Hostinger vs IONOS
Hostinger and IONOS compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. Hostinger scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
HostingerWins overall
Very cheap on a 48-month term, with an easy custom panel; the entry plan cuts backups and email
The former 1&1: unlimited sites and traffic from $8 a month at renewal, with a free domain and wildcard SSL
Hostinger wins 5 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (8.0 vs 7.1).
How do the scores compare?
Hostinger leads on 5 sub-scores, IONOS on 0. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, Hostinger is cheaper ($10.99/mo vs $14.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
What does each include?
| Hostinger | IONOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | First year only, on 12-month and longer terms | One domain free for the first year on every plan: .us, .ca, .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .biz or .online |
| Free SSL | Yes | One DV wildcard certificate on Essential, Starter and Plus; unlimited wildcard certificates on Ultimate |
| Backups | Weekly on Premium; daily on Unlimited and Cloud Startup | Daily backup of storage and databases with data recovery, every plan |
| Email hosting | 2 mailboxes per website on Premium, unlimited on the other plans; free for the first year | Not stated |
| CDN | Included on Unlimited and Cloud Startup; listed as available on Premium | Not stated |
| Control panel | hPanel, Hostinger's own panel, with an AI assistant | Not stated |
| AI tools | AI website builder credits: 5 on Premium, 15 on the other plans, one-time | Not stated |
| Ecommerce | Available on every plan | Not stated |
| Fair usage limits | 3 GB per database, 300 databases, 300 FTP accounts, 400 cron jobs | Not stated |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% per month; 5% credit of that month's fee, claimed within 30 days | 99.99% in the general terms, with a credit for the month proportional to the downtime, on request and at IONOS's discretion |
| Choice of data center | 12 regions across North America, Europe, Asia and South America | Not stated |
| Phone support | No | 24/7, with a personal consultant |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| Free migration | Not stated | No |
| Free CDN | Not stated | Starter, Plus and Ultimate; not on Essential |
| Caching | Not stated | Server compression and HTTP/2 listed; no caching layer named on the plan page |
| Staging | Not stated | No |
| SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI and Git | Not stated | Every plan, with 200 SFTP accounts, Perl and Python |
| PHP versions | Not stated | 8.4, 8.3 and 8.2, with paid extended support for 5.6 and later |
| Resource limits | Not stated | CPU priority 1x, 3x, 5x and 10x by plan; 262,144 inodes on every plan; cron jobs 10, 25, 50 and 100 |
| Websites and traffic | Not stated | Unlimited websites and unlimited traffic on every plan; 5,000 subdomains |
| Not stated | 1, 2, 4 or 5 accounts of 2 GB by plan, with forwarding, webmail and anti-spam | |
| Data center choice | Not stated | No |
| Security | Not stated | Daily malware scanning (basic, or advanced with automatic removal on Ultimate), DDoS protection, geo-redundancy |