Hostinger

Hostinger is a web hosting company. Established in 2004, the company is headquartered in Lithuania. The company has over 1,000 employees.[2]

History

Hostinger was founded in Kaunas in 2004 as Hosting Media.[3] In 2007, Hosting Media's paid hosting offer was joined by a free web hosting service when the company founded 000webhost.[4] 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, US, and the United Kingdom. In 2011, Arnas Stuopelis joined the company as CEO.[5] In the same year Hosting Media rebranded to Hostinger.[6] In 2013, Hostinger launched its subsidiary Niagahoster in Indonesia. [7] 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.[8]

In 2023, Hostinger launched the AI Website Builder, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to generate a custom site from scratch.[9] In 2023, Daugirdas Jankus became Hostinger CEO. Arnas Stuopelis continues as Chairman of the Board.[10] In 2024, 000webhost, a free web hosting brand powered by Hostinger, shut down its operations.[11][12]

In 2021, private equity company ConHostinger acquired an approximately 31% controlling stake in Hostinger with the stated 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[17] 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, Google Workspace,[18] domain registration and transfer, AI logo maker[19] and a website builder.

Hostinger has ten data centers in eight countries: Brazil (São Paulo), Indonesia (Jakarta), India (Mumbai), Lithuania (Vilnius), the Netherlands (Amsterdam), Singapore (Singapore), the United Kingdom (London), and the United States (Dallas).[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]

On blog Review Signal in 2017, authors accused Hostinger of manipulating review ratings via reviews by company employees.[25]

In 2019, a data breach happened and according to Hostinger, it affected approximately 14 million customers.[26]

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.[27]

In 2023, the Cybercrime Information Center reported that Hostinger entered the top five phishing hosts as measured by their Phishing Attack Score.[28] By October 2024 Hostinger had dropped to number 10.[29] The Phishing Attack Score takes into account the raw number of phishing attacks relative to the size of the Hosting Network.[30] 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.[31]