Hostinger WordPress Hosting Review: An Affordable and Cost-Effective Hosting Service

One of the first things to consider when creating a WordPress blog or website is choosing the right WordPress hosting method. In this review, I’ll talk about what WordPress hosting is and why, after much deliberation, I ultimately decided to go with Hostinger for my hosting provider.

I try to be as accurate as possible when writing blog posts, but sometimes there are errors in the information. If you find one, please comment and I’ll correct it. If you make a purchase using a link on this blog, I may earn a small commission.

Is WordPress slow?

Ask people about the downsides of WordPress websites, and the most common response is, “It’s slow.” At first, it might feel fast, but as you start adding various plugins, the site gradually slows down.

But is that really true? Let’s take a look at Tistory, a blogging platform widely used in Korea. Once you start adding features and customizations to a Tistory blog, it can become unbearably sluggish. For example, the average page load time of my old Tistory blog, Sensible Statistics Life, was 4.8 seconds—even though I was using a premium theme that cost 60,000 KRW (about $45 USD).

Below are the results from GTmetrix, a website performance evaluation tool, for my Tistory blog. The overall grade was a C, and the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)—which indicates how long it takes for meaningful content to appear for the user—took 2.4 seconds.

A slow blog or website can be fatal. Visitors get frustrated when navigating between pages and eventually leave. The whole point of running a blog, for many, is to generate income—but if you can’t even offer a fast, responsive experience, expecting revenue is wishful thinking. In the end, to improve your blog’s speed, you need to invest in it.

No investment, no return.

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Why I recommend good WordPress hosting

Here are the GTmetrix results for the current Sensible Statistics Life website you’re viewing. The overall grade is A, and the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) score is 0.62 seconds. This is well below Google Lighthouse’s recommended threshold of 1.2 seconds for optimal performance. So, did I unlock some secret to SEO success when switching from Tistory to this WordPress site? The answer is simple: I invested in a dedicated WordPress hosting service.

Some of you might be wondering, Do I really need to spend money just to run a blog?

If your goal is simply to record your daily life or memories, then using Naver Blog or Tistory is perfectly fine.

But if you’re reading this, chances are you’re interested in monetizing your blog. A profit-driven blog is, in essence, an online business. You provide information to others and earn income in return. When you look at blogging this way, the most fundamental requirement for a money-making blog is speed. And the key to achieving that speed lies in using a reliable hosting service—this is the primary reason to invest in good hosting.

Every business requires investment.

I compared various hosting services and ultimately chose Hostinger because it best suited my needs. As a result, nearly every page of Sensible Statistics Life now loads in under two seconds, offering a smooth experience—and you, reading this right now, are living proof of its effectiveness.

As of June 2024, WordPress users (in Korea) may prefer ChemiCloud over Hostinger. Just a heads-up! 🙂

So now, let’s dive into what hosting services are, and why I chose Hostinger out of all the available options.

What is WordPress hosting?

At its core, a WordPress blog is just a collection of files. Imagine saving those files onto a USB drive and handing it to a friend—they’d be able to open it on their computer and read your blog posts. But of course, you can’t go around handing out USB drives to every visitor who wants to read your blog.

That’s where WordPress web hosting companies come in. These companies run powerful computers called servers that stay on 24/7. Whenever someone visits your blog’s web address, the server delivers the blog files to them. These servers are located all over the world, so they can send your blog content through the server that’s closest to the visitor for faster performance.

The Tstory blog was hosted for free by

By using a hosting service for your WordPress site, you offload the technical responsibility of managing the server. That means you can focus on what really matters—creating, updating, and improving your content and website design.

Why You Need WordPress Hosting

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world. But to run a WordPress blog smoothly, you absolutely need the support of a hosting service. With proper hosting, you gain access to crucial benefits like reliability, performance, and security.

Here are the three main reasons why hosting is essential when building a WordPress blog

Hostinger vs. Cloudways

Let’s compare two popular WordPress hosting options—Hostinger and Cloudways—and explore why I ultimately recommend Hostinger.

To make things simple, there’s one important point we need to clear up first: our personal blogs are not high-traffic e-commerce websites that are going to crash from overwhelming visitor surges. (Although wouldn’t that be nice… 😢) Cloudways is built for websites that expect that kind of scale and complexity.

Some YouTubers post videos showing how to build a WordPress site using Cloudways. But let’s be honest—the main reason they do this is because Cloudways is expensive, which means they earn higher affiliate commissions when viewers sign up through their links.

Cloudways also offers only a very short free trial period—just three days. This short trial increases the likelihood that users will pay quickly, which secures affiliate earnings for the promoter.

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Hostinger vs. Cloudways Comparison Table

Below is a comparison table evaluating both services from the perspective of a WordPress beginner building a blog. Just by looking at the table, it becomes clear why I chose Hostinger as my recommended WordPress hosting service.

Item	Hostinger	Cloudways
Speed	★★★★☆ 4.5 points	★★★★★ 5 points
Pricing plans	★★★★★ 5 points	★★★☆☆☆ 3 points
Ease of use	★★★★★ 5 points	★★★★☆ 4 points
Features	★★★★☆ 4 points	★★★★★ 5 points
Security	★★★★★ 5 points	★★★★☆ 4.5 points
Support	★★★★☆ 4.5 points	★★★★★ 5 points
Average score	4.67 points	4.42 points

Let’s break it down one by one.

Performance and speed

Both hosting providers offer satisfactory performance and speed. However, Cloudways gives you the option to choose from five different cloud hosting services, one of which is Valtr, which has servers in Seoul. So, strictly speaking, Cloudways may offer slightly better performance in Korea. That being said, does this mean Hostinger’s hosting performance or speed is slow? Absolutely not. Hostinger’s hosting service also uses a CDN, providing more than enough speed for running a blog without any issues (provided you’re willing to invest).

• As of June 2024, WordPress users in Korea can check out the free course on creating a WordPress blog with a perfect Core Web Vitals score of 100, using ChemiCloud hosting and the Worple ALL100 theme.

Moreover, Hostinger’s Business plan (starting at 5,500 KRW/month) includes LiteSpeed plugin and Object Cache functionality, which significantly speeds up load times. I used these features to optimize the loading speed of Sensible Statistics Life, and as seen earlier, the site performance improved.

WordPress Hosting Cost Plans

The ultimate goal of running a blog is to generate income. So, when recommending a WordPress hosting service, what is the most important factor to consider? The answer is cost-effectiveness. Hostinger offers the best value for money among all existing WordPress hosting options available today.

Below is a summary of the pricing plans for Hostinger and Cloudways.

Hostinger Pricing Plans Summary

Below is a summary of Hostinger’s pricing plans. The most affordable plan starts at 2,199 KRW per month. Additionally, Hostinger offers separate plans for web hosting and WordPress blogs (see the three options below), and these WordPress-specific plans have servers optimized for WordPress hosting.

WordPress Plan Types	Storage	Free CDN	Bandwidth	Sites	Rates
Single Web Hosting	50 GB SSD	X	100 GB	1	2,199/month
Premium plans	100 GB SSD	X	Unlimited	100	3,999/month
Business plans	200 GB NVMe	Yes	Unlimited	100	5,499/month
Cloud Startup	200 GB NVMe	Yes	Unlimited	300	11,900/month

Cloudways Pricing Plans Summary

Cloudways’ pricing varies depending on which cloud service provider you choose for their data center (DigitalOcean, Amazon, Google Cloud, Vultr). Below is the most affordable pricing available when using DigitalOcean.

When I first came across Hostinger, I was initially shocked by the pricing of Cloudways. To get just 50GB of storage on Cloudways, you’d have to pay 32,000 KRW per month.

To get the smallest storage of 50GB offered by Hostinger, you would need to pay 32,000 KRW per month on Cloudways.

Isn’t the price difference huge? This expensive Cloudways hosting cost is exactly why I exclude Cloudways as the first recommendation for beginners creating their WordPress blog. It’s simply too costly for those just starting out.

Usability

In terms of usability, I believe Hostinger excels. As a managed WordPress hosting service, Hostinger handles both hosting services and CDN, providing a more optimized environment for WordPress sites with an incredibly user-friendly WordPress plan. Additionally, Hostinger offers email accounts for each website, which is very convenient when starting a small business. This means you don’t need to use a separate email service, as everything can be managed in one place, making it easier for first-time WordPress users.

On the other hand, is Cloudways bad? Not at all. Cloudways offers the advantage of choosing from various data centers. You can match the PHP version you need with the data center you select, and with over 60 servers around the world, you can choose the server closest to your target audience. Additionally, Cloudways supports an unlimited number of apps, allowing you to run various applications. This makes Cloudways a better fit for intermediate to advanced WordPress users who need more control.

• As of 2024, I personally use the Rocket Hosting service for the WPlaybook website, a WordPress premium hosting service, and I absolutely don’t regret that choice.

The great flexibility Cloudways offers to data engineers running large e-commerce websites or corporate sites is definitely one of its advantages.

Wapple:WPlaybook

The issue is that some people recommend Cloudways for small businesses or blogs, even though it’s an incredibly expensive option. The large commissions Cloudways offers to instructors can become a comfortable “retirement fund” for them.

However, with Hostinger’s Business plan, priced at 5,500 KRW/month, you can handle quite a bit of traffic (up to around 100,000 visitors per month). In other words, you only need to consider upgrading your plan once your site starts getting around 3,000 visitors a day.

Even if your blog becomes a popular site with tens of thousands of visitors per day (and I hope all of you achieve that!), upgrading is easy through Hostinger’s menu, so there’s no need to worry about it right now.

For reference, if your site reaches 400,000 visits per month, like the image above, you might even get an article written about it in the newspaper. So, no need to worry about your WordPress hosting server crashing due to traffic, right?

In Conclusion

So far, I’ve explained why I recommend a cost-effective WordPress hosting service when making a recommendation. Personally, I hope that many people starting their blogs don’t have to spend too much money at first. Over time, as you gain experience and your needs grow, you can find a hosting provider that suits your requirements.