Hostinger vs SiteGround comparison 2024

With so many great web hosting services available, it can feel overwhelming to pick the best one for your website. If you choose a cheap host, will the performance suffer? Does a higher fee mean better security or features?

Today, we’re answering those questions with a closer look at two hosting industry favorites: the ultra-affordable Hostinger and the highly secure SiteGround. We’ll see how these two web hosting services stack up when it comes to price, user experience, performance, security, and more.

Ready to see what we think about Hostinger vs SiteGround? Keep on reading to get a detailed breakdown of how both providers stack up against each other.

Hostinger vs SiteGround: general info

Hostinger and SiteGround are both big names in web hosting, but they tend to meet slightly different needs. Hostinger is the go-to choice for medium-sized projects, like a relatively popular blog or a small business website. It focuses on affordability while still providing great security features and performance.

SiteGround is better suited for larger projects. For businesses with high-traffic websites, SiteGround is well-equipped with professional hosting plans. They are less focused on pure affordability and more focused on providing outstanding hosting solutions and round-the-clock support.

	Hostinger	SiteGround
⭐ Rating:	4.6 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★	4.3 ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
💵 Price:	From $2.54/month	From $2.99/month
📑 Uptime guarantee:	99.9%	99.9%
🔥 Coupons:	Hostinger coupon 78% OFF	Siteground coupon 83% OFF!
Storage space (from):	100 GB SSD	10 GB SSD
✂️ Free domain (first year):	Yes	Yes
🔒 Free SSL certificate:	Yes	Yes
➡️ Site migration:	Free Automatic WordPress Website Migration	Free automated WordPress migration and site transfer
💾 Automated backups:	Free (weekly)	Free (daily)
📧 Email accounts:	Free (up to 100 accounts)	Free (unlimited accounts)
👨‍💻 24/7 live support:	Yes	Yes
💰 Money-back guarantee:	30-day	30-day

Pricing comparison

Here’s the short answer when it comes to price comparison: Hostinger is cheaper. When comparing the entry-level shared hosting plans, you can get started on Hostinger for $2.54/month, while SiteGround’s pricing starts at $2.99/month.

While we’ll dive deeper into the various shared hosting plans, keep in mind that both hosting services offer a whole lot more when it comes to hosting types. Here’s a quick run-down of what you can expect from each of them:

Hosting type	Hostinger	SiteGround
Shared hosting	✅	✅
WordPress hosting	✅	✅
WooCommerce hosting	❌	✅
Cloud hosting	✅	✅
VPS hosting	✅	❌
Minecraft hosting	✅	❌
	Visit Hostinger	Visit SiteGround

While there are quite a few options to consider, shared hosting remains the go-to solution for bloggers, small businesses, and other small to medium-sized web projects. For this reason, we will compare SiteGround vs Hostinger in terms of shared hosting alone.

Talking about the cheapest plans, both hosts have a few things in common: free business email accounts, an SSL, automated backups, managed WordPress features, and 30-day money-back guarantees. As for the specifics:

• Hostinger's Premium plan ($2.54/mo) – allows hosting up to 100 websites and includes 100GB SSD disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and access to weekly backups. Plus, a free domain is included.
• SiteGround's StartUp plan ($2.99/mo) – comes with 10GB storage space, 10k visits/mo allowance, daily backups, advanced caching, and a free domain.

However, each host also has 2 additional plans for you to consider. So let’s explore which ones are most worth your attention.

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Hostinger has 2 shared and 1 cloud hosting plan: Premium ($2.54/mo), Business ($3.39/mo), and Cloud Startup ($6.79/mo).

Now all plans include a free domain, an SSL certificate, 100 email accounts, automatic backups, GIT access, and LiteSpeed Cache.

While all plans are meant for slightly different needs, Hostinger itself names its Premium plan ($2.54/mo) as the most popular option. And reasonably so. For a very affordable price, you get 100GB storage for up to 100 websites. Plus, a free custom domain is also included.

When it comes to SiteGround plans, the provider offers 3 different options: StartUp ($2.99/mo), GrowBig ($4.99/mo), and GoGeek ($7.99/mo).

Now talking about said plans, all include daily backups, unmetered traffic, free SSL certificates, CDN, a free domain, and a free site transfer.

As for which plan brings the most value, the StartUp plan is more than suitable for beginners looking to create a smaller website. For just $2.99/mo the plan will equip you with 10GB of disk space, and all the commonly included features.

Lastly, both providers offer 30-day money-back guarantees, so you can test out the services worry-free.

All in all, when the price is considered, Hostinger wins this Hostinger vs SiteGround fight fair and square. The provider offers a much larger storage space and quite similar features for a noticeably lower price point.

Hosting management: ease of use

So, how does Hostinger vs SiteGround compare when it comes to user experience? Well, both companies have created custom control panels that have proved to be intuitive for beginners and advanced users alike.

While both services are delivering a smooth user experience, let’s dive a little deeper into how they compare side-by-side.

Account management dashboard

When comparing the account management dashboards of Hostinger vs SiteGround, there is plenty to be impressed by.

Hostinger emphasized simplicity in its dashboard design. You won’t be overwhelmed by information when logging in for the first time – rather, you will be greeted by clear action steps you can follow to set up your site.

Once you’re all set up, you can count on the dashboard’s top menu to clearly display what you might need to manage your website or account. Overall, it’s beginner-friendly and easy to use. The design is rather stark, but this is purely an aesthetic downside.

As you log into your SiteGround dashboard for the first time, you will be greeted by animated videos and links to helpful articles to help you get started. You can easily manage your websites or account by using the quick jump links displayed on the screen.

With SiteGround everything is clear and easy to navigate. Plus, it’s quite aesthetically pleasing and its consistent design element makes it feel organized yet friendly.

Overall, both providers take a very clean-looking and organized approach in terms of their account management dashboards.

Control panel comparison

Up next, we have Hostinger vs SiteGround in the battle for the best custom control panel. Both of our hosting services have designed their own control panels to give their users the best possible website management experience. Let’s see how they did.

First, we have Hostinger with its custom hPanel. This control panel shines with its clarity, usability, and beginner-friendly explanations. Need to install WordPress, fire up the Website Builder, or access your File Manager? You can do it all from the easy-to-navigate hPanel.

Overall, hPanel is very well organized and structured so even first-time users could easily navigate it. This is also the place where you can contact its support agents via live chat.

Next, we have SiteGround’s custom control panel: Site Tools. As we saw with its dashboard, here SiteGround keeps its clean design. As you explore the tools, you’ll often see a graphic, title, and brief explanation for each feature. Beyond being visually appealing, it gives the user plenty of useful information as they manage their website.

In sum, the panel is just as functional as with Hostinger. You will be able to easily navigate all the settings on the left-side menu as well as contact their support if something is unclear.

All in all, both hosts are very easy to use for both beginners and advanced users alike. And while there is no clear winner, Hostinger does come out slightly on the top due to its design being fairly similar to a widely known cPanel.

Extra hosting features

The potential for extra features is really endless when considering all of the possible plans from these two hosting giants. So let’s take a look at some of the most popular extra features and how Hostinger and SiteGround stack up with their offerings.

• Caching. When it comes to caching, both providers enable you to use this feature with all their plans. By enabling caching you will be able to speed up your website’s loading time for your visitor, no matter where they might be located.
• Staging. If you have lots of new ideas you want to test out before actually changing your website, staging is a feature that allows you to make changes to a site without affecting the website's live version. SiteGround offers a staging environment with its GrowBig and GoGeek plans, while Hostinger offers such a tool with its Business and Cloud Startup plans.
• eCommerce capabilities. Both providers make it very easy for you to sell online if you only wish to. You can either integrate a WooCommerce plugin on your existing WordPress site or install a popular eCommerce content management system like PrestaShop, Magento, and many more.
• White-label. The white label makes it possible for you to resell the hosting services without any original provider’s branding on the user interface panel. Such a feature is only available with SiteGround’s GoGeek plan.

Hostinger vs SiteGround performance

Talking about performance, both providers demonstrated great speed and reliability. However, while overall very similar, Hostinger proved to be more reliable in terms of uptime, while SiteGround showed some incredible avg. response speed.

Uptime and response time

No matter which provider you choose, you’re looking at a guaranteed 99.9% uptime. So, how did SiteGround vs Hostinger fare throughout our uptime testing?

When monitoring Hostinger for a two-month period, we didn’t experience any downtime at all. That has resulted in an uptime of 99.9%. While it’s unlikely that the host won’t ever experience any downtime, this was still an impressive result from such an affordable provider.

Now talking about SiteGround, we have monitored it for a relatively similar two months period and throughout that time we have only experienced 7 minutes of downtime. This resulted in a shining 99.9% uptime.

We also found that SiteGround’s average response time was 217 ms, compared to Hostinger’s 511 ms, meaning the former did demonstrate better server responsiveness.

Website speed

To determine each provider's website loading speed, we created two identical websites and ran them through the test. This time around Hostinger proved to have a slight edge over SiteGround.

To test the site’s speed we considered 2 main factors – The Largest Contentful Paint, which should remain under 2.5s, and Fully Loaded Time, which should take no longer than 3s.

Hostinger demonstrated the Largest Contentful Paint of just 849ms and its fully loaded time took just 936ms. This together proves that Hostinger is a very performance-oriented provider.

As for the SiteGround, the host was just as impressive, yet slightly slower than Hostinger. SiteGround demonstrated a very speedy performance: 872ms Largest Contentful Paint and a fully loaded time of 1.1s.

Overall, you can’t go wrong with either one of these hosts when it comes to performance. Since Hostinger is more affordable, plus it performs slightly better than SiteGround, it seems like the better value so far.

Stress testing results

To compare how each provider performs when flooded with increased traffic, we sent 50 bots to each website to roam around for 5 minutes.

For Hostinger, these bots didn’t cause any noticeable disturbance. It was running as well as having no visitors at all. In short, Hostinger easily passed our stress test.

SiteGround also performed beautifully, passing the same stress test. It did as well as when there was just a single visitor on the site.

Overall, you can trust either provider to handle reasonable amounts of on-site traffic. Plus, if your site begins attracting more visitors than you ever anticipated, you can upgrade to a top-tier plan that can better support your growing audience.

Website security

When it comes to security, SiteGround will give you everything that Hostinger can, with a few extras. Both hosting services will provide you with a free SSL, a Cloudflare CDN, basic spam monitoring, automated backups, and two-factor authentication.

Now if you choose to go with SiteGround, you will also get:

• Daily backups (instead of weekly ones with Hostinger),
• Real-time monitoring,
• Web Application Firewall (WAF)
• AI anti-bot system optimized to protect you from various cyber-attacks.

In short, Hostinger has a more than sufficient security suite for smaller sites to keep them safe. However, if you are scaling up to a larger site, maybe even an eCommerce platform, with more traffic and more sensitive data, SiteGround is better equipped to meet your needs.

Customer support

With both Hostinger and SiteGround, you will be able to receive help via 24/7 live chat and email. Additionally, SiteGround also offers customer support via telephone. Regardless, both hosts are more than ready and willing to help you out. Plus, each has an impressive knowledge base with the most frequently asked questions.

To really evaluate each host's customer service we chatted with both Hostinger and SiteGround via live chat. And all there is to say is that neither of the providers disappoints.

Both Hostinger and SiteGround were very professional and knowledgeable in solving the issue at hand. And while SiteGround’s agent initially took fewer minutes to reply to the query, Hostinger’s agents were just as speedy and helpful.

Overall, in this SiteGround vs Hostinger round, both hosts were equally great, meaning you can expect fast and helpful responses from either of them.

Hostinger vs SiteGround: final recommendations

The true final recommendation in the Hostinger vs SiteGround comparison has more to do with the user than the hosting provider. Since both hosts deliver high-quality services for very reasonable prices, the final decision will be up to you. Here's how both providers fare up against each other:

Feature	Hostinger	SiteGround	Verdict
Price	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	Hostinger is much noticeably more affordable, with prices starting as low as $2.54/month, while SiteGround's cheapest plan costs $2.99/month.
Ease of use	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	Both Hostinger and SiteGround are easy-to-use. However, Hostinger's hPanel is slightly more beginner-friendly, while SiteGround's Site Tools is meant for more advanced users.
Performance	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	Hostinger demonstrated a perfect 99.9% uptime, 511ms average response, and 936ms Fully Loaded Time, whereas SiteGround scored 99.9%, 217ms, and 1.1s, respectively.
Security	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	Hostinger comes with all the basic security features like SSL, automatic weekly backups, and 2FA. SiteGround additionally adds daily backups, real-time monitoring, WAF, and an AI anti-bot system.
Support	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	Both providers offer 24/7 live chat and email support, plus SiteGround also offers support via phone. Overall, both hosts have quick and knowledgeable agents.

Based on all features together, our overall winner is Hostinger. So if you're looking to launch a small website or personal blog, you’ll likely want an affordable provider that’s built for beginners. Of course, you want your speeds to be competitive and your site to be safe. If that sounds like you, Hostinger can deliver all that and more.

Now, alternatively, if you're looking for a secure platform for a smaller business site, SiteGround just might be what you're looking for.

Alternatives to SiteGround and Hostinger

While SiteGround and Hostinger offer great hosting services, they’re not the only options on the market. Wondering what else is out there? Check out 3 of the top alternatives and what they have to offer.

Bluehost

If WordPress and affordability are important to you, Bluehost is another great option. This is one of the few web hosting services officially recommended by WordPress. Its control panel is designed with beginners in mind and it also offers an intuitive and simple Website Builder.

You’ll find Bluehost pricing to be competitive, with basic shared hosting plans starting at $1.99.

Visit Bluehost

DreamHost

No list of affordable hosting services would be complete without DreamHost. This host also carries the official WordPress recommendation and remains competitively priced.

You can get a basic shared hosting plan for as little as $2.59 a month.

Visit DreamHost

WP Engine

WP Engine is a pricier alternative to SiteGround. This is not a budget hosting provider – this is a WordPress-focused host that is serious about delivering an outstanding product.

You can expect WP Engine plans to start at $20.00 a month.

Visit WP Engine

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