Hostinger vs Hostwinds – Close Match, but Only One Winner 2021

Not only are Hostinger and Hostwinds popular among small-to-medium-sized website owners, but there are numerous similarities in what they offer. The question is, which one of them gives you your money’s worth?

After testing Hostinger and Hostwinds for pricing, features, support, performance, and security, Hostinger came out on top in four out of five areas. Hostwinds lagged, especially when it comes to value for money.

Click here to get Hostinger’s latest deals or read this detailed comparison to see how Hostinger and Hostwinds performed.

1. 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.

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.

2. Features

Hostwinds Provides More Allocated Resources with its Plans

With Hostinger for shared hosting, you can choose from three Linux-based packages that come with 10 GB to 100 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:

Hostwinds has a slight advantage over Hostinger in terms of features. It offers more resource allocations and daily backups with its shared hosting packages. That’s why it wins this round.

3. Performance

Hostinger Has Faster Loading Speeds and Better Uptime

Hostinger has a global network of servers with locations in the U.S.A., the U.K., Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Lithuania. On the other hand, Hostwinds only has servers in the U.S.A. and the Netherlands.

Both hosts use SSD with all plans. SSD storage performs faster in terms of website data processing than regular HDD storage. This reflects directly on your website’s loading speeds and overall performance.

You’ll get Cloudflare CDN with all plans from both hosts. A CDN or Content Delivery Network places your website on a global network of cloud servers to boost its loading speeds, among other benefits, from different locations around the world.

Hostinger promises a 99.99% uptime guarantee, and Hostwinds promises 99.9999%. While Hostinger exceeded that promise with a perfect actual uptime, Hostwinds reported some minor downtimes.

When testing Hostinger’s loading speeds, it scored perfectly, and almost all locations showed promising timings. See the full performance test results in this detailed Hostinger review.

Even though Hostwinds gave a good result in the loading speed test, some European and Asian locations showed slower speeds. Find out what went wrong in this expert Hostwinds review.

Both Hostinger and Hostwinds performed admirably, but with Hostinger’s better uptime and loading speeds, it won the performance race.

4. 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.

5. 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.

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