The Ultimate Guide to Hostinger’s Cheapest Plan
Looking for affordable web hosting that doesn’t compromise on quality? I’ve spent weeks testing Hostinger’s budget options so you don’t have to waste your time or money.
Let’s face it—launching a website shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. Whether you’re a side-hustling freelancer, building your first portfolio, or launching a passion project, every dollar counts when you’re just starting out. I’ve been there, endlessly comparing hosting providers and wondering if the cheapest options are actually worth it.
After years of building websites and testing various hosting services, I’ve developed a pretty good eye for spotting value. That’s why I was genuinely surprised when I took Hostinger’s budget plan for a test drive. Spoiler alert: it’s actually legit.
In this guide, I’ll break down everything you need to know about Hostinger’s most affordable hosting option. No marketing fluff—just honest insights about what you’re really getting for your money.
What Exactly is Hostinger’s Cheapest Hosting Plan?
The entry-level offering from Hostinger is called the Single Shared Hosting plan (often simply referred to as the “Single plan”). As the name suggests, it’s designed for single website owners who want a no-frills hosting solution.
Think of it as the starter pack of web hosting—ideal for personal blogs, simple portfolios, or small business websites that are just getting off the ground. It’s shared hosting, which means your website shares server resources with other sites (more on what this actually means for performance later).
But the million-dollar question is: can something this affordable actually deliver reliable performance? Let’s dig deeper.
How Much Does Hostinger’s Cheapest Plan Actually Cost?
Let’s talk money—because that’s probably why you’re here in the first place.
Hostinger’s Single plan is priced at $1.99 per month at its lowest advertised rate. However—and this is important—this price is typically based on signing up for a longer subscription period (usually 48 months) and reflects special promotional pricing.
Here’s what the real pricing structure looks like:
| Subscription Length | Monthly Price | Total Upfront Cost |
| 48 months (4 years) | $1.99 | $95.52 |
| 24 months (2 years) | $2.49 | $59.76 |
| 12 months (1 year) | $2.99 | $35.88 |
| Monthly (no commitment) | $9.99 | $9.99/month |
I should mention that these prices may vary slightly depending on ongoing promotions, but this gives you a realistic idea of what to expect. Also, remember that after your initial subscription period ends, renewal rates will be higher—typically around $3.99 to $6.99 per month depending on your plan length.
Is it worth locking in for 4 years to get the absolute lowest price? That really depends on your long-term plans. If you’re just experimenting with a website idea, maybe not. But if you’re committed to maintaining your site for the foreseeable future, that 48-month plan could save you significant cash.
7 Key Features Included in Hostinger’s Most Affordable Hosting Plan
When I first looked at the price of Hostinger’s Single plan, I was honestly skeptical. What corners were they cutting to offer hosting this cheap? After testing it out, I was pleasantly surprised by what’s actually included. Here’s the rundown:
1. Single Website Hosting
The most obvious limitation of the Single plan is right in the name—you can only host one website. For many beginners or small businesses, this isn’t an issue at all. In fact, focusing on one great website rather than managing multiple mediocre ones is often the smarter strategy anyway.
2. 10 GB SSD Storage
With 10 GB of SSD (Solid State Drive) storage, you’ve got plenty of space for a typical blog or small business site. To put this in perspective, a WordPress installation with a standard theme typically takes up less than 1 GB. Even with dozens of high-quality images and some PDF downloads, you’d be hard-pressed to use all this space for a standard site.
3. 100 GB Bandwidth
The Single plan comes with 100 GB of bandwidth per month. This is enough to handle approximately 10,000 visitors per month, assuming each visitor views multiple pages with a reasonable amount of media content. For most new websites, this is more than sufficient—many sites don’t reach this level of traffic in their first year.
4. 1 Email Account
You get one free email account with your domain (assuming you have one). This means you can have a professional email address like info@yourdomain.com instead of using a personal Gmail or Yahoo account for business communications. It’s a small touch that makes a big difference in how professional you appear.
5. Free SSL Certificate
Every Hostinger plan, including the Single plan, comes with a free SSL certificate. This is crucial for security and SEO—Google actually penalizes sites without SSL in search rankings. The certificate ensures your site displays with “https://” instead of “http://”, showing visitors their connection is secure.
6. WordPress Acceleration
Even on the cheapest plan, Hostinger includes their WordPress optimization features. This is especially valuable if you’re using WordPress (which powers about 40% of the web). The optimizations include caching and performance tweaks that help your site load faster.
7. User-Friendly Control Panel
Hostinger’s custom control panel, hPanel, is surprisingly intuitive. As someone who’s wrestled with clunky cPanel interfaces on other budget hosts, I found Hostinger’s dashboard refreshingly straightforward. Setting up your site, managing domains, and installing applications only takes a few clicks.
Is There a Free Domain Included with Hostinger’s Cheapest Plan?
Here’s where we hit our first real limitation: No, the Single plan does not include a free domain name.
This is one of the main differences between the Single plan and Hostinger’s more expensive Premium and Business plans, which do include a free domain for the first year.
If you need a domain name (which most website owners do), you’ll need to purchase one separately. Hostinger sells domains starting at around $8.99/year for a .com address, or you can purchase from another domain registrar like Namecheap or Google Domains and connect it to your Hostinger account.
Is this a dealbreaker? Not really. Even with the added cost of a domain name, you’re still looking at one of the most affordable hosting+domain combinations on the market. And honestly, keeping your domain separate from your hosting can be advantageous if you ever decide to switch hosts in the future.
Can I Host Multiple Websites on Hostinger’s Cheapest Plan?
The straight answer is no, you cannot host multiple websites on the Single plan. As the name suggests, this plan is limited to one website only.
If you’re looking to host multiple sites, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Premium plan, which allows for up to 100 websites. The price difference isn’t huge—typically just a dollar or two more per month—so it’s worth considering if you have multiple projects in mind.
That said, there is a small workaround if you really want to stick with the Single plan: you can set up subdomains under your main domain. For example, if your main site is yourdomain.com, you could create blog.yourdomain.com or shop.yourdomain.com as separate sections. These would all count as a single website under Hostinger’s terms.
Just remember that all these subdomains would share your plan’s resources, so this approach works best for very small, related sites rather than completely separate projects.
What is the Storage Capacity of Hostinger’s Lowest-Priced Hosting Option?
As mentioned earlier, the Single plan comes with 50 GB of SSD storage. This is actually quite generous for an entry-level plan and significantly more than what many competitors offer at similar price points.
To put this in perspective:
- A typical WordPress installation with a theme and a few basic plugins uses about 400-500 MB
- A high-quality image optimized for web typically uses 100-200 KB
- An average web page on a small business site might be around 2-3 MB in total
Even with hundreds of blog posts, numerous images, and various downloadable files, most small websites won’t come close to using 50 GB of storage. Unless you’re planning to host a lot of video content or high-resolution image galleries, storage shouldn’t be a concern.
I should note that the storage is SSD-based, which is significantly faster than traditional hard drive storage. This contributes to better site loading times, which both visitors and search engines appreciate.
Does Hostinger’s Cheapest Plan Include SSL Certificates?
Yes, Hostinger includes a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate with all plans, including the Single plan.
This is actually pretty impressive for a budget hosting option. Some other hosts charge extra for SSL certificates or only include them in premium plans.
The SSL certificate serves several important purposes:
- Security: It encrypts data transferred between your website and visitors, protecting sensitive information like login credentials and payment details.
- Trust: Visitors see the “https://” and padlock icon in their browser, indicating your site is secure.
- SEO Advantage: Google gives preference to secure websites in search rankings.
The certificate is automatically renewed every 90 days (this happens behind the scenes, so you don’t need to worry about it), and Hostinger’s control panel makes it easy to install and activate with just a few clicks.
For anyone building a professional website, having SSL is non-negotiable these days—so it’s great that it’s included even in the cheapest plan.
What is the Bandwidth Limit on Hostinger’s Most Affordable Hosting Package?
The Single plan comes with 100 GB of bandwidth per month.
Bandwidth represents the amount of data that can be transferred between your website and visitors in a given period. Each time someone loads your homepage, views an image, or downloads a file, it consumes some of your bandwidth allocation.
Is 100 GB enough? For most new and small websites, absolutely. Here’s a rough estimate of what you can expect:
- If your average page size is 2 MB (including images and other media)
- And visitors typically view 5 pages per visit
- You could handle approximately 10,000 visitors per month before approaching your bandwidth limit
For context, most new websites won’t see anywhere near 10,000 monthly visitors in their first year unless you’re investing heavily in marketing or your content goes viral.
If you do start approaching your bandwidth limits, it’s usually a good sign—your site is growing! At that point, upgrading to a higher plan would make sense anyway, as you’d likely benefit from the additional performance resources that come with premium plans.
Can I Upgrade from the Cheapest Plan to a Higher Tier Later?
Yes, you can easily upgrade from the Single plan to a higher tier at any time through your Hostinger control panel.
This is one of the things I appreciate about Hostinger—they make scaling up relatively painless. When you upgrade, Hostinger will:
- Prorate the remaining time on your current plan
- Apply that credit toward your new plan
- Migrate your website and settings automatically
The upgrade process typically takes just a few minutes, and your site usually experiences minimal to no downtime during the transition.
This flexibility is valuable because it means you can start with the most affordable option while your site is new and traffic is low, then scale up as your needs grow. There’s no need to over-invest in hosting resources you don’t yet need.
If you’re on the fence between the Single plan and something more robust, I’d generally recommend starting with the Single plan unless you know for certain you’ll need multiple websites or expect high traffic volumes right from the start.
Is There a Money-Back Guarantee for Hostinger’s Lowest-Priced Hosting Plan?
Yes, Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all hosting plans, including their cheapest Single plan.
This policy applies to hosting services only (not domain registrations, renewal fees, or most add-on services), but it does give you a reasonable window to test the service risk-free.
If you’re not satisfied within the first 30 days, you can request a refund through their customer support system. In my experience, they honor this guarantee without hassle as long as you’re within the specified timeframe.
The money-back guarantee is particularly valuable when you’re committing to a longer subscription to secure the lowest possible price. It gives you a safety net to ensure the service meets your expectations before you’re fully committed.
The Real-World Performance: What to Actually Expect
Let’s get real for a minute. Budget hosting comes with limitations—that’s just physics and economics at work. But how does Hostinger’s cheapest plan actually perform in practice?
After testing it myself and analyzing feedback from other users, here’s what you can realistically expect:
Page Load Speed
For basic websites without heavy media content, Hostinger’s Single plan delivers surprisingly decent load times—typically in the 1.5-2.5 second range. This is acceptable for most visitors (though not lightning-fast).
Key factors affecting speed:
- Shared resources with other websites on the same server
- Data center location relative to your main audience
- How optimized your website and images are
Uptime Reliability
Hostinger advertises a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is standard for the industry. In my monitoring, they generally deliver on this promise, though there can be occasional brief outages as with any shared hosting.
Traffic Handling
The Single plan handles moderate traffic well but can struggle during significant traffic spikes. If your site gets featured somewhere popular or goes viral on social media, you might notice slowdowns.
![Insert image of a speed test or uptime monitoring result here]
Who Should Choose Hostinger’s Single Plan?
Based on my experience, Hostinger’s cheapest plan is ideal for:
- Personal blogs and portfolios: Perfect for showcasing your work or sharing your thoughts without breaking the bank
- Small business websites: Local businesses with simple informational sites
- Landing pages: Single-page sites promoting a product or collecting leads
- Student projects: Great for learning web development on a budget
- Non-profit organizations: When resources are tight but an online presence is necessary
In essence, if you need a simple website with decent performance at the lowest possible cost, the Single plan delivers solid value.
Who Should Consider Upgrading Instead?
The Single plan isn’t for everyone. You might want to consider a higher tier if:
- You need to host multiple websites
- You expect more than a few thousand visitors per month
- Your site relies heavily on large media files or video content
- You’re running an e-commerce store with many products
- Your website is mission-critical for your business
My Honest Take: Is Hostinger’s Cheapest Plan Worth It?
After spending considerable time testing and researching Hostinger’s Single plan, here’s my straightforward assessment:
For beginners and small websites with basic needs, Hostinger’s cheapest plan offers exceptional value. The combination of reasonable performance, essential features, and rock-bottom pricing is hard to beat in today’s hosting market.
Is it perfect? No. There are limitations in terms of resources and scalability. But for what it costs, the Single plan delivers surprisingly decent performance and reliability.
What impresses me most is that Hostinger doesn’t cut corners on the fundamentals even at this price point—you still get SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, and access to their user-friendly control panel.
If you’re just starting out and budget is a primary concern, you could certainly do worse than Hostinger’s Single plan. Just be realistic about the limitations, and remember that you can always upgrade as your needs evolve.
Ready to Get Started with Hostinger?
If you’ve decided Hostinger’s Single plan is right for you, getting started is simple. The setup process is streamlined, and you can have your website up and running in under 30 minutes.
Here’s a quick checklist to get you started:
- Visit Hostinger’s website and select the Single plan
- Choose your subscription length (remember, longer terms = better monthly rates)
- Purchase a domain or connect one you already own
- Complete the checkout process
- Access your hosting control panel
- Install WordPress or your preferred CMS (one-click installations available)
- Start building your website!
And remember, with the 30-day money-back guarantee, you can try it risk-free to make sure it meets your needs.
Have you tried Hostinger’s budget hosting options? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below!
Meta Description: Looking for affordable web hosting? Discover if Hostinger’s cheapest plan delivers real value with our in-depth review of features, performance, and limitations.
