Hostinger test data

Each of the three fixed briefs (a ceramics shop, a café and a wedding photographer) was pasted in full into Hostinger's AI onboarding chat. The clock ran from sending the brief to the first draft being live at a public address.

The shop was live in 4 min 16 s, the café in 4 min 20 s and the photographer in 5 min 34 s.

The AI asked guided questions first, even when the brief already answered them: what the site is about (shop, photographer), which features (photographer) and the look (all three). I answered from the brief only and left the style to the AI.

There is no publish step: the draft goes live on a temporary hostingersite.com address as soon as it is generated.

Every page of the three first drafts (25 pages, including the shop's 7 product pages) was checked at 360, 768 and 1440 pixels wide. Faults were counted once per type on each page: horizontal scrolling, low-contrast text (WCAG AA), placeholder text or images, broken images, overlapping elements and tap targets that are too small.

No page scrolled sideways, nothing was left as a placeholder and no image was broken. The designs look polished and fit each business.

Small tap targets were found on all 25 pages. Low-contrast text was found on all 12 shop pages, and one café page had overlapping text: 38 faults in all.

Each brief has 20 checkable facts (prices, address, hours, phone, policies, pages). Each live first draft was read page by page and every fact marked right, missing or wrong. Anything the AI added that was not in the brief was listed as invented.

46 of 60 facts were right: 19 on the shop, 18 on the café and 9 on the photographer site.

The photographer site had an invented address, phone number and email, no prices on its Pricing page, no Elopement package, and delivery times, travel distance and session lengths that contradict the brief.

Invented items: two shop products (a $42 pour-over dripper and a $64 fluted vase), a cortado and a $2 add-on on the café menu, and a café backstory. No fake reviews or testimonials.

The same twelve edits for every builder, done on the café site in Hostinger's drag-and-drop editor: move a section, change the font site-wide, change the colours site-wide, add a page with its menu link, edit the footer, add a form field, replace an image and choose what part shows, change a button's link, duplicate a section, change the phone layout on its own, embed custom code, and rewrite one section with the AI.

All twelve worked without a workaround, and each was checked on the published site.

Changing the site font set much bigger headings and made 16 headings overlap text on 5 pages; fixing that took about 20 minutes (one site-wide setting, then 13 headings by hand).

The AI had linked the café's "Catering Details" button to nothing; I pointed it at the Contact page. The AI rewrite (AI Writer, Change tone) took about 4 seconds and kept every fact.

Lighthouse mobile tests on the home page and one inner page of each live site, three runs each, 18 runs in all.

The median of the 18 runs was 68. Sixteen runs scored 66 to 70; two scored 93 and 94.

The main content appeared after about 5.6 seconds (median) on a simulated phone connection. The shop pages weigh about 5.9 MB, the others 0.7 to 1.1 MB.

• Speed is retested on the live tool pages; this grade uses the 22 October runs.

The twelve points were checked in the published HTML and files of all three sites (25 pages), and in the editor's SEO panel.

Present: a title on every page (only the page name, like "Home"), one H1 on 24 of 25 pages, clean URLs, an automatic sitemap, robots.txt, canonical tags, structured data (WebSite, WebPage and Product) and a per-page "Hide page from search results" switch.

Missing: meta descriptions on the 18 normal pages, image alt text (45 of 177 images), headings in order (14 of 25 pages skip a level), a social preview image, and page redirects (Hostinger's help says AI Builder has none).

Each page has an AI SEO Assistant that writes titles, descriptions and keywords on request; the AI did not use it while building.

• Images are served as AVIF and lazy-loaded; file names are random codes.

Each point was set up in the editor or the store admin (Hostinger Ecommerce) and then tried on a live site.

Our test domain was live with HTTPS about 16 minutes after starting (about 11 minutes after adding one CNAME record). Only one subdomain level is allowed.

A test order of $82 went through checkout with Hostinger's test payment method, and three customer emails followed (confirmation, new-order alert, shipped). Shipping was $0 because the AI had set no shipping rules; I set the brief's $8 flat rate, free over $100, and pickup in about 4 minutes.

Built in: blog with an AI post writer (a 550-word post in 14 seconds, but the template adds six placeholder posts), email marketing (Hostinger Reach), appointments, product options, tax rules, digital downloads and visitor analytics.

• Form messages are saved in the editor; whether the notification email arrived is checked in the owner's inbox.

I looked at every export option in the editor and the store admin.

"Export content to WordPress" copies texts, images, pages, blog posts and media to a WordPress site. It does not take the styling and layout, the online store, integrations, forms and submissions, or SEO settings.

Orders and customers export to CSV; products have no export button. There is no code export.

The same three questions went to each support channel: connecting a domain bought elsewhere, contact-form messages not arriving, and changing the card and switching from monthly to yearly billing.

Hostinger's AI support chat (Agent, inside hPanel) started answering in about a second and finished each answer in under a minute. All three were correct, with exact steps; it also looked up my real subscriptions.

On the domain question it first asked which registrar, then answered in full. A human specialist (Sebastian, hosting) joined the chat about 5 minutes after I asked for one.

Every plan was read on Hostinger's US cart on 22 October 2026, for every billing period. The figure graded is the yearly cost of the cheapest plan that connects your own domain and has no Hostinger badge.

The cheapest plan for that is Premium: $47.88 for the first 12 months ($3.99 a month, paid upfront), then $10.99 a month ($131.88 a year) at renewal.

Selling online on Premium needs the Hostinger Ecommerce add-on: $1 for three months, then $8.99 a month. Unlimited ($4.99 a month for 12 months, then $16.99) includes ecommerce.

Hostinger Ecommerce charges no transaction fee; Stripe and PayPal charge their own.

• Prices change often; the price tracker rechecks them every day.