Hostinger vs Wix: best web builder for small businesses

Our research shows that against almost every metric, Wix is a better choice of web builder than Hostinger. According to our latest testing, Wix is the best all-round website builder for small businesses, owed to its high overall ranking and extensive list of website features.

However, we think Hostinger is the more affordable website builder for startups and budget-conscious SMEs, thanks to its many deals and discounts. For example, our readers can now get up to a 81% discount on Hostinger annual plans and get online from just £2.33/month with the discount code STARTUPS. Additionally, users will get a free domain and 3 months for free.

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	BEST OVERALL FOR SMALL BUSINESS
Hostinger	Wix
Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.9	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8
Price £2.59-£3.79 per month Up to 81% discounted with code “STARTUPS”	Price £9-£119 per month £8.10-£107.10 with code “TAKE10”
Free trial	Free trial
Get Hostinger	Try Wix

Based on our expert scoring alone, we’d have to say Wix is the better choice for SMEs with a little more flexibility in their budget. The platform ranks top of our list with a first-class score of 4.8 out of 5. That’s an entire mark above Hostinger’s still-admirable 3.8 out of 5.

But break down those scores, and you’ll begin to see the benefits and drawbacks to each platform. For example, Hostinger is considerably more affordable than Wix. It offers a basic version of the latter’s extensive, but complex, features list. But will Hostinger still give you enough tools to design your dream company website? Which is the better solution based on your specific business needs?

Using our more than 20 years’ experience of working with small businesses, we’ve pulled together the below guide to answer these questions and more. We’ll give you an overview of the pros, cons, and costs of both Hostinger and Wix.

We’ll pit old blood against new as we help you in your search to find the best small business website builder for UK SMEs.

Want to save time? We’ve come up with a snapshot view of our top picks for small business website builders. It’s completely free and based on our own expert research – which is why you won’t find Hostinger there, because it’s our fifth best. Read on to find out more about Hostinger vs Wix.

Hostinger Website Builder

3.9

This affordable website builder makes building simple with its suite of AI tools.

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• Free trial 30-day
• Price from £2.59

• Affordable deals for beginners
• The drag-and-drop editor is very easy to use
• A growing suite of AI features

Summary Hostinger is a simple and low-cost website builder, offering affordable plans and introductory deals for new businesses. However, its features aren’t as sophisticated as rival website builders’, and it lacks basic functionalities like email marketing. That said, its design options are impressive and its suite of AI tools makes building a website quick and easy.

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Wix

4.8

Number one website builder for features, design, and support.

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Full review of Wix

• Free plan Yes
• Price from £9 per month

• Good balance of usability and complex features
• Customisable 'drag-and-drop' templates
• 24/7 customer support is available

Summary Wix has undoubtedly earned its place as our best website builder, offering an unparalleled list of features and wide-ranging payment options for small businesses. Because of this, Wix is an excellent choice for a variety of users, whether you’re new to website building or a seasoned expert looking for endless customisability.

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Industry leader Wix is our top website builder for SMEs, and we think it is the best all-round option for small business users. In 2020 alone Wix added 31 million users, and there’s a reason it keeps drawing in new customers: it came out on top in half of the performance categories we looked at in our research.

Small business owners need a lot of different features when building a website, as you’re likely to be doing all of the work yourself and gaining experience along the way. Wix does have a steeper learning curve than Hostinger, as it is a comparatively more complex platform. However, its thorough knowledge centre and powerful customer support tools mean it can provide expert guidance to steer you through the process.

Costing £11 per month for its lowest-priced business tier (Wix Unlimited), Wix is also competitively priced. However, this is still a higher upfront cost than Hostinger. On average Wix’s four pricing plans cost £10.87, whereas Hostinger costs around £8.24.

We would recommend Wix for any small business, but particularly for small online stores or digital firms conducting their business entirely online.

Read our full review of Wix to learn more about the benefits and drawbacks it offers small businesses.

4.8 out of 5

• Website Features
  4.6
• Design Functionality
  4.2
• Value for Money
  3.7
• Help and Support
  4.5
• Customer Score
  4.0
• User Experience
  3.9

Visit Wix

3.9 out of 5

• Website Features
  2.7
• Design Functionality
  3.9
• Value for Money
  3.6
• Help and Support
  2.7
• Customer Score
  3.5
• User Experience
  4.5

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Hostinger pricing vs. Wix pricing: which is better value for money?

We compared Hostinger’s website builder (£5.99 per month) and Wix Unlimited (£11 per month) to see how many features they each offer, and how high-quality the features are.

Our research found that Wix just pips Hostinger in terms of better value for customers, thanks to its higher overall score in all of our six main research categories. Hostinger might have the lower price but it doesn’t have the features that Wix offers for a reasonable price, making Wix better value.

Hostinger has a huge range of payment structures available, meaning you can find yourself an absolute steal. Currently, our readers can get up to 81% discount on a Hostinger subscription of 12 months or longer, and get online from just £2.33/month with the discount code STARTUPS. This deal also comes with a free domain and 3 months for free.

But, while Wix has a generous five plans to choose from, Hostinger only offers one, which means there’s less opportunity to scale. Its website builder is also ecommerce focussed, which makes it better-suited to small business retailers. Wix also provides a completely free plan, while Hostinger does not (although you’ll have to accept a ‘.wix’ subdomain in your URL if you choose the free option).

Winner: It’s close, but Wix just takes it

Hostinger pricing

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Hostinger Website Builder

Price Single £1.49 per month Premium Hosting £2.59 per month Business £3.99 per month

Free trial?

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Up to 81% off with code "STARTUPS" See Deal

Hostinger Website Builder

Monthly: £11.99

If you choose a longer subscription, anywhere between 12 and 48 months, you’ll only have to pay £2.59 per month for the first term. The subscription then renews at a lower price than the standard month-by-month pricing.

Renewal prices by subscription length:

• 12 months: £7.99 per month
• 24 months: £6.99 per month
• 48 months: £5.99 per month

This platform is good for small businesses. It offers many advanced marketing tools to help you grow your website, such as Google Analytics. It also includes unlimited bandwidth and storage, which means you’ll be able to host thousands of website visitors without breaking a sweat. Users also get blogging tools, 125+ templates, and a free domain.

It also functions as an ecommerce platform, and you’ll be able to sell 500 products on this plan. You’ll also be able to sell on Amazon and Ebay.

Given that unless you choose the 48 months subscription, Hostinger’s renewal price isn’t that much lower than a Wix plan, it doesn’t provide the best value for money in comparison. We think Wix offers the better ecommerce plan if you’re looking to sell lots of products and host a large inventory line.

Are there discounts available?

Hostinger offers plenty of discounts, and it’s unlikely you’ll ever pay full price for a plan. Check their website for available deals.

Wix pricing

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Free plan	Wix Light	Wix Core	Wix Business	Wix Business Elite
Price Free	Price £9 per month £8.10 with code ‘TAKE10’	Price £16 per month £14.40 with code ‘TAKE10’	Price £25 per month £22.50 with code ‘TAKE10’	Price £119 per month £107.10 with code ‘TAKE10’
Features Use and test Wix’s features No obligation to sign up for a paid plan Can move your created website on to a paid plan option seamlessly	Features 2GB storage space Free domain for 1 year Can remove Wix branding	Features Up to 5 collaborators 50GB of storage 24/7 customer care	Features 100GB storage space Free Site Booster app for 1 year Up to 10 collaborators	Features Up to 15 collaborators Unlimited storage space Priority customer care
Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?

Get 10% off with code 'TAKE10' Try Wix Now

Wix Free

Yearly: Free
Monthly: Free

If you choose to download Wix’s freemium version then you really will be spending £0 on a free-forever platform. But you’ll also be lumbered with Wix advertisements and banners on your site, so it’s not something we’d recommend if you need a professional-looking business page.

As a free trial, and a way to get better acquainted with the platform before you make a decision on purchasing, it’s a great way to get started.

Wix Connect Domain

Yearly: £4 per month
Monthly: £6 per month

Costing just £4 per month when billed annually, this plan is the cheapest of Wix’s paid-for tiers. But again, you’ll be stuck with Wix ads and will have storage limitations. You will have 24/7 customer support, but there’s little else to brag about here.

Wix Combo

Yearly: £7.50 per month
Monthly: £10.50 per month

Wix Combo is for small businesses that are just beginning their journey. It offers 10 GB of storage and 2 GB of bandwidth (enough for around 300 visitors a day).

This plan is a solid solution if you’re just looking to gain experience in early-stage website building, or to market your business to online consumers. But there are still some useful website features missing, such as visitor analytics.

Wix Unlimited

Yearly: £11 per month
Monthly: £14 per month

Most commonly used by entrepreneurs and small businesses, Wix Unlimited is both competitively priced and comes with a generous list of elements that allows you to design both a stunning and functional website.

Three of the biggest benefits from Wix Unlimited are unlimited bandwidth, the site booster app (for search engine optimisation so you’ll rank higher in web searches) and the visitor analytics app, which you can use to measure who is visiting your site. All of these will enable you to improve your site’s performance, which is why we think it’s the best choice for growing small businesses.

You’ll also get:

• Your own domain
• An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate for secure data transfers
• No Wix Ads
• 10 GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth
• One hour of video
• Wix vouchers and access to Premium Apps (yearly plans only)

Wix VIP

Yearly: £21 per month
Monthly: £26 per month

At £21 per month, Wix VIP is the most complex Wix plan that can help to build the ultimate business website from scratch. You definitely don’t need the extra tools it provides, but they do have some handy benefits.

For example, you’ll be given VIP, skip-the-queue customer support, 35 GB of storage space, and five video hours. We’d recommend this plan only for SMEs who’ll be hosting large amounts of data or videos, such as training providers.

Are there discounts available?

Wix’s promo codes aren’t as generous as those offered by Hostinger. You’ll still be able to find frequent deals and discounts if you keep an eye out for them on the Wix website, but they won’t make Wix as cheap as Hostinger.

Read more in our dedicated Wix pricing guide.

Best for website features: Wix

There are similarities between Hostinger and Wix when it comes to website features. Both platforms have thorough SEO tools and integrate well with social media. As for additional functionalities, they have nearly identical lists, with both platforms offering special features like logo makers and name generators.

These two software products are also both excellent at website hosting for mobile users – a key consideration in today’s smartphone-first world. In November 2021, over 54% of websites were visited on a mobile device.

Both Hostinger and Wix also performed well in our site speed test, receiving a shared 87 out of 100 in our results to place joint third.

But despite these fairly equal scores, a clear leader emerged in other ways. While we gave Hostinger just 20% for quality of features, Wix’s extensive app market and impressive marketing tools contributed to a huge overall score of 100%.

There’s almost no tool missing from Wix’s arsenal, and unlike other complex website builders, it’s still fully customisable without code. Plus, thanks to recent improvements to its website features – including blogging tool updates and more international options – our most recent research has seen its feature score jump up by 18%.

In contrast, Hostinger’s feature list reads more like a list of things you can’t do. Its lower price point means that unlike Wix, you can’t have a customer login, or password protected pages. You can’t archive or schedule posts, or have comments on blog pages. There’s also no app market, which means you won’t be able to get any of these tools through third-party plugins or extensions.

According to our research, the only features area where Hostinger significantly outperforms Wix is storage capacity – you’ll need to pay almost £10 more for unlimited storage with the latter. 

Winner: Wix, by a long mile

Best for design flexibility: Wix

Brand, UX and design

Thanks to its recent updates, Wix has skyrocketed up our rankings, increasing its design score by 10%. Hostinger scored similarly well.

In terms of typography and colours, our user feedback showed that every element across both website builders was clear and consistent. This is valuable from a branding perspective.

The Wix editing interface

Design flexibility

Because it’s the more complex platform, Wix outperforms Hostinger when it comes to design flexibility. You can do pretty much anything you want to your pages, including changing colours and image sizes, swapping out images, and adding new social posts. Unlike with Hostinger, you can also make use of clipart and stock imagery.

Hostinger offers very little in terms of customisation. As its templates are aesthetically pleasing and well designed, this shouldn’t matter too much – but it could be frustrating in future if you want to rebrand or drastically alter your site. Still, Hostinger does allow you to swap out templates, unlike Wix.

We have to score Hostinger slightly lower than Wix in this category due to these limitations, and also due to the number of templates available (over 100 versus over 500, respectively), but both platforms do well to make attractive options.

Mobile editor

It’s rare to see one website builder that’s advanced enough to let you edit your website from your mobile – but both Wix and Hostinger support this function. Both platforms will let you host your website from either desktop or mobile, and you can also edit from the comfort of your own phone.

Still, if you’re editing with either Wix or Hostinger, any changes you make on your mobile will automatically be updated on the desktop, meaning you won’t get to preview the desktop view before approving changes – a minor drawback in this otherwise high-scoring round.

Overall winner: Wix

Best for help and support

Wix and Hostinger offer similar levels of help and support. If you have an issue or question to raise you can contact both platforms’ sales teams via live chat and over social media. Hostinger doesn’t have a phone support function, but it does allow you to contact its sales team via email, whereas Wix offers the reverse.

For help online, there is a community forum and a knowledge centre available with each platform. Wix’s knowledge centre is slightly easier to navigate than Hostinger’s, but it also has fewer pages, so you’re more likely to require a specialist to talk you through any problems you encounter.

It’s a tough one to call, but we think Wix’s restore tools mean it pips Hostinger over the line. Depending on your payment plan, you’ll be able to access both an autosave feature and a restore option (unlike with Hostinger) which means you won’t face the risk of crashing your website if you do run into trouble.

Winner: Wix

Best for customer score: Wix

Understandably, in terms of brand recognition, Wix came out on top as the industry leader for the website builder market. However, on popular customer comparison websites such as Trustpilot, it was Hostinger (called Zyro at the time of our research) that received the higher praise with an impressive 4.3 out of 5.

However, this is likely down to Wix’s much larger customer base (over 4.5 million downloads compared to Hostinger’s, which was at the time of this data collection called Zyro, 11,000). 84% of our testers said they would recommend Wix to a friend, compared to 82% for Hostinger.

Winner: Wix by a small margin

Best for ease of use: Wix

For getting your website up and running quickly, Hostinger wins. Its simple drag-and-drop interface means even complete website builder novices will be able to get stuck in and start adding elements within minutes.

The Hostinger editor

Wix’s interface is a little more intuitive than Hostinger’s. You can add content blocks to the former, while the latter requires you to add pages, which makes for a difficult layout to navigate.

At first glance, Wix’s longer list of features can be overwhelming for newcomers. However, once you’ve gotten past the early learning stages, its smarter interface makes it easier to grasp than Hostinger. As a result, 88% of our testers said they found Wix easy to use, compared to 82% of Hostinger testers.

Winner: Another tight round that’s narrowly won by Wix

What are some good alternatives to Hostinger and Wix?

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Wix	Hostinger	Squarespace	Shopify	GoDaddy	Weebly
Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.9	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.7	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.4	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.5	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.7
Free plan	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan
Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial
Cheapest paid plan Light – £9 per month	Cheapest paid plan £11.99 £2.49/month for first term on a 48-months subscription Renews at £12.99 £5.99/month	Cheapest paid plan Personal – £12 per month 10% off with code SU10	Cheapest paid plan Starter – £5 per month	Cheapest paid plan Basic – £7.99 per month	Cheapest paid plan Connect – £4 per month
Try Wix	Get Hostinger	Try Squarespace	Try Shopify	Try GoDaddy	Try Weebly

As you can see from the table above, Hostinger is the most affordable website builder amongst the top software solutions we surveyed, with all of its pricing plans costing less than any other competitors.

Wix costs more than Hostinger but it is still priced competitively, comparing well to rival Squarespace.

Final verdict

We’ll put it simply: if you’re an established business based largely online, and have experience using web builder software, choose Wix. Its admirable app market and stunning design features make it a winning choice for SMEs that want the flexibility to design their perfect online presence. Plus, it has a generous free plan for you to try the platform out before you buy.

But if you’re a small business owner who’s new to the online world, or looking to save on both time and money, then Hostinger is your best choice. It’s beginner friendly, affordable, and comes with great help and support tools to get you up and running quickly. Dropshippers, or those that want to sell a lot of online products, might struggle with Hostinger. But for those whose business has a physical base, such as a coffee shop, it’s a great platform to launch a low-maintenance website from.

Hostinger vs. Wix FAQs

Is Hostinger a good website builder?

Overall, Hostinger is an easy-to-use, simple drag-and-drop website builder. It has fewer design features than most of its rivals, but this can be a positive or a negative depending on what you’re looking for.

Through this platform, setting up your own website becomes less time consuming and more affordable – meaning it’s a good website builder for beginners or budget-conscious SMEs. Plus, as it’s relatively new to the market, we expect exciting things from Hostinger in the future.

Is Hostinger better than Wix?

Wix outscored Hostinger in every web builder category we marked it on. Hostinger is more affordable than Wix, and its age means it’s definitely one to keep an eye on, but the latter is the clear winner in terms of quality of features versus price.

Is Wix’s free version good?

Wix’s free plan is generous in the context of the web builder market, as most platforms tend not to offer a freemium version. In terms of what it gives users, it’s definitely not suitable for small businesses as it has significant drawbacks in storage limits and unavoidable Wix advertisements.

We’d recommend it for users wanting to test out the platform before coming to a decision on purchasing.

Is Hostinger better for small businesses?

Hostinger’s simplified user experience and lower payment tiers mean it is aimed at SMEs, both digitally or physically based, that are just starting out and need an online presence quickly and cheaply.

In terms of value for money, we think Wix offers more, and it’s a good idea to upgrade to the latter as soon as your business is able. But specifically for early-stage growth, or those small business owners who are working with stricter budgets, we would recommend Hostinger over Wix.