Hostinger vs Siteground: Which is Better?

How do you categorize a website hosting provider as worthwhile? Which aspects do you consider crucial when choosing a hosting provider? Only when you have thorough answers to these questions, can you find a reliable platform.

And if you are still in a search, we shall gladly present to your attention the results of our meticulous investigation and reviews of two giant companies of the industry – Hostinger and SiteGround.

We based our reviews on the four most essential aspects – scalability, security, speed, and support. It’s particularly these four aspects that can provide a site with a competitive edge so that they can manage the inflow of traffic they anticipate.

Hostinger is acclaimed for its budget-friendly hosting services which are good enough to begin your journey into the online platform. Contrarily, SiteGround has focused on creating a technically superior and powerful hosting environment.

So, which to choose? Take your time and let us guide you into the detailed review of the Hostinger vs SiteGround battle for the title of the best hosting provider.

Hostinger vs SiteGround: General Comparison

Being among those few companies which have established a reputation of a creditable hosting provider ever since they have entered the industry, both Hostinger and SiteGround have certain similarities with up to 100% uptime in particular. This feature serves as a pledge for reliability. Both companies ensure 24/7/365 assistance to their clients. Users will find a highly useful drag-and-drop website builder completely for free at both hosts. This ensures not only quick and effective but also easy site-building processes.

Furthermore, both SideGround and Hostinger are amazing for users leaning towards a WordPress account. Taking into account the fact that over 60 million of the currently operating websites are WordPress-built, this feature is more than simply helpful.

Those were the basic similarities. If we look at each of these providers separately, Hostinger is on top of Cloud hosting providers with its inexpensive yet advanced solution. The cheapest plan by this host designed for up to 300 sites comes packed with unlimited bandwidth, up to 100 email accounts per domain, and a wide range of other features.

The software foundation dates back to 2004. Since that time, Hostinger has expanded into one of the most affordable and reliable hosting solutions. The company now offers a variety of hosting types, including shared, cloud, VPS, WordPress hosting as well as Titan email hosting.

One of the major Hostinger advantages is its focus on affordability that does not compromise with quality. They strive to provide competitive pricing while preserving a high level of performance, security along with trusted customer support.

This approach has made the software a popular solution for savvy subscribers who intend to establish a powerful and trusted web presence without huge financial investments.

Hostinger data centers are smartly located worldwide.This eventually guarantees better website loading speed and improved performance irrespective of the user’s geographical location.

Finally, the host boasts a user-friendly interface and a toolset that makes it easy for beginners to set up and manage their web projects. They grant access to a custom control panel that simplifies various project management tasks. This makes the system accessible to users with limited or no coding skills.

SiteGround, on the other hand, is ideal for single sites. Its introductory plan delivers free SSL and email, 10GB of storage space, daily backups, etc.

Just like Hostinger, SiteGround was founded in 2004. Since that time, it has built a strong reputation for providing reliable and high-performance hosting solutions.

Along with versatile hosting packages, SiteGround boasts a superb infrastructure designed for reliability and speed. The company is concerned with their clients’ security and, thus, employs various measures to protect websites hosted on their servers from potential threats. These measures include regular system updates, proactive monitoring for vulnerabilities as well as a web application firewall to block malicious traffic.

SiteGround also has a strong emphasis on website performance optimization. They offer various caching techniques, Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration, and SSD storage to enhance website speed and overall performance.

However, it should still be mentioned that the set of integrated SiteGround features works best for hosting a limited number of websites. If you expect to host multiple sites, this may not be the best solution for you.

After overlining both hosting solutions, we need to get down to an in-depth comparison to find out which of them is better than the other.

Pros and Cons

Hostinger and SiteGround clearly have much to offer their users in terms of wallet-friendly options and robust features. Here we have reviewed the strongest selling points, as well as the downsides of both companies.

Comparison of Features

The main similarity line that we can draw between SiteGround and Hostinger is the abundance of features necessary to manage a website. For instance, both companies make it possible to collaborate with others on a website. For this, they have got collaboration tools to set up an account and give permissions to the entire team. What makes the two offers different is that Hostinger’s Access Manager is accessible on every shared plan. The SiteGround’s offer, meanwhile, spreads only on the higher-tier subscriptions.

However, SiteGround delivers a number of great features for developers including the possibility to ship sites to clients easier, staging, etc. The provider also includes managed WordPress services in all shared hosting plans. These services involve specialized WordPress support, automatic core and plugin updates, advanced tools, etc. As strange as it may look, being a known domain registrar itself, this company doesn’t include a free domain in its plans.

Hostinger, on the other hand, offers a free domain name for a whole year in all plans except the Single. The WordPress tools available at SiteGround are included in the managed WordPress plans at Hostinger at a cheaper cost. Besides mandatory attributes like the single-click WordPress installer, automated updates and backups, and the staging option, Hostinger supports a number of pro WordPress tools that will be indispensable for developers using this platform for building websites.

Thus, at their disposal will be such WordPress features as PHP version control, the Git Integration tools, WP-CLI, SSH access, and MySQL databases manager. With all this in hand, a WordPress programming specialist can both raise the productivity of their project sites and extend the choice of instruments for smart control over them. Moreover, be sure to get your WordPress site optimized for faster and more secure performance, thanks to such innovations as LiteSpeed Cache technology applied to Hostinger servers.

The provider does not offer dedicated hosting plans, but its choice of VPS hosting solutions does impress. Thus, you can try one of the available CyberPanel VPS plans to feel how easy-to-manage, fast, and secure your website can be for quite an affordable price! We also liked the domain features of Hostinger. Besides basic options, you can make use of a domain checker for free, the .xyz extension option, the ability to transfer your domain by simply clicking a button, and more.

To get a better view of features available, here is a list of tools by Hostinger:

• Shared, Linux and Windows WordPress, Cloud hosting, CyberPanel VPS hosting, CMS hosting, Email hosting, eCommerce hosting, and Hosting for Agencies available;
• Free domains on all plans except the starting Single tier;
• Free SSL certificate;
• 30GB to 200GB disk space on Shared hosting plans;
• 100GB to unlimited bandwidth;
• Daily and Weekly automatic backups on Premium and Business plans respectively;
• Brand hPanel control panel;
• Free CDN on Business plans;
• Unlimited email accounts;
• Free site migration by a professional team;
• 30-day refund policy;
• SQL and PHP support;
• Absence of ad banners;
• Availability of built-in AI tools.

Now let’s overview SiteGround’s essential features offered to users:

• Shared, WordPress, WooCommerce, Reseller, Cloud dedicated servers, custom enterprise hosting available;
• Free SSL certificate;
• 10GB to 40GB disk space on Shared hosting plans;
• Unlimited bandwidth;
• Automatic daily backups;
• Site Tools control panel;
• Free CDN;
• Unlimited email accounts;
• Free site migration for WordPress websites;
• Free website builder;
• SSD for faster data access and improved project performance;
• Multiple server locations;
• Automatic daily backups;
• Git integration;
• 30-day refund policy.

The main advantage of Hostinger here is that it offers more for a lower price. For instance, when you wish to migrate a non-WordPress site to Hostinger, this will be done for you free of charge. In the case of SiteGround, expect a paid transaction, and the fee will be significant. Another example is WordPress core and plugin updates that go with any shared hosting plan from SiteGround. To get these options on the Hostinger platform, you’ll need to subscribe to a managed plan from the provider. A common shared hosting from Hostinger will cost cheaper, but, interestingly, it is still less expensive than Siteground offers.

And you can find plenty of similar examples when comparing two companies. So, in the category of features, SiteGround and Hostinger are very close – their feature sets are practically equal. And yet, each provider arranges them in a different way – or rather at a different level of generosity. So we have concluded that Hostinger provides just a bit more than SiteGround.

Comparison of Usage

Nowadays, nobody wants to deal with a site that is challenging to use. Fortunately, when it comes to this, both Hostinger and SiteGround deliver easy setup and usage. SiteGround uses a Linux-based control panel Site Tools, while Hostinger uses an hPanel. This is a brand panel designed especially for Hostinger. It enables users to finish the setting up of a website relatively quickly and it will take only a minute to complete.

Overall, the functionalities of hPanel and cPanel are similar. The site-building tools of SiteGround can be accessed from the dashboard once you have logged in. The hPanel, meanwhile, suggests managing the website’s settings from the menu.

After we have worked with the Site Tools panel of SiteGround for a bit, we can say that the company’s main goal was to simplify a common cPanel offered on most hosting platforms. With all the necessary menus and buttons on the dashboard, you will be able to go straight to the options you need. For beginners and those seeking ultra-fast management of their hosting settings, this might be a very pleasing cPanel variant.

As for Hostinger, it seems the provider’s idea of how their control panel should look was quite the opposite. The Hostinger hPanel is a more sophisticated version of a cPanel, and many users might appreciate such an approach. Although you need to enter the dedicated menu with all the tools and options arranged in it, the Hostinger hPanel is a very comfortable way to manage your hosting settings. Its interface can be understood and maintained intuitively.

To sum up this feature, both control panels of Hostinger and SiteGround are aesthetically pleasing. And yet, if you are used to the traditional cPanel and don’t want to experiment with anything new, you’d better stick up with SiteGround.

When comparing other aspects of usability, we cannot give the palm to any of the providers – they both offer professionally built platforms with all services lying right before your eyes. You can find all the necessary info – be it available plans for a certain type of hosting, a tutorial, or migration tools – you are sure to access it in no time.

Finally, we liked the signup process with Hostinger a little bit more than the one offered by SiteGround. When you join Hostinger, the registration page suggests choosing a plan right away. Thus, you can observe actual promo plans, as well as the most popular packages offered by the company. You are free to compare all the options and choose the one you like the most. You can sign up with an email or via your Google, Facebook, or GitHub social media account.

The SiteGround signup page is more simplistic. You can get registered only via email. The procedure is as simple as with Hostinger. After your signup is complete, you will be able to access the site from your personal account and select a hosting package that suits you the most.

After several hours of navigation on both platforms, we liked the Hostinger site’s responsiveness and layout a bit more. However, it’s rather a question of taste. You may not doubt that both hosting providers have modern and easy-to-use sites.

Performance Comparison

Let’s get a bit technical now and discover what hides behind the excellent performance of Hostinger and SiteGround, shall we?

From one side, Hostinger has upgraded to the LiteSpeed web server to deliver exceptional performance. On the other hand, SiteGround combines NGINX with Apache to use as a reserve proxy. But despite being very powerful, NGINX features complicated configurations.

In terms of data center locations, these two hosts are on par. Their data servers are registered in Asia, Europe, and the US. But as long as you have a significant quantity of audience in South Africa, you may find Hostinger a better solution.

Speed tests conducted on the Pingdom time tester showed impressively high page loading times for a Hostinger-based website – 348ms on average. SiteGround slightly yields in this metric – it delivers only 415ms. Let us remind you that the tests have been conducted to get the average response time of one month. Most probably, the results will not be as impressive if we held the tests for several months or a year.

What refers to the uptime, both companies guarantee 99.9%. In practice, they go above and beyond this plank which is a stunning revelation for us. And although both Hostinger and SiteGround offer a certain type of compensation in case of delivering a lower uptime than guaranteed, you won’t be able to use it – both companies perform excellently when it comes to uptime.

Nevertheless, since Hostinger shows better results with its average response time, it takes the victory in this round.

Security Comparison

The security of your website is the aspect you should never neglect in any condition. Take time to make a thorough search of security features provided by the hosting company you choose before you entrust your website to them. To facilitate your task, we have already found out what Hostinger and SiteGround offer in terms of security. Let’s have a quick look.

Hostinger boasts of implementing the next-generation website hosting techs. This refers to the innovative network architecture, faster hardware, and, of course, security solutions. Here we have listed all the tools designed to protect your website from any type of vulnerability:

• Real-time reactive server monitoring;
• Cloudflare protected nameservers;
• Spam and threat detection;
• Daily/weekly backups;
• Imunify360 or Bitninja on every server;
• SSL encryption (offered for free in all plans);
• DDoS protection;
• Access Manager;
• RAID-10 protection;
• LVE containers for Account Isolation.

Additionally, Hostinger provides SpamAssassin for each plan. This is an email spam detector that automatically scans and removes the potential threats. The company has also enabled two-factor authentication to users, which makes it possible to identify yourself as the account owner by specifying both the email address and the phone number.

SiteGround doesn’t yield to Hostinger in terms of security. It adheres to the Security-First approach to keep its clients’ websites in complete safety against any probable virtual attacks. The main security tools incorporated by this hosting provider are as follows:

• AI anti-bot against brute force attacks;
• Smart WAF for reliable protection against hacks;
• WordPress security plugin;
• 24/7 server monitoring and fraud prevention;
• Free SSL encryption for protecting sensitive information;
• Excessive backups to safeguard data.

What’s important, SiteGround isolates each hosting account on their servers, ensuring that the actions or issues of one account do not affect others. The host continuously monitors their servers to promptly detect and respond to any potential security threats. Integrated anti-spam tools and filters help reduce spam emails and secure communication.

A notable advantage is that SiteGround provides instant notifications and assistance to restore the website’s security in case of hacks or security breaches.

Apparently, no threat can get past either Hostinger or SiteGround. As you can judge by their dedicated security features, these companies have much in common – they both offer DDoS protection, free SSL certificates, a robust web application firewall, and a spam filter. Moreover, they have employed security teams to monitor network health round-the-clock. While Hostinger uses Wanguard’s powerful solution, SiteGround features its proprietary real-time scanning software.

We can’t help but see Hostinger somewhat prevails over SiteGround when it comes to providing a high level of security.

Site Migration Comparison

If you already have a website hosted by any other provider, you can have it successfully migrated to Hostinger. For this, you just need to fill out a migration form after requesting the service. Mind that you must specify the control panel you were using with the previous host (this can be cPanel, FTP, WordPress, etc.) along with some other details. Choose the account you need the migration for. After this, the technical support member will do the rest for you. Once ready, Hostinger will notify you about it via email. And the cherry on top – the migration is completed entirely for free!

SiteGround, meanwhile, takes a fee to conduct a managed migration at $30 per site. The WordPress migration plugin is also available. If your website is WordPress-created, you can install the plugin and generate a token that initiates the migration.

Most certainly, you already guessed who’s the winner in this comparison review section. The completely free and tech support-conducted site migration by Hostinger drastically prevails over the costly one by SiteGround.

Dashboard Comparison

Hostinger generally offers a custom control panel for their hosting services. The dashboard is designed with user-friendliness in mind and provides a straightforward interface for managing your hosting account and website.

The control panel somewhat resembles the Microsoft tiles style. This is where you will come across large buttons, the use of which will help save your effort and time. There is also no need to look for hidden features or settings here as the system provides them as they are. Just pick the required category or option to proceed with your task.

An important aspect is that Hostinger comes with the original and intuitive hPanel that can be easily mastered even by beginners. Most other hosts, however, still offer a more complex cPanel that frequently complicates the software navigation and use.

When you reach the dashboard, you get an overview of your hosting account details, such as domain names, storage usage, bandwidth and more. A handy file manager tool will help you manage and upload files to your hosting account.

If needed, you will quickly get access to the website builder, one-click WordPress installer, DNS and email management, customer support section etc. Everything is at hand here.

Just like the majority of other popular hosts, SiteGround keeps using the cPanel as their hosting control panel. This is a widely-used and feature-rich control panel used by many hosting providers. However, it is somewhat more complicated to master as compared to hPanel.

The SiteGround dashboard also provides a standard overview of your hosting plan along with access to database management features. You can reach and work with the website builder here, create and manage email accounts related to your domain, use one-click installers for popular apps like Joomla, WordPress etc.

Access to security features is available here as well. If needed, you can manage SSL certificate settings along with other security-related options.

To sum it up, Hostinger is easier to work with due to the availability of hPanel that simplifies the task for newbies. This makes it easy for users to manage their hosting accounts and websites without requiring advanced tech knowledge.

Website Building Comparison

If you are new to the online business and need a website, both Hostinger and SiteGround offer site building services. In some features, they are alike, yet overall, provide different site-building tools. For instance, with Hostinger you use the Zyro site builder which ensures easy yet powerful website creation. It implements a drag-and-drop tool with no coding skills required. It comes in two forms – free and paid.

With Zyro, you actually get a free collection comprising over 100 special templates to come up to any requirements and niche preferences. These themes are free and responsive by default and they are also optimized for SEO.

Hostinger also grants access to versatile design customization tools that make it possible to adjust your project colors, images, fonts, styles and other design elements. You can always switch to another design on any stage of the customization process without losing the submitted content.

For users willing to set up web stores, Zyro provides integrated eCommerce features. You can add and manage product listings, work with inventory tools, process payments and other related options here.

What’s more, Hostinger website builder comes with a built-in media library where you can add and manage images, videos and other media files. Likewise, it is possible to connect social media profiles to your web project hereto share the content with followers.

It is worth mentioning that Hostinger is an AI-powered website builder. It ensures the automated content creation process that depends on the submitted information. The software also comes with AI logo maker and business name generator that let you create unique logo design and brand name.

SiteGround offers the simple drag-and-drop Weebly site builder completely for free. Here players don’t need any technical skills either. Users are provided with responsive themes, convenient eCommerce sites, and storefront themes.

Other tools include the incorporation of contact forms, many design layouts, a shop, etc. A free version of a site builder is offered on all plans.

SiteGround website builder comes with a simple drag-and-drop interface, enabling you to add and rearrange elements on your web pages effortlessly. You can move images, text blocks, buttons, and other elements to create the desired layout.

There is an opportunity to pick a suitable theme from a collection of pre-designed templates for various types of websites, such as business sites, portfolios, blogs etc. These designs are free and responsive.

If needed, you can upload and store images and media files in the website builder’s media library. This makes it easy to access and use your media across different pages.

The software also includes a range of built-in elements like contact forms, image galleries, social media buttons etc. You can integrate these elements into your website with a few clicks only.

All in all, Hostinger website builder is more full-featured as compared to that of SiteGround As a result, users have more chances to create large websites that look and function well on all devices. SiteGround is suitable for setting up small and quite simple web projects.

Customer Support Comparison

Users of Hostinger and SiteGround privilege their users with responsive and knowledgeable customer support available round the clock. How can you find out which of them is better in this metric? Let’s see what contact forms each of them suggests.

Hostinger features a team of experts to give quick and effective solutions to any query whether technical or not, that their clients may face. The company doesn’t provide phone support (not to make visitors hang on the line waiting for someone to answer them, as they claim), but the live chat is accessible 24/7 and the replies are sent almost instantly. So, you don’t even feel the need for a phone call. At Hostinger, all queries are replied via email forms and not live chats. But once you purchase a plan, you get access to real-time chat through your account’s control panel. To contact the service for sales inquiry use sales@hostinger.com email. The company also has dedicated emails for media, lost access to 2FA/profile email, affiliates program, and report abuse services.

SiteGround features a team of well-prepared and responsible workers to deliver efficient and fast solutions to any problem that occurred. The company offers several ways to contact the support including round-the-clock live chat, phone, and Helpdesk tickets designed for the most complicated issues. All this seems amazing, not counting the fact that you can use any of the provided contacts only after signing up and logging into your account. Site visitors aren’t given that advantage.

Both companies feature help desks and knowledge base articles. However, we grant an extra point to Hostinger for its openness to visitors which haven’t yet registered on the site.

Pricing Comparison

And the last but not the least important aspect in revealing the best website hosting provider out of Hostinger or SiteGround is pricing. Both companies are known in the market for their versatile pricing options.

You see, SiteGround starts at $2.99 per month while Hostinger’s introductory price for the Single Shared Hosting plan is $1.99 per month (this is a promo offer, however).

Apparently, SiteGround’s price tiers are somewhat higher than those of Hostinger. This becomes obvious once we compare them one by one.

The most popular shared hosting plan of SiteGround is the GrowBig, the equivalent of which at Hostinger is the Premium plan. Both plans deliver unlimited bandwidth and unmetered websites.

Nevertheless, the difference between these two plans lies in the price-Hostinger’s plan is three times cheaper yet comes better-packed with features. It offers 100GB of SSD storage while SiteGround’s offer is only 20GB.

The same can be noticed about all other hosting types provided. Hostinger’s cloud plans are several times cheaper but offer twice as much storage space.

However, the first thing to bear in mind about Hostinger is that the company offers a free plan – the option absent on the SiteGround platform.

Surely, you cannot expect too much from this package, but it is quite a workable solution for a low-budget startup, a small company, or a first-time entrepreneur. At least, you will get the ability to run one website with 300Mb storage and 3Gb bandwidth. At your disposal will be one database and one FTP account. The company guarantees 99% uptime and Cloudflare protection for your website based on free Hostinger hosting.

One more big plus of Hostinger is that it does not only offer a variety of plans for each type of hosting but that it supplies each package with a reasonable set of features, available for the price posted.

You will be impressed with the choice of VPS hosting plans. There will be eight options at your disposal, with prices from $5.99 to $21.99. The more productivity you want, the higher the price will be. But you are sure to find a nice solution with an adequate ratio of price/value. Thus, the most popular VPS package on the platform will bring you 2Gb RAM, 2TB bandwidth, SSD storage of 40Gb, a dedicated IP address, full root access, and other features. You can expect eight profitable plans for CyberPanel VPS hosting as well.

Both Hostinger and SiteGround give a 30-day refund guarantee on the shared hosting packages. This time is definitely enough to see if you have made the right choice.

As you see, Hostinger is a lot ahead of SiteGround in terms of pricing. The broader choice of plans and their more beneficial conditions make Hostinger the absolute winner in our review’s pricing race.

Verdict

For a third of the cost of SiteGround’s hosting plans, Hostinger is far from a bad choice. In fact, it features everything necessary to launch a website without any hassles.

It offers the same unlimited storage and bandwidth for top pricing tiers, a straightforward and aesthetically pleasing brand hPanel control system, free domain registration for an entire year, professional yet free website migration, and far better performance than SiteGroud.

Let us introduce the main summed up reasons why you should stop your choice on Hostinger:

• Affordable plans;
• Amazing WordPress experience;
• LiteSpeed cache;
• Weekly backups;
• Free domain name;
• Free SSL;
• Email addresses based on domains.

As you see, you have all the reasons to choose Hostinger over SiteGround, though the latter doesn’t yield much to Hostinger.