Hostinger Website Builder Review: Is It Right for Your Business?

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Hostinger, which was originally a web hosting provider, recently acquired Zyro and its website builder. As a result, Hostinger now offers its customers a Website Builder & Web Hosting plan, absorbing Zyro’s drag-and-drop editor and offering a suite of similar tools.

The single plan is incredibly affordable, starting at just $2.99 per month (billed annually), and it’s clear Hostinger’s target audience is beginners. When testing the builder ourselves, we managed to set up a website within minutes thanks to its straightforward editor. While the limited choices make it easy to decide on a design, you’ll feel limited in what you can achieve pretty quickly, especially when compared with design-oriented builders like Squarespace.

After testing over 50 platforms and focusing on areas that matter most to our readers, such as value for money and website features, we awarded Hostinger’s website builder an average score of 3.4 out of 5.

Our Hostinger website builder review will walk you through each of these categories in more detail, but you can get a quick overview below if you’re short on time.

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When it comes to ease of use, Hostinger’s website builder scores a decent 3.9 out of 5 – dropping slightly from last year’s score of 4 out of 5.

When signing up, we were first asked if we wanted to create a new website or migrate a site from another platform. We then had to choose our preferred building method: start from scratch, use Hostinger’s AI builder, or build with WordPress. If you want more control over the final look, we’d recommend starting with a clean slate, but the AI builder will set you up with a great foundation to build onto.

Once in the drag-and-drop editor, we could add new pages, browse pre-designed elements, and tweak sections. It’s a very sleek and modern-looking editor but, because of Hostinger’s grid-style formatting, you won’t have the same degree of freedom that Wix provides.

We did find the overall building experience to be smooth – especially with so many AI tools to hand. It’s worth noting that Hostinger continues to improve its website builder, with plenty of planned updates outlined on its roadmap, including video uploads and video backgrounds.

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We had various options to get started with, including Hostinger’s AI builder.

Hostinger’s editor provides a helpful checklist, so we knew what to prioritize when building.

We could edit text directly on the page.

We tested Hostinger’s AI assistant to help generate copy for our pages.

Hostinger’s website builder really shines when it comes to value for money, scoring 4 out of 5 in our recent round of research. Prices have increased across the market, meaning some platforms (like Wix) have struggled to keep their features on par with the higher fees, but Hostinger remains incredibly affordable.

To make things easy, Hostinger offers a single, all-in-one plan: Website Builder & Web Hosting. You get all of the basic features we’d expect from a website builder, such as SEO support and a free domain, but we’ll go into more detail on why these are important later on.

Hostinger’s lone plan starts at the low price of $2.99 per month (if you opt for one of the longer billing cycles).

If you’d rather pay monthly, Hostinger’s website builder will set you back $11.99 each month – a similar price to GoDaddy’s Basic plan which starts at $9.99 per month (billed annually) or $16.99 per month if you pay monthly. However, Hostinger is much cheaper than the likes of Wix and Squarespace which both start at $16 per month (billed annually).

Whether you choose the 12-month, 24-month, or 48-month term, the introductory price will remain at $2.99 per month. The only thing to note is that the 48-month subscription includes the added bonus of three months for free!

The plan’s billing cycles vary when it’s time to renew, so make sure you’re prepared for the price jump ahead of purchasing. After your first term at $2.99 per month, take a look at how the price increases below:

• 12 months: $9.99 per month
• 24 months: $7.99 per month
• 48 months: $6.99 per month

Unfortunately, there aren’t any advanced plans to upgrade to, so you’ll be pretty limited when it comes to scaling your business – what you see is what you get. The builder lacks a free plan or trial to help you get started, which isn’t ideal for beginners that want to get a feel for the platform before signing up.

That said, Hostinger’s website builder does come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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Hostinger scores 3.6 out of 5 for its design functionalities, improving on last year’s score by 16%. There are 140+ pre-designed templates to choose from (a little lackluster in comparison to Wix’s 800+ options), and 19 specific filters to narrow down your search – including industries such as photography, travel, and fashion.

Tweaking the template to your liking isn’t too complicated. The grid-style drag-and-drop editor limited where we could place items, but we did appreciate how easy it was to edit the color palette and swap out imagery.

There’s also a library of elements to look through, whether you want to add a new gallery or include an Instagram feed.

One of the main downsides to Hostinger’s templates is the lack of flexibility – if you want to change templates when editing, any progress you’ve made will be wiped, and you can’t swap templates at all once your site is live.

Thinking about building an online store? We’d recommend avoiding Hostinger if that’s the case. Its ecommerce tools are pretty standard – you can manage your inventory and orders, take appointments, and offer unique discounts to customers.

But there are separate dashboards for Hostinger’s website and store management. This was a bit of a pain when we tested the builder since we had to constantly jump between the different views.

Hostinger doesn’t offer a unique ecommerce plan, like Wix and Squarespace, and it isn’t a dedicated online store builder, like Shopify. These alternative builders provide users with advanced ecommerce tools and power, such as abandoned cart recovery and additional product capacity.

While you can sell up to 500 products with Hostinger, which is suitable for small to midsize businesses, you’ll need to look elsewhere if you have more products to sell. Still, we found it very easy to add new products to our store during testing, and we were guided by Hostinger’s questions and form.

You can also accept payments from 20+ payment providers, including PayPal and Stripe, giving your customers options when it’s time to checkout. Wix, in contrast, supports over 80 payment gateways, so make sure Hostinger has what you need.

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Hostinger’s website features are incredibly lightweight in comparison to the feature-rich plans on offer by our top website builder, Wix.

Hostinger’s plan comes with the essentials, including a free domain for the 1st year and marketing insights from Google Analytics. Hostinger also offers simple SEO tools – with roughly 53% of all website traffic coming from organic search, it’s important to make sure your website is fully optimized for search engines.

Here’s a quick look at what you can get with Hostinger:

• Websites – create up to 100 websites with your account
• SEO – optimize your pages, discover keywords, and help Google find your website
• Domains – free for the 1st year if you choose the 12-month billing cycle or above
• AI tools – use AI to build a logo, monitor visitor behavior, and write content
• Marketing – get insights from tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar to grow your business
• Bandwidth – unmetered so your website can receive traffic 24/7

However, Hostinger doesn’t have an app market, and with only one plan on offer, you’re stuck with these limited website features. In comparison, Shopify gives its customers access to thousands of apps to enhance their websites with additional features – but you’ll have to pay extra for the majority of these.

Plus, dedicated social media and marketing features, such as social selling and email marketing, are absent from Hostinger’s website builder, making it difficult to promote your website to your target audience. If these are important to you, we’d recommend Wix which incorporates these features into its plans.

Because of this, Hostinger scores a very low 2.8 out of 5 for its features – to compare, Wix scores 4.8 out of 5.

While Hostinger isn’t as impressive as some other website builders on the market, it could still be the perfect fit for your needs – whether you’re building a personal website, a blog, or want to start a small online business.

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When it comes to security measures, Hostinger’s website builder covers the essentials. The Website Builder & Web hosting plan comes with the following features:

• Unlimited free SSL certificates
• Weekly backups
• 24/7 server monitoring and protection

These features will help keep your customer’s data secure, and they’ll also prevent your website from falling victim to harmful online attacks.

Hostinger’s website builder scores 3.3 out of 5 for its help and support. Unlike other builders that offer a variety of contact channels, you can only message Hostinger via 24/7 live chat. We tried to test Hostinger’s live chat feature but we kept being redirected to the knowledge base instead. So, without phone or email support, we were left to find a solution by ourselves!

There’s also no in-editor support, but Hostinger does provide links to its knowledge base that’s full of tutorials and guides.

Hostinger’s customer satisfaction dropped by a massive 33% since last year’s research, resulting in a new score of 2.8 out of 5 for the category. This makes it one of the least popular choices of all the builders we tested.

Some users enjoyed the simplicity of the platform:

“It does the basics right so you can be quick to get your store up and running.”

While others got frustrated during testing, disliking its limited features and support:

“I felt capped from the offset. Because of this, I would find Hostinger hard to recommend.”

“Hostinger doesn’t have the best tools for those with advanced needs and higher expectations for the capabilities of their website.”

Hostinger’s affordability is one of its greatest strengths, but the general customer experience is let down by the limited website features, lack of design options, and inability to grow your website with your business.

If you’re after a simple website builder that has all of the essential features, like SEO and the ability to sell online, then Hostinger could be a good fit for your website.

That being said, Hostinger does fall short in quite a lot of areas – especially when compared with its top-rated competitors, such as Wix and Squarespace. For example, with only one plan, there’s no opportunity to grow your website and you can’t supplement its built-in features with third-party integrations because there’s no app store.

Still, if you’re looking for an affordable alternative to some of the popular website builders, Hostinger is a great starting point for beginners.