Best for: cost-conscious small businesses that still need room to grow.
Avoid if: you want premium support without paying premium renewals.
Biggest tradeoff: Hostinger is cheaper at scale, SiteGround is steadier on hands-on support and mature managed tooling.
Method scope and limits (checked February 16, 2026): I compared standard shared/business hosting offers shown on official pricing pages for US-facing plans. I excluded reseller/VPS add-ons and short-term promo codes, because most small businesses buy core plans and keep them beyond year one.
Head-to-Head: Tool A vs Tool B
| Decision factor | Hostinger | SiteGround | What It Means in Practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry promo price | Premium: $1.99/mo (48 months) | StartUp: $2.99/mo (12 months) | Both are low upfront, but Hostinger’s headline deal requires a longer commitment. |
| Renewal price | Premium renews at $10.99/mo; Business at $16.99/mo | StartUp renews at $17.99/mo; GrowBig at $29.99/mo | Renewal is where budgets get tested; SiteGround jumps harder after year one. |
| Website allowance | Premium: up to 3 sites; Business: up to 50 | StartUp: 1 site; GrowBig/GoGeek: unlimited | Multi-site businesses hit SiteGround’s pricier tier sooner. |
| Storage | Premium 20 GB SSD; Business 50 GB NVMe | StartUp 10 GB; GrowBig 20 GB; GoGeek 40 GB | Hostinger gives more space per dollar on mid tiers. |
| Traffic guidance | Hostinger does not publish visit caps on core plans | SiteGround shows ~10k/~100k/~400k visits by tier | SiteGround gives a clearer planning signal before traffic pain starts. |
| Backups | Weekly on Premium, daily + on-demand on Business | Daily backups across shared plans; on-demand on higher tiers | Stores and booking sites should lean daily backups minimum. |
| Support | 24/7 chat/email; claims sub-3-minute resolution | 24/7 phone/chat/ticket; priority support on upper tiers | If you need phone escalation, SiteGround is stronger. |
| Dev/control tools | hPanel, WP management, CDN on higher plans, Node.js apps on Business+ | Site Tools, staging, Git on higher tiers, SSH/SFTP, strong WP stack | Agencies and dev-heavy teams usually get faster workflows on SiteGround. |
| Uptime positioning | 99.9% guarantee language across service pages/legal docs | 99.9% on shared pages, 99.99% on cloud messaging | For basic SMB sites, both are acceptable; mission-critical apps should validate SLA terms directly. |
Small-business reality: the first invoice is rarely the hard part. Renewal plus migration friction is. That is why Hostinger wins many budget-first decisions, while SiteGround tends to win when support quality and operational polish matter more than raw monthly cost.
Pricing Breakdown
Below are the published prices I used, with source pages and check date.
| Provider | Tier | Intro price | Renewal price | Term required for intro | Source | Date checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger | Premium | $1.99/mo | $10.99/mo | 48 months | https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting | 2026-02-16 |
| Hostinger | Business | $2.99/mo | $16.99/mo | 48 months | https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting | 2026-02-16 |
| Hostinger | Cloud Startup | $6.99/mo | $25.99/mo | 48 months | https://www.hostinger.com/web-hosting | 2026-02-16 |
| SiteGround | StartUp | $2.99/mo | $17.99/mo | 12 months | https://www.siteground.com/features/Vanilla-hosting.htm | 2026-02-16 |
| SiteGround | GrowBig | $4.99/mo | $29.99/mo | 12 months | https://www.siteground.com/features/Vanilla-hosting.htm | 2026-02-16 |
| SiteGround | GoGeek | $7.99/mo | $44.99/mo | 12 months | https://www.siteground.com/features/Vanilla-hosting.htm | 2026-02-16 |
Cost implications by business stage
For a new small business running one brochure site, both look cheap at checkout. Over time, the difference widens:
- Hostinger Premium renewal is $10.99/mo versus SiteGround StartUp at $17.99/mo.
- On growth tiers, Hostinger Business at $16.99/mo undercuts SiteGround GrowBig at $29.99/mo by a wide margin.
- If you expect multiple sites, Hostinger’s website allowance per dollar is usually better before you hit cloud-level needs.
Plain-English impact: if you optimize for total 2-4 year spend, Hostinger is easier on cash flow. If your team values phone support and mature managed tooling enough to pay more every renewal cycle, SiteGround can still be the better buy.
One warning: both providers anchor offers to long prepay windows. Cheap monthly math can hide a larger upfront charge.
Where Each Tool Pulls Ahead
Performance
SiteGround publishes practical visit guidance by plan (~10,000, ~100,000, ~400,000), which helps capacity planning earlier. Hostinger pushes stronger storage/value ratios and includes NVMe on Business, but does not provide the same clear traffic bands on shared pages.
Implication: for owners who want a visible “when to upgrade” line, SiteGround is easier to forecast. For teams squeezing cost per resource, Hostinger gives more headroom per dollar.
Support
Hostinger advertises 24/7 support with fast response claims, mainly chat and email. SiteGround offers 24/7 phone, chat, and ticket support, with priority support on higher plans.
Implication: if downtime stress rises when chat queues grow, SiteGround’s support stack is safer. If your team is comfortable with chat-first workflows, Hostinger remains practical and cheaper.
Control panel and dev tools
Hostinger’s hPanel is beginner-friendly and now includes more automation and AI assistance. SiteGround’s Site Tools, staging availability, and Git on higher tiers are still better aligned with agency and developer workflows.
Implication: solo founders and first-time operators move faster on Hostinger at lower cost. Teams shipping staging-to-production changes frequently will usually spend less engineering time on SiteGround.
Scalability
Hostinger’s ladder from Premium to Business to Cloud Startup is price-aggressive, and cloud plans publish concrete CPU/RAM/storage specs. SiteGround’s shared-to-cloud path is operationally solid, with strong messaging around autoscaling and uptime on cloud tiers, but at meaningfully higher spend.
Implication: if growth is likely but margins are tight, Hostinger gives a cheaper ramp. If your revenue depends on support response quality and managed reliability posture, SiteGround’s premium can be justified.
Use-case winners
- Pick Hostinger for local service businesses, early SaaS marketing sites, and small ecommerce stores that need low long-term hosting cost.
- Pick SiteGround for agencies, client-heavy WordPress operations, and owners who want phone support when things break.
- Tie-breaker rule: if renewal cost difference over 24 months is larger than one day of your team’s downtime cost, buy the better support option. Otherwise, buy the cheaper platform.
The Verdict
Hostinger is the better default for most small businesses in 2026 because renewal pricing stays lower while features remain sufficient for common workloads. SiteGround is still excellent, but it asks you to pay a support and tooling premium from year two onward.
Ranked recommendation by user type
- Most small businesses: Hostinger Business
- First-time site owners on tight budget: Hostinger Premium
- Agencies and support-sensitive operators: SiteGround GrowBig or GoGeek
- Higher-risk revenue sites needing premium handling: SiteGround (or move straight to managed cloud tiers)
Switch trigger: move hosts when renewal plus add-ons exceeds your current plan’s value by 30%+, or when your team opens two or more urgent support tickets per month tied to performance or deployment friction.