# Hostinger vs SiteGround

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/hostinger-vs-siteground/

Every value below is read from Hostinger's and SiteGround's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Hostinger | SiteGround |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | No — Explicit statement, not inferred from the plan lineup; the 30-day guarantee is a refund, not a free plan. | No — Every listed plan is prepaid; the risk-free offer is a 30-day money-back guarantee, not an ongoing free plan. |
| Kind of free offer | No free offer | No free offer |
| Entry paid plan | $10.99/month on renewal (Premium plan) | $17.99/month on renewal ($3.99/mo intro, prepaid 12 months) |
| Pricing model | Prepaid multi-year terms at a heavily discounted first term, renewing at roughly 3.7x that rate. The Premium plan is $2.99/month if you buy 48 months up front ($143.52, against a $575.52 list price) and $10.99/month on renewal. | Prepaid fixed-term subscription; advertised rate is introductory and renews higher |
| When you exceed a cap | Throttled or errored rather than billed: exceeding CPU slows the site, exceeding RAM or process limits returns 503 errors, and exceeding the inode limit blocks new file creation | Access to the website may be limited after early warnings, rather than billed as an overage |
| Storage (entry plan) | 20 GB SSD storage on the Premium plan (cheapest paid shared web hosting plan) | 10 GB Premium Google storage on the StartUp plan (cheapest paid shared hosting plan) |
| Memory (entry plan) | 2 GB memory (RAM) on the Premium web hosting plan; 1 GB on Web Single, 3 GB on Unlimited. | Up to 768MB RAM per process on SiteGround shared web hosting, which includes the StartUp plan |
| Sites or apps included | 3 websites on the Premium plan (cheapest paid shared web hosting plan) | 1 website on the StartUp plan (cheapest paid shared hosting plan) |
| Monthly visits cap | Up to 100,000 monthly visits stated for the Business WordPress hosting plan — Knowledge-base capacity figure; the plan parameters-and-limits tables publish no visits row for any plan. | Shared plans, SiteGround's stated capacity per plan: StartUp around 10,000 monthly visits, GrowBig approximately 100,000, GoGeek 400,000+ monthly. |
| Included bandwidth | Unlimited on Premium and Unlimited plans; 100 GB on Web Single, the cheapest tier. | Unlimited traffic on all shared web hosting plans: StartUp hosts 1 website with unlimited traffic; GrowBig and GoGeek offer unlimited websites, unlimited traffic. |
| File, inode or volume limit | 400 000 inodes on the Premium web hosting plan; 200 000 on Web Single, 600 000 on Unlimited. | 200000 inodes per account on the StartUp plan |
| Git deployment | Limited | Limited |
| Scheduled jobs | Supported | Supported |
| Edge network | Supported | Limited |
| Regions | Europe: France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom; Asia: India, Indonesia, Malaysia; North America: USA (Phoenix, Boston, Asheville); South America: Brazil. | 11 locations: Ashburn (Virginia, US), Council Bluffs (Iowa, US), Dallas (Texas, US), Los Angeles (California, US), London (UK), Madrid (Spain), Eemshaven (Netherlands), Frankfurt (Germany), Paris (France), Sydney (Australia), Singapore |
| Support on entry paid plan | 24/7 support on every plan, alongside a 30-day money-back guarantee. | 24/7 expert human support on every plan, including the cheapest. |
| ISO 27001 | ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified hosting provider; the certificate is listed under Compliance in the Hostinger Trust Center. | Not ISO 27001 certified itself; staff say only the Google Cloud services it builds on are certified (blog reply, Jun 2021). SiteGround Team reply in blog comments, Jun 22, 2021; the only 27001 statement anywhere on the site. |
| HIPAA | Hosting plans are not designed to meet HIPAA compliance standards; review before storing protected health information on them. | Not HIPAA compliant: staff state its hosting services, including the Email Marketing tool, are not HIPAA compliant (blog reply, Jul 2023). SiteGround Team reply in blog comments, Jul 17, 2023; no HIPAA or BAA wording in Terms, AUP, DPA or KB. |
| GDPR / data residency | All personal data processed under GDPR; servers outside the EU/EEA (US, Brazil, Singapore, Indonesia) are covered by EU standard contractual clauses. | DPA: customer may specify, subject to availability, the data center location for its hosting account content; SiteGround may move it at its sole discretion. |
| PCI DSS | Hosting plans are not designed to meet PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance standards; Hostinger advises against storing payment card data on them. | Credit card data transmitted to SiteGround's payment processors is tokenized and secured by those processors in accordance with the PCI DSS requirements. Privacy Policy security section; the compliance is attributed to the payment processors, not to SiteGround. |
| Encryption at rest | Encryption of personal and sensitive data at rest (databases, shared directories) is listed among the DPA's technical and organisational measures. | Privacy Policy: when storing information SiteGround protects its security by encrypting critical data, with access restricted, logged and reviewed periodically. Scope is personal data SiteGround collects via its site and client area, not hosted site storage. |
| Role-based access control | Account Sharing assigns a shared user the Collaborator or Admin role, each with a different permission set; per-website sharing requires an Agency plan. | Roles functionality is available only to users of type "client" associated with websites on Cloud hosting plans; roles cannot be assigned to collaborators. |
| Dedicated infrastructure | Cloud hosting includes a dedicated IP address (web hosting uses a shared IP); dedicated resources and root access are attributed to VPS hosting. Dedicated IP addressing only; no single-tenant hardware option is published inside the managed hosting range. | Cloud Hosting includes dedicated resources and a dedicated IP on every plan: dedicated resources like VPS hosting with the fully managed convenience of shared hosting. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Hostinger: $10.99/month on renewal (Premium plan) ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting))
- SiteGround: $17.99/month on renewal ($3.99/mo intro, prepaid 12 months) ([source](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm))
- Lean: 62% Hostinger / 38% SiteGround — inversely proportional to the documented price. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Pricing model

- Hostinger: Prepaid multi-year terms at a heavily discounted first term, renewing at roughly 3.7x that rate. The Premium plan is $2.99/month if you buy 48 months up front ($143.52, against a $575.52 list price) and $10.99/month on renewal. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting))
- SiteGround: Prepaid fixed-term subscription; advertised rate is introductory and renews higher ([source](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### When you exceed a cap

- Hostinger: Throttled or errored rather than billed: exceeding CPU slows the site, exceeding RAM or process limits returns 503 errors, and exceeding the inode limit blocks new file creation ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/1583532-what-to-do-if-your-hosting-plan-limits-are-reached-in-hostinger/))
- SiteGround: Access to the website may be limited after early warnings, rather than billed as an overage ([source](https://www.siteground.com/kb/fair-use-siteground-hosting))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### Storage (entry plan)

- Hostinger: 20 GB SSD storage on the Premium plan (cheapest paid shared web hosting plan) ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting))
- SiteGround: 10 GB Premium Google storage on the StartUp plan (cheapest paid shared hosting plan) ([source](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm))
- Lean: 67% Hostinger / 33% SiteGround — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Memory (entry plan)

- Hostinger: 2 GB memory (RAM) on the Premium web hosting plan; 1 GB on Web Single, 3 GB on Unlimited. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/6976044-parameters-and-limits-of-hosting-plans-in-hostinger/))
- SiteGround: Up to 768MB RAM per process on SiteGround shared web hosting, which includes the StartUp plan ([source](https://www.siteground.com/kb/fair-use-siteground-hosting))
- Lean: 73% Hostinger / 27% SiteGround — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Sites or apps included

- Hostinger: 3 websites on the Premium plan (cheapest paid shared web hosting plan) ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/6976044-parameters-and-limits-of-hosting-plans-in-hostinger/))
- SiteGround: 1 website on the StartUp plan (cheapest paid shared hosting plan) ([source](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm))
- Lean: 75% Hostinger / 25% SiteGround — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Monthly visits cap

- Hostinger: Up to 100,000 monthly visits stated for the Business WordPress hosting plan — Knowledge-base capacity figure; the plan parameters-and-limits tables publish no visits row for any plan. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/how-to-use-the-hostinger-affiliate-marketing-tools-plugin-to-build-an-affiliate-website/))
- SiteGround: Shared plans, SiteGround's stated capacity per plan: StartUp around 10,000 monthly visits, GrowBig approximately 100,000, GoGeek 400,000+ monthly. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Included bandwidth

- Hostinger: Unlimited on Premium and Unlimited plans; 100 GB on Web Single, the cheapest tier. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/6976044-parameters-and-limits-of-hosting-plans-in-hostinger/))
- SiteGround: Unlimited traffic on all shared web hosting plans: StartUp hosts 1 website with unlimited traffic; GrowBig and GoGeek offer unlimited websites, unlimited traffic. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### File, inode or volume limit

- Hostinger: 400 000 inodes on the Premium web hosting plan; 200 000 on Web Single, 600 000 on Unlimited. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/6976044-parameters-and-limits-of-hosting-plans-in-hostinger/))
- SiteGround: 200000 inodes per account on the StartUp plan ([source](https://www.siteground.com/kb/fair-use-siteground-hosting))
- Lean: 67% Hostinger / 33% SiteGround — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Edge network

- Hostinger: Supported ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting))
- SiteGround: Limited ([source](https://www.siteground.com/kb/siteground-cdn-configuration))
- Lean: 64% Hostinger / 36% SiteGround — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Regions

- Hostinger: Europe: France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom; Asia: India, Indonesia, Malaysia; North America: USA (Phoenix, Boston, Asheville); South America: Brazil. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/1583267-where-are-hostinger-servers-located/))
- SiteGround: 11 locations: Ashburn (Virginia, US), Council Bluffs (Iowa, US), Dallas (Texas, US), Los Angeles (California, US), London (UK), Madrid (Spain), Eemshaven (Netherlands), Frankfurt (Germany), Paris (France), Sydney (Australia), Singapore ([source](https://www.siteground.com/kb/where_are_sitegrounds_servers))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Support on entry paid plan

- Hostinger: 24/7 support on every plan, alongside a 30-day money-back guarantee. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting))
- SiteGround: 24/7 expert human support on every plan, including the cheapest. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### ISO 27001

- Hostinger: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified hosting provider; the certificate is listed under Compliance in the Hostinger Trust Center. ([source](https://trust.hostinger.com/))
- SiteGround: Not ISO 27001 certified itself; staff say only the Google Cloud services it builds on are certified (blog reply, Jun 2021). SiteGround Team reply in blog comments, Jun 22, 2021; the only 27001 statement anywhere on the site. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/blog/sg-security-preinstalled))
- Lean: 64% Hostinger / 36% SiteGround — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### HIPAA

- Hostinger: Hosting plans are not designed to meet HIPAA compliance standards; review before storing protected health information on them. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/pci-and-hipaa-compliance-on-hostinger-hosting-plans/))
- SiteGround: Not HIPAA compliant: staff state its hosting services, including the Email Marketing tool, are not HIPAA compliant (blog reply, Jul 2023). SiteGround Team reply in blog comments, Jul 17, 2023; no HIPAA or BAA wording in Terms, AUP, DPA or KB. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/blog/new-siteground-email-marketing-tool))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### GDPR / data residency

- Hostinger: All personal data processed under GDPR; servers outside the EU/EEA (US, Brazil, Singapore, Indonesia) are covered by EU standard contractual clauses. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/legal/privacy-policy))
- SiteGround: DPA: customer may specify, subject to availability, the data center location for its hosting account content; SiteGround may move it at its sole discretion. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/viewtos/data_processing_agreement))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### PCI DSS

- Hostinger: Hosting plans are not designed to meet PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance standards; Hostinger advises against storing payment card data on them. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/pci-and-hipaa-compliance-on-hostinger-hosting-plans/))
- SiteGround: Credit card data transmitted to SiteGround's payment processors is tokenized and secured by those processors in accordance with the PCI DSS requirements. Privacy Policy security section; the compliance is attributed to the payment processors, not to SiteGround. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/privacy.htm))
- Lean: 36% Hostinger / 64% SiteGround — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Encryption at rest

- Hostinger: Encryption of personal and sensitive data at rest (databases, shared directories) is listed among the DPA's technical and organisational measures. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/legal/dpa))
- SiteGround: Privacy Policy: when storing information SiteGround protects its security by encrypting critical data, with access restricted, logged and reviewed periodically. Scope is personal data SiteGround collects via its site and client area, not hosted site storage. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/privacy.htm))
- Lean: 64% Hostinger / 36% SiteGround — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Role-based access control

- Hostinger: Account Sharing assigns a shared user the Collaborator or Admin role, each with a different permission set; per-website sharing requires an Agency plan. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/support/1583777-how-to-share-access-to-your-account-at-hostinger/))
- SiteGround: Roles functionality is available only to users of type "client" associated with websites on Cloud hosting plans; roles cannot be assigned to collaborators. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/kb/can-assign-roles-collaborators))
- Lean: 64% Hostinger / 36% SiteGround — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Dedicated infrastructure

- Hostinger: Cloud hosting includes a dedicated IP address (web hosting uses a shared IP); dedicated resources and root access are attributed to VPS hosting. Dedicated IP addressing only; no single-tenant hardware option is published inside the managed hosting range. ([source](https://www.hostinger.com/cloud-hosting))
- SiteGround: Cloud Hosting includes dedicated resources and a dedicated IP on every plan: dedicated resources like VPS hosting with the fully managed convenience of shared hosting. ([source](https://www.siteground.com/cloud-hosting.htm))
- Lean: 36% Hostinger / 64% SiteGround — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

## Which should you choose?

Pick Hostinger if Small sites where the recurring cost matters most and a control panel is preferred to a command line. Cron jobs are available through hPanel.

Pick SiteGround if Shared hosting with Git available over SSH and a visual interface on top, across eleven data centre locations. Cron jobs are configured in Site Tools.

Consider something else: Hostinger — The advertised price is introductory. Compare the renewal rate, and note the plan is prepaid across a multi-year term.

Consider something else: SiteGround — Dynamic page caching on the CDN requires the paid Premium tier, and the advertised price is introductory on a prepaid annual term.

## Documented by only one

One side documents these and the other does not. An absence is a missing source, not a stated "no" — except where a line says the other page was READ on a date and does not mention it, which is a sourced observation and the only one-sided case this site leans on.

- Max request duration: Hostinger: 360 seconds PHP max execution time on every shared plan, with a matching 360-second input time. MySQL statements are separately capped at 300 seconds and queries at 60 on Premium.
- Managed databases: Hostinger: Supported
- Connection limit: Hostinger: 50 MySQL connections per user on the Premium plan, against a 500-connection global ceiling per server. 25 per user on Single, 75 on Unlimited.
- Backup retention: Hostinger: Weekly backups on the Premium plan; daily on Unlimited. Hostinger does not state how many are kept.
- Private networking / VPC: Hostinger: No private networking on Web and Cloud hosting plans: VPN is supported only on VPS hosting, and Cloudflare Tunnel and Access require VPS root access.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Hostinger or SiteGround?**

Hostinger: $10.99/month on renewal (Premium plan)
SiteGround: $17.99/month on renewal ($3.99/mo intro, prepaid 12 months)

**When you exceed a cap: Hostinger or SiteGround?**

Hostinger: Throttled or errored rather than billed: exceeding CPU slows the site, exceeding RAM or process limits returns 503 errors, and exceeding the inode limit blocks new file creation
SiteGround: Access to the website may be limited after early warnings, rather than billed as an overage

**Included bandwidth: Hostinger or SiteGround?**

Hostinger: Unlimited on Premium and Unlimited plans; 100 GB on Web Single, the cheapest tier.
SiteGround: Unlimited traffic on all shared web hosting plans: StartUp hosts 1 website with unlimited traffic; GrowBig and GoGeek offer unlimited websites, unlimited traffic.

**Should I choose Hostinger or SiteGround?**

Pick Hostinger if Small sites where the recurring cost matters most and a control panel is preferred to a command line. Cron jobs are available through hPanel.
Pick SiteGround if Shared hosting with Git available over SSH and a visual interface on top, across eleven data centre locations. Cron jobs are configured in Site Tools.