Let me be upfront: this is not a paid review. I'm the person running MasterPrompting.net, and this is the hosting I actually pay for and use. If you want to support the site, the affiliate link at the bottom lets you get the same plan I'm on — but the honest opinion here is mine regardless.
With that out of the way — here's why I ended up on Hostinger, and why I haven't moved.
The Problem with "Standard" Cloud Providers for Indian Developers
Most hosting content online is written for developers in the US or Europe. The recommendations are always the same: AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, Linode.
These are fine services. But for an Indian developer or founder running a bootstrapped project, they have real problems:
Cost. A t3.medium on AWS (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM) costs around ₹6,000–8,000/month depending on the region. GCP's e2-standard-2 is similar. That's a meaningful monthly expense when you're early-stage.
Billing complexity. AWS bills in USD, meaning you take an exchange rate hit plus the bank's foreign transaction fee on every charge. You also get surprise bills when you misconfigure something.
Latency. AWS Mumbai is the obvious choice for Indian users, but the cheapest instances there are still expensive. Hostinger has its own India (Mumbai) data center that gives comparable latency at a fraction of the price.
Support. AWS support at the free tier is essentially documentation. Getting a human to help you debug a deployment issue is gated behind a paid support plan.
Hostinger solves most of these for a specific kind of developer: someone building a real product, who needs reliable infrastructure, but who doesn't need Kubernetes or auto-scaling or five nines of uptime — yet.
What I'm Running
MasterPrompting.net is a Next.js 16 app with static generation, MDX content, and no database. It's not compute-intensive, but it still needs a real server — Vercel's free tier has limits, and I wanted full control over the deployment.
I'm on the KVM 2 plan running out of Hostinger's India (Mumbai) data center. The plan gives you:
- 2 vCPU cores (dedicated, not shared)
- 8 GB RAM
- 100 GB NVMe SSD
- 8 TB monthly bandwidth
That's a genuine dedicated VM — KVM virtualisation means you're not competing with other tenants for CPU cycles the way you do on cheap shared hosting.
The server runs:
- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
- Node.js 20 + PM2 (process manager)
- Nginx (reverse proxy + SSL termination)
- Certbot (Let's Encrypt SSL, auto-renews)
Total monthly cost: less than one dinner out in Mumbai.
Performance: Honest Numbers
Page speed matters for SEO and user experience. Here's what I see from Indian IPs:
TTFB (Time to First Byte): 15–30ms from Indian IPs to Hostinger's Mumbai datacenter. Genuinely fast — comparable to AWS Mumbai at a fraction of the cost.
Core Web Vitals: LCP under 1.5s, CLS near zero (static pages, no layout shift), INP well within acceptable range. These are more about how the app is built than the hosting, but the server isn't the bottleneck.
Uptime: In the months I've been on the plan, I haven't noticed any unexpected downtime. Hostinger lists 99.9% uptime SLA and in my experience it's held.
The NVMe SSD makes a real difference for read-heavy workloads. Even with SSR pages doing file reads (MDX parsing), the latency is negligible.
Pricing: The Indian Developer Angle
This is where Hostinger genuinely stands out. The KVM 2 plan on a 24-month commitment works out to a fraction of what equivalent AWS or GCP instances cost — billed in INR, no foreign transaction fees, no surprise overage bills.
The bandwidth is also generous. 8 TB/month on KVM 2 is far more than most content sites will ever use. AWS charges per GB of egress after the free tier. That alone can add up fast on a high-traffic site.
One practical note: the 24-month commitment is how you get the best rate. If you're building something you intend to run for more than a few months, it's the right call.
Get the KVM 2 plan (this is my affiliate link — same price, supports MasterPrompting): Hostinger KVM 2 VPS — India
Setup Experience
Hostinger's onboarding for VPS is good compared to other providers at this price point. You get:
- OS selection (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, etc.)
- Data center selection at setup time
- Root SSH access within minutes of payment
- A clean hPanel dashboard that shows resource usage
What you don't get: pre-configured stacks. This is a bare VPS — you SSH in and install what you need. That's a feature if you're comfortable with Linux; it's a friction point if you're not. Their documentation covers common setups (LAMP, Node.js, Docker) well enough.
The control panel (hPanel) is simpler than cPanel or Plesk, which I consider a plus. It does what I need: SSH key management, firewall rules, OS reinstall if I break something badly.
Support Quality
I've contacted Hostinger support maybe four times total. Three were basic ("can you whitelist this IP range on the firewall"), one was a billing question about renewing early at the same rate.
Response time via live chat: under 2 minutes each time, which is genuinely impressive for the price tier. The agents knew what they were talking about on all the Linux/network questions. The billing question took a bit more back-and-forth but resolved correctly.
I haven't needed tier-2 support for anything complex, so I can't speak to how they handle genuinely hard infrastructure problems. But for the level of support you'd typically need on a VPS at this price, they've been good.
What I'd Choose Differently
A few things worth knowing before you commit:
No managed database. If you need PostgreSQL or MySQL, you install and manage it yourself. That's fine for developers; less ideal if you want a fully managed stack. (I use Neon for managed Postgres on other projects — it's cheap and works well with Vercel or any VPS.)
No managed database. If you're running PostgreSQL or MySQL, you manage it yourself. That's standard for VPS — Neon works well as a managed Postgres alternative if needed.
No managed SSL or CDN included. I set up Certbot + Let's Encrypt myself (takes about 10 minutes). For CDN, I use Cloudflare's free tier in front of the VPS — that handles the global edge caching and DDoS protection.
Who It's For
Hostinger KVM 2 is the right choice if you're:
- A solo developer or small team building a real product
- Running a Next.js, Nuxt, Remix, or Node.js backend app
- Hosting multiple smaller projects on one server
- Bootstrapped and watching your infrastructure spend
- Based in India or Southeast Asia
It's probably not right for you if you need managed Kubernetes, auto-scaling, or enterprise SLAs. Those exist on AWS/GCP for a reason.
For most of what Indian developers are building at the indie or early-stage level, Hostinger VPS is the most cost-effective option I've found that still gives you full control.
The Setup Guide
If you're ready to deploy, I wrote a complete step-by-step guide covering SSH setup, Node.js, PM2, Nginx, and SSL:
How to Deploy a Next.js App on Hostinger VPS →
And if you want the KVM 2 plan with 24-month pricing:
Get Hostinger KVM 2 VPS (affiliate link — same price for you, small commission for me)