Hostinger Explained: Domains, Hosting Plans and Getting a Site Online

Nearly every first website starts with the same two confusions: people think a domain and hosting are one purchase, and they pick a plan by looking only at the price on the front page. Both cost money later. Here is the short version of what you are actually buying, and how to choose without regretting it at renewal.

A domain and hosting are two different things

A domain is the address — ezgihocaoglu.com. You rent it yearly from a registrar, and while you keep paying it is yours. It contains no files.

Hosting is the computer your files live on. When someone types your domain, DNS points them at that computer, and it hands back your pages. You can buy the two from different companies; buying them in one place is simply less wiring to do yourself.

Hostinger is both: a registrar and a hosting provider, with its own control panel called hPanel instead of the older cPanel. Shared hosting, cloud hosting, VPS and managed WordPress all sit behind the same account.

Registering a domain without the renewal surprise

Keep it short and typeable. If you have to spell it out loud on a call, it is the wrong name.
Extension matters less than people think. .com is still the default; .dev, .co and country extensions are fine. For .com.tr be ready to send documents.
Look at the renewal price, not the first-year price. This is where most of the money is. A first year that looks almost free can renew at several times that, and the renewal is the price you will pay for years.
Turn on WHOIS privacy. Otherwise your name, address and phone number are in a public database within hours of registering.
Turn on auto-renew. A domain that lapses can be picked up by someone else, and buying it back is not cheap.

Which plan do you actually need?

Match the plan to what your site is, not to what you hope it becomes:

Shared hosting — a static site, a portfolio, a WordPress blog, a small company site. Your site shares a server with others, which is why it is cheap, and it is perfectly fine at this size.
Cloud hosting — the same simplicity with more dedicated resources. Worth it when a WordPress site with real traffic starts slowing down.
VPS — you get a machine and root access. Choose it when you need Node.js, your own database, a queue, Docker — anything shared hosting will not run.

Before paying, check these, because they are annoying to discover later:

Free SSL certificate, and automatic renewal of it
Automatic backups, and how far back they go
Current PHP version, and whether you can switch it yourself
SSH or Git access if you plan to deploy from a repository
Email accounts on your domain — sometimes separate, sometimes included
Data centre location: pick the one closest to your visitors. For a Turkish audience, a European location is a real difference in load time, not a detail.

Buy the shortest term you are comfortable with until you have used the panel for a week. Multi-year deals are cheaper per month, but only if you stay.

Getting the site online

For a static site the whole deployment is copying files. Build the site, then upload the contents of your output folder into public_html — not the folder itself, or every address ends up with an extra segment in it:

public_html/
  index.html
  about.html
  assets/
    css/ js/ img/
  robots.txt
  sitemap.xml

Then point the domain at the hosting. If both are in the same account it is usually already done; if the domain is elsewhere, change its nameservers to the ones your host gives you and wait — DNS changes propagate in minutes to a few hours, not instantly.

After that, three small things that are easy to forget:

Force HTTPS, so http:// redirects to https://
Decide between www and no www and redirect the other one, so search engines see one site
Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console

Deploying automatically instead of by hand

Uploading by FTP every time gets old quickly. If your code is on GitHub, a small workflow can build the site and push the output to public_html on every commit:

- run: npm ci
- run: npm run build

- uses: SamKirkland/FTP-Deploy-Action@v4.3.5
  with:
    server: ${{ secrets.FTP_SERVER }}
    username: ${{ secrets.FTP_USERNAME }}
    password: ${{ secrets.FTP_PASSWORD }}
    local-dir: ./dist/
    server-dir: ./public_html/

Your FTP credentials come from the hosting panel and go into the repository's secrets, never into the code.

If you are buying: use the discount link

Hostinger campaign Discount

If this guide is what you needed and you are about to set up hosting, my referral link applies an extra discount on top of the campaign Hostinger is running — on domains and hosting plans alike.

See discounted plans

Referral link: if you buy through it I may receive a commission, and it costs you nothing extra — the discount is on your side. The current rate and campaign are whatever Hostinger shows on the page, so check the renewal price there before you pay.

A checklist before you pay

Do I know the renewal price, not just the first-year price?
Is the plan matched to what the site needs today?
SSL, backups and the PHP version — all confirmed?
Is the data centre close to my visitors?
Is WHOIS privacy on and auto-renew enabled?

Five minutes of checking here saves the "why did my hosting bill triple?" message a year from now.

Ezgi Hocaoğlu 👋

Currently on repeat

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