Hostinger Website Builder Review
Picture of Racheal Smith
Racheal Smith
Updated Jun 16, 2025
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Hostinger is best known for its global reach when hosting websites. It is popular because you can overcome some of the gnarliest privacy and data storage laws because of the spread of its worldwide operation. It is also affordable and reliable, all essential in any IT provision.
My question dives into whether Hostinger delivers in the competitive website builder market. There are some outstanding sites out there that provide easy-to-use interfaces for the almost instant creation of my website. With such mainstays as Wix and Weebly available to users, I’d like to know if anything sets Hostinger apart in 2025.
Having tested its features and explored pricing, performance, and usability, I am ready to recommend Hostinger’s website builder—with one or two caveats.
Pros and Cons
+ Easy to use
+ AI offers instant answers
+ Affordable
– Limited functionality for those who have experience developing websites
– Few third-party integrations
– No phone support for when things get challenging
Packages and Pricing
At the time of writing, Hostinger was offering a significant deal. For four years, you could sign up for a package with access to the website builder and domain for less than £200, which is exceptional value. The website builder is integrated into their web hosting plans, so its access comes with many extras.
Once you step outside of this limited-time offer, Hostinger is still affordable, with packages starting at £11.99. However, if you are coming to Hostinger because of the buzz around the AI functionality available, much of this is only available if you upgrade to the business premium subscription.
Also, as you work through the early setup, you are presented with various ways to increase the cost of building your website, including custom domain and email hosting. The good news is that you don’t have to make these extra choices until you play with the web builder. Unfortunately, the same is not valid for the basic hosting charges, which you must subscribe to before you begin. You are charged for the whole period.
Money-Back Guarantee
There is a 30-day money-back guarantee, which Hostinger honours relatively easily and quickly. However, competitor sites such as Wix allow the user to build the site and appreciate the value of the functionality before demanding payment. The subscription charge can come as late as the point of publishing the site with these alternatives.
Therefore, the aggressive pricing policy encourages users to sign up for 48 months and auto-renew their subscriptions before trying the product. I assume this plays into people’s reluctance to claim refunds, as they fear it will be too difficult. This is a bold choice in a world of try-before-you-buy.
Overall, it is worth saying that Hostinger still offers good value for money. The pricing is affordable for most small businesses and solo entrepreneurs.
Building your site
Hostinger has a solid suite of features to help support you in creating your website. These features include:
Onboarding flow
AI site generation
Templates
Checklist
A drag-and-drop website editor
AI logo, image and content generation
SEO
Blogging tools
Auto-generation mobile design
Mobile design functionality from an Internet browser
eCommerce
I didn’t find any of these tools revolutionary, and I can name a competitor platform that includes some or many of these. Hostinger has done well in bringing these features together into one easy-to-use platform. The revolution isn’t in the tools available but in the thoughtful design of the user experience.
Onboarding and AI
Onboarding image for the site Hostinger
This website builder is for beginners or novices with tech. Hostinger understands its target market, and beginning the process with a series of binary options is reassuring. Tech-free questions based on the user’s needs meant I was quickly presented with a site. I could also use templates or AI tools that promise to build a site that is entirely personal to me. While the quality of what the AI tool can produce is restricted by my ability to come up with a reasonable prompt, Hostinger gave an example that helped me out.
As with all AI tools, the outcome is always a little off-target. In my example, where I asked it to help me produce a site for a writing coach offering a course, it presented a black-and-white image of schoolchildren from the 1950s. The copy was a little closer to the mark, though it lacked the humanity you would want for your business website.
Image showing the AI prompt for Hostinger
The other option is to start from a template. There are 150 or more templates to choose from, and they are constructed based on the business, such as fashion, or website types, such as community. The templates were a good starting point for most people who do not have a specific design vision for their site. The templates also include recommended elements for those new to website building, such as case studies for a technology site.
You can combine the AI and templates by using the option to personalise with AI in the library. I preferred combining the two tool sets, and I got closer to something I would want to publish this way.
One thing to note is that you cannot switch the templates after you start building out your content. Choosing a different template means starting the build again.
Key points
– Aimed at those new to website building
– Easy onboarding
– Guided AI, which offers a fair starting point
The website builder editor
The evaluation of the AI tool as being a little clunky and dependent on the user’s skill is not revolutionary. All AI is only as good as the user. My ability to express and understand my vision for my business will limit the output. AI, as yet, is not a mind reader. Fortunately, Hostinger has created an intuitive editor to help shape the site you want and need.
Before I go any further about the editor tools, the mic drop for those in love with AI features is that it won’t necessarily save you that much time. It will give you a structured starting point to evolve your idea, but it would be surprising if it ever produced something you could publish. When it comes to helping you design your logo and site images, it can be prompted, and prompted some more, until you are happy. This could save you money with a designer.
The checklist you are given after completing the initial onboarding is helpful. The technical ability to go from the AI creating the site to a drag-and-drop editor isn’t too significant, but I was still glad to receive a prompt on what to do next. The same is available for those building from a template, which meant I felt guided throughout the design process.
As I clicked on each item on the checklist, the side pane changed and helped me to navigate the builder while evolving my site. As someone who dislikes going through tutorials, I appreciated the chance to progress my design while I learned. I should tell you to do the online tutorials to ensure you get off to the right start with your website, but I am a player and experimenter, and it worked.
In addition to the drag-and-drop features, a smart grid allows you to drop elements onto the page. Evolving a website like a jigsaw puzzle involved choosing the right pieces and slotting them into place.
In many ways, the smart grid with the drag-and-drop functionality allowed you some of the structure of Squarespace but with some of the freedom of Wix. This is a significant plus for the website builder, giving the user the best of both worlds. With this combination of tools, you can build a page from scratch, ignoring the templates and AI in favour of the idea you have in your imagination. What is impressive here is that Hostinger has unlocked a means by which beginners can do this when it would typically be the remit of an experienced developer.
However, the interface’s ease of use makes it unsuitable for more skilled developers. There is an apparent limit to what you can achieve with this website builder, and if you are a large business looking for a sophisticated and bespoke design, this is not the platform for you.
Key points
– A great checklist that helps you ease into editing your site
– The smart grid helps you to structure your site
– The freedom of drag-and-drop functionality gives you some of Wix’s freedom.
SEO, Blogging and Mobile Design
The platform gives you much support to make your site findable on search engines. There is another list to click through where you are guided to understand how to improve Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is something that WordPress has got right, making it clear how you can improve your design and content. I know that Hostinger is hoping to make this site an alternative for building in WordPress, and it has borrowed some of the clear instructions from its more complex big brother.
Although blogging is easy, as simple as adding a new template, the choices available to the user are significantly limited. The blog function is undoubtedly offered as an addition to an eCommerce site rather than its primary function.
In contrast, the Hostinger has aced the auto-generation of a mobile-friendly design. My site looked amazing on a smaller screen, which I could check by clicking the icon for the different views. While there is no dedicated mobile design builder, which a purist would find challenging, it isn’t required, considering the quality of the auto-generated redesign.
However, if you want to produce a mobile-first website, it is still best to use Wix. It allows you to add features that mobile users need to access your business’s support. While you can edit on your mobile site with Hostinger, it is an afterthought rather than the main functionality.
Key points
– Excellent SEO features
– Basic blogging functionality
– Auto-generation of mobile design is a strength
eCommerce Features
Adding a store to your website will be complicated, right? Not at all. With a single click on the store button, the platform will configure an online store and attach it to your website. You must edit using the website builder functions to improve the customer flow around the store. However, you have media-rich options to bring your products to life, and you don’t need to employ someone to list them for you.
If you subscribe to the business plan, you can access Hostinger’s eCommerce tools and the dashboard from which to manage it. The store can support more than a dozen languages, and the platform will generate estimates of shipping times and costs based on the IP. You can accept payments using 20+ payment methods, including Stripe, PayPal, and Apple. While you cannot run subscriptions through the platform, you can take appointments and bookings and manage your availability through your Hostinger dashboard.
My favourite feature? It is the AI-powered product information generator that Hostinger introduced in 2024. It can scan an image of a product I want to see and create product information. Was it always accurate? No, but then we all know we need to check the work of our artificially intelligent work buddy.
If you are a small business or start-up, Hostinger offers the store features you need. However, it is worth considering how quickly you will scale your business. This is not the site for building a large enterprise, and it is challenging to migrate your store.
Key points
– Single-click store creation
– Simple editing to personalise the store
– Not suitable for scaling a large business where sites specialising in eCommerce, such as Shopify, would be better.
Evaluating the features
Let’s get to the heart of the review and see if the features in Hostinger cut it in 2025.
Onboarding flow: A well-conceived flow that helps a novice build a website in only a few minutes. I would rate this excellent.
AI site generation: The AI prompt example helps make this feature a little more usable, though, like most AI, it doesn’t always perform well. It is rated good.
Templates: A vast library of beautiful and functional templates organised by business sector and website use. This is more effective when pairing it with AI to help the user personalise the template. Rated excellent.
A drag-and-drop website editor: Paired with the smart grid, the drag-and-drop editor brings together Squarespace’s structure and Wix’s design freedom. Neither feature is exceptional, used by competitors, though the drawing together of these in one product significantly enhances the user experience. This is rated good.
Checklist: This is a strange feature to focus on, as it feels relatively basic. Yet, moving from the quick and straightforward onboarding to a list of actions to take with the website editor continued my user journey with the platform, helping me build confidence with the builder. Rated excellent.
AI logo, image and content generation: As with all AI, the generator is only as good as the prompts it receives. It helps users who need inspiration for a vision, but if you have a brand in mind and how the site should look, this tool will quickly become frustrating. Rated good.
SEO: Like all the tools on Hostinger, the SEO functionality presumes you are a novice. It gave me prompts that improved the SEO and were rated good.
Blogging tools: Blogging is easy with Hostinger, but the functionality is too basic for this to be a site where you draw readers to a blog-only website. It is rated good.
Auto-generation mobile design: It is impressive that you can design a website and then have the platform optimise it for a smaller screen. This feature is rated excellent.
Mobile design functionality from an Internet browser: The lack of a mobile designer and a mobile-first solution will be a problem for purists. Rated good.
eCommerce: The simple click of a button to create a store and the automation features for shipping make this a strong feature. However, it is not the right choice for scaling, so it is rated good.
Support
Everything about Hostinger is designed for beginners, and there is a definite assumption that most can use the site with limited support. There is a Getting Started section and a massive selection of learning materials. If you are a self-starter and happy to learn without support, you can master the platform quickly.
Hostinger has introduced a chatbot called Kodee, which, you might have guessed, is an AI assistant. It provides 24/7 support for creating your site and managing your business. The assistant helps you search through the extensive knowledge base on the site and find the answer to most queries without needing a human. You can access a human once logged into an account, meaning you will already have subscribed. However, you can email a customer support representative and receive a response without subscribing first.
While the response to the online chat was prompt, I still enjoy being able to speak to someone when the issue is complex or urgent. There is no option to connect directly in this way, which would be needed for enterprise client management.
Security and Uptime
Hostinger promises 99% uptime, meaning you might experience about 9 hours of downtime over a year. These numbers are hard to quarrel about, and I suspect that no site will promise 100% uptime because of events outside the company’s control. However, if your livelihood depends on your website’s reliability, choosing a hosting company renowned for its reliability is an excellent strategy.
Though relatively standard, your Hostinger website will have a free SSL certificate, automatic backups, and a Cloudflare DNS firewall. What I liked more is that 1) I can share the site with an agency or freelancer developer without giving my credentials, and 2) I have a dashboard that shows me what activity has been undertaken on my site so that I can spot problems quickly. These thoughtful additions make it easier to trust others to support me in developing my site.
I know from experience that these are the boring details but also essential for businesses starting with a website. Nothing is more likely to cause brand damage than a data breach or misrepresentation on your site.
The overall verdict
Let’s begin with the things that are missing that you would want. First, there is no photo editing or third-party app library. These significant omissions will stop you from creating a fully functional business website.
Second, there is no free tier. Hostinger aggressively asks that you pay for the entire subscription term in a single payment before trying the website builder. Paying hundreds of pounds for an extended term before your website is ready for launch requires more confidence than a beginner would have.
With all this said, Hostinger does what it intended to do brilliantly. It wanted to produce a website builder for a novice. Anyone can create a workable website using AI, a smart grid, and drag-and-drop features within an hour or so. The features are simple to use, and the outcome looks relatively professional. While the basic functionality would be utterly frustrating for anyone with experience, Hostinger never intended for this to be a tool used by developers.
The danger of starting your website on a platform meant for beginners is that you might have to migrate it to something more sophisticated as you grow. While single-click store creation might sound appealing now, it might be a pain when you need the sophistication of Shopify or other eCommerce specialist sites.
Despite these caveats, I would heartily recommend Hostinger. I am impressed with how quickly you can get a fully functional, secure, and well-designed website.
