Whether you’re migrating or creating a new project, if you’re in search of the best web hosting company for your WordPress website or WooCommerce store, Hostinger may be the ultimate solution for your needs and personal preferences.
Editor’s Note: I haven’t been paid by Hostinger to write this review, nor did they give me anything for free, apart from the coupon code that you’re going to see in the next sections (which I got years ago as an affiliate for my Greek blog). This review is based on my own experience with Hostinger, hosting both my own blog (this one) and many websites that I manage for my clients.
Here’s the thing; Google is looking for fast websites, and recommending website owners to make sure their Core Web Vitals are being passed. It’s crucial nowadays to have a fast website that can perform great on any device, and to do that website owners are turning their eyes to web hosting companies that provide the fastest servers – without breaking the bank.
With ultra-fast servers thanks to LiteSpeed technology implementation, cheap starting plans, and the flexibility of upgrading as your traffic increases over time, just to name a few, Hostinger is an absolute beast when it comes to WordPress hosting.
I’ve been using the hosting company for quite a few years now, both for my personal websites [such as this one] and for most of my clients, and here’s everything I’ve learned, my experience so far, and what exactly this company is offering.
What is Hostinger and what does it offer?
Funded in 2004 as Hosting Media and rebranded in 2011 with the name we know today, Hostinger is one of the most popular web hosting companies in the world, providing budget-friendly, adjustable, and flexible hosting solutions.
Hostinger’s cheapest WordPress Managed Hosting plan for example starts from only $2.99 per month, and their WooCommerce’s cheapest plan starts from $3.99 per month. They also provide classic Web Hosting solutions, cloud hosting, and VPS hosting. Hostinger has its own custom interface named hPanel, from which you can easily manage your websites, hosting plans, domain names, and SSL certificates, and quickly install WordPress with a few clicks.
If you’re looking at a web hosting company that has implemented artificial intelligence tools to help you quickly build your own website, Honstinger has everything from an AI Website Builder to boosting your conversions with AI-generated product descriptions – although I will keep suggesting that staying away from AI-generated content is the safest way as of this moment.
What is LiteSpeed technology and why it’s so important?
Simply put, LiteSpeed technology is a suite of web server software products that are designed to serve web content without consuming too many resources, and it has been developed by a company with the same name. Instead of traditional web hosting, such as Apache and NGINX that most website owners are currently using, LightSpeed is not just here to stay but to also save you lots of money along the way.
Think of this technology this way; The more plugins you install on your WordPress website the heavier it gets, and the same goes for the theme too. Apart from that, the more traffic it gets, the more resources it needs to handle all your visitors, something that can be really expensive if your website is running under a non-optimized server.
Most people will turn their heads over NGINX, making the change over Apache so they can increase their loading times and save server resources, but compared to LiteSpeed technology, nothing can beat that beast. While Apache offers flexibility and extensive module support, and NGINX is often preferred for its performance and efficiency, LiteSpeed combines performance and advanced features and comes with improved security, which is crucial these days.
But who has the time to set up a custom VPS or Dedicated server, install and configure LiteSpeed, right? So if you’re looking at having the best performance and security while not using all of your server’s resources all the time, you need a web hosting company that has all of that included in their plans – and this is where Hostinger comes into play.
hostinger’s hPanel for managing your websites
Hostinger comes with its own custom interface for managing your websites, hosting plans, and other services provided by the company. It’s called hPanel, and it’s as easy to use as it looks from the pictures. It’s perfect for people who never used a web hosting company in the past, and you quickly configure and optimize everything with a couple of clicks.
You can quickly navigate and find any option from the left side menu, or change between your websites, hosting plans, emails, domains, VPS, and billing from the top menu. Most options are one 1-click away, and from the Dashboard page, you’re going to be seeing tips to improve your website’s performance, such as installing and enabling the LiteSpeed WordPress cache plugin, updating your PHP version, or downgrading it for more stability, and more.
Most web hosting companies use well-known control panels for website and server management such as Plesk and cPanel, but they are more complicated and mostly for advanced users or developers. Apart from that, Hostinger’s hPanel has nothing to fear from its competitors, providing everything that you may need to easily manage all of your websites and services.
Sure, advanced users coming from VPS or Dedicated servers that had full access and flexibility to do anything may find Hostinger’s hPanel lacking in features, but it’s easier, faster, and less time-consuming. It’s also pretty fast and easy to navigate, which I find both of those pros crucial.
And yes, you also get access to a statistics page from where you can have an image of your server’s resource usage. If you’re new to web hosting, these statistics are important, because if you exhaust them, you’ll have to upgrade to a bigger and more powerful hosting plan.
Hostinger’s Managed WordPress Hosting Review
Let’s talk WordPress, servers, auto optimization, and ultra-fast websites, shall we? Hostinger is currently providing 7 Managed WordPress hosting plans, of which 4 of them are ideal for WooCommerce owners. Choosing between plans is all about your needs and what you’re looking for, such as creating a blog or an e-commerce store. Then it’s all about the space that you need, the resources, and how much traffic you get.
If you lack any knowledge, keep in mind that all managed plans are automatically configured and optimized for best performance, stability, and security. You can also use their live chat to ask any pre-sale questions and let their team help you decide what’s the best option for your needs.
WordPress Managed Hosting
Hostinger has optimized all of its servers specifically for WordPress in their WordPress Managed plans, and they did a great job doing that. Everything is running using the LiteSpeed technology, and you can even install the LiteSpeed Cache plugin with 1-click through the hPanel.
There are three available plans; The Premium, Business, and Cloud Startup, all designed for specific needs.
- With Premium, you get standard performance, 100GB of SSD storage space, weekly backups, free email, free SSL certificates, unlimited bandwidth, and a free domain name.
- But with the Business plan, you get increased performance (up to 5x), 200GB of NVMe storage (faster), daily backups, a free domain name, and free CDN which supposedly results in up to 40% faster loading times. You also get basic WooCoommerce support, which stores up to 100 product listings and 100 orders per month.
- Then there’s Cloud Startup, which provides maximum performance (up to 10x), 200GB NVMe storage, dedicated IP, and standard WooCommerce support.
You can also choose a hosting plan based on your monthly traffic, as you get 25,000 monthly visits in Premium, 100,000 monthly visits in Business, and 200,000 monthly visits in Cloud Startup. There’s also a limitation to the number of inodes your website can use, so make sure you’re not going over that number.
For advanced users, FTP, SSH, and GIT access are provided on all plans, and you can easily manage your DNS. There’s also a cache manager, and you can easily create or delete databases and access the phpMyAdmin panel.
WooCommerce Managed Hosting
If you are a store owner, Hostinger has its own managed hosting plans specifically designed for WooCommerce stores; The Business, Cloud Startup, Cloud Professional, and Cloud Enterprise plans. WooCommerce Managed Hosting plans are also flexible, which means that you can start with the lowest-priced plan and upgrade as you go.
- With the Business plan, you get up to 100,000 monthly visits, 200GB NVMe storage, 600,000 files and directories (inodes), free domain, SSL, email, and CDN.
- You can later upgrade to Cloud Startup, which will increase your resources to 200,000 monthly visits, and 2 million inodes.
- Cloud Professional comes with 300,000 monthly visits, 250GB storage, and 3 million inodes..
- ..while Cloud Enterprise goes up to 400,000 monthly visits, 300GB storage, and 4 million inodes.
Apart from the server resources, the last three plans also include expert eCommerce tech support, for all your WooCommerce questions. Yes, it’s a live chat for store owners who have questions and they’re looking for quick answers from experts on WooCommerce.
All you need to know about Hostinger’s pricing
Web hosting can be expensive, even for new websites that just getting started. Thankfully, when it comes to pricing, Hostinger has its own way of getting the attention of new customers. For every new client, the company is providing up to 70% off if you pay for 48 months. Put simply, the more years you pay, the better offer you’re going to get as a new customer.
For example, the Premium Web Hosting plan costs $11.99 per month if paid monthly, or $2.99 per month if you pay for 48 months, which is a great offer for small business websites, portfolios, and WordPress bogs. The same goes for the Managed WooCommerce plans, with the Business plan costing $3.99 per month (if paid for 48 months) or $13.99 per month (if paid monthly).
Hostinger Coupon: Click here and add the coupon code “INKSTORY” to get -7% off your first order.
Whichever plan you choose, keep in mind that the offer is only for new customers and will not get applied in the next renewal. The same goes for VPS, Cloud Hosting, and Business Email.
Reviewing Hostinger’s technical support
In all of those years, I only had the chance to talk with Hostinger’s support team only a few times. That’s good news, because I rarely had any issues with their servers or services, and neither did my clients. I can mostly report a stable experience with a well-structured web hosting company.
As far as their technical support goes, contacting them is pretty straightforward; Just log in to your account, click on the live chat icon (located down below on the right side of the screen), and start typing your issue. You may have to wait from 5 to 15 minutes to a whole 40 minutes until someone from their support team can handle your issues or questions.
I had a pretty good experience with their support team, with everyone taking a comprehensive look at my issues and quickly fixing them for me. It’s important to note here that every issue that I had was server-related or had something to do with LiteSpeed, and not for silly things such as installing a plugin and having your website go down in seconds. You can fix that by going to the File Manager through the hPanel and renaming the plugin’s folder, or even deleting it. Some things are simple, people!
Speaking of silly mistakes, you can find a whole list of documentation, tutorials, and tips and tricks to improve your website’s speed and security. Visit their help page and search for solutions based on the topic. You can also find the same page by clicking on the live chat icon.
The pros and cons of using Hostinger
Hostinger Review 2024
Hosting is keeping their clients happy by providing cheap managed hosting solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce owners, LiteSpeed technology, 1-click CMS installation, and an easy-to-use and modern custom panel for managing their websites, named hPanel.
Operating System: All
Application Category: Web Hosting
5
Pros
- 1-Click CMS Installation (including WordPress).
- AI Website Builder for quick website creation.
- Affordable web and cloud hosting solutions.
- LiteSpeed and CDN implementation with 1 click.
- Free Domain Name and SSL Certificates.
- Top-notch technical support that fixes everything.
Cons
- Lack of dedicated servers.
- No phone support.
Some people may disagree with the cons of this review. Some may even say that the lack of dedicated web hosting is fine, as cloud hosting seems to be the future of hosting. And while that may be true, dedicated servers are still among the most popular choices, even now with cloud hosting available at any corner.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind using another web hosting company for my dedicated servers, but I wouldn’t mind having a dedicated server optimized by Hostinger either – and I am sure it would have made my life a whole lot easier.
The lack of phone support is also bad. Take that from a person who hates calls and loves writing. I wouldn’t use their phone support for that reason, but I do have a couple of clients who are having some health issues that are making their lives harder when it comes to using their hands. For those clients, I went and installed a few text-to-speech plugins, so they can speak and see their voice being displayed as text on their Gutenberg editor.
Those people will absolutely appreciate some good old-fashioned phone calls and get things done without getting tired.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, Hostinger is one of the most popular, trusted, and modern web hosting companies in the world, providing ultra-fast servers, 1-click WordPress installation, 1-click LiteSpeed optimization (using the plugin), and you can upgrade as you move on and your website needs more resources.
Although they lack dedicated server support, they have pretty powerful VPS and Cloud hosting solutions that you can choose from, and believe it or not, a fully optimized virtual private server or a cloud hosting plan with fewer resources can handle better and provide faster loading times than an unoptimized dedicated server with more resources.
Hostinger does exactly what more people would expect; Provide everything already optimized by their team, so clients can focus on creating their websites and publish new content, rather than trying to handle all the technical stuff that comes with a server.
Have you ever used Hostinger to host your website? And if so, what was your experience with their services and support? If not, what is keeping you from migrating to Hostinger or starting your new website using their servers? I’d love to know more about your personal experiences and thoughts, so don’t hesitate to share them in the comment section down below.
