If you like scams and wasting time fixing broken sh*t, you’ll love Hostinger!
Before you obsess over their cheap prices and fake reviews, you might wanna read some of the 350+ TrustPilot complaints about scams, suspensions, phishing, their shady abuse department, and Hostinger’s subreddit which has plenty of other horror stories. Here is a fairly common one:
Hostinger accuses legitimate websites of phishing, permanently wipes entire accounts without warning, and denies backups, refunds, and proof phishing actually existed.
Imagine losing $200k after your account is wiped because someone sent a bogus report to abuse@hostinger.com or report-phishing@hostinger.com. If you weren’t taking third-party backups, your data is gone. You (or your client’s) businesses are now vanished off this earth.
All because you wanted to save a few bucks and fell for Hostinger’s fake reviews (which are so fake that even their Wikipedia page mentions employee-written reviews). Meanwhile, affiliates like Emit Reviews are knowingly leading you into a scam with more bogus reviews. Seems like no one writes honest reviews about Hostinger until they get scammed or have 100% CPU usage.
Go capitalism!
Here’s a Hostinger review for you:
Hostinger costs less because you get less.
You get less resources since shared plans have less cores/RAM while VPS plans also have less CPU resources and are notorious for 100% CPU usage. You get less honesty (Hostinger has been repeatedly accused of lying about suspensions/scams, degraded performance, resources, malware, downtime, support not investigating problems, and legitimacy of their reviews). Finally, you get less help with AI support + website builder and arguably the worst support & abuse team in the industry. But if you like surprises, they do have lots of those – like billing you 14 days before renewal and refusing refunds.
- Phishing suspension scams
- Backups/data deleted without refunds
- Shared plans have ~50% less CPU + RAM
- VPS plans constantly hit 100% CPU usage
- 503 errors with ~90% degraded performance
- Unreported performance issues and downtime
- How to test if Hostinger’s limits are the problem
- Emails only have 1GB storage and are sent to spam
- “Abysmal” support with Kodee AI
- Free migrations aren’t always free
- Charges you 14 days prior to renewal
- “Horizons” is a slot machine with errors
- 14M customers impacted by data breach
- Nothing about this is “managed” hosting
- Emit Reviews is leading people into a scam
- Ex-CEO admits to employee-written reviews
- Hostinger alternatives
1. Phishing Suspension Scams
Hostinger suspends accounts for bogus phishing reports and refuses backups/refunds.
Your account can be immediately deleted from their servers without giving you the chance to take backups, contest the accusation, or request proof phishing even existed in the first place.
Hostinger’s abuse department “hides behind terms” with cold replies saying it’s “policy” and denies refunds. You can find hundreds (likely closer to thousands) of nearly identical stories if you search their reviews. They’re accusing you of scams, but they’re the one scamming you!
Meanwhile, Hostinger is ranked one of the top phishing sites and has been accused of knowingly hosting them.
While this seems to be the most common scam, customers also reported:
- Renewals process when auto-renew is off.
- SSL, backups, and migrations are not always free.
- Giving their information to other scammers who call you.
- Domain renewals increase to $100+/year with privacy protection.
- Domains and hosting plans don’t appear in the dashboard after payment.
- Advertising more sites/storage/bandwidth than their plans can actually handle.
2. Backups/Data Deleted Without Refunds
After Hostinger suspends an account, they can delete data and refuse a refund.
There are SO many stories like this and many can be found by searching “data” in their TrustPilot reviews. Customers like Serbon have said they “don’t care about customer losses.”
Providing you with a backup is outside their data request policy which is defined as “a request for information or documents relating to customer accounts in connection with official criminal investigations or other official legal proceedings.” Which is why people are begging to Hostinger.
3. Shared Plans Have ~50% Less CPU + RAM
Hostinger’s highest “Web Business” plan only includes 2 CPU cores + 1.536GB RAM while other hosts like ChemiCloud and NameHero use 3 CPU cores + 3GB RAM on their highest shared plan.
4. VPS Plans Constantly Hit 100% CPU Usage
Get this. Hostinger’s KVM 8 VPS plan (which supposedly has 8 vCPU cores + 32GB RAM) can’t even handle a fresh install of AlmaLinux. That’s because their VPS has super low CPU limits.
Hostinger doesn’t define what “high CPU usage” means (they seem to leave this at their discretion). But judging by the amount of complaints and how CPU capacity is decreased by 25% per hour until it’s 0%, it’s obviously why Hostinger’s VPS plans are cheap. Because of low CPU limits, CPU stealing where other users hog resources, poor virtualization, and downtime.
“Our internal systems will detect if your VPS sustains high CPU usage for longer than 180 minutes. Once this limit is exceeded, our internal systems will consider your VPS compromised. If this happens, your VPS CPU capacity will be decreased automatically by 25% per hour as a protection measure.”
Read their VPS reviews before you get fooled by those cheap prices!
5. 503 Errors With ~90% Degraded Performance
Think you can host 50 websites on their $3.99/month Business plan?
I’ll bet you’ll get 503 errors, 90% performance degradation, and a wp-admin that’s so slow it’s unusable before you come anywhere close to hosting 50 WordPress sites on their shared plans. Just like Hostinger does their marketing and fake reviews, several numbers are highly inflated.
In reality, users reported a whopping 90% performance degradation and unusable wp-admin. You’ll either need to boost CPU/RAM for 24 hours or upgrade. Hostinger has also been accused of providing less resources than advertised, so ensure you’re not getting scammed of resources.
6. Unreported Performance Issues And Downtime
Surely Hostinger reports downtimes and degraded performance… or do they?
I’ve seen quite a few people accuse them of not reporting these issues on their status page. Which isn’t surprising considering even if Hostinger broke their uptime guarantee, you would only get 5% of your monthly hosting fee. Something tells me no one has gotten that 5% credit.
7. How To Test If Hostinger Is The Problem
Test your site using the WordPress Hosting Benchmark Tool plugin to ensure you’re getting enough CPU power, memory, and disk I/O (in filesystem performance and database operations). This tells you a lot more about your host’s resource limits and “power” as opposed to just TTFB.
8. Emails Only Have 1GB Storage And Are Sent To Spam
Here’s why you shouldn’t use Hostinger for email:
- Titan email is a nightmare.
- Free email only has 1GB storage.
- Even after upgrading to 10GB storage, it’s only for 1 account.
- There are many other limits on messages, recipients, mailboxes, etc.
- Emails go to spam due to unreputable shared IPs and bad neighbors (their customer base is abusive judging by the amount of phishing sites they host).
9. “Abysmal” Support With Kodee AI
What kind of support do you expect from a host who offers some of the lowest prices and is known for running scams? Abysmal support and arguably the absolute worst in the industry.
Partly because you’re met with an AI chatbot (named Kodee) and because if you do reach a human, they’ll say anything to get rid of you – including blatant lies like how a problem is being investigated, things are working when they’re not, and passing off the blame elsewhere.
10. Free Migrations Aren’t Always Free
Do not, I repeat, do NOT trust Hostinger’s support to migrate your site.
Whether it’s free or they bait and switch you like they’ve done with many customers, there’s a good chance Hostinger will completely screw up migrating your site. Then they’ll toss it over to you with a bunch of errors and you’re left to clean up the mess. Who even trusts these people?!
11. Charges You 14 Days Prior To Renewal
Sneaky sneaky!
Hostinger charges you 14 days in advance for yearly hosting plans or greater and 27 days for domain names. Most hosts only charge you 7 days prior to your renewal (giving you some time in case your card gets declined), but 14 days is borderline predatory. So add it to your calendar!
12. “Horizons” Is a “Slot Machine” With Errors
Want your website builder to work like a janky slot machine?
Just keep feeding it credits and AI will “accomplish everything except what you requested” with lots of errors. They’re charging way too much for something that’s basically still in Alpha stage. IMO, it’s another scam-like service offered by Hostinger that sucks up your money with lots of limitations and errors. You’ll spend more time and money on it than hiring a freelancer.
13. 14M Customers Impacted By 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 through their teeth, so I wouldn’t take their word. If you value security, do not use Hostinger.
14. Nothing About This Is “Managed” Hosting
Managed hosting should mean LESS problems and BETTER support.
Hostinger has more problems and worse support. So when they screw up your migration, suspend your account, then completely ghost you, just remember… this is what managed hosting looks like on Hostinger. And if you think that’s bad, try using their VPS which is truly unmanaged. If you think you can get managed hosting for $4/month, you’re on the wrong blog!
15. Emit Reviews Is Leading People Into A Scam
If you’ve searched for hosting reviews, chances are you’ve come across Emit Reviews.
He heavily promotes Hostinger despite knowing about their scams (he also uses my blog to learn about hosting and I can tell you he has no idea what’s talking about). Just a warning for anyone who thinks his reviews are legitimate… I think Emit is just as legitimate as Hostinger. Spoiler: at the end of his video, he says they “hit the sweet spot” then drops his affiliate code.
16. Ex-CEO Admits To Employee-Written 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!
17. Hostinger Alternatives
ScalaHosting is night and day compared to Hostinger and here’s why:
- Faster CPUs. Hostinger uses AMD EPYC 9354P CPUs which are ~62nd fastest on PassMark. ScalaHosting uses AMD EPYC 9474F CPUs which are the ~25th fastest.
- VPS and Entry Cloud plan use dedicated resources with no resource limits. Unlike Hostinger who has low limits on shared and strict CPU limits on their VPS.
- You can build a VPS which is more similar to Cloudways, but resources scale individually, cost ~60% less, and it’s faster (due to CPUs, OpenLiteSpeed, and less overhead). Scala also has full root access, free malware scans, and free migrations.
- The Entry Cloud plan is a small VPS with 2 cores + 2GB RAM (fixed) which is a big upgrade from shared since you get dedicated resources, no limits, and fast CPUs.
- Scala’s shared hosting is comparable to Hostinger but with faster CPUs and more relaxed limits without the sneaky tricks (and scams) you often see with Hostinger.
- Both Scala and Hostinger use LiteSpeed, NVMe SSDs, and a custom control panel (SPanel). But there are several key details in their CPUs, resources, and support/reliability that make ScalaHosting a much better choice than Hostinger.
There are several other hosts who are better than Hostinger like ChemiCloud (cheapest), MechanicWeb, and Rocket.net (best for WooCommerce). It really depends on your site/budget.
Shared Hosting (View Table):
VPS Hosting (View Table):
Whatever you do, just don’t use Hostinger!
Cheers,
Tom
