Hostinger Website Builder Review: Should You Use It?

Hostinger Website Builder

$

2.49

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Hostinger Website Builder is an AI-powered drag-and-drop builder for creating and managing professional-looking websites, with SEO and analytics features baked in. You can use it to build a site in minutes, making it a popular choice for small businesses, personal blogs, and basic eCommerce sites.

For this review, I’ve subscribed to Hostinger’s 12-month Premium web hosting plan, which gives access to the AI website builder tool. I’ll explore the tool’s features, ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and AI capabilities to determine if it’s a suitable option for your website creation needs.

Features

• AI-powered drag-and-drop builder
• SEO tools for optimized sites
• e-Commerce features for selling products online
• Blogging features for freelancers and agencies
• 150+ responsive design templates for varying requirements

Pros

• Beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder
• Affordable pricing
• Extensive AI capabilities for blogs, portfolios, and product landing pages
• Detailed onboarding process
• Built-in analytics for website traffic

Cons

• Lack of app marketplace
• No built-in email marketing tool
• No free trial or free forever plan

What is Hostinger Website Builder?

Hostinger is a popular hosting platform that also offers the Hostinger Website Builder. The website maker is beginner-friendly, with a focus on using AI capabilities. This ranges from customizing already-available templates or using AI to create content for the website.

The Hostinger Website Builder is entirely drag-and-drop, simplifying the website creation process. Additionally, it’s included in basic Hostinger web hosting plans, making it accessible to new customers.

As for Hostinger, it’s a two-decade-old hosting platform, founded by Arnas Stuopelis in 2004. The Website Builder has been part of their fleet for quite a long time, with continuous updates to its AI capabilities (which were added in 2023).

Hostinger’s headquarters are located in Lithuania. Till date, they’ve served more than 3M clients. Its huge reach can be associated with its market position as a “budget-friendly” hosting provider and website builder. They aim to provide affordable hosting services to individuals, small businesses, and freelancers.

The key industries that Hostinger Website Builder serves include:

• Small businesses
• eCommerce
• Personal blogs and portfolios
• Creative professionals
• Non-profit organizations
• Educational institutions

How Does Hostinger Website Builder Work?

To properly evaluate Hostinger Website Builder, it’s vital to see how it works. That’s why, in this section, I’ll go through the step-by-step process of using it.

Summary: The Hostinger Website Builder heavily utilizes AI to create the website’s initial version. It offers a well-designed wizard to guide users. This makes website creation with Hostinger easier for new users while providing customizability (for more experienced users) via drag-and-drop functionality. As a user, you can also take advantage of its pre-made templates. Once I started, I was able to complete the site creation process in less than 5 minutes! 

1. Log in to Your Account

After you buy the Website Builder or web hosting plan, you’ll need to log in to your account. It will land you on the Hostinger control panel.

2. Start the Website Creation Process

There are two ways you can use the website builder.

The first way is to do it from the dashboard menu. Under “Your to-dos”, you’ll get two options – Create Website and Migrate Website.

Another way is to open the menu and choose Websites. From there, choose the start of website creation.

In my case, it shows “Start Over” and “Continue Setup” as I started the process already.

Step 3: Follow the Wizard

The wizard (part of their onboarding) guides you in creating your website. So, choose the “Create a website” option as shown below and then click on “Next”.

Next, you will be asked to choose between WordPress and Hostinger Website Builder. As we’re reviewing Hostinger’s Website Builders, I choose the latter.

Step 4: Choose the Domain Name

In this step, you need to choose the domain name for your website. Here, I have used geekflarelab.com, which I got free of cost with Hostinger’s 1-year plan.

If you don’t have any custom domain name set, you can use the temporary domain available at the bottom. Furthermore, you can use the Hostinger Domain Name Registration service to get a new domain name.

Step 5: Set Brand Name and Description

As Hostinger Website Builder is AI-powered, you can use its AI capabilities to help create your site.

In this step, you’ll need to enter the following details:

• Brand name: Enter your business/brand name.
• Description: Briefly tell the AI what your business does. Here, talk about its type, mission, vision, or any information that makes the description as clear as possible.

For the review, I chose “Geekflare Labs”.

The description that I used is as follows:

“Geekflare is a trusted software company and online publication empowering small and medium businesses (SMBs) with the resources they need to succeed in the current digital world.

We help businesses through high-quality business guides, free tools, APIs, and SEO software.

The site is a Labs site where we try out different products, mostly hosting providers and their tools like website builders. The site is built to showcase the capabilities of Hostinger Website Builder.”

Now, you’ll need to wait 1-2 minutes as the AI creates a website.

Once done, it’ll open up the website design window, where you can do the following:

1. Option to change color palettes
2. Rate the design
3. Option to create again. 
4. “Version History”: If you create multiple versions, you can choose between them.
5. Change view from desktop to mobile view or vice versa.
6. Continue to edit the site’s design, content, and layout in detail.

Step 6: Recreating Process and Version History

If you’re unsatisfied with Hostinger’s Website Builder’s AI, you can try to create the design again by using the “Create again” option. Also, it opens up experimentation as you don’t lose the other creations (accessible via version history).

If you don’t like any of the AI designs, you can check out its pre-made beautiful templates. Let’s discuss it in the following step.

Step 7: Using Pre-made Templates

Hostinger offers a wide range of pre-made templates. These templates are easy to use with a focus on customizability. All templates can be edited to change fonts, images, colors, and so on.

Note: Once you start using an AI template and then go back to pre-made, the wizard will lose all AI-generated templates.

Furthermore, these templates are divided into different categories, including:

• Photography
• eCommerce
• Fashion
• Restaurant
• Travel
• Resume
• Blog

All you need to do is select the template that fits your needs. You can preview the template before making the choice.

Once selected, it will load the template directly to the Website Builder.

Step 8: Customizing the Website

Depending on your choice (either the AI template or pre-made template), you’ll see the website builder load it.

The website builder is well-designed with ease of use at its core. Here, each section is editable. All you need to do is select the element and click “Edit”.

It’ll list all the associated settings that can be changed. For example, for Button, it’ll help you change:

• The button text
• The link to address
• Ability to make the link open in a new tab
• Make link no-follow
• Change style like color
• Behavior when hovered over
• Animation during page load

For images, you have the “Generate Image” option.

The website builder offers a simple site setup checklist that helps you edit all the major elements of your site, including heading text, images, paragraph text, contact forms, and so on.

Step 9: Publish Site

After you feel your site is ready, you can publish your site. Before publishing, you can preview or connect a domain name. Furthermore, you can preview how it looks and feels in mobile mode.

You can also set the “Coming Soon” mode and promote your business page before making it live.

Hostinger Website Builder Features

During my evaluation, I discovered 6 primary features of the Hostiger Website Builder, as discussed below:

1. Drag-and-drop Builder

Hostinger Website Builder is a drag-and-drop builder. It’s easy to use and offers access to commonly used site elements, including:

• Text
• Button
• Add to Bag
• Image
• Gallery
• Video
• Shape
• Map
• Instagram feed
• Contact form (RSVP)
• Subscribe
• Social Icons
• Embed code
• Product Search

All elements are responsive and completely customizable. This means that there’s no need to know coding or design to create your business website.

Under the hood, the website builder uses smart layout systems that automatically align elements.

Some elements are eCommerce focused, making it an eCommerce website builder as well.

2. Responsive Design Templates

Hostinger Website Builder also comes with pre-defined 150+ Hostinger Website templates. These are professionally designed templates with extensive customizability.

Furthermore, there are different categories of templates, including blogs, eCommerce, events, marketing, etc., with each offering multiple options.

3. SEO Tools

To help achieve your website SEO goals, the Hostinger Website Builder has built-in SEO features. These include:

• In-built website speed: To meet Google’s site load speed guidelines for smooth user experience
• Sitemaps: Create sitemaps by default for your website

You can access these SEO features via the sidebar or page settings.

The SEO settings allow you to

• Preview search results
• Hide page from search results
• Add Focus keyword for website pages, including the home page
• Change SEO title and meta description

You also get an AI SEO assistant. It helps generate new SEO titles, keywords, and meta descriptions for the selected page.

4. eCommerce Functionality

Hostinger’s Website Builder is not limited to blogs or business sites. It also offers the eCommerce Platform mode, which means you can set up your site to sell physical or digital products. It supports up to 500 products with easy management and quick setup. Furthermore, you get fast load times with decent SEO performance.

To activate the eCommerce feature, you need to enable the “Add Store” option (available via the Website Builder side menu).

Once activated, you can edit it by adding images, changing prices, and more.

5. Blogging Platform

The Hostinger Website Builder lets you create, edit, and publish blogs. Additionally, it offers

• Scheduling publishing dates
• Organizing posts with categories
• SEO-optimizing the blog posts

You can change the blog structure, add blog images, and publish directly from the backend without adjusting any settings.

To enable it, click the ellipsis (three dot) menu button on the side menu and then select “Blog”.

6. Built-in Analytics and Traffic Sites

To give businesses an idea about how their site is performing, Hostinger AI Website Builder offers built-in analytics. It lets you see site sessions and unique visitors via graph for periods of 3, 7, and 30 days.

You can also see sessions by country and device to better understand your audience demographics.

To access it, go to the ellipsis menu button on the side menu and select “Analytics.”

Hostinger Website Builder Use Cases

So, now that you know the Hostinger Website Builder features, how exactly is the tool useful? I’ve discussed some important use cases for the website maker below.

Small Business Website

Hostinger AI Website Builder is affordable and offers plenty of features to create a fully functional business website. It’s ideal for small businesses that need to establish an online presence quickly and affordably.

Online Portfolio

Professionals such as video editors, freelance writers, or consultants can use Hostinger Website Builder to create inviting and attractive online portfolios. You can use AI to create one according to your needs or try the pre-made Portfolio templates.

eCommerce Store

Hostinger AI Website Builder offers excellent eCommerce capabilities, allowing you to launch your online store. You can build it from scratch, use AI to give you something close to your liking or customize the pre-defined eCommerce templates.

One such project is Super Speciosa, which utilizes Hostinger services.

Marketing Page

Brands can utilize Hostiner’s Affordable Website Builder to create appealing marketing pages. The tool offers pre-made templates like Tati Uribe, Proxima, Flynn, or Mischa to kick-start the page creation process.

What Are the Benefits of Hostinger Website Builder?

Through the testing process, I discovered 5 benefits of using Hostiner Website Builder, as discussed below:

• Cost-effectiveness: Hostinger’s AI-powered Website Builder is a cost-effective way to create professional-looking websites. Here, you don’t have to hire developers or buy costly templates or plugins, as you can do everything directly from the builder itself.
• User-friendly Interface: The Website Builder is beginner-friendly. It comes with a simple onboarding process where you choose its AI or pre-made templates to create a site. The drag-and-drop feature is easy to use, and each site’s component is configurable. Most features are accessible via the builder side menu as well.
• Fast Setup Process: Once you start, you can get a working website in a matter of minutes. This is due to the wizard (which effectively guides the user) and the tool’s AI generation capabilities. Further optimization and tweaks can take more time.
• Good Range of Templates: I liked Hostinger’s huge collection of templates for different use cases. You get templates for eCommerce, Business, and Blog. The templates themselves are responsive and completely customizable.
• Seamless Integration with Hostinger Hosting: Hostinger AI Website Builder is deeply integrated with Hostinger’s web hosting offerings. You can find it in all their plans, including the cheapest web hosting plan.

Website Builder AI Tools

With the advancements in AI technology, Hostinger Website Builder also saw updates to the AI tools in its feature set. Let’s check out the website builder’s AI tools below:

• AI Image Generator: Generate images for a site via a description of up to 700 characters.
• AI Writer: Create text for your business by providing detailed input.
• AI Page Generator: Create a complete page for your business with text, images, and other elements. For example, you can create an About Us page.
• AI Section Generator: Generate a section for your page with AI. For instance, if you want to list past projects, you can use the AI Section Generator to quickly generate the section for further editing.
• AI Blog Generator: Create content by choosing tone of voice and length, and providing a description. It supports up to 2000 words of content with voice choices between Formal, Neutral, and Casual.
• AI Product Details Generator: Generate descriptive details of your products by providing image(s).
• AI Heatmap: Learn which areas of your website are getting the most attention and use it to optimize the site for better results.
• AI SEO Assistant: Use AI to create and add on-page SEO elements to a page or blog. It will generate SEO titles, keywords, and meta descriptions. All you need to provide is a page description.
• AI Logo Maker: Make logos with AI help using credits.

Hostinger Website Builder Pricing

Hosting offers two main plans for its Website Builder category. These include:

• Premium Website Builder
• Business Website Builder

Both plans offer hosting and a free domain (for 1-year and longer plans). The key difference between the plans is the availability of AI and eCommerce tools (available on the Business Website)

I recommend the Business Website Builder plan as it offers all the AI features that speed up website creation, such as an AI image generator, AI writer, AI heatmaps, and more. It’s also recommended for business projects as it comes with eCommerce features, 100+ payment methods, and 0% transaction fees.

Remember: If you opt for a 1-month plan, then you need to pay a one-time $4.99 non-refundable fee.

Plan Name	Features	Pricing
Premium Website Builder	100 websites, free email, 150 templates, 24/7 customer support, free domain	$2.49 (for 2-year term)
Business Website Builder	Same as above plus access to all AI tools and eCommerce features	$3.49 (for 2-year term)

You can start with an affordable plan, i.e., the Premium plan, and then upgrade to the Business plan (one-click upgrade option available) when needed.

Note: These two plans are similar to Hostinger Premium and Business web hosting plans.

Pros and Cons of Hostinger Website Builder

There is a lot to like about Hostinger Website Builder. It’s a sleek drag-and-drop builder, providing easy-to-use tools for small businesses to get their site up and running. You also get access to a diverse selection of AI tools in the higher-tier plan, simplifying and automating most of your website creation process.

However, it does come with a few limitations. As it is beginner-focused, it is not as feature-rich as Wix or other popular drag-and-drop website builders. Furthermore, switching templates is not supported, meaning that you need to start the site creation process again if you change your mind.

After testing it thoroughly, I’ve listed the pros and cons of Hostinger Website Builder below

Website Builder Integration

You can add new features via third-party integrations such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and Hotjar. Businesses can use these to enhance a site’s marketing, tracking, and functionality.

To add a new integration, go to the ellipsis menu option on the side menu and click on “Integrations”.

Currently, Hostinger Website Builder supports the following integrations:

• WhatsApp
• Facebook Pixel
• Google Analytics
• Google Tag Manager
• Google AdSense
• Google AdMod
• Hotjar

It also supports custom integration via code.

Support

Hostinger offers 24/7 customer support via its customer success team. However, starting a live chat requires a series of steps and is locked behind the account.

To compensate, Hostinger offers a powerful AI chatbot, Kodee, which is capable of answering almost all generic queries and questions. For example, you can ask him questions about plans and associated features or use it tactically to navigate to different Hostinger resources such as Knowledge Base or Support Center. 

Additionally, Hostinger’s knowledge base is rich, offering access to over 1192 articles and video tutorials, with continuous additions and updates. Exploring further, I found that it has an extensive 241 covered topics on its website builder. Impressive!

On the downside, Hostinger doesn’t have any community forums.

However, you can take advantage of the Hostinger Academy, where the platform shares high-quality video content covering guides on different topics, including gaming servers, the website’s evolution, Linux, and more.

Hostinger Website Builder Alternatives

Hostinger Website Builder is a perfect fit for small businesses, freelancers, or marketing agencies. However, due to its target audience, it might be limited to advanced users and large eCommerce sites. If you don’t fall into either of these categories, you can take a look at the Hostinger Website Builder alternatives that I’ve listed below.

Wix

Wix is an established web builder that offers a WYSIWYG creator with access to plenty of features. It’s user-friendly and provides advanced eCommerce capabilities compared to Hostinger Website Builder.

You also get better site customization than Hostinger. However, Wix is comparatively costlier due to more features and functionality.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a viable alternative to Hostinger Website Builder. It offers a similar feature set but excels in eCommerce capabilities. It has better product customization, POS capabilities, shipping options, payment processing, etc. Moreover, Squarespace offers diverse eCommerce template selections.

As for the editor, the Square drag-and-drop editor provides similar features with excellent ease of use. Overall, if you want a drag-and-drop builder for your eCommerce site, it’s best to go with Squarespace.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com uses WordPress CMS but with its own hosting service. It’s different from self-hosted WordPress. However, this approach limits its capabilities, especially when choosing themes and plugins.

Still, WordPress.com is a viable alternative to Hostinger Website Builder if you have technical knowledge of how WordPress works. It also offers drag-and-drop with access to hundreds of color schemes, themes, and plugins.

WordPress.com excels at scaling and provides robust reliability. The best part is that you can always move to another hosting provider to take full advantage of the WordPress ecosystem.

Webflow

If you want a more customizable build experience, then Webflow is a great choice. It comes with a drag-and-drop builder but offers extensive customizability and the option to add/remove code, offering complete control over your design. This makes it an ideal business tool for marketers while still providing value to designers and developers.

Webflow also supports A/B testing, SEO localization, and AI-powered personalization. All of this makes Webflow a great alternative to Hostinger Website Builder if you know how to handle complex workflows.

Below, I’ve provided a table to compare Hostinger Website Builder’s offerings with popular alternatives. This lets you know more about their best use cases, features, and pricing.

Who Should Use Hostinger Website Builder?

Based on my experience when testing the Hostinger Website Builder, I can safely say that the platform will be worth the investment for the following audiences:

• Small Business Owners: Affordable and offers a beginner-friendly approach to site creation and management.
• Marketing Agencies: For easily creating market-focused landing pages and sites with AI-powered content and images.
• Freelancers: Ability to showcase projects via easily customizable portfolio sites.

Who Shouldn’t Use Hostinger Website Builder?

Although Hostinger Website Builder is easy to use and offers some excellent features for the price, its lack of advanced customization and enterprise e-Commerce tools don’t make it the best choice for some audiences. You shouldn’t opt for Hostinger Website Builder if you fall in the following categories:

• Advanced Developers Needing Custom Code: Hostinger Website Builder lacks code customization and cannot handle complex requirements.
• Large eCommerce Businesses With Extensive Needs: Huge dependency on scalability and managing multiple products over different categories; aspects which Hostinger’s Website Builder doesn’t cover.
• Users Needing CMS: Hostinger Website Builder can’t compete with the ever-growing CMS capabilities of WordPress, including its amazing plugin and theme ecosystem.

Hostinger Website Builder Verdict

Even though Hostinger’s Website Builder is powerful, it’s best suited for new businesses starting their online journey. 

Its AI is helpful in creating professional-looking sites, but only offers basic capabilities such as image generation, text creation, and SEO-related generation. Plus, I do think that they should offer a free trial or a lifetime free version for a very basic site.

Nonetheless, what makes Hostinger Website Builder shine is its ease of use. It invites anyone with no code or site creation experience, enabling them to create beautiful, professional, responsive websites.

Overall, Hostinger AI Website Builder receives the Geekflare Innovation Award. It provides a beginner-friendly website builder with decent AI-powered features at a perfect price point for small businesses, freelancers, and marketing agencies. If you’ve never created a website, I’d highly recommend trying out the platform for your website-building needs!