IONOS vs Hostinger: Which One Is Cheaper After Year One?
IONOS advertises shared hosting at $1.00/mo. Hostinger advertises it at $2.99/mo. Going by those two numbers, IONOS is three times cheaper and the article ends here.
It doesn't, because those two prices are not the same kind of price. IONOS gives you $1/mo for twelve months. Hostinger gives you $2.99/mo for forty-eight. Once you line the terms up, the host with the bigger sticker price is the one that costs less.
We have tracked both providers' prices every night since 12 February 2026, so this comparison uses what the plans actually cost across six months of readings, not what a press release says. Every figure below is dated and checkable against the live profiles for IONOS and Hostinger.
The headline prices, side by side
Both hosts run a discount-then-renew model. The gap is in how long the discount lasts.
| Plan | Intro price | Discount covers | Renews at | Storage | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS Plus | $1.00/mo | 12 months | $14.00/mo | 350 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| IONOS Essential | $4.00/mo | 12 months | $8.00/mo | 100 GB NVMe | 1 |
| IONOS Starter | $6.00/mo | 12 months | $10.00/mo | 200 GB NVMe | 10 |
| IONOS Ultimate | $10.00/mo | 12 months | $18.00/mo | 500 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Hostinger Premium | $2.99/mo | 48 months | $10.99/mo | 20 GB SSD | 3 |
| Hostinger Unlimited | $3.99/mo | 48 months | $16.99/mo | 50 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Hostinger Cloud Startup | $7.99/mo | 48 months | $25.99/mo | 100 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
Read the renewal column on its own and IONOS looks brutal. A $1 plan that renews at $14 is a 14x jump, and it is the single most quoted complaint about the company. Hostinger's $2.99 to $10.99 is a mere 3.7x by comparison.
The multiple is the wrong number to fixate on. What matters is the third column.
Four years of hosting, in dollars
Here is what each plan costs over a 48-month window, which is how long Hostinger's cheapest term runs. IONOS bills in 12-month blocks, so its plans renew three times inside that window.
| Plan | Year 1 | Years 2 to 4 | 48-month total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger Premium | $2.99/mo, locked for the full term | $143.52 | |
| Hostinger Unlimited | $3.99/mo, locked for the full term | $191.52 | |
| IONOS Essential | $48.00 | $288.00 | $336.00 |
| IONOS Starter | $72.00 | $360.00 | $432.00 |
| IONOS Plus | $12.00 | $504.00 | $516.00 |
| IONOS Ultimate | $120.00 | $648.00 | $768.00 |
IONOS Plus, the $1 plan, is the second most expensive option on that list. Over four years it costs $516 against $191.52 for a Hostinger plan with the same unlimited-sites promise. That is 2.7x more money for the plan that looked 4x cheaper on the pricing page.
There is a real catch on the Hostinger side and it is not a small one. That $143.52 comes out of your card on day one, in a single charge, for four years of a service you have not tested yet. IONOS asks for $12. If you are launching something you might abandon by spring, paying $12 to find out is the smarter bet, and the 30-day money-back window both hosts offer does not change the arithmetic much.
So the honest split is this. Hostinger is cheaper if you already know you are staying. IONOS is cheaper if you don't. Run your own term through the true cost calculator if your renewal date falls somewhere odd.
What our price tracking caught since February
Six months of nightly readings turn up things neither host puts in a blog post.
Hostinger raised every VPS price 30% in March and never rolled it back
On 3 March 2026 the entire KVM line moved up at once, and it has held at the new level every night since, through 21 August.
| Plan | Before 3 Mar 2026 | Since 3 Mar 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| KVM 1 | $4.99/mo | $6.49/mo | +30% |
| KVM 2 | $6.99/mo | $8.99/mo | +29% |
| KVM 4 | $9.99/mo | $12.99/mo | +30% |
| KVM 8 | $19.99/mo | $25.99/mo | +30% |
The renewal prices moved first, on 27 February, a few days ahead of the intro prices. KVM 1 went from $9.99 to $11.99 at renewal, KVM 2 from $12.99 to $14.99, KVM 4 from $24.99 to $28.99. If you signed up in January 2026 you are still on the old rate until your term ends. Everyone after March pays the new one.
IONOS quietly relaunched its VPS line in June with much higher renewals
This is the sharper finding. IONOS's old VPS plans stopped appearing in our readings on 18 June 2026. Two days later a new "+" line showed up, billed yearly instead of on a three-year term. The intro prices went down. The renewals went up hard.
| Old plan (until 18 Jun) | New plan (from 20 Jun) | Intro | Renewal | vCores |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS M | VPS M+ | $4 to $4 | $8 to $11 (+38%) | 2 to 4 |
| VPS L | VPS L+ | $8 to $6 | $15 to $21 (+40%) | 4 to 6 |
| VPS XL | VPS XL+ | $14 to $11 | $30 to $44 (+47%) | 8 (unchanged) |
| VPS XXL | VPS XXL+ | $22 to $18 | $50 to $68 (+36%) | 12 (unchanged) |
The M+ and L+ tiers got extra cores for the money, so part of that increase buys something. XL+ and XXL+ did not. Same cores, same RAM, same storage, and a renewal that is $14 to $18 a month higher. On the XL tier that is $168 a year extra for an identical machine, effective from June 2026.
A shopper comparing IONOS VPS prices to a review written in May would be looking at numbers that no longer exist.
IONOS shared hosting has not moved a cent in six months
Plus at $1/$14, Essential at $4/$8, Starter at $6/$10, Ultimate at $10/$18. Same on 12 February, same on 21 August, and on every night in between. The WordPress plans are identical in that respect. Flat is not exciting, but it is worth knowing that the price you see on the IONOS shared pages has been stable long enough to plan around.
Hostinger runs small promo dips on the shared line
The Unlimited plan slipped from $3.99 to $3.79 on 13 July and stayed there for about a month, back to $3.99 by 18 August. Twenty cents is not a reason to wait, but it does tell you the shared prices flex a little while the VPS prices sit still. The renewal price never moved during the dip, which is the usual pattern: discounts touch year one, never year two.
WordPress plans
Both hosts sell WordPress hosting that is shared hosting with a different label on the box. The specs give that away.
| Plan | Intro | Renewal | Storage | Sites | CPU / RAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS Grow | $1.00/mo | $12.00/mo | 50 GB SSD | 1 | Not published |
| IONOS Start | $5.00/mo | $8.00/mo | 25 GB SSD | 1 | Not published |
| IONOS Boost | $12.00/mo | $17.00/mo | 75 GB SSD | 1 | Not published |
| Hostinger Premium | $2.99/mo | $10.99/mo | 20 GB SSD | 3 | 1 core / 2 GB |
| Hostinger Unlimited | $3.99/mo | $16.99/mo | 50 GB NVMe | Unlimited | 2 cores / 3 GB |
| Hostinger Cloud Startup | $7.99/mo | $25.99/mo | 100 GB NVMe | Unlimited | 4 cores / 4 GB |
Look at the IONOS rows again. Grow is the cheapest to start and the second most expensive to keep. Start costs five times more in year one and $4/mo less every year after that. Anyone planning to run the site past twelve months should be on Start, which nobody does, because the $1 badge is what the pricing page shouts.
IONOS also publishes no CPU or RAM figures for its WordPress tiers, which is a small tell. Hostinger tells you it is one core and 2 GB on Premium. That is not generous, but you can at least size against it.
One more thing worth flagging: Hostinger's much-advertised $1.99 entry price is not a hosting plan at all. It is the Starter tier of the website builder, and it renews at $10.99.
VPS, where the ranking flips
On shared hosting Hostinger wins on four-year cost. On VPS the picture is less tidy, because IONOS gives you noticeably more hardware per dollar at the entry tier.
| Plan | Intro | Renewal | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS VPS M+ | $4.00/mo | $11.00/mo | 4 | 4 GB | 120 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Hostinger KVM 1 | $6.49/mo | $11.99/mo | 1 | 4 GB | 50 GB NVMe | 4 TB |
| IONOS VPS L+ | $6.00/mo | $21.00/mo | 6 | 8 GB | 240 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Hostinger KVM 2 | $8.99/mo | $14.99/mo | 2 | 8 GB | 100 GB NVMe | 8 TB |
| IONOS VPS XL+ | $11.00/mo | $44.00/mo | 8 | 16 GB | 480 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Hostinger KVM 4 | $12.99/mo | $28.99/mo | 4 | 16 GB | 200 GB NVMe | 16 TB |
| IONOS VPS XXL+ | $18.00/mo | $68.00/mo | 12 | 24 GB | 720 GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Hostinger KVM 8 | $25.99/mo | $49.99/mo | 8 | 32 GB | 400 GB NVMe | 32 TB |
IONOS VPS M+ is the best entry VPS on this page and it is not close. Four vCores, 4 GB and 120 GB of NVMe for $4/mo, renewing at $11. Hostinger's KVM 1 renews at $11.99 for one core and 50 GB. If you want a small box for a side project, staging, or a self-hosted tool, M+ wins at both the intro price and the renewal.
Above that tier it inverts. At 8 GB you pay $21/mo on IONOS L+ against $14.99 on Hostinger KVM 2. At 16 GB it is $44 against $28.99. The June repricing is exactly why: those renewals went up 40% and 47% while Hostinger's have sat still since March. If you expect to keep a mid-size VPS for years, Hostinger is the cheaper landlord.
Traffic policy differs too. IONOS says unlimited across the VPS line, Hostinger meters it at 4 TB to 32 TB depending on tier. Most projects never come near either limit, though "unlimited" always deserves the reading we gave it in what unlimited hosting really means.
The parts that aren't price
IONOS is a German company with European data centre infrastructure, which matters if your users or your lawyers care where the data sits. It also has 24/7 phone support, an increasingly rare thing at this price level, and a 99.99% uptime guarantee against Hostinger's 99.9%. Free domain and wildcard SSL come with every plan.
The trade is the control panel. IONOS runs its own, it is cluttered, and the checkout tries to sell you things at every step. People who have used cPanel for a decade tend to find it aggravating.
Hostinger's hPanel is the better interface by a wide margin, genuinely built for people who have never touched a server. LiteSpeed and NVMe storage across the shared line, a decent AI site builder, Cloudflare-protected nameservers by default. The gaps are phone support, which does not exist, and free domains, which are tied to specific tiers rather than granted across the board.
Neither host is the one to pick purely on European compliance grounds. If that is the driver, the options in our European GDPR hosting alternatives piece are a better starting point, though IONOS is the closer of these two by a distance.
Which one I would actually buy
A first WordPress site you intend to keep. Hostinger Premium at $2.99/mo. Locking $143.52 for four years hurts once and then stops hurting. The same four years on IONOS Plus costs $516.
A site you are not sure about. IONOS Plus at $1/mo. Twelve dollars buys you a year to find out, with 350 GB and unlimited sites while you decide. Set a calendar reminder for month eleven, because $14/mo arrives without asking.
A WordPress site staying past year one, on IONOS. Take Start over Grow. It costs more up front and $48/year less from year two onward.
A small VPS. IONOS VPS M+. Four cores and 120 GB for $4/mo, $11 on renewal, and Hostinger has nothing at that price with that spec.
A VPS with 8 GB or more, long term. Hostinger KVM 2 or KVM 4. IONOS's June repricing made the upper tiers expensive to keep, even after the March hike on Hostinger's side.
Full plan-by-plan numbers sit on the Hostinger vs IONOS comparison page, and both profiles carry the price history charts the tables above are drawn from. If you are weighing these two against the wider budget field, cheap hosting and shared hosting list what else is at this price, and monthly vs annual vs 3-year plans goes deeper on the term-length trap that decides this whole matchup.
All prices tracked nightly and current as of 21 August 2026. Both hosts bill in USD.
