Hostinger Website Builder Review 2024

Zyro by Hostinger has been rebranded to Hostinger Website Builder. Essentially the same product, their main audience is website beginners. That means that the way website design works is very straightforward and doesn’t try to bog you down with too much information.

That being said, it’s a double edged sword, since the simple building tool means that you won’t be able to get in any specific design considerations that you have in mind.

Nonetheless, it’s a great entry into website building if you have no experience.

Hostinger Website Builder functions really well as an eCommerce platform, just as well as any other really, which is impressive considering its not been around that long.

Not only can you expect to find the traditional tools that you’ll see on Shopify, but they also have a few extra AI tools not available from the competition.

All in all, that puts Hostinger Website Builder with the leaders of the pack, as it manages to provide an attractive overall package for newbies.

AI Writer

Probably the most interesting thing you’ll see are the new AI tools they are offering.

For starters, you have the AI writer (same one as Zyro) which . . . ok granted doesn’t actually function like a real human writer but it does a good job.

Essentially how it works is that you pick a general topic like ‘entertainment’ and then a sub-topic like ‘horror films’ and the AI writer writes something up for you!

Of course, don’t expect the content to be that great and you will absolutely have to edit it yourself, but it’s an interesting concept.

Mostly the AI writer is targeted to those who need an about page or something relatively simple, although you could theoretically use it for general content and not just copy.

That being said, if you rely on your content for income, it’s best to hire a real human writer. Even more so considering there are only 11 general topics to pick from, so there isn’t a large variety as you’d expect. 

AI Heatmap & Tools

Another interesting thing Hostinger is doing with AI is their heatmap.

What you do is take an image of your site, upload it to their application, and the AI gives you a heatmap of where people look at the most.

The idea here is that you can use that information to alter your website design and copy to better match what you want them to focus on.

For example, maybe you want them to focus on a subscription button, or a specific article. 

What’s more interesting is that this AI heatmap is actually free to use on the old Zyro page, so you don’t even need to have one of their plans to check it out!

Aside from the heatmap, Hostinger Website Builder also uses a great tool to create Slogans and logos. The slogan maker functions very similar to what the AI writer does, so we won’t cover that again.

The logo maker isn’t anything amazing, and is more along the lines of picking simple premade graphics and combining them together, but it’s easy, simple and great for those who don’t want to complicate their lives. 

Top Notch Performance

Of course, having a bunch of great tools doesn’t mean anything if the website is constantly experiencing crashes.

Thankfully, as with Zyro, Hostinger Website Builder does a great job of performance, managing an average of 99.94% of uptime, which is really good for a new entrant in the scene.

Granted, WordPress and some of the other ones come closer to 99.97%, but the minute difference is marginal and within the margin of error. 

Other than that, speeds are really good, so you won’t feel a bottleneck there. Like previously with Zyro, Hostinger Website Builder also includes Cloudflare protection for all its sites, so you won’t have to worry about Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS).

On top of that you also get an SSL certificate, so you’re pretty much protected from every angle possible, and the security provided by Hostinger is equivalent to the top-tier website builders.

Related Read: Best Free Website Builders 

Simple and Easy Design Interface

If you’re coming at Hostinger Website Builder with the expectations and perspectives of an experienced designer, you’re very likely to get disappointed.

That’s because Zyro was originally made with inexperienced people in mind, and the rebrand to Hostinger Website Builder doesn’t change that.

The whole design philosophy revolves around making it as simple as possible to build your own website. In fact, you will get twelve elements to play with.

As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of freedom there to build the site to your exact specifications, and that’s ok.

The idea here is specifically to make it easy so that people who are usually overwhelmed by complex website design aren’t, and can therefore setup a website relatively quickly.

Sure, this is a double-edged sword, especially if down the road you have more money to spend on a UI designer, but that’s just what you have to expect when using Hostinger Website Builder.

There is also one other small downside, which is that going from one template to another can be a hassle since there’s no easy transfer system. You basically have to manually migrate the content to your new template, which can be really annoying.

Hopefully this gets fixed in the future though, and we expect it will be high on the list of priorities for Hostinger.

Excellent Templates to Work With

Thankfully it’s not all bad news, and you do get more than 100 templates to play around with, and the number keeps growing. 

Given their update schedule I wouldn’t be surprised if we see even more than that. Keep in mind that WordPress.com only offers about 200-300 templates for you to work with and Hostinger Website Builder (just like Zyro) is comparable, just more elegant. 

Also, the templates you get are well optimized and are developed around a reactive design philosophy. That means that they function perfectly for both desktop and mobile users.

That being said, if you don’t like how your site looks on mobile, you can absolutely edit that look separately from the desktop version. This is actually a minor addition that could have easily broken Hostinger Website Builder for new users, so we’re glad to see it in.

Great Customer Service

While Hostinger Website Builder (like Zyro) still doesn’t have the option to call for customer support, they do have 24/7 availability for the chat function.

In fact, they’ve even integrated a search function into the chat which pops up a hopefully relevant bit from the knowledge base based on your keyword.

If that doesn’t help, then you can absolutely continue to the chat function and yes it is a human being, which is excellent.

If you aren’t comfortable with the live chat you can always go the email route, although it will most likely be slower.

Dealing with Domains is too Complex

As with Zyro, one thing that can be annoying with Hostinger Website Builder is the way it handles domains. With most website hosts the process is relatively simple: you update DNS servers with the new routing.

This works even if you bought the domain separately. 

With Hostinger Website Builder it’s much more complicated and you have to go in and edit CNAME information. It’s not something that is incredibly difficult but it goes against the concept of simplicity that Zyro (and now Hostinger Website Builder) had originally marketed itself around.

Honestly, it makes very little sense to be so complicated about it, so hopefully this will be rectified in the future.

However, if you purchase your web hosting service and domain name through Hostinger, then Hostinger Website Builder is an easy and natural extension of that process.

Bugginess Exists

You may experience the odd bug here and there. It’s nothing deal breaking, and mostly fixes itself if you resend or refresh the action you were taking.

Thankfully there aren’t any real deal-breaking bugs here, and considering how frequently Hostinger updates their services, these bugs and issues tend to evaporate away really quickly, which is excellent.

With more features and coming in cheaper than Zyro’s previous options, Hostinger Website Builder comes with a free domain name for your first year and web hosting, all at $2.99 USD per month with a 1-year contract minimum.

Renewal costs are $8.99, $7.99, and $6.99 USD per month depending on if you purchased a 1-year, 2-year, or 3-year contract, respectively.

The Hostinger web hosting plan included is the Premium Web Hosting option which comes with :

• 100 GB SSD storage
• Unmetered traffic
• 99.9% Uptime guarantee
• 100 websites
• Unlimited Free SSL Certifications
• Weekly Backups
• Malware Scanner
• Cloudflare protected Nameservers

The only other option is to purchase it per month which will cost you $11.99 USD with an initial $4.99 Setup Fee. 

You get some great app integration such as messenger live chat as well as things like Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics. 

Included are also all of the ‘eCommerce’ and business related tools. These are great if you have an online store or want an online storefront.

You get things like discount coupons, email notifications, shipping and tax management (which is so useful), and of course having your store be commission free, which means no commission to Hostinger. You also get the abandoned cart recovery and the ability to have your site in multiple languages.

When you add to that the ability to have your shop on Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon, then you really get yourself a good deal.

As you can see, Hostinger Website Builder (formerly Zyro) has some interesting features and options, which is a must for a newcomer to the scene. More importantly, it markets itself as a website builder made for people who don’t know the first thing about website building.

We actually appreciate that approach since not everybody is tech savvy, and therefore gives website access to those who might not necessarily be able to build one otherwise.

Of course, the downside is you give up a lot of customization, but putting some rails around what you can do means you aren’t constantly falling off the edge.

In terms of pricing, the cost has been reduced significantly recently, while not losing any value and even upgrading some of their features.

All in all, Hostinger Website Builder is at the front with the rest of the pack, and will certainly be a website builder we’ll keep an eye on!