Hostinger Review: Is This the Best Therapist Web Hosting Company to Use in 2023?

Start shopping around for the best therapist web hosting to launch a new website for your private practice, and I guarantee you’ll see the name Hostinger come up time and time again. 

The company are frequently praised for their cheap web hosting deals. On the one hand, this makes them an attractive option for therapists who are starting their private practice on a shoestring budget. On the other hand, the cost is only one small factor that you need to consider when choosing a hosting company for your therapist website.

As you’ll read in my beginner’s guide to web hosting for therapists, performance, reliability, and all-round usability are equally -if not more- important. 

After all, what’s the point in cutting costs on your hosting if your site performs so horribly that it turns potential clients away?

So how does Hostinger fair in all these critical categories?

That’s what I’m about to tell you in this complete Hostinger review.

Why Do So Many Websites Recommend Hostinger?

I’m about to expose a terrible, dirty secret about the Internet: 

Many website owners -myself included- get paid a commission when their readers buy products or services they recommend. This is called affiliate marketing, and it’s a legitimate way to make a living on the web. 

The thing is, Hostinger offers HUGE commissions to affiliate marketers, more so than just about any other hosting company I know. So, naturally, you’ll see a tonne of Hostinger reviews online because so many people are trying to grab those big payouts. 

Still, that’s not why I’m writing this review. 

I’m writing it for two reasons: 

1. I Actually Give a S**t

Although I have no problem with affiliate marketing, I do have a problem with private therapy practice owners getting caught up in the Hostinger hype without knowing what they’re letting themselves in for. 

If you decide to use this company to host your website, I want you to do so because it’s genuinely the best option for you and not because I’m going to make bank from it. 

Honestly, you can go to the company’s website in a separate browser tab without clicking a single link in this review, and I won’t make a penny from it. I’m totally OK with that.

The other reason is this:

2. I Actually Use Hostinger 

I have a Business Web Hosting plan with Hostinger, which currently powers two of my websites, the one you’re reading right now (Therapist Marketing Tips) and my wife’s upcycled clothing brand. 

As a long-time Hostinger user, I feel I’m in a great position to leave the hype behind and tell you what it’s really like to use this company.

So let’s get on with it, shall we?

How Much Does Hostinger Web Hosting Cost?

If there’s one thing I can’t fault Hostinger for, it’s their pricing. 

Seriously, look at those prices. Only my other preferred hosting company, 1&1 Ionos, comes close to matching them. 

With all that being said, there is something you need to know about Hostinger’s pricing, which, to be fair, is true of pretty much all hosting providers: 

Those low rates are only available if you sign-up for a multi-year plan.

In other words, if you sign-up for the Single Web Hosting plan, you won’t pay £1.49 monthly. You’ll have to sign up and pay 48 months in advance to get your hosting at that rate, which works out to £71.52. 

While that isn’t as sweet a deal as paying £1.49, I can assure you it’s still outstanding value for money compared to other hosting companies.

Of course, you can pay for 24 months, 12 months, or a single month instead. 

Doing so means you’ll pay less upfront, but your average monthly costs will increase. 

I’ll show you all the current price options in the plan breakdown below:

Which Hostinger Plan Should You Buy?

If you’re not sure which of Hostinger’s three main web hosting plans is right for you, allow me to offer some suggestions: 

1. Single Web Hosting

Pricing:

• 48 month plan – £1.49 (p/m)
• 24 month plan – £1.99 (p/m)
• 12 month plan – £2.49 (p/m)
• 1 month plan – £9.99 (p/m).

Best for: 

Therapists who only ever plan to launch one Website. 

The 50 GB of storage, 100 GB bandwidth and 10,000 monthly visit allowances are more than enough for most small private practices.

However, this plan doesn’t come with a free domain name, so you’ll have to pay for that separately.

2. Premium Web Hosting

Pricing: 

• 48 month plan – £2.59 (p/m)
• 24 month plan – £2.59 (p/m)
• 12 month plan – £2.59 (p/m)
• 1 month plan – £11.99 (p/m).

Best for:

Growing practices and therapists who want to launch more than one Website. 

This plan offers: 

• 100 GB (Gigabytes) of storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• 25,000 monthly visits
• 100 x email addresses
• Free domain name for one year. 

All of which makes it a better choice for therapists who are already established and attract a large number of visitors. 

3. Business Web Hosting 

Pricing: 

• 48 month plan – £3.99 (p/m)
• 24 month plan – £3.99 (p/m)
• 12 month plan – £3.99 (p/m)
• 1 month plan – £3.99 (p/m).

Best for: 

Media-rich sites and online stores. 

If you’re planning to host a lot of resources, such as videos and guided relaxation audio files, or selling products from your therapy practice website, these will take up a lot of storage and bandwidth. As such, you may be better off paying for the higher-priced business plan. 

Is Hostinger Easy to Use?

Regarding ease of use, Hostinger is relatively average compared to the many other hosting companies I’ve used in the past. 

While I’ve certainly used easier platforms, there’s nothing exceptionally difficult about it.

I’d even say that if you can send emails, update your social media, and navigate to this blog, you’re skilled enough to use Hostinger.

When you first log in, Hostinger presents you with a simple dashboard that makes it easy to access your web hosting and any email accounts associated with your Website.

Clicking on the Manage button for your hosting takes you to a new dashboard. 

Now, I admit that if this is the first time in your life that you’ve ever dealt with web hosting, this whole thing can look a little confusing. 

Fortunately, it’s much more straightforward than it first appears. 

Click that link labelled See details, for example, and all you get is a bunch of technical information about things like nameservers and server details that you’ll probably never even need to look at.

In fact, in all the time I’ve been with Hostinger, I only clicked that link to see what was there for the sake of this review.

Elsewhere in that menu, clicking manage under either Domain, Free Email, or Daily Backups will take you to a beginner-friendly set of tools to manage those features. 

Beneath that, you click to access the file manager. 

If you read my beginner’s guide to web hosting for therapists, you may recall that a website is basically a collection of files. As you’ve likely worked out for yourself, the file manager is where you can see all those files and make some basic changes, such as uploading new files and renaming or removing old ones. 

Again, you’ll rarely -if ever- need to use this feature, especially if you’re running your Website on WordPress like I am. 

There are two things I really like about the dashboard.

The first is the Tips to Improve, which gives you a useful heads-up if something’s amiss with your Website and leads you to take the appropriate action to fix it. 

The second is the malware scanner and loading time boxes, which give you an at-a-glance at the safety and performance of your Website. 

Again, this is very handy. If something doesn’t look right, it will give you the actions to fix it.

Fortunately, Hostinger is always pretty fast, and I’ve never had a problem with their security features, so these two boxes typically report nothing but positive stuff.

Building a Website With Hostinger Therapist Web Hosting

Launching a new site on your therapist web hosting plan is as simple as clicking Website from the main menu and then tapping Auto Installer.

This gives you four main options.

There’s WordPress, which is my favourite tool for building websites because it’s very easy and incredibly customizable. 

Then there’s WooCommerce (basically WordPress with online store features) and Joomla, which is more technical but great for experienced website designers.

Finally, there’s also Other. You can use this option to install a huge variety of different applications.

Honestly, if I were you, I’d ignore all those other applications and select WordPress.

When you do that, a pop-up form will appear. 

Here, all you have to do is give your Website a name (Jo’s Hypnotherapy Practice, for example) and then enter an email, username and password.

You’ll use these credentials to log into WordPress so that you can build and maintain your site. 

Below that, ensure your site is installed under the https version of your domain name and click Next.

Unless you want to change the language, all you have to do on the following screen is to click install, and that’s it.

Hostinger will automatically install the popular website-building software on your server.

From there, you can log in and start using WordPress to create an awesome website for your therapy practice.

I’ll show you how to do that another time.

What Security Features Does Hostinger Offer?

Data protection is hugely important for any business. Still, in an industry like therapy, where client confidentiality and safeguarding are paramount, it’s even more crucial that your Website is as safe as possible.

Hostinger’s security features are basic but effective. 

I really like that you get a free SSL certificate, which encrypts data sent between your visitors and your servers to prevent people from stealing it. 

Many companies I’ve worked with charge a fee for this feature, so the fact that it’s free and can be activated with the simple click of a button makes it very handy indeed.

Elsewhere, the company monitors their servers 24/7/365 to identify potential threats and tackle them before they become problems. 

Hostinger also uses firewalls to provide further protection and uses advanced security modules to ensure round-the-clock safety.

Finally, the company offers Two-Factor Authentication, which allows you to set an extra layer of security for logging into your account.

This means that, even if someone steals your password, they still won’t be able to access your account because they’ll also require a secret code sent to you via email, a text message, or an app.

Ultimately, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about Hostinger’s security features, and I’ve certainly seen more impressive setups on other platforms.

However, I’ve never personally experienced any problems with their security, and I trust that my websites are safe with them.

That said, for the sake of absolute transparency and objectivity, I should point out that the company suffered a huge data breach in 2014. 

Is Hostinger Fast and Reliable?

As I said earlier, Hostinger is a pretty fast web host. However, much like their security features, there’s nothing spectacular about the service’s speed. 

There has been the odd occasion when my site has taken a little longer to load up than I would have liked, but for the most part, pages load almost instantaneously.

That’s pretty much on par with most good hosting companies, and I can’t say I’ve seen much difference between Hostinger’s performance and that of other top brands like 1&1 Ionos and GreenGeeks. 

In terms of reliability, I’ve never experienced any issues with my sites being unavailable or otherwise difficult to load.

To put all this another way, Hostinger usually offers great performance and does more than enough to ensure that a typical therapy practice website will load quickly. Still, it’s not significantly faster than any of its competitors, so its speed is unlikely to be a big deciding factor when choosing the best therapist web hosting company for your business.

What Email Features Does Hostinger Offer?

Having an email based at your domain (i.e. you@yourtherapypractice.com) is essential for presenting a professional image when communicating with clients or fellow therapists. 

Hostinger offers free domain-based email across all plans. This is just one of the reasons why I like them, as I’ve used many other hosting providers that charge fees for this.

To create an email address, click on emails from the top menu, then select Manage next to your domain name. 

Next, click email accounts and then Create new email account.

Enter the first part of your email address, whether that’s your name or a generic name like “contact” or “info,” then create a password and enter a second email address that you can use to recover your account should you ever get locked out of it.

When you’ve done all that, click Create new account, and that’s all there is to it.

Hostinger will then create a new email address for you then present you with your login details and two ways to access your new email account.

The first is via webmail, an option that should be familiar to you if you’ve accessed services like Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! via a web browser.    

The layout of this webmail client is very familiar, especially if you’re used to using programs like Microsoft Outlook or Windows Mail. 

To be honest with you, I haven’t used the mobile app, so I can’t really comment on whether it’s any good or not. However, given that everything else is pretty easy, I can’t imagine it giving you any problems. 

To be even more honest, I don’t use the webmail client either. 

Instead, I used the details Hostinger provides to set things up so that I get my Therapist Marketing Tips emails via my Windows Mail client. 

This is as simple as opening the program and going to Accounts – Add New Account – Advanced Setup.

From there, you simply copy the information provided by Hostinger and paste it into the relevant boxes in the email client. 

All of this is great and user-friendly, but where Hostinger lets itself down is by using DKIM records to handle spam protection. 

While the instructions on creating such a record are clear, it’s a complex process that can quickly get confusing and frustrating if you’re a beginner.

Does Hostinger Have Good Customer Service?

Unfortunately, Hostinger’s customer service leaves a lot to be desired. 

I’ve had multiple occasions in which I couldn’t figure something out and needed their help, and each time I came away feeling underwhelmed, if not completely annoyed. 

The first disappointment is that the company doesn’t offer telephone support. So, if you’re like me and enjoy the simplicity of picking up the phone and talking to someone, you’re out of luck. 

The lack of phone support leaves you with two other options: 

Email and Live Chat

In all the time that I’ve been building and running websites, I’ve never once used email support with any web hosting company because it usually takes at least 24 hours to get a response, and that’s too long to wait if you’re relying on a website to grow a business.

That just leaves live chat, which, in Hostinger’s case, is far slower than the industry average.

I’ve used hosting companies where the average response time for live chat is two minutes at most. Hostinger’s average wait time is around 10 minutes. Even then, your support agent is helping multiple people at once, which usually means it takes them an annoyingly long time to sort out the problem. 

On the plus side, the service does offer an extensive catalogue of tutorials and troubleshooting guides. 

These can be great if you’re fairly tech-savvy and want to fix the problem yourself. 

The problem is that web hosting is new to many of the therapists I meet, particularly those who find technology a little intimidating. If that sounds like you, the tutorials may be of little help, and you’ll be left to sit around idly waiting for someone to help you via live chat. 

Overall, Hostinger doesn’t offer a great experience when it comes to their customer service, and this is disappointing when you consider that the rest of their service is actually pretty good. 

Hostinger Pros and Cons 

Pros:

• Hostinger offers low-cost hosting, making it great for therapists who are starting their business on a small budget
• It’s pretty easy to use, so you should have no trouble with it, even if you’re new to hosting websites
• The free SSL certificate is great for keeping data protected.

Cons: 

• Hostinger’s customer support could be a lot better. I’m particularly disappointed that they don’t have phone support.
• I’ve had issues using the file manager in the past. Uploading new files can be buggy, and the whole thing stopped working at one point.
• The security features are basic.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hostinger

Is Hostinger better than Bluehost?

I think so. Bluehost is more expensive than Hostinger and, in my experience, doesn’t perform as well. However, Bluehost do offer more bandwidth and storage than Hostinger. 

Does Hostinger use renewable energy?

Hostinger recently announced new packages powered by Google Cloud Services, which match their energy usage with renewable energy. Hostinger has also pledged a commitment to the Sustainable Web Manifesto.

Does Hostinger have a website builder?

Yes. The company also offers a drag-and-drop website builder similar to Wix or Elementor for WordPress.

Is Hostinger the Best Therapist Web Hosting Company? My Final Opinion 

Throughout this Hostinger review, I’ve tried to give you my unbiased opinion and all the information you need to determine whether it’s the best therapist web hosting company for your private practice website. 

If you’re on a limited budget, the company’s remarkably low-cost plans may certainly appeal. 

If this is your first time building a website and you’re somewhat daunted by the whole process, then you may also like the general user-friendliness, though I can understand that the company’s poor customer service could be enough to put you off. 

All in all, as an ongoing Hostinger customer, I’m satisfied that I’m getting good value for money, and I would have no problem recommending them as a good web hosting option for fellow therapists. 

• Try Hostinger

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