Hostinger Website Builder Review 2025: Wix Killer or Just for Beginners?

Website builders like Wix and Squarespace have made creating websites accessible to everyone - and traditional hosting providers don't want to give up without a fight. Many web hosts, including Hostinger, have developed their own website builders.

But how good is Hostinger's website builder, and how does it compare to the competition? We put it to the test.

When it comes to ease of use, Hostinger's website builder hits the mark. The editor interface is clean and simple to use, the design tools are intuitive, and the AI tools make standard tasks easier.

Everything is designed to help beginners create attractive websites - without limiting flexibility as much as other quick-start website builders.

First, you need a Hostinger account. Since Hostinger doesn't offer a free plan or trial version, you'll need to pick a paid plan right from the start (more about pricing later).

You have two options to set up your website: You can use Hostinger's AI assistant, which automatically creates a website and fills it with content based on your preferences, or take the classic route with pre-made templates.

AI tools are a natural fit for website builders: Both were created to simplify and automate complex manual processes. However, AI features often seem more like a gimmick that isn't quite ready for prime time in the website builder space. Hostinger's AI assistant is different - it actually adds real value.

Setup is easy: Just specify your website type and add a description that serves as the AI prompt. You can also define a color palette if you want. Then the AI gets to work and creates the first version of your website.

Of course, you shouldn't expect miracles from Hostinger's AI: The website it creates based on your input is pretty basic, uses boring stock photos and adds the same pages and content types over and over - depending on your website type.

But we don't expect more from AI right now, and we actually prefer Hostinger's straightforward results to the AI websites from other builders like IONOS or Webnode.

Would you rather start with a handcrafted template? The template selection offers more than 150 templates organized into different categories:

Since you can't switch templates later, choose carefully. You can click through the template in preview mode and view it in either desktop or mobile view. If you want to proceed with the template, click "Edit page" in the top right of the preview.

After selecting a template, you'll go straight to the website builder editor where you can customize your website's design and content. You'll first see a quick checklist reminding you of the most important steps.

The interface has a logical layout and uses the typical website builder setup with side and navigation bars framing the website preview:

The Hostinger editor has an intuitive layout with a clean interface, so we never had trouble finding any features or settings.

Creating content with Hostinger is super simple. This is thanks to the drag-and-drop controls with a grid option: While you can freely move elements within each section, you can also turn on the "snap" feature in the section settings. When enabled, a grid appears while moving elements, and they automatically snap into place.

Like most website builders, design happens on three levels: pages, sections, and elements.

All standard processes in the Hostinger website builder are easy to handle. You can quickly create new pages and sections and fill them with content. The drag-and-drop editor gives you enough freedom for layout design, while providing structural guidance with its (optional) snap-to-grid feature.

The performance is also great: In our review, the Hostinger website builder was always quick and responsive, with hardly any lag or loading times.

Sometimes the Hostinger editor isn't flexible enough. This is especially true for content management: We miss features to centrally manage pre-formatted elements like testimonials or services.

Hostinger treats all sections the same way. So when you create a testimonial section, you can't add new entries in a mini-CMS style where the layout and display automatically adjust to the number of entries - instead, you have to manually edit each entry in the editor.

As long as you stick to the layout's preset number of entries, it's not a problem. But it gets tricky when you want to add more or fewer entries. This makes it harder to scale content and flexibly adjust page and section templates with Hostinger.

Hostinger offers a solid selection of high-quality templates that you can customize quite extensively using the built-in tools. Thanks to the drag-and-drop feature, you can flexibly adjust your page layout. However, the selection of elements is limited - and section templates aren't very flexible.

Hostinger gives you more creative freedom than other quick-start website builders. But compared to all-rounders like Wix or Squarespace, the customization options are limited.

You can create the basic visual structure of your Hostinger website either by using AI generation or by choosing a classic design template.

There are plenty of templates to choose from: Hostinger offers more than 150 templates that you can filter by categories like website type and industry. Most templates are well-made, featuring attractive designs that look professional and modern.

Many templates use large, eye-catching images and sleek layouts - with clean lines, well-matched color palettes, and modern typography. While many templates look similar to each other (a common issue with website builders), Hostinger's templates generally make a good impression.

The AI-generated websites aren't very exciting visually: the designs are practical and functional, meant for simple, modern websites without any fancy extras.

In the styles menu, you can adjust your website's global design. Any changes you make here will apply to your entire website. You can later customize these default settings at the local level and override them for specific elements and sections.

There are four types of global style settings:

Hostinger's global design settings are quite comprehensive, even though some adjustments - like quickly changing color palettes or buttons - could be more user-friendly.

The global settings are just the default choice: You can customize the colors, fonts, shapes, and animations of your elements at the local level.

The exact options depend on the element type, but they're generally quite extensive for a website builder. For text fields, you can not only customize fonts, sizes, and colors individually, but also set background colors, animations, and line heights.

You can manage your pages in the website menu. Here you can create new pages, arrange existing pages however you want, and set your homepage. You can also hide pages from navigation: this way search engines can find them, but they won't show up in the website menu.

Another handy feature: You can password-protect pages to make certain areas of your website accessible only to specific people, like customers or employees. You can choose from different designs for this guest area, and you can customize all the text as needed.

You can create dropdown menus with sub-items by indenting a page to the right. However, the navigation only goes one level deep. This means you can't have sub-sub-menus in Hostinger.

Each page consists of horizontally aligned sections. When you hover your mouse over the live preview, a button pops up at the border between two sections, letting you add new sections.

Hostinger offers a manageable selection of pre-made sections, like "About Us" areas, contact forms, testimonials, or slideshows. You can also add a blog and an online store as sections - more on that later.

You can also generate a section using AI. However, it only uses the standard available section types - so don't expect results that you couldn't create manually in a few minutes yourself. Sometimes the AI completely misses the mark.

The selection of section templates is decent but could be more diverse. Some standard sections are missing, like logo lists or a pricing widget. We also miss a proper portfolio section for showcasing past projects in detail, as the "Projects" template is very basic.

Add to this the previously mentioned issue that templates with repeating elements, like testimonials, are somewhat inflexible due to missing content management.

Here you can see the section templates available in Hostinger:

You can also add an empty section and fill it with content yourself. You can access the elements menu through the plus icon in the left navigation menu.

The selection here is limited to the basics: Besides the classics (text, images, buttons), there are a handful of advanced elements, including contact forms, social media feeds, and Google Maps integration.

Some of the available elements aren't flexible enough. For example, you can't upload videos directly - you can only embed them through YouTube or cloud services like Google Drive.

On the bright side: You can add custom code. However, other website builders offer many more options when it comes to elements.

Here's a comparison of the elements available in Hostinger:

You can upload images manually, generate them with AI, or choose from the stock photo library. You'll find the latter in the "Free Images" tab, which includes many free stock photos from Unsplash.

The built-in AI image generator lets you create prompt-based images using paid AI credits. The results can be quite impressive:

However, image editing options are limited. You can adjust opacity, zoom in and out, and apply shapes, but you won't find extensive editing tools.

Hostinger supports blogs, online stores, and multilingual websites - and performs relatively well for SEO. It also includes some nice AI features that help you speed up and automate standard workflows.

However, Hostinger starts to struggle with more complex projects. While its built-in tools work fine for simple websites and small online stores or blogs, it often lacks advanced features and in-depth customization options.

You can add a blog to your Hostinger website. Just use the page or section template to set it up.

In the blog menu, you can view your posts and drafts, and create new content. The blog editor gives you access to all design tools and section templates from the website editor, so you can customize your post layouts pretty freely.

You can assign posts to categories, set post authors, and customize each post's URL - which is essential for SEO. AI features come in handy here too: you can automatically generate blog posts using prompts, and set the post length and tone of voice.

Beyond that, Hostinger's website builder only covers the blogging basics. You can't add tags to blog posts or let readers engage through comments. There aren't any built-in monetization features either.

Your options for presenting blog posts on your blog page are also limited to just a few layout choices.

Creating multilingual websites with Hostinger is straightforward. In the three-dot menu under "Multiple Languages," you can set a default language for your website and add more languages.

The system will then copy all your website content, which you can translate manually. It's best to add extra language versions only after you've finished your website in the default language. It's puzzling why Hostinger's website builder, which includes AI features everywhere, doesn't offer AI translations.

Once you've added another language version, visitors can use a dropdown menu to choose their preferred language for viewing your content.

Hostinger handles SEO pretty well. It includes AI support that automatically generates focus keywords, SEO titles, and meta descriptions. You can manually adjust these texts and add custom URLs for all your pages (including blog posts). For multilingual websites, each language gets its own subdirectory, which is great for SEO.

Hostinger automatically creates a sitemap. You can also add a noindex tag to specific pages if you don't want search engines to include them.

Unfortunately, you can't edit the robots.txt file or add structured data. You can only set up 301 redirects through Cloudflare as a workaround.

Here's a comparison of Hostinger's SEO features:

You can set up an online store with just a few clicks. Store management happens in a separate area called Hostinger's "Store Manager." Here you can set up payment methods, view orders, and most importantly, manage your products.

Product management is the heart of any good online store. Hostinger keeps it simple. When adding a new product, you first choose between physical and digital products, as well as services, donations, and even appointments.

You can then add all the usual product details - title, subtitle, images, descriptions, and more.

Hostinger calls product variations "options": This lets you offer each product in different versions (like colors or sizes). Each variation counts as its own product with its own SKU, price, and product images.

You're limited to 50 variations total, which is much stricter than many other online store solutions (BigCommerce allows up to 600 variations per product).

Hostinger's shop solution comes with quite a few limits and restrictions. You can only add up to 500 products in total, and digital downloads are limited to 100 MB. This means you can't run larger shops.

The platform isn't really designed for large, complex online stores. While you can organize products into different categories, the website presentation is pretty basic and works best for small product catalogs that fit in a simple product list. You won't find advanced filtering options here.

Hostinger's ecommerce solution is better suited for regular websites that want to run a small shop on the side, offer services, or take bookings (like for online meeting webinars).

The marketing features are limited. In the discount section, you can create discount codes that work with either percentages or fixed amounts. You can limit how many times they can be used, set a minimum order value, or run the discount for a specific time period.

You won't find other discount options - like special deals for specific customer groups or free shipping. You also can't set up discount rules or promotions that work without a code in Hostinger.

Besides discounts, Hostinger doesn't offer much in terms of marketing. The marketing menu just redirects you to advertising features on Google, Facebook, and similar platforms. You can't create ads directly within Hostinger (unlike Wix). They don't support email marketing either. Customer reviews and coupon features are also missing.

Hostinger can't compete with real ecommerce-focused platforms.

While most website builders now include AI features, few have implemented them as extensively as Hostinger. Beyond the website, section, image, and blog generators we mentioned, they also offer an AI-powered logo maker and AI heatmap.

The heatmap analyzes your website design and predicts where visitors will focus their attention. This helps you adjust your design to guide readers' eyes exactly where you want them.

Not all AI tools are equally helpful, and AI-generated content is often easy to spot. Still, these tools can save time and work well enough when you don't need perfect results.

While Hostinger's built-in features should cover most basic website needs, you might find yourself missing certain features.

Unfortunately, Hostinger doesn't have a proper app store to easily add new features. They offer some integrations, but these mainly cover supporting services like Google Analytics, Google AdSense, or Facebook Pixel.

Here's a comparison of Hostinger's advanced features:

Clicking the question mark icon in the top right takes you to Hostinger's support center. However, you'll only find a small selection of help articles here. For more guides, you need to visit the knowledge base on Hostinger's website, which is currently only available in English.

The knowledge base has over 200 articles organized into categories like "General", "Pages and Navigation", "Design", and "Blog". The articles are well-done: they have a clear structure, include helpful screenshots, and address common questions and issues.

A nice bonus is Hostinger's transparent roadmap. It shows you which features are currently being worked on and when they'll be released.

You can get direct support 24/7 through live chat and email. When you start a live chat, you'll first talk to an AI assistant - no surprise there. If you're not satisfied with its answer, you can connect with a human support agent. In our experience, this rarely took more than a few minutes, even on weekends. However, support is not available in German.

Unfortunately, the support staff only had average knowledge of the Hostinger website builder and its features. It seemed like they often had to look up answers to questions themselves.

Hostinger offers many different products and plans. The website builder is included in both the Premium Website Builder plans and the Premium Web Hosting plans. However, the hosting plans are mainly designed for WordPress and other CMS.

Let's focus on the two Website Builder plans:

Here's a current price overview of Hostinger's website builder:

How does Hostinger compare to other website builders when it comes to pricing? Pretty well, as our price comparison for two use cases shows:

Price comparison 1: Basic website, ad-free, custom domain available

Hostinger Premium is the cheapest website builder plan among all 18 providers in our comparison. Other products often cost two to five times more. If you're looking for a low-cost website, Hostinger's Website Builder is worth checking out.

Price comparison 2: Online store, ad-free, custom domain available

Hostinger also ranks first in our ecommerce plan comparison. If you want to open a small, budget-friendly online store and don't need the flexibility of a dedicated shop system, Hostinger might be a good choice.

Unfortunately, Hostinger doesn't offer a free plan with limitations or a no-strings-attached trial period. However, you can get your money back within 30 days after signing up.

Hostinger's website builder does what it's made for very well - creating simple websites quickly and easily. Even beginners with no design or coding experience can create professional and functional websites in no time, whether using templates or AI. The design settings are solid for a website builder, and the drag-and-drop editor with grid option allows for flexible enough layouts.

Hostinger's limitations become clear when you want to create custom or more complex websites: The number and variety of content elements are limited, ecommerce and blogging features are basic, and not all built-in AI tools add real value. There's also no app store to make up for missing built-in features.

Do you need a simple website for your small business or a basic online store for a few products? Then Hostinger's builder is a great choice - especially since it's one of the most affordable website builders out there. If you need more flexibility, you should look at other website builders designed for bigger and more complex projects.

We created a simple demo page with Hostinger's website builder, which you can check out here: Hostinger demo page

For all website builders in our comparison, we create a demo page with the same content: A homepage with hero, about me, services, testimonial, pricing, and FAQ sections, a portfolio page, a blog and a contact page.

We could easily customize the section templates for most content, but sometimes we had to get creative. Since Hostinger doesn't offer a proper portfolio platform, we created our portfolio entries as blog posts and linked them. For the price list, we repurposed the "services" template.

What do other users think about the Hostinger Website Builder? We searched through reviews on different review platforms and compiled the most common feedback:

Not convinced by Hostinger's website builder and looking for alternatives? Here are some options you might want to consider:

Find the best website builder alternatives to Hostinger here: