Hostinger is a web hosting company. Established in 2004, the company is headquartered in Lithuania and employs about 900 employees. [3]
History
Hostinger was founded in 2004 as Hosting Media.[4]
In 2007, Hosting Media’s paid hosting offer was joined by a free web hosting service when the company founded 000webhost.[5]
In 2008, the company launched Hosting24, a cPanel-based web hosting brand, in the United States. The data centers were located in Asheville, North Carolina, and the United Kingdom.
In 2011, Arnas Stuopelis joined the company as CEO.[6] In the same year Hosting Media rebranded to Hostinger.
In 2013, Hostinger launched its subsidiary Niagahoster in Indonesia. It became one of the first hosting providers to offer tier-4 data centers.
In 2014, the company launched a Brazilian subsidiary, Weblink.
In 2019, Hostinger introduced a no-code, drag-and-drop website builder. Launched as a subsidiary under the name Zyro, the builder is supported by Hostinger’s hosting infrastructure and is aimed at small to medium-sized enterprises.[7]
In 2023, Hostinger launched the AI Website Builder, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to generate a custom site from scratch. AI Builder automatically writes unique content, selects royalty-free stock images, and chooses a color palette and fonts that best suit the description.[8]
In 2023, Daugirdas Jankus becomes Hostinger CEO. Arnas Stuopelis continues as Chairman of the Board.[9]
In 2024, 000webhost, a free web hosting brand powered by Hostinger, shut down its operations.[10]
Acquisitions
In 2019, the company partnered with LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS).[11] It also partnered with Google Cloud Platform in 2020.[12]
In 2021, private equity company ConHostinger acquired an approximately 31% controlling stake in Hostinger with the goal of enhancing the growth of the company.[13] In the same year, Hostinger joint-founded the Lithuanian unicorn association, Unicorns Lithuania,[14] and expanded its payment processing capabilities. It partnered with Credorax to provide smart acquiring services and facilitate cross-border payments.[15] In 2022, Hostinger started accepting Cryptocurrency payments via CoinGate.[16]
Services
Hostinger's web hosting services are divided into five categories: shared hosting, cloud hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and email hosting. LiteSpeed servers and the Linux operating system power shared, cloud, and managed WordPress hosting services.
Hostinger provides an in-house control panel called hPanel for users to manage their hosting.
Hostinger offers other services, such as email hosting via Titan Email, Google Workspace, or its own in-house solution, domain registration and transfer, and a website builder.
Hostinger has ten data centers in eight countries: Brazil, Indonesia, India, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Awards
Every year since 2019, The Financial Times has been listing Hostinger as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe.[17][18] It was also named one of the fastest-growing hosting providers by Bitcatcha in 2020 and again by Cyber News in 2021.[19]
In 2021, Hostinger was listed in Yahoo’s Hosting Market Report as one of the key players in the hosting market.[20]
Philanthropy
Hostinger sponsors the organization Save the Children Lithuania, which began in 2020 to contribute computers and other homeschooling tools to the charity organization Mokykla Namuose.[21]
In 2021, Hostinger sponsored the prize for the most innovative idea in the Technorama 2021 competition[22] and rebuilt a school in Sumba, Indonesia.[23]
Criticism
In 2015, a security researcher discovered a collection of 13 million leaked plaintext passwords belonging to users of 000Webhost. 000Webhost addressed the breach in a Facebook post citing an exploit in an old version of PHP.[24]
In 2023, The Cyber Crime Information Center reports Hostinger entered the top 5 Phishing hosts as measured by their Phishing Attack Score. [25] The phishing attack score takes into account the raw number of phishing attacks relative to the size of the Hosting Network.[26] Security firm Netcraft reported in 2015 that 90% of Steam Phishing sites they stopped were hosted by Hostinger. Netcraft reported they stopped 1,400 Steam phishing URLs in one month comprising 331 different websites, all hosted by Hostinger.[27] In 2022, Cyware Social reported that Hostinger's website preview feature was being exploited by criminals via phishing sites. Authors contend that once an account is created with Hostinger, the preview URLs are active for a maximum of 120 hours allowing phishing sites to proliferate.[28] On blog Review Signal, authors accused Hostinger of manipulating review ratings via reviews by company employees.[29]
