In today's world of web hosting, choosing the right service provider can be a crucial decision for businesses and individuals alike. With a multitude of options at our fingertips, two popular providers, Hostwinds and Hostinger, have captured the attention of many users.
Both Hostwinds and Hostinger are highly regarded for their scalability and flexibility, yet each provider possesses unique features that may stand out in specific scenarios.
In this article, we will conduct a detailed comparison between Hostwinds and Hostinger regarding their scalability and flexibility. We will explore the features, service packages, and benefits offered by these two providers to help you make an informed decision based on your specific needs.
Let's delve into what makes Hostwinds and Hostinger special and how they excel in terms of scalability and flexibility in web hosting services.
Plans and Pricing
You Get a Variety of Hosting Plans and Budget-Friendly Prices with Hostinger
Both Hostinger and Hostwinds offer a similar range of hosting packages (for Linux and Windows) tailored for individuals and small to medium-sized businesses. These packages include shared hosting, VPS, and cloud hosting.
Hostwinds also has dedicated server hosting, while Hostinger offers WordPress hosting, e-commerce hosting, email hosting, and MineCraft hosting.
| Hostinger Web Hosting | ||||
| Plan Name | Storage | Bandwidth | Number of Sites | Price |
| Simple Web Hosting | 50 GB SSD | 100 GB | 1 |
$ 1.99/mo |
| Premium Web Hosting | 100 GB SSD | unlimited | 100 | $ 2.99/mo |
| Business Web Hosting | 200 GB SSD | unlimited | 100 | $ 3.99/mo |
| Hostwinds Web Hosting | ||||
| Plan Name | Storage | Bandwidth | Number of Sites | Price |
| Basic | unlimited | unlimited | 1 |
$ 5.24/mo |
| Advanced | unlimited | unlimited | 4 | $ 6.74/mo |
| Ultimate | unlimited | unlimited | unlimited | $ 8.24/mo |
With Hostinger, you can choose to be billed monthly, annually, biennially, or quadrennially (48 months). With Hostwinds, you can subscribe monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, biennially, or triennially. Either way, the longer your subscription term, the less you pay.
Even though Hostwinds’ prices seem cheaper than Hostinger, you’ll end up paying extra since most of its security features (including the basics) are paid add-ons.
Both hosts provide free website migration and free domain name registration. Hostinger has a 30-day money-back guarantee, while Hostwinds offers 48-hour, 14-day, and 30-day money-back guarantees depending on your subscription term.
There’s no doubt that these two hosts are suitable for every budget and offer plenty of useful freebies. But when it comes to value for money, Hostinger wins.
Features
With Hostinger for shared hosting, you can choose from three Linux-based packages that come with 30 GB to 200 GB SSD storage, 1 to unlimited hosted websites, 1 to unlimited email accounts, and 100 GB to unlimited bandwidth.
With Hostwinds for shared hosting, you get to choose from three Budget and three Business Linux-based packages. All shared hosting packages come with unlimited SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, and 1 to unlimited hosted websites.
Hostwinds offers free Cloudflare CDN with all plans, but it’s only available for some packages with Hostinger. Hostwinds also provides daily backups, a feature Hostinger only has with its most expensive shared hosting plans (others come with weekly backups).
Both hosts offer free SSL certificates and a free website builder with all shared hosting packages.
Take a look at this comparison table to find out more differences between Hostinger and Hostwinds:
| Hostinger | Hostwinds | |
| Hosting Types | Shared, VPS (Linux and Windows), MineCraft server hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, email hosting, CMS hosting, e-commerce hosting | Shared, reseller, White Label hosting, managed VPS (Linux and Windows), unmanaged VPS (Linux and Windows), cloud, dedicated servers |
| Free Domain | ✔ (Depending on the plan) | ✔ |
| Free SSL Certificate | ✔ | ✔ |
| Disk Space | 30 GB SSD – 300 GB SSD | 30 GB – Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | 100 GB – Unlimited | 1 TB – Unmetered |
| Automatic Backups | ✔ | Daily |
| Control Panel | hPanel | cPanel |
| Email Accounts | 1 – Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free CDN | ✔ (Depending on the plan) | ✔ |
| Free Site Migration | ✔ | ✔ |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | 48-hour, 14-day, or 30-day (depending on contract length and if it is at first billing cycle or renewal) |
Performance
Performance is a crucial aspect to consider when choosing a shared hosting provider. In this comparison, we will evaluate the loading speeds and uptime guarantees offered by Hostinger and Hostwinds. By examining these factors, we can determine which host provides a better overall performance for your website.
Loading Speeds: Hostinger boasts a global network of servers located in the U.S.A., the U.K., Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Lithuania. Conversely, Hostwinds has servers in the U.S.A. and the Netherlands only. Both hosts utilize SSD storage, which enhances data processing speed and positively impacts website performance.
In terms of loading speeds, Hostinger has been proven to perform exceptionally well. In various tests, it consistently delivered fast loading times across different locations worldwide, with promising timings recorded. Hostinger's use of SSD storage and a widespread server network contributes to its impressive loading speed results.
Hostwinds, while also providing satisfactory loading speeds overall, experienced some issues in certain European and Asian locations. These regions showed slightly slower speeds compared to other locations. Further investigation is recommended to determine the cause behind these variations in speed.
Uptime: Hostinger guarantees an uptime of 99.99% for its hosting services. In actual testing, Hostinger has consistently exceeded this promise by achieving perfect uptime.
This means that websites hosted on Hostinger experienced minimal or no downtime, ensuring optimal accessibility for visitors.
Hostwinds offers an even higher uptime guarantee of 99.9999%. While this is an impressive claim, it's worth noting that Hostwinds has reported minor downtimes in certain instances. Although the downtimes were relatively infrequent, they were still noticeable. It is advisable to review the specific details provided in expert reviews to gain a comprehensive understanding of these occurrences.
In terms of performance, Hostinger emerges as the winner when comparing loading speeds and uptime. With its global network of servers, utilization of SSD storage, and exceptional loading speeds, Hostinger provides a consistently fast and reliable hosting experience.
Additionally, Hostinger's uptime guarantee of 99.99% is commendable and has been proven to surpass expectations.
While Hostwinds also offers satisfactory loading speeds and an impressive uptime guarantee of 99.9999%, occasional slower speeds in certain regions and reported minor downtimes raise some concerns. It is important to assess the impact of these factors based on your website's target audience and their geographical location.
When making a decision between Hostinger and Hostwinds, consider the significance of loading speeds and uptime for your specific requirements. If speed and uptime are critical factors, Hostinger's superior performance makes it an excellent choice.
However, it is recommended to thoroughly review expert reviews and conduct additional research to ensure the best hosting decision for your website.
Security
Hostinger Includes Security Features That Hostwinds Charges For
Hostinger implements DDoS protection on multiple layers. On the switch level, there’s Wanguard anti-DDoS traffic analyzer and intelligent firewall rules. BitNinja or Immunity360 (Web Application Firewall) are on each server, and there are custom web server rules created to protect your website against unwanted attacks.
On the other hand, Hostwinds offers its own security package, known as WindShield. Unfortunately, it’s only available as an optional paid add-on. This package includes DDoS protection, firewall setup, and security audits. All these features don’t come with plans by default.
As previously mentioned, both hosts provide free Cloudflare CDN, which secures your website against unwanted external threats targeting the network.
You’ll get free SSL certificates and automatic regular backups with all plans from both hosts.
Hostinger provides more inclusive security features with its services, while Hostwinds makes you pay extra to secure your account, making Hostinger the clear winner of this round.
Support
Hostinger’s Support Team is More Knowledgeable
The Hostinger and Hostwinds websites are highly informative. Each has a comprehensive and well-organized knowledgebase with numerous important articles and tutorials.
Hostinger offers 24/7 support via live chat and support tickets. However, the live chat isn’t always available, and even when it is, it can take some time to get connected to an agent. On the upside, once you get connected, all representatives are knowledgeable and helpful.
On the other hand, Hostwinds’ support is also available 24/7 through phone, live chat, email, and support ticket. Even though I was instantly connected to a live chat agent, they weren’t as knowledgeable as I hoped – giving me incorrect information, which was a real buzz kill.
Despite having more channels than Hostinger, I can’t overlook Hostwinds’ poorly trained support staff. Even though Hostinger’s support isn’t as responsive as I expected, at least I got the correct information. Hostinger is the winner here.
Hostinger Provides Great Balance Between Pricing and Performance
Hostinger and Hostwinds both offer a wide range of hosting options and feature-packed plans. However, Hostinger outperformed Hostwinds in almost all categories. Hostinger is better value for money and you don’t pay for add-ons like you do with Hostwinds. Hostinger has better performance, more helpful support, and more robust security for your website. On the other hand, Hostwinds won the features section for its generous resource allocations.
Hostinger is also featured in our detailed list of the best web hosting services in the market today.