Hostinger Review - is this a Good Web Host in India [2024]?

  • Average response time - 180 ms
  • Uptime 99.99%
  • Free Site transfer
  • 24/7 live chat

Starts at ₹79

per month

Hostinger (Hostinger International Ltd) is a web hosting service provider and domain name registrar was founded in 2004 and till date has over 29 million users. The company has grown rapidly to become one of the most popular, reliable, and affordable hosting providers worldwide . 


It is the best cheap web hosting provider in India, period. We stressed, messed, and played with Hostinger throughout our testing period, and we were impressed to say the least.


To help you make an informed decision, we tested dozens of hosting providers and came with our “best web hosting providers list.” 


Hostinger, for the incredible value it provides, Tops the List in our top five.


For the price, it gives extraordinary speed, customer support, uptime, and features. Right from the server hardware & software they use to the pricing they offer, Hostinger has it sorted in a way no other web hosting provider does. 


To not stretch it, here’s our verdict: If you are a beginner with a shoestring budget and need the possible best hosting, Hostinger is an easy recommendation. Our ‘Why’? Well, read on to find out.

Hostinger Overview

To keep it brief,  here’s the summary of hostinger’s offerings— some stats/figures that will put Hostinger straight into your favorite considerations list.

Our ratings

A+ | 5/5

Average response time

~180 ms

Avg. response times in top-targeted countries

US: under 60 ms | India: 212 ms

Uptime

99.99%

Support

24/7 live chat

Site transfer

Free

Introductory Pricing

Starts at ₹79/month

Top features

SSD storage, Unmetered bandwidth, Support, Litespeed Cache

Hostinger review

9 reasons why Hostinger is the best cheap hosting


1.It’s super affordable


One of the basic requirements to be considered for a “low-cost” anything is affordable pricing; with Hostinger, that’s a big check.


Technically, you can purchase their Shared hosting and Managed Wordpress plan for under a dollar per month, but that’ll be the case if you are buying on a 48-month tenure. That’s Hostinger’s business tactic, of course. However, incredible value for you if you are going to need a low-performance hosting for the next four years. 


Their Business plans and Premium plans are also super affordable. They cost about the same as other best hosting’s basic ones.


Apart from the shared and managed plans, and this doesn’t get talked about much, Hostinger’s VPS and Cloud plans are also dirt cheap— something to look into if you need high-performance and flexibility.


All in all, Hostinger is inexpensive, and that’s their USP.


2.Fast server response time

Fast server response time


Hostinger is not a “low-cost web hosting,” but it’s the “best cheap hosting”, and to qualify for the “best” part, it needs to perform better than any other option in the price range. And it surely does.


In hosting terms, server response time is a key element to determine a hosting service’s quality. It is the amount of time it takes for a web server to respond to a request from a browser.


Google recommends having the server response time under 200 ms⁠— people start noticing a lag if it crosses about 250 ms.


In our tests, Hostinger managed to have a server response time well under recommended.


Worldwide, the average server response time of Hostinger hosted sites was approx. 180 ms. In the US, it was about 60 ms.


These are some impressive numbers for any hosting provider, let alone this super-affordable one.


3. Fast in general


Speed equals revenue.


As we’ve already mentioned & explained, website speed is crucial, and hosting plays a significant role in it.


Here are a few page speed stats to understand the cruciality of those milliseconds:

  • Sites that load in five seconds (compared to those that load in 19) see 70% longer average sessions [Source]
  • A 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7 percent. [Report]
  • Same report suggests: A two-second delay in web page load time increase bounce rates by 103 percent.

In short, speed is a priority consideration. And Hostinger has considered it as much as any other provider in the business. Therefore, they have gone with the best Hardware and Software combination.


On the hardware side of things, Hostinger uses SSD storage, which is clearly faster than traditional HDD. However, this isn’t a big surprise for anyone given most top of the line hosting companies use SSD.


Where it wins is on the software side. Hostinger uses Litespeed Web Server, a proprietary web server software. When benchmarked against the more popular Apache and Nginx servers, Litespeed was up to 12x faster. 


The reason most web hosting companies stick to Apache or Nginx is that they are open source and free, whereas Litespeed is privately owned and it costs. Ironic how a “low cost” hosting brings the best, paid technology for the customers, and the high charging ones don’t.

 

Anyway, Litespeed is one of the reasons we highly recommend Hostinger to anyone building a Wordpress site.


Another reason for Hostinger’s high-speed is its multi-level caching solution. Combined with the default Litespeed caching on Wordpress sites, it makes for some super-speeds.


4. Multiple Datacenters

Multiple Datacenters


Talking about speed, Datacenter location affects the data delivery speed. The reason? Worldwide connectivity isn’t wireless like many individuals believe. Everything is connected with huge optic cables through sea and land.


For e.g., If your site’s data is saved in a US datacenter and someone from India accesses your website, they will have to wait until the web browser contacts the physical data location 13,000 Km away and brings back the data. Sure, it’s a couple hundred milliseconds only but a delay nonetheless.


Having multiple data centers in different locations is one way to solve this problem.


Hostinger has seven global data centers, one each in the UK, US, Brazil, Singapore, Netherlands, Indonesia, and Lituania. Because of multi-continent server locations, the latency will be minimal.


All you need to do is choose the data center nearest to your target audience to reap the benefits.


5. Optimized for Wordpress


With more than 60% of market share, Wordpress is by far the most popular CMS in the world. Also, Wordpress powers one-third of the websites on the internet.


People at Hostinger know this as much as anyone. Therefore, they have made a few performance tweaks to optimize Wordpress-based sites better.


As we already discussed, they implement Litespeed cache by default on all their Wordpress accounts. This helps the end-user access the frequently-called pages quicker. Moreover, the implementation of HTTP/2, PHP 7.4, and NGINX makes for outstanding performance.


Overall, when it comes to loading speeds for Wordpress sites, Hostinger is a beast.


6.Amazing Uptime


You might be thinking, ‘If they are giving quality Hardware and Software experience at such economical prices, their Uptime must be terrible because they must be saving on computer resources.’


The fact? Their Uptime is terrific! Apart from a few minutes of downtime twice in our whole testing period, their uptime has been as good as the best ones. 


Hostinger guarantees a 99.9% uptime, and it does keep the promise.


However, it’s agreement is a bit harsh. You can request a credit of 5% of the monthly hosting fee for the month they can’t keep the promise. This 5% also has some terms & conditions.


Nevertheless, we didn’t need to claim our credit or contact the Hostinger regarding downtimes because their uptime record has been fantastic.  And quite possibly you won’t have any troubles too.


7.Good customer support


As far as technical support goes, Hostinger provides a 24/7/365 live chat. Plus, you can raise a ticket or send an email as well. Apart from these three options, you can check their knowledge base too.


Talking about the quality of Hostinger support, it’s phenomenal. Their support agents are well-versed with the technical aspects of hosting. Moreover, it’s a multilingual support team, so if you are not comfortable with English, chances are you can talk with them in your native language too.

 

In our experience with the live chat, we didn’t need to wait for more than a couple of minutes to chat with a real person. (However, our interactions were during the low request times; If you want to be prioritized when numerous people are contacting them, you can purchase the “Priority support” add on while purchasing your hosting plan.) 


They were friendly, helpful, and valued our time. And, of course, our problems were resolved.  

All in all, it’s a commendable support team.


8. Sleek control panel

User-Friendly Control Panel


Depending on how you look at it, their control panel can be a positive point or a negative one. 

Hostinger, unlike most hosting providers, doesn’t utilize cpanel’s services. Instead, they have their own control panel, hpanel. And honestly, we love it!


Talking about the interface, Hostinger’s control panel is sleek and minimal. From a UI/UX standpoint, without a doubt, a 10/10. 


From a functionality point, too, it’s on par with cpanel. You can manage Emails, Databases, Domains, IP, etc. quickly. Moreover, you can do cron jobs, have SSH access, install SSL, import website, and do much more.


Overall, their control panel is one of the reasons to opt for Hostinger.


9. Money-back guarantee


Till now, we discussed some significant reasons to choose Hostinger. But this trumps them all if you are still skeptical about Hostinger: You get a 30-day money-back guarantee.


Meaning, you can try them and test them as per your needs and claim back your money if you don’t like them. A win-win deal, indeed.


In this sense, we rather insist on trying out Hostinger.


P.S. We advise reading their refund policy.


2 things that could be improved about Hostinger


Of course, Hostinger has to cut the unnecessary overhead to provide the best services at the lowest price, but we wish they didn’t cut down on these two specifically:


1. Customer support options


As of now, your best chance of getting a quick resolution during hosting mishaps is through live chat. That too, you can access only if you are logged in. 


No doubt, Hostinger support team is able to manage and provide quick solutions to the customer’s queries, but having other options such as 24/7 calling would have been convenient.


2. Backup frequency


You can’t take a daily backup on their basic and premium plan. So, if anything were to happen to your site, the best chance of you getting the latest version of your site would be if the last frequent backup was yesterday.


We don’t mean to scare you. You can surely take backups manually through third-party apps, but daily auto-backup is a luxury we miss from our high-budget-hosted sites.

Hostinger India

If you are someone from India or are targeting the Indian demographic, you might be wondering, ‘should I go with Hostinger?’


The short answer? Yes.


In our tests, Hostinger has performed excellently throughout continents. When we tested it from Bangalore, India, to no one's surprise, the results were fantastic. 


The server response time was superb(opt for the Singapore data center), the loading speeds were outstanding, and the uptime was exceptional. Hostinger support, too, was courteous and well versed. 


Essentially, it’s the same thing; just the demographic is more specific. And given the global reach of Hostinger, it performed as expected. So, long story short, you can opt for Hostinger India with your eyes closed.


Now that you have considered Hostinger in your priority list, let’s have a look at their plans to choose the best value deal for you.


Hostinger Hosting Plans and Features

Again, as we do in most of our best hosting reviews, we focused on the value deals mostly because those make the most sense for our audience members such as yourself.


However, that doesn’t mean all Hostinger sells are ₹79/month plans. Their other hosting plans focus on pricing as well. Here’s everything Hostinger provides in the hosting department:

1. Shared Hosting

In shared hosting, your site is hosted with multiple other sites on a single physical server. Depending on which plan you purchase, the maximum limit of resources is allocated to you.


With Hostinger, you can purchase three such plans:

  1. 1
    Single shared hosting: At an introductory price of ₹79/month, you can host one website with minimal resource allocation. Other things you’ll get include 10 GB Disk space, 100 GB bandwidth, 1 MySQL database, 1 Email, 1 FTP user, 1 Cronjob, Easy website builder, 24/7/365 support, LSCWP, and a couple of guarantees.
  2. 2
    Premium shared hosting: For ₹179/month, you can host unlimited websites on a 20 GB Disk space. Moreover, you get twice the processing power & memory, unlimited Emails and Bandwidth, Free domain registration, and weekly backups.
  3. 3
    Business shared hosting: At ₹279/month, you get all the benefits of the Premium plan. Plus, additional benefits such as double the power, Daily backups, Free SSL, and 30 GB storage. 

Overall, if you are planning to host small or mid-sized sites, these are perfect plans for you.

Managed Wordpress plans:


Hostinger also offers Managed Wordpress plans, namely Single Wordpress hosting, Premium Wordpress hosting, and Business Wordpress hosting. All of these are basically the shared plans but with a few performance tweaks better suited for Wordpress.

2. Cloud

For large scale projects, Hostinger’s cloud hosting services might quench your performance thirst.


Similar to shared plans, you get three cloud plans as well:

  1. 1
    Cloud Startup: For a starting price of ₹799/month, you can host up to 300 websites on their 40 GB high-speed SSD storage. Resources allocated to your sites include 3 GB RAM, 2 CPU cores, and 12x processing power and memory. All these resources are dedicated. Another dedicated element you get with this plan is a dedicated IP address. And, of course, you get everything else included in shared plans, like free SSL and domain.
  2. 2
    Cloud Professional: In here, you get 80 GB SSD, 6 GB RAM, 4 CPU cores, 2X speed boost, and 24x processing power and memory. All of these costs you ₹1,499/month initially.
  3. 3
    Cloud Global: And if you are looking for a mammoth performer, this “powered by Google cloud” plan dedicates 200 GB SSD  storage, 16 GB RAM, and 8 CPU cores. With these, you get a 4x speed boost and 48x processing power and memory at a price of ₹5,099/month.

All of these plans are performance beasts, but if you would prefer a dedicated server for super admin access over a network of computers, Hostinger’s VPS plans might be for you. 

3. VPS Hosting:

VPS Hosting is also for large scale projects, but unlike cloud hosting, every element for this one is on a single server.


Now, if you are thinking about purchasing a VPS Hosting, you possibly know your needs. So, let us just lay down the Hostinger VPS numbers for you to make a choice:

Memory(GB)

Storage(GB)

Bandwidth(GB)

Introductory price(per month)

1

20

1000

₹285

2

40

2000

₹639

3

60

3000

₹925

4

80

4000

₹1135

6

120

6000

₹1999

8

160

8000

₹2999

Hostinger Pricing, Discount & Coupon codes

Hostinger does seem to have nailed the pricing for the users looking for a cheap web hosting, but are these plans worth it, or is this an “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” situation? Well, we have experienced Hostinger first-hand. And, as per our testing and experience, Hostinger is a “more value, less money” deal.


We don’t know how they did it, but they did— they created the best cheap web hosting services in the business.


The cherry on the top? With our Hostinger coupons/affiliate links, you will squeeze even more value from an already super-value hosting.

Conclusion | Do we recommend Hostinger?

Without a doubt!

Hostinger’s low-cost plans have been perfect for a few of our small and mid-sized sites. The speeds have been fantastic, the response time is incredible, the technical support is on par, the uptime is good, and the price is extraordinary. 


Like we said before, Hostinger is the best cheap hosting service out there. Grab it if you’re on a tight budget. It has every element to run a small or mid-sized website.  


In a nutshell, a true value for money.

  • Average response time - 180 ms
  • Uptime 99.99%
  • Free Site transfer
  • 24/7 live chat

starts at ₹79 per month

starts at
₹79
per month

• Uptime 99.99%

• Average response time - 180 ms

• Free Site transfer