I wrote this Hostinger review as a warning.
Please, for the love of god, never use Hostinger.
Hostinger has an army of employees who manipulate people into buying their hosting: posing as customers, writing fake TrustPilot reviews, and voting for themselves in Facebook polls are just a few ways this unethical hosting company gets customers. Worst of all, the CEO encourages it.
This has been reported by Review Signal but I wanted to expand on it, especially since they copied my entire onlinemediamasters.com website and replaced my hosting recommendations with Hostinger. Copyright infringement and false impersonation anyone? If you want an honest Hostinger review, it would be to stay as far away from this host as possible. They’re total scams.
Why you should never, ever, use Hostinger
- Fake TrustPilot reviews and posing as customers
- They vote for themselves in Facebook polls
- Hostinger gets banned from Facebook Groups
- Another host with an average TTFB
- Support is probably the worst out there
- 2019 security incident affects 14M Hostinger customers
- Hostinger duplicated my blog and changed my hosting recommendations
- They are very expensive
- An inside look at Hostinger’s cPanel
- Conclusion: don’t get scammed by this hosting company
1. Fake TrustPilot reviews and posing as customers
Hostinger CEO Arnas Stuopelis openly said “it is their right” to write reviews of themselves.
But in Facebook Groups, they say these are “customer” reviews.
This is exactly what’s happening on their TrustPilot profile. It’s been happening for years. Hosting reviews are already super biased especially with affiliates, and this makes it worse.
Hostinger ruthlessly monitors the web when people ask for hosting recommendations.
When someone asks, one of their 250+ employee will jump in and say something like “I use Hostinger and couldn’t be happier” with a link to the Hostinger website. Their other 250+ employees will like the comment so people are fooled into buying hosting from Hostinger. You can see this pattern in Facebook Groups, Twitter, and on almost every social media platform.
Since they have been called out by Review Signal and banned from Facebook Groups, Hostinger 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!
You can see the screenshots on Review Signal and Emit.Reviews covered it well:
If you’re an existing customer of Hostinger and just found out about this information, I highly encourage you to write a review of them on TrustPilot to help expose the truth.
2. They vote for themselves in Facebook polls
Whenever there is a Facebook poll on “the best hosting” Hostinger sends their army of employees to vote for themselves.
Click on the Facebook profiles of people who voted for Hostinger and you’ll see a pattern. They either work for Hostinger or their Facebook profile is clearly not real. Facebook polls are used by many affiliates (including me) to promote the best hosting companies. So when Hostinger manipulates their ratings and other affiliates take screenshots, these affiliates are supporting Hostinger without realizing it. It affects average people, but also who the affiliates recommend.
Back when their employees had “works at Hostinger” in their Facebook profile, this was more obviously and the admins caught on. But now, they have fake profiles and vote more discretely.
They got caught red handed:
But in groups that aren’t moderated closely, this is still a problem:
3. Hostinger gets banned from Facebook Groups
Many Facebook Groups have caught on to Hostinger’s strategy.
Other groups continue to be infiltrated by Hostinger especially those not moderated well. If you are a member of these types of Facebook Groups, please report Hostinger to the admins. Or at least when you see them promoting themselves and pose as customers, please warn the others.
4. Another host with an average TTFB
As much as I hate Hostinger, their TTFB was average for shared hosting (around .5s).
I set up Hostinger’s WordPress Premium plan on a test server (hstngerserver.com) to measure TTFB and speeds (I did the same thing for 15+ other different hosting accounts too). Data center locations are different, but all use the exact same environment: same Astra Starter Site, plugins, SSL, no cache plugin, no CDN. The website isn’t live anymore because I refused to give Hostinger any money and cancelled immediately, but I at least wanted to show you the results.
Hostinger Reports
The Pingdom tests also tell a story (1 month period with 30 min check intervals):
5. Support is probably the worst out there
Hostinger advertises 24/7/365 support, but it’s a lie.
Just look at look at TrustPilot reviews from around July 24, 2020 (now page 4 on their Trustpilot profile). You know, the ones not written by Hostinger employees. Everything Hostinger does is suppose to look good on paper, but they obviously don’t follow through.
6. 2019 security incident affects 14M Hostinger customers
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 then again, they lie about everything and I wouldn’t take their word. If you value security, don’t use Hostinger.
7. Hostinger duplicated my blog and changed my hosting recommendations
They have since taken it down, but it used to be here: https://onlinemediamasters.fr
A lot of people come to my blog for hosting recommendations. So a Hostinger employee thought it would be clever to buy a similar domain, copy my blog, then replace all hosting recommendations with Hostinger. I sent a DCMA notice and they changed the design/content, but left the domain up. It’s still named “Online Media Masters” and the guy’s name is still Tom.
Hostinger is based out of Lithuania, Indonesia, and Brazil where there things are obviously not enforced. If this company was based in the United States, you bet I would 100% hire a lawyer to squeeze every penny out of them. This is the only hosting company I would expect this from.
8. They are very expensive
Hostinger offers an entry level price of $7.45/month for their most popular WordPress Premium plan, but it jumps to $15.90/month once you renew.
This is just like SiteGround and I am personally tired of having to switch hosts every couple hears because my renewal prices kick in. One of the main reasons I stopped promoting SiteGround is because their ridiculous renewal prices, and Hostinger is doing the same thing.
9. An inside look at Hostinger’s cPanel
This is what the Hostinger cPanel looks like.
If you’re already using Hostinger, migrate to a new host, then scroll down to the bottom and click this button:
10. Conclusion: don’t get scammed by this hosting company
These are just some of the few shady tactics I have found. God knows what else they’re doing. For all we know, they are paying people to write reviews, setting up more fake Facebook profiles, and doing anything they can to build an unethical hosting company. It is completely fake and I am genuinely surprised they were able to trick so many people into buying Hostinger, that even my owner readers are asking opinions about them. Now, you don’t have to ask again.
The hosts I do recommend: Cloudways Vultr High Frequency and NameHero (who uses LiteSpeed) are both significantly better than Hostinger in terms of speed, support, and ethics. I wrote extensive reviews on both of them (I’m currently using Cloudways Vultr High Frequency).
I hope this Hostinger review shed light on how terrible this company is. Please don’t support them or their affiliates. Most affiliates know about this, but fail to mention anything about this.
Cheers,
Tom
I have been using other hosting providers for many years and didn’t have any issues with Indexing new sites on Google. Now I recently started some few side projects and decided to buy 4 of the domains from Hostinger and Host them on Hostinger. Now all 4 website are not indexed by Google. I have also submitted all 4 sites to Search Console and same issue. I normally do not need to submit my websites to Search Console before they are indexed on Google but with Hosting it is a real pain in the ass. All 4 websites not automatically indexed and even trying to manually index them through Search Console is still an issue. I will never use Hostinger eve again. They are the worst Hosting provider.
To be honest, I have been happily using Hostinger for many years now.. Their support is fast and very helpful. I have no issues at all. The author (“Tom Dubious”) of this article vilifying Hostinger is obviously promoting HIS favourite hosting providers that he benefits from:
“The hosts I do recommend: Cloudways Vultr High Frequency and NameHero (who uses LiteSpeed) are both significantly better than Hostinger in terms of speed, support, and ethics. I wrote extensive reviews on both of them (I’m currently using Cloudways Vultr High Frequency).”
I suggest the readers see this guy for what he really is, and trying to do. He is the culprit – not Hostinger. And NO, I am not an Hostinger affilliate or anything – just a happy Hostinger client who does not rubbish and mud-rake others for his own gain!
With that logic, I could have wrote this review to make Hostinger look amazing and use affiliate links to them which probably would have benefited me more than steering people somewhere else. I can agree to disagree on whether Hostinger is good or bad, but your logic on why I say they’re bad is the typical “oh he’s just doing to for the money.” But, I get it. Everyone’s skeptical of affiliates so I don’t take it personally.
I wish I had found this before I signed up for the 4 year deal. I thought I had researched them but I guess my “credible” sources only taught me that they’re not credible. I asked for a refund and to transfer my site back to where I came. I moved because they offered “more” than what I was getting. However that more was just more headache! They will not release my site for 60-days. And if I get the refund, they will not redirect my site but take it down altogether. Foolishly I had moved a couple of sites.
So, the 30-day refund guarantee is useless unless you don’t really need your domain name.
They’re a bunch of crooks. Extra fees, useless money-back offer. Their load time is slow – it’s crappy service.
I wish I had found this site before purchasing a two year plan with Hostinger. I was duped. I no longer have access to my main email. It took them a week to get back to me and I am still waiting for them to reinstate it. This is despite all the emails full of love hearts and we are here to help you when they finally do get in contact.
Their fee includes free access to website building but their website builder is useless and they only provide a very limited version of WordPress (which they don’t tell you in the sales literature).
I have asked for a refund but they have stopped replying to my emails. I do not have access to chat through my account and it is not possible to send a message through their contact form as the drop down covers the submit button as soon as you select a topic (which his required in order to submit).
I think I have been given the finger.
If you are looking for a host, I would look elsewhere.
That’s horrible, sorry to hear about your experience.
Totally agree with this review. Hostinger support is terrible. They will always tell you they are looking into things and then never come back to you. This is why they have to sell 4 year plans…force you to stay for that time because you wouldn’t otherwise.
Seriously worst support, useless, never use pls.
This is a nice blog, thanks I was about to buy hostinger hosting, I am working on a big project, it will have around 10K products, site is built on Woocommerce, site traffic will be not more than 30K in a month, I asked hostinger support team and they suggested me “Business Web Hosting” which is very affordable but I want fast hosting not only affordable, I can’t go with hostings like WP engine or Kinsta these cost too much,
Any hosting you would like to suggest?
Cloudways DigitalOcean is who I use and generally recommend (I have a review about them in the nav menu). Starts at $10/month and is very fast. Great balance between affordable yet very fast.
Tom, Online Media Masters is a great resource and one of the main reasons that I caught the optimization bug. Thanks. :)
Regarding Hostinger, however, I honestly have been blown away by their value for money.
I’m using their shared business plan and it cost something like £250 for four years.
Their LiteSpeed back end is absolutely spot on. I have ten websites in total and now that I’m well versed in website optimisation, I get 100/100 on PageSpeed Insights.100/100 on GT Metrix and anything else is 98+.
I’d show my site, but don’t want to be accused of spamming.
Of course if they are manipulating reviews that’s not right, but it’s the end product that I care about and on that note I can’t fault them.
Regarding manipulation, everyone does it to a certain extent. Most of the caching plugins, for example, are all the same if set up correctly. Yet people promote WP Rocket simply because of the affiliate link.
WP Rocket themselves say not to bother with PageSpeed Insights, when they should be telling the truth. It’s Google who rank our sites so of course PSI is more important than Pingdom or GT Metrix. It’s PSI where Google get’s the RUM data from!
The truth is, any shared hosting can be set up to be as fast as a dedicated server if you know how to configure Cloudflare correctly.
Thanks once again for your amazing articles. They have inspired me immensely – I especially admire your dedication, because it’s not easy to keep on writing long-form blog posts one after the other.
With respect,
David Elstob
Hey David,
I respect your opinion. If it works, it works. I will admit their servers were pretty fast and they use LiteSpeed which is great. Just for me personally after seeing so many fake reviews and literally hundreds of employees impersonating themselves as customers trying to fool people on social media, then copying my site, there comes a point where a company is so unethical you will do anything to avoid them.
The whole thing about PSI always has mixed opinion. WP Rocket wrote that article before the new PSI version came out so there’s something to be said about that.
Any way, glad Hostinger is working out and thanks so much for reading my articles :)
Hey Tom. This blog post is a BIG surprise for me becasue I was going to test Hostinger in the next days.
I see your points and I totally agree with you. Also, the OnlineMediaMasters copy is crazy (even the “About Me” page is almost the same).
2 questions:
Thanks for everything.
Hey Pablo,
If you’re just starting I would consider A2 Hosting or Cloudways. A2 is shared hosting but it’s still very fast for shared, user-friendly with a cPanel, and also pretty cheap. We used A2 for my girlfriend’s restaurant website and it does the job. if you don’t think there will be lots of traffic growth and don’t need to scale, A2 should be good.
Cloudways is honestly not who people usually start with and are more for people upgrading from shared/slow hosting. “Techie” is a main concern people have about them but it’s actually not that bad, plus their community manager Mustaasam is very helpful. It’s not cPanel but it’s a pretty user-friendly dashboard. Installing SSL, staging, etc are easy to do.
It really comes down to what type of website it is. If it’s going to run resource-hungry tasks (WooCommerce, high CPU plugins, heavy page builder, etc) or you plan on getting decent traffic, I would skip shared hosting all together.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for the detailed answer Tom. It helps a lot.
Just to have a guide, what amount of monthly traffic would you consider enough to pay and learn Cloudways?
Maybe 300-500 visitors/day? That’s really hard to answer :)
If you’re running WooCommerce or a page builder like Divi or even Elementor, I would skip shared hosting all together. Just make sure if you’re using shared hosting, try to use a lightweight theme + plugins and do the basic speed optimizations like using a good cache plugin, CDN, etc.
Got it! Thanks Tom.