Next time someone recommends Hostinger (probably an affiliate), send them scam reports from Reddit or TrustPilot.
Once you give Hostinger your credit card, don’t be surprised when you’re billed for unauthorized purchases and get phone calls from scammers. They’ve been repeatedly threatened with lawsuits and Hostinger’s CEO (Arnas Stuopelis) openly admitted to fake reviews. This company got popular because of deceptive marketing and dishonest affiliates.
Migrations are done by inexperienced support who don’t read notes, make mistakes, and scam/ignore you. Resources are far from “unlimited” with low cores/RAM, slow SSDs, and extremely low I/O limits (sometimes 10x less than GoDaddy). This leads to server crashes, 503 errors, and account suspensions where you’re prompted to upgrade. Downtimes and degraded performance are common, but they don’t always update the status page to reflect it. There are several scams/issues related to all 3 of Hostinger’s main services: hosting, domains, and email.
So don’t believe the “glowing reviews” from Hostinger’s affiliates and the fake reviews. The “quality” is directly reflected in how dirt cheap the prices are. Both Hostinger/SiteGround trick people with misinformation and I encourage you to avoid both. Just stay away from Hostinger.
- How Hostinger scams you
- CEO admitted to fake reviews
- Resources are extremely limited
- Downtimes + degraded performance
- 1GB email storage with various issues
- Support is slow, scammy, or non-existent
- Hostinger’s SSDs are slower than NVMe
- hPanel is slow, limited, and has bugs
- 14M customers affected by data breach
- 4 LiteSpeed hosts that are better than Hostinger
1. How Hostinger Scams You
- Renewals process when set to manual.
- Charges for “free” SSL, backups, and support.
- Gives your information to other scammers who call you.
- Suspends your account for “abuse” without refunding you.
- Domain renewals increase to $100+/year with privacy protection.
- Domains and hosting plans don’t appear in the dashboard after payment.
- Advertises way more sites/storage/bandwidth than plans can actually handle.
You can find many complaints on Reddit and TrustPilot. There are probably others I missed (please let me know if I missed any in the comments), but these seem to be the common scams.
2. CEO Admitted To Fake Reviews
Hostinger CEO Arnas Stuopelis openly said “it is their right” to write reviews of themselves.
But in Facebook groups, they’ve always said these are “customer” reviews.
Hostinger got banned from Facebook groups for voting for themselves in polls and other unethical behavior. However, many groups are now run by SiteGround (WordPress Hosting, WordPress Speed Up, WP Rocket Users, and others) where admins censor posts and favor SiteGround. I recommend Gijo’s WP Speed Matters Facebook Group for less biased opinions.
Hostinger also monitors the internet prying on people asking for hosting recommendations. When someone asks, one of their 250+ employees will jump in and say something like “I use Hostinger and couldn’t be happier” with a link to the Hostinger website. Then their other 250+ employees will like the comment so people are fooled into thinking how amazing Hostinger is.
Since they’ve been called out by Review Signal and banned from Facebook groups, their employees no longer list “works at Hostinger” on their Facebook profile. They also created hundreds of fake Facebook profiles to keep the scam going and be more sneaky. Very clever!
3. Resources Are Extremely Limited
Don’t believe the numbers Hostinger puts on their WordPress Hosting page. The 100s of websites, 100-200GB storage, and unlimited bandwidth are completely inaccurate numbers. Even Hostinger’s VPS 3 plan advertises 60GB NVMe storage for $7.99/mo which is unheard of.
If you compare resources to another bad host (GoDaddy), Hostinger has 10x less I/O (KB/s) on most plans with only 1-2 CPU cores. That’s why Hostinger lets you boost your account for 24 hours while you lower CPU/memory usage. But chances are, the low limits will hold you back.
4. Downtimes + Degraded Performance
Advertising 99.9% uptimes (and uptimes tests) usually don’t mean anything because your websites are running on different servers/nodes than other sites.
Hostinger’s hosting agreement page clearly says “the service uptime guarantee does not apply to service interruptions caused by periodic maintenance.” While this is standard with hosting companies, Hostinger’s status page is usually filled with maintenance and degraded performance notifications. This is also one of the biggest complaints in their TrustPilot reviews.
Hostinger doesn’t come anywhere close to 99.9% uptimes.
5. 1GB Email Storage With Various Issues
Hostinger’s email includes 1GB for free, then it’s $.99/account per month for 10GB. However, there are many issues reported with their email service, including emails not going through.
Of course, I always recommend keeping web/email hosting separate to avoid exceeding inode/storage limits, and because you don’t have to constantly move email if you switch hosts.
6. Support Is Slow, Scammy, Or Non-Existent
Cheap hosting rarely has good support, but Hostinger’s is borderline incompetent.
Aside from scams, you may not get a response for hours, days, or ever at all. They upsell support for a monthly fee, and they’ve been caught logging into accounts without permission and changing things (including lowering the resource limits). Support is usually something you have to experience, but take my word, it’s one of the worst support teams you will come across.
7. Hostinger’s SSDs Are Slower Than NVMe
Hostinger uses SATA SSDs while other hosts (including shared hosts) are starting to move to faster NVMe SSDs. As I mentioned earlier, while Hostinger’s claims to use “terabytes of NVMe SSD storage” on their VPS plans, take it with a grain of salt since they lie all over their website.
8. hPanel Is Slow, Limited, And Has Bugs
Hostinger’s hPanel is basically a cPanel ripoff but worse.
Here’s a walkthrough of it:
9. 14M Hostinger Customers Affected By 2019 Data Breach
Back in 2019, 14 million Hostinger accounts were compromised.
The server contained customer usernames, email addresses, first names, IP addresses, and hashed passwords. Hostinger claimed no financial data was compromised, but they also lie about everything else, so I wouldn’t take their word. If you value security, don’t use Hostinger.
10. 4 LiteSpeed Hosts That Are Better Than Hostinger
All 4 alternatives use LiteSpeed and run circles around Hostinger in terms of speed, resources, email functionality, support, and some use faster NVMe SSDs + Redis (faster than Memcached).
FastComet is the cheapest but uses SATA SSDs, MySQL, Memcached, and has lower email storage. ChemiCloud / NameHero are better choices IMO (NameHero for US-based sites and ChemiCloud for other locations since they have more data centers with 9 of 11 of them using NVMe). If you want more powerful cloud hosting on a budget, look into Scala’s Entry WP Cloud.
| Hostinger Business WordPress Plan | FastComet FastCloud Extra Plan | ChemiCloud WordPress Turbo Plan | NameHero Turbo Cloud Plan | Scala Entry WP Cloud Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Shared | Shared | Shared | Shared | Cloud |
| Cores/RAM | 2 cores/1.5GB | 6 cores/6GB | 3 cores/3GB (scalable to 6/6) | 3 cores/3GB | No hard limit |
| Storage | 20GB SATA | 35GB SATA | 40GB NVMe | “Unlimited” NVMe | 50GB NVMe |
| Database | MariaDB | MySQL | MariaDB | MariaDB | MariaDB |
| Object cache | Memcached | Memcached | Memcached | Redis | Redis |
| Data centers | 8 | 11 | 11 | 2 (US + EU) | 3 (US + EU) |
| Server | LiteSpeed | LiteSpeed | LiteSpeed | LiteSpeed | LiteSpeed |
| Cache plugin | LiteSpeed Cache | LiteSpeed Cache | LiteSpeed Cache | LiteSpeed Cache | LiteSpeed Cache |
| CDN | QUIC.cloud ($.02-.08/GB) | QUIC.cloud ($.02-.08/GB) | QUIC.cloud ($.02-.08/GB) | QUIC.cloud ($.02-.08/GB) | QUIC.cloud ($.02-.08/GB) |
| Control panel | hPanel | cPanel | cPanel | cPanel | sPanel |
| Email storage | 1GB | 2.048GB | Adjustable | Adjustable | Adjustable |
| Inodes | 600,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | “Unlimited” |
| Major incidents | Scam reports, fake reviews, 2019 breach | 2022 DDoS attack on 3 data centers | None | 2011 2-day node outage | None |
| Migrations | Unlimited (but screws it up) | 3 free | 200 cPanel + 10 non-cPanel | 1 free | 1 free |
| Support | F | B | B | B | B |
| TrustPilot rating | 4.6/5 (fake) | 4.9/5 | 4.9/5 | 4.6/5 | 4.9/5 |
| Monthly price | $3.99 (1-4 years) | $5.49 (1-3 years) | $5.99 (3 years) | $9.98 (3 years) | $14.95 (3 years) |
| Renewals | $8.99/mo | $21.95/mo | $19.95/mo | $19.95/mo | $24.95/mo |
| View plan | View plan | View plan | View plan |
If you’ve read my blog, you probably know I use Rocket.net. They don’t use LiteSpeed (and will cost more), but they’re definitely the fastest host I’ve used with 32 CPU cores + 128GB RAM and Cloudflare Enterprise. You can read my full review but my <100ms global TTFB speaks for itself.
Cheers,
Tom
Really bad hosting provider I never seen . I send an email to sales team for some confirmation before buy them. However now almost 3 days no reply.
I’m thinking what will happened if I subscribe a plan when I need support team .
I decided Forgot a name hostinger are really exist .
Yeah, best to stay away. Spend the extra few $/mo and get a better host.
Im filing a class action lawsuit against HOSTINGER. I will not let them get away will all of their lies and and not holding up to their agreement when I purchased hosting from them. I was told to look for other people who have the same complaint as myself in order to file a lawsuit. I am reaching out for help from all of the people that have submitted a complaint and have been fooled by Trustpilots reviews who seem to have been honest non biased reviews or so I thought. I need for other people to come forward and file suit with me. It wont cost you anything and if it is becomes certified and becomes a class action, you could get paid for their damages and HOSTINGER not holding up to their hosting agreement. Its not about the money. I dont care if I get $0 from a lawsuit, but I want HOSTINGER to pay and be fined for the type of shady business that they have done to customers and basically stealing their money and not providing what they were intended to.
Angie, do you want to leave your email so people can reach out? I would love to see this go through. Completely agree.. it’s about justice more than money.
do not work with them, they will manipulate you to upgrade plans but will make fun of you when you will need help, i attach screenshot look
probably the good review like most are fake bots, i also share many verity of conversations and chat support to claim im right
do not book any domain this worst scammer company, I pay for one domain my money is deducted but still domain not showing in my panel its show”reviewing” bloody scammer company do not buy anything
I just had that darn feeling about hostinger. too many “adds”, and what seems to be “paid for” reviews. you forgot though one ting that is really imperative. :::::: NO phone number anywhere for anything and anyone and corporate address. That screams “stay away” for any business.
Q. any thoughts on hostwinds?
Haven’t tried Hostwinds and normally I only take TrustPilot reviews with a grain of salt, but their profile doesn’t have great reviews.
What are you look for in your host specifically? LiteSpeed, shared hosting, a specific data center location, or certain features?
thanks for the reply Tom. yup shopping for new host after 15 years with HostGator. those guys have gone to the “dark side”. they are refusing to renew my hosting for month to month, or even one year, rather 3 years at $20 per month or nothing. I am choosing “nothing” as I can get the same plan or better for 75% less, elsewhere with a 3 year. Looking for “Steller” customer service, US based support, (if that still exist), and of course > SPEED. we are going to invest serious $ in marketing, so reliability and speed matter. Thank again.
Any time. If it’s speed and support, those are really the 2 things Rocket.net excels at, but it’ll cost more than someone like NameHero, Cloudways, Scala, etc.
If it’s HostGator you’re referring to, they got bought out long ago by EIG (now Newfold Digital) and yes, they’re known for turning companies into the dark side.
Hi,
In these comments you keep recommending NameHero as an alternative. I looked them up and found a negative review here: https://www.cloudzat.com/namehero-review/
Thoughts?
Yes: