Security Features
Hostinger’s servers are loaded with a host of advanced security features like “Apache mod_security” and “Suhosin PHP hardening”.
Apache Mod_security is a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that works with Apache, Nginx and IIS.
The firewall supports a flexible rule engine to perform simple and complex operations and comes with a Core Rule Set (CRS). The CRS has rules that protect from various security threats like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, Trojans, bad user agents, session hijacking and a lot of other exploits.
Suhosin is an advanced protection system for PHP 5 installations. The PHP hardening system is designed to protect servers and users from known and unknown flaws in PHP applications.
The flaws that can cause security threats.
#2. HTTP/2
Hostinger provides HTTP/2 on higher plans. HTTP/2 is the latest and a much faster and secure way to access websites. Google has started indicating pages that do not have HTTPS.
HTTP/2 works by delivering data via binary code. The binary codes are clear and when they are encrypted, the web communication gets enhanced security.
Limitations
#1. Tricky Pricing
Many web hosting companies promote their prices in a tricky way. Hostinger is one of them, but they are more transparent than many other hosting providers.
For example, if you want to take advantage of the awesome $0.99 per month deal for Single Shared hosting, you’ll have to commit to Hostinger for 48 months, and after those 4 years, your renewal cost will jump up to $2.15 per month.
In the long run, the hosting plan could save you quite a lot compared to most other hosts.
A low price usually means some compromises have been made in quality. But in Hostinger’s case, the service they offer is actually quite good when compared with hosting service providers like Godaddy and BlueHost.
#2. No Traditional cPanel
Most hosting services providers use cPanel – a traditional control panel interface.
Hostinger has developed its own proprietary control panel – hPanel. New users might find hPanel easier to use than a traditional control panel because of the larger icons and arranged dashboard.
But if you’re already accustomed to using cPanel, then you might not like hPanel.
#3. No Free SSL Certificate
You can either have an SSL certificate installed or go for a Business shared hosting plan for a free SSL certificate.
Hostinger does not provide free SSL for Single and Premium shared hosting plans. A big limitation. Especially, when the hosting providers and website owners are more concerned about security.
#4. No Phone Support
No phone call support is a serious drawback.
No calls can potentially hurt you badly when you require support immediately. In scenarios of urgent support like website compromise or the technical setup, reading manuals can be hard. There are chances of delayed response while using an email.
#5. No Daily Backups
Another limiting factor with Hostinger is that – the hosting services do not have daily backups for Single and Premium shared hosting plans. The daily backup benefit is only available with the higher Business Plan.
But Hostinger provides you weekly backups on all the plans.
Both free SSL and daily Backup feature makes one think that Hostinger is indirectly marketing
for the higher priced “Business Plan”.
Let us have a look at the Hostinger hosting plans and suitability.
Which Plan is Suitable For Whom
Hostinger shared hosting plans come in three levels differing in resources.
- The Single plan has 1X processing power and memory
- The Premium Plan has 2X processing power and memory
- The Business Plan has 4X processing power and memory
A comparison of the processing memory and memory is under
#1. Single Shared Hosting Plan
The Single Shared Hosting is the cheapest plan costing at $0.99 per month for 48-months.
Please keep in mind that after four years the plan renews at $2.15 per month. Pick up the plan when you are likely to have a single website requiring little or limited resources.
The Single shared hosting plan comes with
- 10 GB of Disk Space
- 100 GB Bandwidth
- 1 MySQL Database
- Easy Website Builder
- 1-click Auto Installer
- 2 Subdomains and 2 parked domain
- 1 FTP Account
- 1 Email Account
#2. Premium Shared Hosting Plan
The Premium plan has all the benefits of a Single plan. You can host 100 websites on allotted 20GB of disk space.
The plan is best suited when you have a few growing websites with increasing traffic and resource requirements. Along with that, you are planning to start some more websites.
The Premium shared hosting plan costs $2.89 per month for 48 months.
Under premium plan you have on hands
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Free domain registration for one year
- 100 subdomains and parked domains
- Unlimited FTP accounts
- SSH Access
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Easy Website Builder
#3. Business Shared Hosting Plan
The Business shared hosting plan is suitable when you have a portfolio of websites. Where the portfolio has a few large websites with higher traffic needing more resources. The number of websites that you can host is limited to 100.
The plan has 4X resources when compared to a single plan with 30GB of disk space. Under the plan, you get all the benefits of both the plans as well as the following
- Free SSL certificate
- Daily Backups
- Upto 600K inodes
- 1GB of RAM
The Business Plan costs $3.99 per month for 48 months.
Conclusion
The Hostinger is pure cheap yet value play hosting. The hosting does not have great elaborate features.
But given the price point, Hostinger does provide fast speed, security and good uptime. Which is better than other hosting providers like GoDaddy and BlueHost.
I dont like their pricing strategy