Hostinger Review: The Best Website Builder for Uptime Reliability

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 more conveniently.

In this review, we’ll explore Hostinger’s features, pros, cons, and pricing, and compare its website features, design functionalities, ease of use, and help and support with the other website builders we’ve investigated. 

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’s pros and cons

✔ 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 emphasise the power of Hostinger’s uptime, our overall top-scorer for website builders, Wix (overall score of 4.9/5), only offers a 99.8% uptime guarantee. Another plus for Hostinger is that it offers a free business email for your website, which is something you would need to purchase separately if you choose to go with Wix, starting at $6 per month, which goes on top of Wix’s price plans.

✔ 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 centre, 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 centre to guide you, but it only offers live chat support from Monday to Friday, from 10am to 6pm. 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. 

✔ Pro: Adaptive AI-powered tools

There’s no denying that AI has redefined how we build websites, and Hostinger is following suit. You can create a personalised 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 website copies. To use this, you only have to choose from its pre-selected topics and categories and 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 colour-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’s score drops to 2.8/5 in our website features analysis, as our research shows that it doesn’t offer keyword support for search engine optimisation (SEO). Keywords help you understand what your visitors are searching for, so you can define your content strategy and 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 same category, has a great offer. It has a Keyword Search Analytics panel, which monitors and identifies the keywords that drive 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?

Hostinger scores 3.7/5 in our value for money analysis. For only $11.99 per month, you can unlock its 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 and get three months free. Moreover, you’ll enjoy a discounted price of $6.99 per month when you renew your subscription. 

It’s worth noting that Hostinger one-ups our ecommerce overall top-scorer Wix, which only scores 3.6/5 in our value for money analysis. Although Wix offers a free plan, its free tier provides limited features, so you cannot take advantage of Wix’s promising website features. And unlike Hostinger which includes a free business email in its plan, you’ll have to pay upwards of $8.50 per month to unlock a business email (through Google Workspace) for your website with Wix. It also doesn’t provide round-the-clock support through email. 

Hostinger also beats IONOS in value for money, as this competitor only scores 3.1/5 in this category. Hostinger packs a lot of discounted rates across its plans while offering their full functionality. IONOS pricing does have a lower entry cost, but this provider packs less features than Hostinger in its more economical plans.

Overall, our in-depth analysis names Jimdo as the website builder with the best value for money with a score of 4.5/5. 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 $15 per month, you can enjoy a free domain, advanced SEO tools for your website, and you can create up to 10 pages for your site.

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 10 website builders. We investigate and compare them according to:

• Website features
• Design functionality
• Help and support
• Ease of use

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 offer an App Market, which could be useful if you want to integrate valuable apps for ecommerce or marketing. If these are features you would want, then you should go with our top-scorer, Wix (4.8/5). As the top-runner in our website features analysis, it unlocks all of these features, which could help you boost your website’s functionality.

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: art, entertainment, gaming, electronics, and more. 

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 said 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, and its handy drag-and-drop editor removes any hassle from the process. It also provides helpful tips and tutorials if you need a boost when editing your website. Add in the grid-based editor, and your pages will look sleek and professional in minutes. 

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 customise your site with unique options for every element, plus helpful SEO prompts that can help you optimise your website as you’re building 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 centre, 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 have assistance anytime, anywhere. You have access to live customer support, and you can seek help about any issue or inquiry about the platform. Hostinger also extends this round-the-clock support via email and social media.

However, Squarespace, which aces our help and support analysis with a score of 4.8/5, has a more extensive knowledge centre. This will be helpful if you need written and video guides as you build your website from the ground up. However, Hostinger still powers through, since Squarespace only has live chat support on weekdays, whereas Hostinger offers it around the clock. 

What kind of business is Hostinger best for?

Our independent research into the top website builders in the UK names Hostinger as the best for uptime reliability because of its guaranteed 99.9% uptime. 

As the internet is a crucial part of running a business today, having a reliable uptime ensures that your website is online and easily accessible. This directly impacts revenue, reputation, and productivity. In fact, even a few minutes of downtime can make your business lose a significant amount of money. Take Google, for example. When YouTube and other Google sites suddenly went down in 2020, it reported a total loss of $1.7 million in ad revenue, despite only being down for only 37 minutes. 

As such, Hostinger’s exemplary uptime reliability sees to it that businesses that rely heavily on the internet – say, for example, you own a small online shop – will always be open to customers. Live websites are easier for customers to find, and your customers will most likely stay on your page for longer. But if your website is suddenly down, customers might not return because of the inconvenience of waiting for your site to load. 

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: